Unfortunately, we tend to get our news via short, highly edited, and questionable “objective” snippets as we are on the run. The old legacy media media of NBC, CBS and ABC are widely ignored no matter how much is paid to the latest talking head. That is why an interview like the one linked here is so important.

Tom Holman is often presented as a hard talking, in your face individual who is doing the dirty job of cleaning up not only the prior Presidents’ mess, but also the mess of other Presidents. It seems that everyone agrees that we need to remove the worse of the worse criminal aliens from our midst, but for some reason there are short sighted politicians who fail to understand that their efforts to block Holman guarantees to make life harder to the “good” illegals that they say they are protecting; especially those who clean their pools, mow their laws and act as their nannies.  Never mind that those same illegals are the first to suffer at the hands of the “worse of the worse.”

This interview shows that there is so much more to Holman’s job than picking up criminal illegals. He and his ilk also rescue some of those 300,000 children who were somehow “lost” during the Biden administration. They also rescue women forced into prostitution by the criminal cartels, act with other agencies against money laundering, tax evasion, and more.

If you watch the interview, you may view the next interview by a talking head of Holman a bit differently.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

• Germany: the race to the bottom- For well over a thousand years, especially in the West, the concept of a social contract between the government and the governed has been developing. It has not always been perfect, but it has been a steady part of Western culture. Briefly it says that you the citizens agree to pay taxes and obey the laws, including if necessary, taking up arms to defend the state. In return, the state agrees to work to protect the citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic and to provide certain services (health inspections, a school system, fire, and police services, etc.). No government can stay in power without at least a minimal amount of support from its’ citizens.

Germany, like all other governments is constantly looking for new streams of revenue. One new stream is making cannabis legal. As usual, on paper it looked like a great idea; by making it legal, it should undercut the drug cartels and thus save money on policing. Additionally, it is a repeat business that is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy. Never mind that modern day cannabis is basically a mutant of the cannabis which is not only stronger than the cannabis of Woodstock fame, but is know to cause mental problems, such as depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc., especially among the younger generation (up to the age of the mid-20s). So, a certain portion of our youth will face mental problems in their lives, that is just the cost of getting more taxes.

The problem is, in Germany for example, that the sale of cannabis is not creating the tax windfall that was expected. Why? One reason is that the underground economy offers a stronger version of cannabis than that offered by the government. This can be done by altering the amount of THC; in fact, the amount of THC in European cannabis is nearly double since 2013. The market responds as the legal cannabis has less THC and thus the underground economy is outperforming the legal product.

What is a government to do? They want their money. They could put an all-out effort into eliminating much of the underground economy but that would take time and money, and they have not been that successful in the past. The obvious solution to the government is to increase the THC, thus making the legal stronger so it can compete with the underground-economy product. Of course, the stronger the product, the more dangerous and damaging to the citizens who not only use the product but have to face individuals who are impacted by the stronger product. Given the long-term thinking (?) of the government, which should solve the problem, right? Not really, as all those who work the underground economy need to do is to up the amount of THC to maintain market share. This means in effect that the government, in its quest for dollars, is in a race to the bottom against the underground economy. It is a kind of, “if we cannot lick them, we can join them.”

The social contract is not what it used to be; we cannot count on the government to protect us from foreign and internal enemies. Does that mean I get a tax refund for the governments not only failure, but conscious decision to offer a product that is increasingly dangerous. (FT,  6/7-8, 2025, pp. 2)

There are getting to be a number of “trigger” words, which when heard, should make you immediately be on your guard. Normally these trigger words are spoken by an individual or group who present themselves as having a plan which will make your life better. As a rule, they spring up from the Left and their mission may be to save the planet, or save some particular species, or it is to ensure “equity” which will be better for everyone. There is always an entire pantheon of causes that need to be put right. They talk a lot about what a glorious future they offer but somehow never manage to tell you the price in either economic or very personal terms. They remain true to their mission no matter the actual results, assuring themselves and their audience that success is just around the corner.

Such promises are nothing new for if we read our history, great promises of utopia were the rationale of the various five-year plans under Stalin. There were great successes as well as great failures, but the promised utopia never arrived and the millions who paid the ultimate price were swept into the dustbin of history.

More recently we have seen a great march to “net zero,” especially in Europe. Germany has spent untold billions of Euros on their particular march with the end result being that the cost of energy is among the highest in the world, industries are leaving for nations with lower energy costs, unemployment is creeping into industries which were the mainstay of the economy and finally, the air is no cleaner, in fact it is dirtier than before the great march to “net zero”.  It is as if the political leadership of Germany had just arrived from another planet and did not realize the realities of German weather. The fact that most of Germany only gets 150-200 days of sunshine is something that the planners of solar power never realized.

