UBI For Me But Not For Thee? When a nation is colonized from the inside out.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

The explosive unveiling of the wildly extensive Somali-run daycare scams in Minnesota has drawn attention to a huge shadow economy, and not just in Minnesota. America, it turns out, is full of people, companies, and organizations that basically live off of fraud. We’re not talking old-fashioned waste, like $600 hammers or $1200 toilet seats. We’re talking about entities whose sole reason for existence consists of being a conduit for taxpayer money to flow directly to the people controlling them, with some of the proceeds being diverted to politicians and political organizations.

People are noticing.

This reverses an old joke told by my Nigerian relatives. A Nigerian visits his rich relative in the United States and is awed by the penthouse apartment, the limo, the private jet and so forth. “How did you make so much money?” he asks. The relative points out the window. “See that bridge? 15%. See that shopping mall? 15%. See that train station? 15%.”

The visitor, inspired, returns home to Nigeria and becomes fabulously wealthy. His rich cousin from America visits and says “How did you make so much money so fast?”

“You see that bridge over there?”

“Nope,” responds the confused relative. The Nigerian cousin points at himself and says “One hundred percent!”

Well, this joke has now been turned around. Leaving aside that we don’t really even build train stations, bridges, or even shopping malls in this country anymore, now it’s America where people are pocketing one hundred percent and not even trying to actually deliver any goods or services. That the people doing this are mostly Africans only adds to the irony.

But what happened?

Well, several things. At base, people defraud the government for the same reason that dogs lick themselves — because they can. One of the things you find in these programs is that there are virtually no controls to ensure that the recipients of the money are legitimate, that the money is spent as promised — in essence, that the bridges get built. (Or, in the case of California, the high speed rail lines.) That lack of controls, of course, is no accident. The systems are designed to promote fraud and to make it hard to catch or punish.

Second, the culture is weaker. In a high trust society, people get angry when there is fraud and move to punish and ostracize the perpetrators. In a low-trust society, people expect it.

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Beware the Democratic ‘pseudo-recession’ that’s destroyed past presidents.

Back in 1992, as the presidential campaign approached, incumbent President George HW Bush was seen as a shoo-in for reelection.

The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular US victory at the head of a coalition that had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait with few losses.

For much of 1991, Bush’s approval ratings hovered between 90% and 70%.

By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the favorite Democratic nominee.

But he was written off as having little chance to knock off the popular Republican incumbent with far more foreign affairs experience.

Bush, however, had just lost his brilliant 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to cancer.

Most important, the US economy in 1990 had experienced a mild recession that had bottomed out in early 1991.

By the 1992 election, the United States was headed to full recovery.

In the last six months of 1992, GDP rebounded at an astonishing 4%.

The inflation rate in the months before the election was often less than 3%.

Even stubborn unemployment, at 7.3%, was starting to fall.

The eight-month recession officially ended in March 1991, followed by continual positive economic growth.

No matter: The canny Clinton campaign still ran on the directive “It’s the economy, stupid” and the slogan “Putting people first.”

Clinton’s theme song was the upbeat Fleetwood Mac hit “Don’t Stop,” highlighting the young Clinton-Gore ticket’s supposed contrast to the 68-year-old Bush.

Key to the Clinton campaign rhetoric was a false charge: “the worst job growth since the Great Depression.”

By November 1992, Clinton had convinced voters that the prior year’s recession was still in full force.

The doom-and-gloom, near-depression “recession” rhetoric, together with Perot’s third-party candidacy and Bush’s sluggish campaign, won Clinton the presidency with 43% of the popular vote.

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 Deflating another gun control bogeyman.

Deflating Another Gun Control Bogeyman

There is a problem with the term “gun violence.” Not just the term itself, but the whole idea that firearm-related injuries and deaths are qualitatively different or special. Violence is violence regardless of the weapon or method used.

Gun violence is a handy bogeyman for gun control and other groups advancing similar agenda. By lumping homicides, suicides, and accidents together, gun grabbers of every stripe can use this family-sized phantasm to alarm the public. Even better, it can be used to make a variety of claims since the overwhelming percentage of Americans won’t check the underlying numbers.

Gun control addicts use this to confidently claim there is an “epidemic” of gun violence. In June 2024, Vivek Murthy, Joe Biden’s surgeon general, declared “firearm” violence was a public health crisis. Murthy went on to recommend the adoption of the gun-grabbers’ wish list despite the fact that none of those measures have been shown to be effective based on results reported by the U.S. government.

