Halloween terror case against two 20-year old and one 19-year old suspects in Michigan will center around protected free speech

 From the story here:

... Like other terrorism prosecutions, this case is expected to focus on protected free speech, with one side arguing the defendants were merely expressing their views, while the other maintains they were planning to do harm. So far, the government has not produced any anti-gay text messages, social media comments or conversations by the defendants, whose communications and movements were being monitored by undercover informants and agents. ...

The FBI, which started investigating the Dearborn men a year ago, used undercover informants and agents to monitor the defendants' communications. ...

To date, the government has charged eight individuals in this case: five from Michigan, including two juveniles who are being prosecuted in a confidential process because of their age; two from New Jersey, including one man who allegedly referred to himself as the biggest anti Semite in America, and said he wanted to kill his mother's Jewish friends; and one man from Washington, whose plans to travel overseas to join ISIS were cut short by the FBI raids in Michigan. He was arrested at his home in Seattle, one day before his plane was to leave, court records show.

The charging documents filed in all eight cases, so far, do not show how the New Jersey or Washington defendants were allegedly tied to the purported Michigan Halloween terror plot.

It sounds like the FBI worked pretty hard on these young fellas for a long time to get the statements they needed. 

Imagine sitting in the dark to save on electricity when you make $115k

 Reported here:

... The effort to keep up with higher prices feels relentless to Teri Kopp, who lives in Southbury, Conn., and works as an administrator at a synagogue. “I’m tired,” she said.

Kopp and her husband Bill, an HVAC technician, earn a combined $115,000 a year. They often sit in the dark with only strings of LED lights on to save on electric costs. She is considering painting rocks to send to friends as Christmas gifts. Their biggest vacation this year, a road trip to Maine, was mostly covered by cash back from a shopping-rewards program.

Kopp, 59 years old, doesn’t see any way to quickly pay off the $15,000 in credit-card debt the family took on largely to cover medical bills for knee surgeries. She also has $30,000 in debt from her daughter’s undergraduate degree in biology, which has yet to yield any job offers in a tough labor market for new graduates.

Kopp voted for Trump last November in part because she wasn’t happy with how Biden handled the economy. She approves of the job Trump is doing but is skeptical that it will lead to any relief on costs soon. “I think Trump has a hard nut to crack to bring all this stuff down,” she said. ...

Do the two Rachels at the Wall Street Journal who write this sob story about the middle class "buckling" realize that about half the country makes $45k or less? What about those people? Well, they don't read the Journal anyway, right?

You have to be in the 64th percentile to be like Teri and Bill, the high end of the middle 33-66%. 

 

Donald Trump is building out the police state on the nation's roads through U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol's license plate reader program

 Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns

... Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years. ... 

The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars. ...

The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels. ...

... it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities ... beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. ...

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.” ...

Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt.

Border Patrol’s parent agency got authorization to run a domestic license plate reader program in 2017, according to a Department of Homeland Security policy document. At the time, the agency said that it might use hidden license plate readers ”for a set period of time while CBP is conducting an investigation of an area of interest or smuggling route. Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed,” the document states.

But that’s not how the program has operated in practice, according to interviews, police reports and court documents. License plate readers have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region. ...

The Border Patrol also has access to a nationwide network of plate readers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, documents show, and was authorized in 2020 to access license plate reader systems sold by private companies. ...

Trump openly advocates death for U.S. soldiers who won't obey unlawful orders

 This is exactly like Russian officers in Ukraine who threaten their soldiers with death if they do not follow orders.

 

 

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God

 

Stephen Miller: Democrats Urging The CIA and Armed Forces To Defy President Trump's Orders Is Insurrection

No man with any self-respect wears a quarter-zip

 

Donald Trump's Dumb Ass Unemployment Rate for September 2025 was 37.56%, higher than his first term average when he averaged 96.4 million eating but not working

 The Trump I Dumb Ass Unemployment Rate averaged 37.35% 2017-2020 inclusive.

