… deal with a medical issue. Nothing life-threatening, but I’ll be doing that for the next few hours.
I plan to resume posting after that.
Open thread 1/15/2026
Anti-ICE demonstrations: it’s all fun and games until it’s not
Do you recall that the press seemed okay with ICE before Trump came along? Here’s a video that might remind you; unfortunately, it can’t be embedded but you can view it here.
There’s also this:
2016. Obama’s Press Secretary is asked about reports that during immigration raids, ICE agents were storming into homes, going room to room looking for illegals, and making children tremble with fear.
I thought only fascist Presidents do that sort of thing.
Why was the press so civil? Why weren’t they crying or at least calling Obama a nazi?
How come nobody was shaving their head in protest? Surely there were a bunch of angry white liberal wine moms outside the building screaming at the top of their lungs, right?
Always keep in mind how fake and performative the outrage is.
I don’t think the present rage is fake. I’m basing this on the rage against ICE of some people I know. It’s real, and it’s created, fostered, and nurtured by Democrats and the press coverage as well as social media. It’s no accident at all, it’s deliberately drummed up, but the rank-and-file are for the most part sincere.
Some of the most active protesters seem to not understand that this is serious, and that their actions could be deadly serious – to themselves. For example, there was this:
Ask yourself what [Renee] Good’s partner’s conceptual world has to be like for her to scream [after Good was killed] “Why did you have real bullets?”
This is the outrage of someone who is discovering the hard limits of social construction.
Indeed. It’s also the result of too much reliance on imagology and not enough awareness of reality. Perhaps that’s saying more or less the same thing. But it doesn’t pay to live in a fantasy world where federal agents arresting criminals don’t have real bullets in their weapons, and impeding them – or even trying to run them down in your car – won’t have potentially very dire consequences resulting from the use of very real bullets.
It’s also a reflection of the fact that in this country, protesters are not shot unless they do something very dangerous. Despite the left’s rhetoric about ICE, the officers are not going around murdering people and demonstrations against them would be fine if those demonstrations were non-violent. So based on that knowledge, perhaps demonstrators get into a mindset of “anything goes” because they believe there will never be serious retaliation on the part of ICE. It’s paradoxical, but it makes a certain amount of sense – they hate ICE but rely on ICE’s general tolerance of dissent.
Who’s funding the training of these people? Here’s a piece that attempts to find out.
The left wants martyrs and is happy to have them and to exploit their deaths to fire up even more rage against ICE and Trump. It’s pretty much the Black Lives Matter playbook, only it’s not about race this time.
[NOTE: More from that tweet:
I’m reminded of a news story I read a couple of weeks ago. White couple out on the town, approached by a random black street psycho, random psycho insults the girl and spits at the guy, guy squares up to fight him.
The girl grabs her man’s arm and says “Don’t fight”. While she’s restraining him and his attention is distracted, black psycho stabs him to death.
That girl lived in a universe where everything was head pats and cookies and good intentions. So does Becca [Renee Good’s spouse]. And so, I’m pretty sure, did Renee Good.
I wonder about that analysis of the street fight. If an unarmed person is confronted at close quarters by someone with a knife, it’s very dangerous. I don’t think a fist fight necessarily stops the potential knifing at all – it might be best to try to get away as fast as possible. Knife attacks can be very quick, and even if the victim has a gun the knife often is faster at close quarters or even semi-close quarters.
Looking it up just now, I tried to identify the murder. If it was this one, the facts are significantly different from the description in that tweet:
Carson and his girlfriend were coming home from a wedding when the apparently unprovoked attack occurred, ABC New York station WABC reported.
The suspect walked past the couple while they were seated on a bench at a bus stop, police said. They then begin to walk toward the suspect, who started to damage scooters, police said. The suspect said to Carson, “What are you looking at?” according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
“Mr. Carson immediately places himself between the male and his female companion to protect her,” Kenny said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
As Carson tried to de-escalate the situation, the suspect swung a knife at him, Kenny said. Carson backed up and tripped, falling to the ground. The suspect then stabbed him three times, with the knife piercing his heart, Kenny said.
“As Mr. Carson laid dying on the sidewalk, the male with the knife kicks him in the chest, threatens to stab the woman companion and spits in her face,” Kenny said.
Awful, horrible, but the woman was not restraining Carson and he was trying to get away, having seen the knife. He was murdered because he tripped and fell, affording the murderer the opportunity to stab him. The perp spitting on the woman occurred afterwards.]
The waiting game in Iran
The killings have reached enormous levels. The mullahs are like cornered rats with very sharp teeth:
With the Iranian regime conducting one of the deadliest crackdowns in recent decades despite repeated warnings by President Donald Trump, the U.S. and several Western countries have advised their citizens to leave the country immediately.
The advisory comes amid reports that the U.S. was pulling out hundreds of troops from bases in the region, including the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the Middle East. “The Pentagon has begun withdrawing some U.S. troops and assets from a key base in Qatar as a precautionary measure while President Trump weighs whether to take military action against Iran, officials said,” The Washington Post reported.
