Category: The More Things Change……

Don’t worry, unlike what was part of what caused the crash in 2008, I’m sure this time around it will work just fine.

Fannie Mae removes minimum credit score requirements from DU.

The current 620 minimum representative or average median credit score will be removed for new loan casefiles created on or after Nov. 16, 2025

Fannie Mae‘s November 2025 Selling Guide, released on Wednesday, detailed several updates, including expanding Fannie’s Day 1 Certainty offerings to include representation and warranty relief for undisclosed non-mortgage liabilities, expanding the eligibility for the age of credit document exception for single-closing construction loans and removing minimum credit score requirements from Desktop Underwriter (DU).
As a result of the latter update, Fannie Mae will remove minimum credit score requirements for loans submitted through its DU system starting Nov. 16. This means that the current 620 minimum representative or average median credit score will be removed for new loan case files created on or after that date.
Other related updates will apply to files submitted or resubmitted beginning the weekend of Nov. 15, 2025, an announcement from Fannie Mae said. Instead of applying a minimum score, DU will use its own analysis of borrower risk factors to determine loan eligibility.

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Guilt-Trip Gun Control Advocacy Won’t Work, So Knock It Off

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of calls for gun control from a lot of different sources. You’ve seen a lot, too, I suspect, and you’re not necessarily someone who has to seek them out to any degree. You can imagine how many I’ve seen.

A lot of them just sort of repeat what’s been said before. In fairness, we do the same thing, too. After all, it’s the same issue and nothing has really changed about where anyone stands.

But one thing has really gotten under my skin over the years, and that’s what I call “guilt-trip gun control advocacy.”

That’s when someone tries to make you feel terrible for not supporting gun control. They’re focusing on emotions, either your own or the emotional struggles of others, all to make you feel like you should have to support gun control.

It looks like this:

The news ticker denotes yet another shooting and fire, this time at a Latter-day Saint church in Michigan. This tragic incident occurred only weeks after the massacre at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, a tragedy whose shock had barely begun to fade from public memory.

Each headline was a fresh rupture in our collective psyche, each one a new entry in the ever-lengthening register of loss. I felt the same fatigue—the hollow, tightening ache of resignation. How many times can we say “not again” before the words’ meaning dissipates?

America has a peculiar way of justifying sin and bearing her scars. Our country’s response to violence is not just inadequate; it is complicit. We have constructed a body politic that tolerates, even sanctifies, these acts through legislative inertia and a distorted interpretation of constitutional rights.

The sacred text of our republic has become a shield for the status quo, with lawmakers and justices hiding behind its language to justify inaction. Leaders at every level offer only platitudes, as if thoughts and prayers could bind wounds that legislation refuses to heal.

Our nation’s dysfunction runs deeper than any one event or single perpetrator. Behind the headlines are the haunted: families who will never again feel whole, first responders who carry silent burdens, and clergy who must find words when language feels useless.

And behind them, a vast community of the traumatized—students, parents, teachers, neighbors—bound together not by choice but by the grim lottery of proximity. This is not the mark of a healthy society. It is the sign of a nation adrift, its soul eroded by violence and its conscience dulled by repetition.

Yes, we’re complicit in mass murder simply because we aren’t willing to give up our rights, even when many of these killers are people who should have been caught by some existing law and weren’t.

How dare anyone try to claim that I’m complicit, that I’m responsible, simply because I recognize the failures of gun control in the past? I’ve been one of those who will never feel whole again, because a dear friend was gunned down by a maniac who was pissed that he couldn’t sit in a coffee shop anymore after being a pain for the last time.

How dare anyone say that to our own Ryan Petty, who lost his lovely daughter Aliana in the Parkland shooting, or RedState’s Jenn Van Laar, who lost a friend in a shooting in Thousand Oaks?

We lost, and we recognized that gun control wasn’t the answer, but now we’re told everything that followed was really our fault because we didn’t bend the knee and give up our rights?

No.

This guilt-trip gun control push isn’t working. It’s never going to work. People don’t get told they’re complicit, that they’re responsible for mass murders, then just go, “Oh, well, OK. I’ll change all my views about everything.” They get angry and dig in even harder, which is fantastic for our side.