Learn from mistakes? Why do that when the architects of failure can always count on the mild nature of the people they rule? Spain and Portugal are recent examples of failure when both countries suffered electrical failures of a size never before experienced in the history of humanity. The result? The leaders of both nations swore to move even faster toward net zero, putting the health and well-being of the citizens ever more into a danger zone.

The quest for left of center rulers to dominate and control the lives of those they rule is never ending. The attached article focuses on the concept of “15-minute cities”, where your ability to travel freely and participate in an open society will be discouraged. Do the rulers in this situation believe that their citizens will be happier, more prosperous, more creative? That is not what they offer. They claim that such cities will be better able to withstand challenges like they faced during Covid. So, do we completely restructure civilization in the belief that we will face more Covid type challenges in the future? When will the next pandemic show up? In a year, five years, 50 years? We are expected to give up our freedoms for an event that might very well not occur in our lifetime. Given that the “scientific” leaders were so disastrous wrong about the value of masks, distancing, shutting down schools, churches and businesses, not to mention insisting that those with the highest immunity be forced to take a vaccine which could counter-act their natural immunity, why would we accept that “15 minute cities” will be any more successful than more open societies?

It is always nice to look at a project or plan and imagine the wonderful upside of success. But we must be realistic how many of those golden promises have ever been fulfilled. We need to be more willing to ask and demand answers on what are the dangers on the downside. If the downside risk is greater, or more easily achieved than the upside, perhaps we need to tread a bit more cautiously.

The War on City-Dwellers: ‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century, Part III :: Gatestone Institute

A friend of mine recently lent this book to me and it brought to mind various debates I had during graduate school many moons ago regarding the premise of the book; whomever controls the Eurasian continent controls the world.

This theory was originally formulated in 1904 by Halford MacKinder, a British geographer. It shortly followed the work by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s extremely influential book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. In that book Mahan put forth the theory that as the oceans are the fastest routes for trade, control of the oceans will decide which powers will succeed and which will die. MacKinder put forth the idea because of the population, central position, and mineral wealth of the Eurasian land mass, that it will determine which nations live and die. Going further, Karl Haushofer, a German geopolitician continued MacKinder’s theory and he was influential to the Nazi view of the world as MacKinder was influential with Kaiser Wilhelm prior to the first World War.

Britain and the United States are both sea faring nations, outside of the Eurasian sphere, yet both have played vital parrs in controlling and shaping the Eurasian sphere. Brands goes through several examples of how the United States has dealt with the area, including World Wars I and II, the creation of NATO, our actions in the Middle East and so forth. In one way, this is a weakness in the book as the involvement of the U.S. was not due to an acceptance of MacKinder’s theory, but rather at least until the Cold War, a natural case of self-defense. The U.S. actions in the Middle East, plus Afghanistan are more suspect in that they went far beyond actions that were previously acceptable to the average American.

The last part of his book looks at the current players who seek to control if not all, at least sizable chunks of the Eurasian land mass, namely China. China with it ever increasing military power and sizable economic power, is the greatest player. It pushes until seriously pushed back as the nations such as Viet Nam, the Philippines, and others are finding out today. Their Belt and Road programs has reached even into Europe and has been successful in spreading China’s influence through most of Africa. Can China, with help from Russia, seize control of the Eurasian area thus locking out England and the United States out of such a vital area.? Can anyone accomplish that goal?

That has always been the key question to me, for the land mass is so great, the populations so diverse and in so many levels of development that how could any power do anything but bleed to death attempting to gain a level of control that would be worth such a great effort. In the early twentieth century, thinkers like MacKinder and Haushofer might have believed it was possible, even though there were already small struggles for independence in India and parts of Asia and Africa. Today, we must add in the religious extremism of the Middle East (and parts of Indonesia) and the task would become even harder. Finally, we have seen failures in the Belt and Road project which show the Chinese model may have feet of clay.

I would recommend this book as it is objective (I only found a couple of examples of personal political bias) and provides an excellent overview of various nations causes for action. If one or more nations cannot control the Eurasian area, is it possible to be done by a group of nations? It is doubtful, for if we think of the problems in Europe which has tried to tamper down the differences between the various members of the E.U., we find that despite hundreds of years of cross border trade and wars, the differences in languages, customs, views of history, even food make for a challenge on so many fronts.
The Eurasian area is huge and the hundreds of millions of people who live there share little in common beyond a desire to live, have enough food and at best, provide for a better life for their children. Help yes, control and direction, no.