Through three quarters of 2025 an average of 102.67 million are eating but not working. 

I don't make the rules. Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump made the rule. 

 

 

Elon Musk's DOGE was all sound and fury, signifying nothing: Federal employment in Sep 2025 is down just 97,000 from January

 

Not the greatest economy ever, not by a long shot: Full time jobs in Sep 2025 moved sideways with just 49.48% of the population working at one

 The data was delayed by the federal government shutdown.

The current level is little better than Sep 2016 at 49.08%.

 

 

The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the Alcee Hastings tree, Democrat representing majority-black precincts of Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach under investigation since at least May 2024 finally charged

 

House Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick charged with stealing $5M in Covid aid funds

 

A federal grand jury charged U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., with stealing $5 million in Covid-19 disaster funds — a chunk of which was then illegally contributed to her 2021 congressional campaign, the Department of Justice said Wednesday. ...

Cherfilus-McCormick joined the House in 2022 after winning a special election that January to fill late Rep. Alcee Hastings’ seat representing Florida’s 20th Congressional District. ...

Cherfilus-McCormick has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the panel revealed in late May.

The Office of Congressional Conduct sent a referral to that committee in May 2024, laying out a number of possible violations. Cherfilus-McCormick “may have requested community project funding that would be directed to a for-profit entity,” the office said in that referral. ...

 

 

Perfidious Mad King Ludwig has continued to work behind the scenes with Russia and without Ukraine and the Europeans on a Ukrainian capitulation plan

Ukraine under pressure amid reports Russia and U.S. have devised a secret peace plan

 

... Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said that if the reports are true, the 28-peace plan would amount to “Ukraine’s full capitulation and would set conditions for renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

“The reported proposed peace plan would deprive Ukraine of critical defensive positions and capabilities necessary to defend against future Russian aggression, apparently in exchange for nothing,” the ISW analysts said Wednesday.

They noted it would “give this significant land to Russia — apparently for no specified compromise — sparing Russia the time, effort, and manpower that it could use elsewhere in Ukraine during renewed aggression.”

The ISW concluded that the plan, if verified, showed Russia’s maximalist territorial demands on Ukraine had essentially not changed since the initial invasion in 2022. “This reported peace plan is fundamentally the same as Russia’s 2022 Istanbul demands, which Russia presented to Ukraine when the circumstances on the battlefield appeared to favor Russia more heavily.”

Megyn Kelly's attempt to soften Jeffrey Epstein's pedophile status is about as advisable as Todd Akin's attempts were to highlight the phony rape claims of women

It's not exactly a politically winning message, even though 34 states in America allow minors to marry with parental and/or court consent, and four set no minimum age by law.

Google AI estimates there were fewer than 2,500 minor marriages in 2018, mostly involving girls.

Epstein liked 'em young too, but he wasn't trying to marry any of them for crying out loud. He isn't called a predator for nothing. 

Meanwhile, marriage under the age of 18 is banned without exception in only 16 states and DC, mostly in the northeast with Missouri and Virginia being notable exceptions in the near south. 

Is Megyn just doing this for the clicks, or is it symptomatic of having a tin ear?

Why not both? 

At any rate, the woman who once confronted Trump in 2015 sure has changed her spots since then. 

 

Megyn Kelly promoted trans kids on NBC before she regretted promoting trans kids

 

Megyn Kelly was against platforming Nick Fuentes before she was in love with the guy who did

 

The guy on the left beheaded a record high 345 people, mostly for non-violent drug offenses, in Saudi Arabia in 2024, but he says he still feels pain for the 9/11 families of America

 

 Trump, Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman brush off criticism of Khashoggi killing

 ... On Tuesday, bin Salman said, “You know, I feel painful about, you know, families of 9/11 in America. But, you know, we have to focus on reality.”

“Reality based in CIA documents, and based on a lot of documents that Osama bin Laden used Saudi people in that event, for one main purpose, is to destroy this [relationship], to destroy the American-Saudi relation,” bin Salman said.