The writer of this screed, Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson, describes himself as a “spiritual entrepreneur,” which sounds more like someone who uses faith to grift, if you ask me, but I’m not sure he understands that trying to guilt-trip someone isn’t really a great strategy.

Knock it off. You’re just making us mad and making yourself look like an absolute dipstick.

Written down ages ago, yet the purported intellectuals believe they’ve discovered something new………

Genesis 9:2
And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

There’s One Super Predator in Africa That Instills More Fear Than Lions.

With their bladed paws, wielded by a rippling mass of pure muscle, sharp eyes, agile reflexes, and crushing fanged jaws, lions are certainly not a predator most animals have any interest in messing with. Especially seeing as they also have the smarts to hunt in packs.

“Lions are the biggest group-hunting land predator on the planet, and thus ought to be the scariest,” conservation biologist Michael Clinchy from Western University in Canada said in 2023.

But in over 10,000 recordings of wildlife on the African savannah, 95 percent of the species observed responded with far more terror to the sound of an entirely different beast. This animal isn’t even technically an apex predator. It’s us: humans.

We’re the monsters lurking under other mammals’ beds.

“The fear of humans is ingrained and pervasive,” said Clinchy. “There’s this idea that the animals are going to habituate to humans if they’re not hunted. But we’ve shown that this isn’t the case.”

In research published last year, Western University ecologist Liana Zanette and colleagues played a series of vocalizations and sounds to animals at waterholes in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park and recorded their response.

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Supreme Court turns away Missouri’s bid to revive gun law

The Supreme Court turned away Missouri’s bid to revive its law purporting to declare various federal gun restrictions unconstitutional in the state, the justices announced Monday.

It has become a major battle over state versus federal authority. The Biden administration launched a lawsuit and convinced lower courts that Missouri’s statute violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

After the change in administration, Trump’s Justice Department maintains that some provisions are unconstitutional.

But it agreed the lower judge went too far in blocking the act’s entirety at the onset. The administration urged the Supreme Court to turn away Missouri’s appeal and send the case back so the injunction can be narrowed.

“That is all the more reason why review by this Court is unwarranted at this juncture,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court filings.

Monday’s announcement came on the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, a year already filled with major battles over race, LGBTQ rights and Trump’s second-term agenda.

The justices considered Missouri’s petition at a closed-door conference last week alongside hundreds of other cases that had piled up over the summer. On Friday, the court announced it will hear a Second Amendment challenge to a Hawaii gun law, which bans concealed carry on private property without the owner’s express permission.

Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act in 2021, declaring certain federal gun laws unconstitutional and prohibits using state resources to enforce them.

Missouri agencies and law enforcement also cannot hire anyone who has attempted to enforce those laws as a federal employee. Private parties can sue over violations and seek up to $50,000 penalties.

The Biden administration challenged the law and won in the lower courts.

The Supreme Court at an earlier stage of the case declined Missouri’s request for an emergency intervention that would enable the law’s enforcement as litigation proceeds. Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the court’s conservatives, publicly dissented.

Back at the high court, Missouri’s petition insisted the law is constitutional and the federal government lacks the right to sue Missouri because the law is enforced by private citizens, not state actors.

Missouri told the justices they should still take up the case to definitively reject the legal challenge, despite the Trump administration’s urging to turn away the appeal.

“The Eighth Circuit’s reasoning is a Pandora’s Box that will misguide lower courts and impose a straitjacket on States,” the state wrote in court filings.

“No wonder the Government refuses to defend it.”

Trump Snubs NRA Convention

For the first time since 2015, President Donald Trump won’t be speaking at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meeting.

On Tuesday, the NRA confirmed President Trump would not be attending the event in Atlanta, Georgia, at the end of the month. It also said it had canceled the Leadership Forum, the part of the conference where Trump and other politicians usually address NRA members. It cited scheduling conflicts as the reason for Trump’s absence.

“Though President Trump is unable to attend the NRA’s 2025 Annual Meeting, he is always welcome on our stage to address our members and has done so on nine occasions over the last decade,” the NRA told The Reload. “As an NRA Life Member himself, President Trump remains a steadfast advocate for NRA members and a champion for the right to keep and bear arms. Considering the high level and pace of work being done by his administration on many fronts to make America great again and put America first on the world stage, we can understand that he has a complex, ever-moving schedule.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on President Trump’s decision not to speak. However, this is not the first NRA event he has canceled in recent months. At the end of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump canceled a planned rally with the group in the swing state of Georgia.