The British broadcaster Sky News saw this as “a signal the US is readying a strike – or giving itself the option to do so.”
The death toll is reported to now be as high as 15,000. It’s impossible to know, but there’s little doubt it’s very high, and more to come.
Trump needs to do something effective, and it should happen as soon as possible. From the Times of Israel, on why it hasn’t happened yet:
Israeli and Arab officials have suggested the Trump administration hold off on striking Iran for now, believing that the Islamic Republic may not be sufficiently weakened in order for a US attack to topple it, NBC News reported Tuesday.
The report came as US President Donald Trump told reporters that he has not yet decided what course of action he will take in response to Iran’s killing of protesters.
Protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. It said Wednesday that at least 2,571 people had been killed and more than 18,100 had been arrested in the more than two weeks of protests. The Mossad is said to believe the death toll is more than twice as high.
NBC said that Israeli and Arab officials prefer the US wait to strike until the Iranian regime is further stretched, and that this message was relayed in talks held the past few days involving US political and military leaders.
Can this report be trusted? Or is it a pretense to try to get the mullahs to believe no action is forthcoming any time soon when in fact something is imminent?
SCOTUS decides in favor of standing for candidates challenging voting rules
This seems like good news to me:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday backed a Republican congressman from Illinois who is challenging a state law that allows mail ballots to be received after Election Day, a decision that may make it easier for other candidates to challenge voting laws – even if they ultimately win their election.
The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, was 7-2 with two of the court’s liberals dissenting.
“Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their campaigns,” Roberts wrote. “Their interest extends to the integrity of the election—and the democratic process by which they earn or lose the support of the people they seek to represent.”
The congressman, Michael Bost, challenged an Illinois law that allows ballots to be received up to two weeks after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by the election. Bost sued in 2022, claiming that the Illinois law ran afoul of a federal law that sets a uniform day for federal elections. …
“Today’s ruling could open the door to a lot of litigation—and potential chaos – on the far side of the next contested election,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
“If candidates will generally have standing to challenge how votes are counted in any election they’re running in, that could dramatically expand the horizon of legal challenges that can be brought challenging even those elections that were completely by the book,” Vladeck said, “potentially injecting more uncertainty in those critical days and weeks after Election Day going forward.”
That’s certainly true. But I doubt the professor would be complaining if it happened to be a Democrat mounting the challenge for any reason.
The justice who sided with the conservative majority was Elana Kagan, by the way.
Open thread 1/14/2026
On Iran
[Hat tip: commenter “huxley.”]
Trump nixes negotiation while the killings continue:
“I’ve canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops,” Trump says, repeating his announcement from the Truth Social post, again telling protesters, “help is on its way.”
What’s there to negotiate? Hopefully, the only thing under consideration would be to allow them to surrender the government and leave the country. Even that seems way too kind.
More from Trump:
US President Donald Trump reiterates his call for Iranians to keep protesting, take over their institutions and save the names of those cracking down against them.
I’m not sure how an unarmed populace “takes over institutions,” except through sheer numbers.
Bill Clinton refuses to testify before Congress
This story focuses on two elements that have come to bore me greatly. One is Bill Clinton, and the other is the much-hyped (much overhyped, IMHO) idea that Epstein, who did have sex with underage girls, involved many other famous people in the practice.
However, in case you’re interested, here it is:
President Bill Clinton defied a subpoena to give a deposition regarding Jeffrey Epstein in front of the House Oversight Committee.
The sworn closed-door deposition should have happened at 10 AM ET.
Chairman James Comer is not happy:
“Well, I think everyone knows by now Bill Clinton did not show up, and I think it’s important to note that this subpoena was voted on in a bipartisan manner by this committee. This wasn’t something that I just issued as chairman of the committee. This was voted on by the entire committee in a unanimous vote of the House Oversight Committee to subpoena former President Clinton and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.”
He faces contempt of Congress, perhaps. But that’s not usually all that meaningful either, is it?
Will Hillary show up tomorrow? I doubt it, but if she does I very much doubt it will be meaningful.
Ten percent of the US budget goes to theft/fraud
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has an estimate for us:
Somewhere between 5-10% of the total federal budget gets gobbled up by wrongdoers each year, Bessent said, citing data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
“If we can narrow that number, President Trump asked for a $500 billion increase in the defense budget to fortify the 10 to 20 years of neglect,” Bessent told journalist Christopher Rufo in a recent interview.
“If we need to flex up our military budget, if we can get rid of this waste, fraud, and abuse, we can finance a safer, sounder US with that, without taking on more debt. Sounds like a pretty good outcome to me.”
It is infuriating to think that much money has gone to criminals. And yet it’s believable. The amount almost certainly mushroomed during COVID, when many of the controls (including those on voting security, by the way) were relaxed. I don’t think this relaxation policy was done in all innocence, either. Was it done in part to facilitate fraud, graft, grift? I would bet on the answer being “yes.”