When most people hear the word “violence” they associate it with one individual deliberately using force to harm another individual, i.e. assault or murder. It’s also the type of violence most alarming to the public. Supporters of 2A restrictions focus their rhetoric and “remedies” on exploiting this fear.

But there is a problem with this: Far from being a looming threat, the U.S. homicide rate has been declining.

FBI statistics for the 65 years from 1960 to 2024 prove this. The decade from 2010 to 2019 had a lower average murder rate than any comparable period going back to the last year of Eisenhower’s term. In fact, the 2010-2019 average was 12% lower than in the previous decade.

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On the local scene

Judge dismisses charges against captain, 2 supervisors involved in deadly Ride the Ducks sinking in 2018

GALENA, Mo. (KY3) – A Stone County judge dismissed charges against the captain and two supervisors involved in the July 2018 deadly Ride the Ducks sinking.

Judge Johnnie Cox ruled there was no probable cause in the case against Captain Kenneth Scott McKee and two supervisors, Curtis Lanham and Charles Baltzell. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office refiled the charges in April 2022.

The Ride the Ducks’ Stretch Duck 7 with 31 people on board capsized and sank in stormy weather on Table Rock Lake. Seventeen passengers, including nine from the same family and one crew member driving the boat, drowned that night. It became one of the deadliest boating accidents in United States history.

Investigators say the Ride the Ducks crew had plenty of warnings about the severe weather, but the boat still launched more than 20 minutes after a thunderstorm warning was issued for Table Rock Lake. The duck boat sank under high waves while winds around the area reached up to 70 miles per hour that day.

Well, I guess that takes care of the trip to Timbuktu

Mali and Burkina Faso announce reciprocal travel ban on US citizens.

Mali and Burkina Faso have said they are imposing a travel ban on US citizens in response to an equivalent measure announced by the Trump administration earlier this month.

In separate statements issued by their foreign ministries late on Tuesday, the two West African countries said they were acting in the name of “reciprocity” after the White House announced on December 16 that President Trump was adding them and five other countries to a list of those subject to a full travel ban.

The White House said the expanded ban, set to take effect on January 1, applied to “countries with demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the Nation from national security and public safety threats.”

The Trace Tries Desperately to Make ‘Gun Violence’ Numbers Look Bad

This year, we’ve seen a significant downturn in so-called gun violence. While some like to say we’re just rebounding from the pandemic spike, the truth is that this seems to be a bit more. It’s been a good year, all things considered, though maybe not enough to reach levels akin to other developed nations.

Then again, when you take guns out of the equation, we’re still more violent than those countries, so I’m not really going to expect that to change anytime soon.

At The Trace, though, they need to continue with their mission to champion gun control under the guise of journalism, and that means taking the truth and trying to make it sound so much worse than it actually is.

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Firearms Instructors Talk Changes Coming in 2026

Lee Williams –

Our country was much more troubled and dangerous when Joe Biden was president, but thankfully times have changed, according to several current and former firearm instructors.

“There was a lot more concern about how things were going to go,” said Mike Magowan, chief operations officer for Florida’s Self Defense Emporium. “There’s not as much panic now as there was then.”

Magowan has taught more than 30,000 students how to shoot safely over his 30-year career. He started as a sniper in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division and has earned a host of national certifications and accreditations.

He and several other instructors discussed current trends and predicted what will happen in 2026.

Suppressors were a common topic, especially if they finally end up outside of federal purview and can be purchased easier. Everyone mentioned teaching a fully-suppressed class.

The largest national trend that’s occurring right now involves smaller 9mm full-capacity handguns specifically made for concealed carry. Everyone predicts their popularity will continue to grow throughout the new year

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Report: Transgender Who Attacked Nashville Christian School Bought Guns with Federal Grant Money

A report by the Tennessee Star appears to show that the transgender individual who killed six at Covenant Christian school on March 27, 2023, purchased her guns with federal grant money.
The Star points to pages from a journal the she allegedly kept during 2021.

Copies of the journal pages were released by the FBI Monday, and readers can see how the transgender shooter compared and contrasted certain aspects of various guns–including various sight configurations and accuracy.

After weighing different types of guns, the Star noted that the shooter, a woman who felt she was a man, referenced the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and numerous payments received from Nossi College when she was attending the Nossi College of Art and Design in Nashville.

At the top of one entry, the transgender shooter wrote, “FASFA [sic] grant checks started at $2,050.86.”

Below that she noted: “$2,656.87 (x3 checks from Nossi).” The next ledger entry states, “+$530.00 (x1 check Nossi) ($3,186.87).”

Speaking to the Nashville Metropolitan Police, the shooter’s mother said, “It was the grant money.”