The abrupt end to Trump’s streak of speaking at the NRA’s biggest gathering of the year, which draws tens of thousands of visitors, comes as his administration has taken a slower approach to gun policy reforms than most other areas. The White House left gun policy off its list of priorities, and Trump skipped it altogether during his record-long speech to a joint session of Congress in March. The decision to skip the NRA speech also reflects his diminishing relationship with the organization as it has struggled to pull out of a half-decade-long tailspin, resulting from former NRA leader Wayne LaPierre’s long-running financial impropriety.

In 2016, the NRA was one of the only major national groups to spend big on Trump’s candidacy. It poured over $50 million into that election, and its membership rose to all-time highs under his first term. It had direct access to Trump during much of his first term as well, with LaPierre and former-NRA lobbyist Chris Cox having Oval Office meetings with him.

However, shortly after Trump spoke at the 2019 Annual Meeting, news of LaPierre’s misuse of NRA funds caused a brewing leadership battle to boil over into public view. That fight lasted years and ended with the firing of Cox, loss of millions of members, as well as the ouster of LaPierre and a court finding he was liable for millions in damages. It also took a toll on the NRA’s ability to fundraise and spend in elections, with the group spending less and less through Trump’s subsequent presidential runs.

Still, the gun-rights group has remained a strong backer of Trump throughout that time. It has rarely publicly disagreed with him. The only notable times the NRA has criticized Trump came after he declared he wasn’t beholden to the group in the wake of the 2018 Parkland shooting, backing unrealized new gun restrictions, and he unilaterally banned bump stocks after the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting–which the Supreme Court eventually found unconstitutional.

The NRA also backed Trump during the 2024 Republican primary, despite Florida Governor Ron DeSantis initially positioning himself to the right of Trump on guns. They brought Trump in to speak to NRA members at multiple Annual Meetings during his numerous criminal prosecutions, one of which ended in a felony conviction that bars him from owning guns. During his 2023 Annual Meeting speech, Trump even claimed he and the NRA were facing similar legal persecution at the hands of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D.).

“The very same raging radical left lunatic attorney general that is coming after me in New York state is also waging war on the NRA, shamefully trying to destroy this legendary organization that’s been an American institution since 1871,” Trump said at the time. “They better endorse me again or they’re going to have some explaining to do.”

The NRA also invited Trump to speak to members in Pennsylvania before he had wrapped up the nomination. Trump made a series of promises to undo President Joe Biden’s gun rules during that February 2024 event. The NRA formally endorsed him a short time later.

Still, a source familiar with the discussion about canceling Trump’s speech to the NRA, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly, said the group has “fallen out of favor.” Although reformers have gained control of NRA leadership in the wake of the ruling against LaPierre and the group has already instituted some changes with more promised, the moves haven’t yet left a positive impression in the White House. That’s at least in part because the President “doesn’t even have any idea who runs NRA anymore or what they do.”

While Trump has put gun policy on the back burner and is well behind his own timetable to implement pro-gun reforms, the NRA has yet to criticize him during his still-young second term. The group has instead focused on the policy moves the Trump Administration has announced thus far. While it’s behind schedule, Trump did order the Department of Justice to review executive branch gun policies–which recently led to the official elimination of the Biden-era “zero tolerance” ATF policy toward gun dealer malfeasance or mistakes.

“In just over 80 days since he took office, President Trump has already made critical changes to safeguard the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” the NRA said. “This includes rolling back radical administrative rules instituted by the Biden-Harris administration and ordering the Attorney General to expose work by various government agencies and bureaus that limit the gun rights of lawful citizens.”

The NRA doesn’t appear to be changing tack despite Trump’s decision not to speak. Instead of complaining about Trump skipping its meeting, the NRA chastised Congress for not sending a reciprocity bill to his desk.

“President Trump has pledged to sign national concealed carry reciprocity into law,” the group said. “Congress should deliver this bill to his desk. We look forward to continuing our partnership with President Trump and his administration to further strengthen Second Amendment freedoms.”