Last week I posted (But Will Europe Listen) about the threat to Europe, not from the U.S., but from the leaders of Europe who have allowed their nations to sink into an unrealistic sea of complacency. For decades, living under the U.S. umbrella of protection, the leaders of the E.U. have acted like teenagers, believing that tomorrow will never come regarding their own defense and their survival.

Tomorrow has arrived with the second Trump administration and the demise of the enfeebled Biden presidency. Suddenly the leaders of the Western European democracies face a dark and threatening future with troubling questions. Will Trump leave NATO? If he decides to stay, how much will the U.S. contribute to the defense of Europe given the other challenges to the U.S.? Given the hideous bureaucracy of the EU, how can the nations of NATO co-ordinate their growth of military spending so that waste and inefficiency are minimized? How are the massive amounts of money needed to rebuild NATOs military going to found? If the money is raised, does Europe have enough energy at reasonable costs to manufacture what it needs? Given the level of technology in Europe vs. the U.S., does Europe have the ability to produce the technology for current and future weapons systems. The list can go on and on.
The attached article outlines key problems and provides practical solutions to a few of these questions.

We are living in interesting times, and it remains to be seen if Europe, so long living in a dream world can summon the leadership and be able to face its greatest challenges in over eighty years.

Joint EU debt for European defence investment is a questionable idea – Brussels Report

Europe is going through a challenging time. For decades it has lived in a never-never land of social welfare programs designed to provide its’ citizens with ever immagionable comfort: free schools for as long as you wish to remain an adolexcent, free health care, job protection, and so much more. Of course, those “perks” of life are not really free, they are paid for by high taxes. But it was a compact between the government and the people. This promise could be fulfilled as long as the United States provided for the protection of Europe thus freeing billions of Euros annually and the demographic balance could be maintained.

Unfortunately, that compact was broken; the governments upset the balance by allowing seemingly unlimited migration of people who do not have a tradition of Western liberal democracy values, who want the “goodies” of the west without having to produce anything has disrupted the compact. Somehow the leaders of the EU managed to convince themselves that individuals from societies morally grounded in the fourteen century would provide the technocrats, doctors, engineers, and other skilled professions needed to maintain their standard of living.

Additionally, the umbrella of U.S. protection begain to be pulled back. With a new major economic and military threat growing in Asia, the U.S. began to question, why should the U.S. spend its precious wealth protecting someone else who had no desire to protect themselves?

Finally, while the leaders of the E.U. claim that President Trump is a threat to democracy, it is the Europeans themselves who are passing laws aimed at limiting speech and even thought.
The quiet secret that no one has mentioned for decades suddenly has come into the light; most of Western Europe has been suffering from societal atrophy. Europe has lost their economic edge; they have contributed little to recent technologies, their militaries were often decades behind the times, their industry is moribund, their tax system and bureaucracy stifle those who are innovative and reduce their capital for new ventures.

The attached lightly edited speech by Vice President J.D. Vance points out a number of threats to the E.U., all of them internal and all of them created by the governments of the E.U. The E.U. cannot regain its’ strength by fining American tech companies because Europe does not have the ability to compete, nor can the E.U. claim to stand for the dignity of man when they warn people not to pray in their own homes if they are within a “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic. If a politician can use the law against a citizen because the politicians “dignity” or “feelings” have been hurt, then it is time for those politicians to realize they are there to serve and not to act as if they wear the purple. Crimes by those immigrants who cannot and will not assimilate have been covered up for years and arresting those who expose them only go to undercut the trust between the governed and the governments.

It was said that no one had ever spoken to European leaders like Vice President Vance and that is too bad. Continuing to follow a failed path is the mark of stupidity and we all want to believe that there are still rational, strong leaders in Europe who can reverse the course of failure.

Europe Must Listen to Its People – The American Mind

The politicians and bureaucrats of the EU are incredibly nervous about President Trump. They fear that the party is over and the days of using the U.S. as a financial milk cow via lawsuits, unfair tariffs, billions of dollars of fines and a refusal to adequately support their own militaries during the march of dictators and religious fanatics.

Western Europe in particular is nervous as France, Germany, Belgium and although not in the EU, the U.K. are led by weak political leaders who often are at the mercy of their own shaky coalition governments. Behind the scenes, the faceless bureaucrats who are the real power continue to insist on the failing policies which they promised would deliver a better life but have failed by every standard.

The attached article shows that the real problem with Europe is in fact the EU. The EU bureaucracy is Europe’s “deep state.” Unelected the committees and departments follow their own ideology and pay no price for their remarkable number of failures. From an idea to provide easier trade, the EU has grown into an uncontrollable behemoth which seeks power over those who it believes should serve it.