“It’s really painful to hear .... anyone that been losing his life for you know, no real purpose or ... not in a legal way,” bin Salman said, referring to Khashoggi.

“And it’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia,” the prince said. “We did all the right steps of investigation ... in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that. And it’s painful, and it’s a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this still doesn’t happen.” ...

Trump threatens ABC after reporter Mary Bruce exposes the kabuki dance around the Epstein files

 

Trump calls for ABC’s license to be revoked after reporter asks about Jeffrey Epstein files

President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for ABC’s broadcast license to be revoked as he angrily lashed out at a reporter from the network who asked why he has not released files on notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his former friend.

“I think you are a terrible reporter,” Trump told ABC News White House correspondent Mary Bruce.

The president said he did not like Bruce’s “attitude.” ...

Trump’s tirade came shortly before the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to compel the Department of Justice to release all of its records on Epstein.

The DOJ earlier this year refused to release those documents, despite prior promises by Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump administration officials.

Trump does not need to wait for Congress to pass a bill. He could order the DOJ to release more Epstein files.

“Why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files?” Bruce asked the president. “Why not just do it now?” ...

Trump has repeatedly called the Epstein matter a “hoax” created by Democrats, even though members of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement were leading advocates for releasing the files. ...

Last week, the House Oversight Committee released emails showing Epstein discussing Trump.

In one email from 2019, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls.”

 

The US House and Senate wanted this Epstein business out of their hands so fast it makes your head spin

So the legislative branch is ordering the executive branch to  D O   S O M E T H I N G.

The legislative branch ordered TikTok to do something by last January, you'll recall, but the executive and its Department of Justice found a way around that.

They'll find a way around this, too.

The foxes remain in charge of the henhouse. 

 

The fix is in on the Epstein files vote: MoveOn in action

 Trump last night reversed himself and said the House should vote to release the Epstein files.

Vote they will, except Speaker Johnson has rigged it so that the vote will be under suspension of the rules.

Which means they don't need a mere majority to pass it. They'll need 2/3 . . . of those present.

It's a 219 GOP to 214 Dem U. S. House. 

If they all show up the bill needs 286 Yeas to pass.

Good luck with that. 

"See, we voted. But aw shucks, it didn't get enough votes to pass. Oh well, time to move on as Trump said."

 

 

Paid liar for DHS Tricia McLaughlin reportedly has a husband who was awarded a megamultimilliondollar no-bid government marketing contract for . . . DHS!

I guess you can watch the propaganda films on Newsmax, which can't spell Affairs lol.

There is so much money to be made in government service with deals like this. It's why the politicians want to win. It's a giant skimming operation which enriches their appointees. No lasting policy achievements are necessary. 

 

The period is also marked by the phony utopianism of the libertarian Americanists who exalt the individual and deny that there are any limits

 In their idealism they are little different than Zohran Mamdani. 

... The United States is undeniably the beacon of hope for the world because it’s founded on the value of the individual and the ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence. We believe every person should have an equal opportunity to pursue their dreams and determine their destiny.

For free people, there is truly no problem too big or care too small. Free people don’t wait on a government middleman to solve their problems or redefine what’s possible. ...

More.

The choice isn't between this Americanism and Zohran Mamdani. They aren't really competing visions.  

On the contrary, both are impotent in the face of intractable problems.

New York City, with an annual budget of in excess of $100 billion, needs to spend well in excess of $50 billion to fix its water and sewer systems which limit population growth and drive up rents. The place is already $125 billion in debt. In his wildest dreams Mamdani will increase taxes "only" $10 billion, about which they are having a fit.

The so-called free people of the United States also have met problems which are truly too big for them, one in the Black Sea, one in the Red Sea, and one in the South China Sea, about which $38 trillion in national debt keeps them from doing very much.

Every person should have opportunity to determine their destiny, they prattle on, except for the people of Ukraine, of Israel, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan, who will just have to do it themselves. How long does this list have to get before it includes you, too? Or are you on it already? 

Their self-indicting answer?