The Senate version of concealed carry reciprocity currently has 46 co-sponsors, none of whom are Democrats, putting it well short of the 60-vote threshold likely needed to make it to President Trump’s desk.

The NRA’s 2025 Annual Meeting will take place at the Georgia World Congress Center from April 24th through the 27th. It’s not clear what, if anything, will replace the Leadership Forum.

Sometimes reasonable people must do unreasonable things.

The title is a paraphrase of something Marv Heemeyer said. If you’re unfamiliar with that name, it’s the guy who built and used the “Killdozer” to go after people who kept screwing him over in Granby, Colorado. The Lore Lodge on YouTube did a great video on some of what’s been missing from the popular narrative you should check out.

In the heart of things, though, you’ve got a guy who wanted to be part of the community; to contribute and be treated fairly as any person has a right to expect. The problem was, he wasn’t. The “good old boy” system there took issue with him because he bought property that someone else, someone connected, wanted and things went downhill from there until Heemeyer engaged in his rampage.

Which hurt no one, by the way. The only fatality was himself.

But the truth is that you can only push people so far before they start pushing back, and if you push them long enough, their pushback won’t be for just one thing, but a long history of abuses. I’ve touched on how the attacks on Christians could go, but it doesn’t stop there.

See, I came across this bit from Hot Air today, and I found something interesting, but not surprising. See, an auto repair shop called Popular Mechanix has a problem. An arsonist who has been arrested numerous times but keeps coming back to cause problems with the shop. And, frankly, enough is enough.

It’s not that the city is doing nothing. They do arrest and charge Perez Perez every few months, it’s just that the city isn’t stopping him or even discouraging him. He’s committing many more crimes than he’s being punished for and the city can’t deal with it. So dealing with Perez Perez has fallen on shop manager DJ Meisner:

“It feels like the Wild West,” said Meisner about the city. “I try not to give into the doom spiral narrative. But they are doing nothing to dissuade me of that notion.”…

In 2022, Meisner said he was putting out blazes weekly and even installed a ladder he bought from a hunting website to get a better vantage point from the fence line. He placed extinguisher devices on the fence, but they have proven useless and have been swallowed up in the fires.

In October, an early morning fire broke out in Popular Mechanix’s backyard, growing into a large blaze that destroyed two of the shop’s cars and scarred surrounding trees. One of the cars exploded because it was full of gasoline.

In January the police recommended charges against Perez Perez for the November arson (the one caught on video). Supposedly the DA reached out to the company this week, but does anyone think it will matter? Perez Perez might go to prison for another six months. Then he’ll be back on the street and Popular Mechanix will be left to do its best to protect itself from him. And of course, he’s not the only agent of chaos in the city.

The shop’s owner, Andrew Gescheidt, says it feels like he’s being pushed toward becoming a vigilante. “I feel like I don’t want to become a vigilante, but the universe is saying you have to do it yourself,” he said. He vowed he wouldn’t go out and hit Perez Perez with a wrench but added, “Bureaucracy is not helping us.”

Again, the police show up, arrest him, he goes to court, gets a sentence, then comes out and does it all over again. There’s a restraining order against him, but that’s just a piece of paper when all else is considered.

What Gescheidt is articulating here is that he, a reasonable man, is starting to feel like he needs to do unreasonable things.

Let’s understand that you cannot use lethal force in a situation that isn’t reasonably perceived as a life-or-death situation. Bottles of urine and rocks should qualify—both can kill people, after all—but California’s prosecutors would likely disagree. That means Gescheidt attacking Perez Perez in any way, even when you and I might believe there was a threat of grievous bodily harm or even death, he’s likely to be the one to go to prison.

But unless something is done, you’re going to see some kind of vigilantism in San Francisco. Writer John Sexton teases that you have to become Batman to live in San Fran, and he’s not entirely wrong to do so.

The thing is, though, anyone can be pushed far enough. There’s a point where anyone stops being docile and law-abiding. Sure, you can push them pretty far if you’re gentle about it to start with, but even then, sooner or later, you risk crossing the Rubicon and that person unleashing hell.