Perhaps Trump will provide the cover for European politicians to begin to gain a degree of control over their nation’s future as his desire to “balance the books” between Europe and the U.S. is enunciated.

What Is Really Destroying Europe? The EU. :: Gatestone Institute

Western Europe seems to be on a death ride of their own making, especially Germany and France, followed by Belgium and other Western European members of the EU, along with the U.K. An unbending belief in “green” energy which has driven employers from Europe and has led to high energy costs plus the first German lay-offs in their bread-and-butter auto industry, while unmanaged immigration has led to thousands of no-go zones, increased violent crime and the burning of hundreds of churches as well as absolutely horrid stories of sexual grooming gangs. Meanwhile the electorate is moving to the hard right. Europe’s political center has all but disappeared with no willingness on the part of the traditional political leaders to learn that repeating failing policies is not the way to address their problems.

The article linked below gives us an overview of failed European leadership. Years ago, Europeans viewed U.S. organizations like the Tea Party and Donald Trump as movements which could ever happen in Europe. Today we see movements springing up on the conservative side of the political spectrum. They are seriously challenging the confused and clueless traditional parties who have held power for decades when times were good; today’s challenges seem to have sapped the center and left of realistic solutions to problems their policies have created.

Is there a movement or leadership with the will and courage to face so many challenges? Or will their societies continue to decay until life becomes intolerable for most Europeans and they turn to a leader on a white horse? We have seen it done before in Europe.

Brussels: Is the Capital of Europe Crumbling Before Our Eyes? :: Gatestone Institute

President Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Millions of individuals have placed great hopes on the new Trump administration as they believed that in four short years, our fundamental freedoms were in danger of disappearing. Those who welcome the second term of President Trump believe he will restore the DOJ, FBI and other federal law agencies to political neutrality while returning the military to its primary functions and purge itself of DEI which has weakened its ability to meet the anticipated challenges from China and others. The list goes on and on, the economy, the budget, EV mandates, the Ukraine war, the Middle East, Russia, and so on. They believe that his second term will be even more successful than his first. That is a tall order.
When he began his first term, he faced challenges that seemed large at that time; President Obama left a feeble economy, unchallenged advances in the Crimea and the Middle-East, a fast growing and aggressive China as well as various domestic issues stemming from a ballooning federal bureaucracy that was drowning small business in an ocean of new regulations. The challenges this time are much greater as he faces:
• An inflation rate that is being fed by:
• A federal national debt that grows by nearly one-trillion dollars every one-hundred days
• New federal rules and regulations which cost the American citizens about $15,000 and have a total cost of about $1.37 trillion over the past four years.
• Repairing our standing in the Middle East after the Biden administration managed to all but kill the Abraham Accords while trying to second guess our best ally in the region,
• Continue to force the European nations to increase their defense spending in the face of little or no growth in their economies.
• Proving realistic military spending after four years of budgets which did not keep up with inflation let alone provide for adequate growth.
• A national deficit and budgets which drive inflation restrict borrowing for new growth.
• The list goes on and on.
Will he and his team be able to successfully attack that list of problems and others which cover every aspect of our daily lives? Let us hope so, for we need a renaissance to free us from the trials and tribulations of the past four years and the “hope and change” of the Obama administration. The next few years shall be trying, but we all need to recognize that fundamental changes, within the limits of the Constitution, need to be made. There can be no more of the Executive ignoring the Supreme Court, no more of a back-room cabal of unknown players making national decisions and no more of a federal bureaucracy that sees the American people as an ATM machine to foot the bill for their ever expanding quest for more power of our everyday lives.
Let us, as we always should, wish our new President strength and wisdom and may an honest and fearless team surround him.

It is not often that you can watch a nation crumble in real time, but this is what is happening to Germany. On February 14 and April 12 of this past year, this blog posted “The New Sick Man of Europe”, parts I and II. Here is part III, the story of how a government is following an ideology no matter what the costs. In fact, the German fanatical adherence to going “Green” has increased the pollution which is the very item that their program is designed to defeat!

It has gotten to the point where the politicians who lead Germany are actually a danger to the average German. After spending billions and billions of Euros and seeing increases in pollution, jobs lost, a high rate of business bankruptcies, lay offs in the auto industry for the first time in the history of that industry and skyrocketing energy costs, the “leaders” of Germany are unable to keep hobbled together a government which can address the problems created in the past several years. And we must not forget the problems caused by an immigration system which, instead of bringing in skilled workers, does in effect, do the exact opposite (not the mention the wholesale rejection of Western values by those same immigrants).

Now is really the time to ask, Quo Vadis, Germany? And, if Germany continues on its current path, why?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21244/europe-germany-renewable-energy