Plus:
Beyond fraudulent government spending, the Internal Revenue Service estimates that it has failed to collect hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxes owed.
The IRS most recently projected that the so-called “tax gap” was about $606 billion as of fiscal year 2022.
Pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money.
[NOTE: That last sentence is a riff on this quote from Senator Everett Dirksen:
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
Indeed.
Scott Adams, RIP
He said he was going to die soon and he kept his word: Scott Adams has died of prostate cancer at 68.
All of us are unique, but Adams was one of the more unique and independent-minded people around:
Adams became famous through “Dilbert,” the comic strip that poked fun at corporate culture with keen insight into the absurdity, cruelty and incompetence of management inside large organizations. In his last decade and a half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis.
His 2013 best seller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years.
In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.
In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice.
A trained hypnotist, Adams predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.
I think his most impressive offering in the latter part of his career was his analysis of “The Charlottesville Hoax” – how it was perpetrated and the thinking process of those who bought into it.
He will be missed.
Here his ex-wife reads a final message from Adams:
Open thread 1/13/2026
Oregon will finally be purging its voter rolls of “inactive voters”
The state is being sued about this, but that has nothing to do with the actions now being taken to clean up the rolls, says Oregon’s Secretary of State Tobias Read:
That process could lead to the cancellation of as many as 800,000 registrations. That’s the number of voters Read says are currently classified as “inactive” on the voter rolls. To be clear, inactive voters do not receive ballots, but their names remain on the rolls.
Who are these people? “Inactive” merely means the ballot mailed to the voter was returned as undeliverable. It doesn’t mean the voter hasn’t voted in years, it doesn’t mean the voter is dead, it doesn’t mean the voter doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean the voter isn’t a citizen; it seems that any of those things could be the case and the voter will remain on the rolls and get a ballot in the mail without asking.
Why did this weeding out process take so long?:
Read, a Democrat elected in 2024, says he’s acting not in direct response to any of the lawsuits, but because he wants to increase voter trust in mail elections.
“There are many examples of people seeking to undermine confidence in our elections,” he says. “We want to do whatever we can to remove any reasons for doubt.”
Say, I’ve got an idea I’d like to share with Read: end universal mail-in ballots and have in-person voting, with the old-fashioned absentee ballot request system with its checks on fraud. But funny thing, that’s not even being considered.
In the comments at the link, here’s an interesting response in answer to another commenter’s query about what’s inherently suspicious about universal mail-in ballots:
1. Ballot secrecy.
In the home it is possible for dominant and potentially abusive family members to watch the marking of the ballot. This overlaps with a similar problem in such family environments of dictating the vote, or outright ballot theft.
Then when tallying, it is possible that the signed security envelope that contains the ballot can, as it is opened, be correlated with the ballot. In short, a malevolent actor can record who voted for whom/what. Not saying it happens or is likely, but it is much more possible than under the old ballot box system.
[EDIT: Anyone who is scared of Trump ought to be worried that in the future, with sufficient power, it could be covert policy for such “vote-peeping” to be used to identify his enemies. I’m not a conspiracy sorta guy, but this seems like a glaring threat.]2. Selective release of early results.
Now I’m working from memory and could be wrong, but I believe that the votes are tallied as they arrive, if not tallied, then removed from the security envelopes at least, making it possible to tally early. I think it is unlawful to release the on-going count, nor do I think it has been done, but again, it’s possible where it is not possible with the ballot box method.
Related to this is a weird thing I discovered (or think I did, I could find it with some work) is that when the signed security envelopes come in, your name is marked as having voted. This is fine, but it looks to me like this information is released to both parties and based on the fact that your name is not marked as having voted they will call you and try to get you to vote for their issues/candidates. This OK as it is (although annoying), but the possibility exists that a favored party–depending on which has power–can suppress the information to the opposing party. Not possible in the ballot box method.
3. “Stolen” votes in the household.
This relates to #1. The ballots come to the home and if there is an abusive situation the actual ballot may be taken from the abused person and filled out by the forceful head of house.
Related to this but much less abusive is the situation that happened while my daughter was away at college, out-of-state. For the entire 4 years a ballot came for her to our house that she was never present to fill out. If I had wanted to open it and fill it out, then forge her signature–easy enough since I had examples at home–I have little doubt that I could have gotten away with it.
4. Miscounting.
This has actually happened at least once, and we know this because it was detected, but any undetected instances would pass.
In the old ballot box version, the vast bulk of votes were taken from the precincts to the tallying sites on the same day. There is an old tradition of partisan observers being present when the votes are counted–figuratively looking over the shoulders of the of vote counters. Now, since the votes are counted as they come in (if they are), is much harder for partisan observers to view the entire process, leaving many more of the votes to be tallied with no observers present. It is at such a time when the sole detected cheating was done: a GOP lady who was counting altered at least one ballot and was caught. She shamefacedly admitted to it and was given a light penalty.
There is no excuse for having such a bad system, subject to manipulation. Once it is in place, however, it is almost impossible to go back. The left depends on the system.