In a civilized nation, we expect criminals to be punished. We expect at least some response that looks like justice. Since the system is run by people, we can accept that mistakes are made so long as they’re rectified as quickly as possible, but we still expect meaningful action.

Someone revolving through the jails to return and continue to unleash havoc isn’t justice. It’s not remotely like justice, and if it keeps up, someone will decide justice has to come from somewhere else.

Clearly, the police can’t do it.

But it’s not limited here, either.

Right now, the left is, once again, losing their freaking minds. They’re firebombing Tesla dealerships because they don’t like Elon Musk. They’re acting as if they’ve been pushed too far when no one has pushed them anywhere. They’re the ones doing the pushing.

At some point, someone is going to say enough is enough and take action.

Should that happen, it’s entirely possible it will inspire others to act. Reasonable men and women must do unreasonable things, and it’s usually unreasonable men and women who push them to do them.

Stop being unreasonable and things will settle. Fail to do that, and, well…consider yourself warned.

Trump Cabinet Nominees And Administration Appointees Threatened, Swatted Before Thanksgiving.

Former President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees faced a series of threats overnight and on Wednesday morning.

“Several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and Administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt wrote in a press release on Wednesday morning.

The threats, which came the night before Thanksgiving eve, “ranged from bomb threats to “swatting,’” in which a suspect falsely reports an emergency to trigger a police response against his target, according to the release. Police and “other authorities” quickly acted for the “safety of those who were targeted.”

“President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action,” Leavitt wrote. “With President Trump as our example, dangerous acts of intimidation and violence will not deter us.”

Trump has so far faced at least two attempted assassination attempts. In the first, a would-be assassin shot Trump in the head at a Pennsylvania rally, and in the second, a shooter waited in the bushes on a Florida golf course to ambush him, as The Federalist previously reported. Apparently this violence is now being directed toward Trump’s associates.

Leftists have consistently incited violence against Trump by calling him a “Nazi,” peddling the recent Madison Square Garden media hoax and refusing to abandon their incendiary rhetoric in the days after the first assassination attempt.

Devon Eriksen

Cenk has seen the writing on the wall, and knows the dems have no future.

Problem is, the fact that he is able to pivot so smoothly and quickly means that he wasn’t drinking the koolaid.

Which means he knew Trump wasn’t Orange Hitler. That he knew most of the things said about him were lies. Because if half the stuff they said about him was true, no sane person would work with him.

So, if he knew before that it was all a lie, but he’s only pivoting now, that means this is self-interest, not enlightenment.

Which means he is not trustworthy.

This is something to keep in mind as more and more lefties try to pivot to the Trump Coalition, which they will.

Keep an eye on when they turned, and what they said before they turned. Not just about Trump. About covid. About immigration. About white people. About middle America. About heterosexuals. About the working class. About men.

Check the receipts.

Doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t work with them, but it means we must be judicious about how much trust we extend.

Works the other way, too. Ron Paul was laying tracks for the Trump Train before even Trump was on it. Hell, before there was a train. At great personal cost and risk.

The compass needle is swinging away from “experts” with academic credentials from certifying institutions, and towards those with a track record of accomplishment, skin in the game, and, most of all, proven loyalty to the American tribe over the political class.

America is a blood-and-soil nation, like all the others, and, while we have a permissive culture about allowing others to join the club, they must prove their loyalty to be allowed to do so.

Let’s remember to keep that in mind as the rats start to abandon the ship.

Kamala campaign flip-flops on EV mandates.

The former senator cosponsored legislation banning gas-powered cars by 2040

A campaign official for Kamala Harris said Tuesday that it is a “lie” that the vice president Kamala Harris supports implementing an electric vehicle mandate, even though she cosponsored legislation doing exactly that in 2019.

Harris’s director of rapid response, Ammar Moussa, wrote in a campaign email ahead of Trump running mate J.D. Vance’s remarks on the economy in Michigan that the Ohio senator would “undoubtedly lie, gaslight, and try to run away from the truth.” One such lie, he cautioned, is that “Vice President Harris wants to force every American to own an electric vehicle.”

“Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Moussa claimed, before citing several news stories that argued the Biden administration only incentivized, rather than mandated, electric vehicle production by car manufacturers. The administration spent billions to build just a handful of electric vehicle chargers and introduced tax credits for electric vehicle purchases. In addition, however, the Biden administration pushed through a new tailpipe emissions rule through the Environmental Protection Agency that would force car manufacturers to significantly scale back production of gas-powered cars. “The regulation would essentially require automakers to sell more electric vehicles and hybrids by gradually tightening limits on tailpipe pollution,” the New York Times reported in March.

Even more damningly, Harris also supported an electric vehicle mandate when she serves as the junior senator from California. In April 2019, months after announcing her bid to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Harris cosponsored the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019. The bill, which was introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Mike Levin, presented “bold plan for transitioning the United States to 100% zero-emission vehicles.”

The original version of the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019 would require 50 percent of new passenger vehicle sales to be automobiles that use zero emissions — electric or hydrogen-powered cars and trucks. The bill would require all new car sales be zero emission vehicles by 2040, according to text of the bill and a press release from Senator Merkley’s office.

The legislation gave authority to the EPA administrator to issue an “injunction on the manufacture of any passenger vehicles other than zero-emission vehicles by a vehicle manufacturer” by 2040.

Harris supported an even more aggressive version of the legislation that would ban non-zero-emission vehicles by 2035, according to an archived page of her 2020 campaign website obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Harris’s campaign has also claimed that she no longer supports a fracking ban and other key policies of her 2020 Democratic primary campaign. Harris herself has not walked back any of these positions or explained why and how she changed her mind so radically in just one election cycle.

I sometimes wonder what we’re paying them for.

US intel not aware of Hamas’ plan for Oct. 7 attack on Israel, John Kirby says.

The US would do the “same thing’’ Israel did if it suffered an attack like the Oct. 7 assault, a top Biden administration official said Sunday — while admitting US intelligence was unaware of a battle plan from Hamas that Israel obtained over a year before the attack.

“[Israeli officials] have every right and responsibility to go after the terrorist group that perpetrated these attacks and planet and oh, by the way, has made clear they’re going to do it again and do more,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told “Fox News Sunday.”

“We would do the same thing — any nation would,” Kirby said.

Kirby also referred to the recent reported revelation about Israeli security failures in the run-up to the bloody terrorist rampage.

More than a year before the deadly attack, Israeli officials obtained a roughly 40-page blueprint outlining Hamas’ battle plan but dismissed it as unachievable for the terror group, the New York Times reported last week.

Kirby suggested that the US did not learn about the document, dubbed “Jericho Wall,” when its staunch ally Israel did.

“The intelligence community has indicated that that they did not have access to this document,” Kirby told “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“They have no indications at this time that they had any advance warning of this document or any knowledge of it.”

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This Sneaky Senator’s Insider Trade Isn’t the Most Corrupt Part of This Story.

When a senator who sits on the Health Committee makes a big bet on a small, home-state medical devices company that just happens to get mucho moolah from the federal government, and then that stock goes up more than 40% in the weeks after said senator’s big bet, it’s the opinion of this mostly humble columnist that there’s some real shady stuff going on.

But it gets worse.

Earlier this month — November 8, to be exact — Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) purchased up to $250,000 in shares of Tactile Systems Technology (TCMD). TCMD shares had been on a real losing streak in 2023, down more than 60% from its 52-week high of $26.11. The price was down nearly another third, to $10.27 from $12.61, in the 48 hours before Smith made her big buy.

Buy the dip, of course. What’s remarkable is just how quickly TCMD recovered over the next three weeks — up 43% since the Minnesota senator plunked down her big bucks on a Minnesota company in an industry that Smith’s committee oversees.

That’s just one trade by one senator.

Financial analyst Quiver Quantitative called it “the most suspicious congressional stock trade I’ve seen in months.”

In May of last year, Quiver built “a trading bot that buys stocks that are being bought by politicians.” In a flat market, Quiver’s congressional bot’s fund is up 20% in just 18 months.

The sliminess is bipartisan. Here’s one example of how Quiver’s bot has performed by following the Tesla trades of one Democrat and two Republicans.

How’s your portfolio doing?

“It’s worth noting,” QQ reminds investors, “that despite the outperformance of the Congress Buys Strategy, it may still be held back by weak disclosure regulations.” Congresscritters, under the 2012 STOCK Act signed by President Barack Obama, have 45 days to disclose their stock transactions — but the penalty for late disclosures is all of $200.

So, yes, you could build a portfolio based on what people like Sen. Smith buy and sell, but you still wouldn’t do as well as they do because you’ll be up to 45 days behind their trades. Or longer if they decide to pony up the $200 for late disclosures.

But it still gets worse.

Quiver claims to have traced 7,912 STOCK Act violations, but “only a few have been investigated.” If any of those investigations have actually gone anywhere, it would be news to me. But Congress writes the laws governing Congress, so what would you expect?

That’s why, as far as I’m concerned, the most scandalous part of any of this is the mainstream media’s absolute silence on the matter.

As Bill Whittle put it to Right Angle viewers years ago, the press is supposed to act as a healthy society’s antibodies — gathering in the bloodstream at the site of any corruption to reveal and destroy it. And yet when a sitting member of the Senate Health Committee, whose “husband is an investor with a focus on medical industry stocks,” is making a killing on a volatile health company’s shares, it results in precisely zero stories in the mainstream media.

That’s despite Quiver’s revelations getting more than two million views on Twitter/X — the preferred social media platform of American journalists.

We know what Congress gets out of all this, so what’s the media’s payout?

So, it’s confirmed. He was another nutjob, this time one on a vendetta, that the authorities knew about, but “the system” let slip through the cracks, by incompetence, inability or negligence.

Maine shooter thought local businesses attacked in shooting were spreading ‘pedophile’ rumors about him

Maine law enforcement officers investigating last week’s mass shooting in Lewiston have shared evidence that suggests the U.S. Army reservist Robert Card, who killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar, may have intentionally targeted individuals at those locations.

On Tuesday, Maine State Police and the Maine Department of Public Safety released a trove of documents on Card, including search warrants, affidavits, criminal records and more that shed light on a possible motive after Card, 40, carried out a deadly rampage at the Schemengees Bar and Grille and Just In Time bowling alley that also wounded 13 other victims on Oct. 25.

According to multiple witnesses, including Card’s brother and son, Card knew people at both locations and may have believed they were calling him a “pedophile.” Card experienced a similar incident over the summer when he accused fellow members of his Army Reserves unit of calling him a pedophile. The incident prompted Army officials to have him undergo a mental health evaluation.

One affidavit reveals Card’s brother told police that the eventual mass shooting suspect thought there was a “conspiracy” involving people “accusing him of being a pedophile.”

State police interviewed a witness just hours after the shooting began, who said Card believed local businesses, including Schemengees Bar and Grille and the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, were “broadcasting online that Robert was a pedophile.” Card, according to his brother, also believed that some businesses were spreading rumors of him being a pedophile online.

Another witness interviewed by police said Card specifically mentioned Joey Walker, the manager of Schemengees Bar and Grille, as one of the people who he thought had disparaged him, according to an affidavit filed in a request to access Card’s cell phone records. Walker was among those killed.

The same witness, whose name was redacted, told police he previously traveled with Card to both the bowling alley and bar, and that Card knew people at both locations.

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“Suddenly”

The World is Freaking Out Because Its Favorite Victims Suddenly Became Human Butchers.

October 7 was so horrific it threatened to ambush the Palestinian cause. So they did what people have done for centuries: They changed the subject and blamed the Jews. That always works.

What do you do when a cause you deeply cherish betrays you?

What do you do when you spend a lifetime fighting for the Palestinian cause, and then, overnight, it becomes associated with the butchering, beheading, raping and mutilating of 1400 people, including  infants, babies, women, rave dancers, families and the elderly?

How do you spin that?

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Richard Fernandez

Future economists will ask why land conflicts in MENA [Middle East North Africa] could not be settled by negotiation. The Coase Theorem states that under ideal conditions, parties can negotiate terms that accurately reflect the full costs and underlying values, resulting in the most efficient outcome.
But in a multi-religions region without a consensus on right and wrong and without clear standards of evidence, territorial disputes cannot easily be argued according to accepted law or facts. The historical remedy in such doubtful cases was “trial by combat”.
“Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of witnesses or a confession in which two parties in dispute fought in single combat; the winner of the fight was proclaimed to be right.”
In cases where the court could not decide who was right, the contending parties could fight it out, in the belief that if no man knew who was innocent, God or the fortunes of war would decide. In way, war is trial by combat when the international order cannot enforce a decision.
MacArthur’s Japanese surrender speech: “We are gathered … to conclude a solemn agreement whereby Peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battle fields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate.”
Because international diplomacy failed Israel and its enemies are resorting to war, to trial by combat, to settle the issue. This, alas, is how much of the world’s boundaries were drawn throughout history and we are no nearer replacing it than our caveman ancestors.

Allahu Akbar: It couldn’t happen here…

Admittedly, I grew up in the golden age for Jews in America. Anti-Semitism was muted; Jews were respected for their family values and love of education. In fact in past presidential elections, candidates delved deep into their genetic inheritances to divine a Jewish gene or two.

The existence of the modern state of Israel, a Jewish state but unequivocally also a democracy, gave Jews existential pride, a psychological homeland to which they could move if so desired, and a sense of protection and invincibility.

Globally, Jews stood taller. For those stuck in Jewish-unfriendly geographic locations, rescue if things turned really ugly, was a reality.

Israel’s creation – by necessity a warrior state – also morphed from a small agrarian economy to a leader in start-ups, high tech, and constant innovation. Moreover, its commitment to rule of law provides more legal rights for Arab citizens than those given in Arab states. Specifically, Israel gives property rights to Muslim second wives – a right unheard of on the Arab street where so many women are still viewed as chattel.

As Arab money and Arab propaganda gained traction in Democrat-run inner cities, in the prisons, and the mainstream (legacy) media, Israel’s truth of a progressive society, democracy, and an inherent military ideology of not harming civilian non-combatants, was muted and ultimately destroyed.

So, how did it come to pass that Israel is falsely compared to Apartheid South Africa or a “colonizer” and a false moral equivalency between Israelis and Palestinians is bruited about from American universities – especially the ivies?

The distortion of historic truth has been fueled by superior marketing by the United Nations, which is anti-Semitic and anti-American and by some African-Americans, who were assisted in their civil rights struggle by American Jews, but now feel their oppression is synonymous with that of the Palestinians. It also came from the university woke administrations and professors, along with the stark ignorance of our youth, and the larger population of Muslim converts and immigrants whose mantra is “Kill the Jews.”

All of the above have either not been educated about history in the area, or deliberately distort it. Some hate the Jews because Israel uncomfortably reminds them of their own failures, as George Gilder noted in his best-seller, The Israel Test.

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Tyrants is as Tyrants does

The Next Step: Brazil’s New Left Wing Government Threatens to Seize Guns Civilians Didn’t Register.

We cannot let our guard down. Unfortunately, the situation is not easy.

With Lula in power, we left a dream of freedom to move to a unique and exclusive defense of jobs, of people who invested in the arms sector. We are now talking about bailing out jobs

Jonathan Schmidt just made the deadline, arriving at Federal Police headquarters in the center of Rio de Janeiro with a travel bag carrying a golden pistol and seven rifles, one peeking out of the zipper.

“I’m in love with guns,” said Schmidt. “I’d have over 2,000 if the government allowed.”

He had already registered his firearms with the army, as required by law for sport shooters like him, but experts have cast doubt on the reliability of its database, and said lax oversight has allowed such guns to fall into criminal hands. Schmidt was adding his guns to the police registry Wednesday on the final day to comply with a decree by Brazil’s new left-wing president — or face confiscation.

Over four years in office, former President Jair Bolsonaro tried to convert a country with few weapons into one where firearm ownership and lack of regulation meant personal freedom.

Now, his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been moving to undo Bolsonaro’s pro-gun policies, and that started with requiring gun owners to register their weapons with police. After initial resistance, he started seeing success.

But more than 6,000 restricted-use guns previously registered with the army, and which include “assault rifles,” were not presented to police by the May 3 deadline, Justice Minister Flávio Dino told reporters Thursday. Those are likely to have been diverted to criminals, and are now targets for investigation and potential seizure, he said.

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