1+ hour, 28+ min ago (296+ words) At the end of the essay, there is a'chart'from a mental health organization entitled, "15 Signs That You Might Be in an Abusive Relationship.All fifteen signs are worth pondering: (1) Stop you from seeing friends and family. (3) Tell you what to wear. (4) Monitor your phone, emails, and communication. (5) Control finances, won't let you work. (6) Control what you read, watch, and say. (7) Monitor everything you do. (8) Punish you for breaking rules that keep changing. (9) Tell you it's for your own good.They know better. (10) Don't allow you to question decisions. (11) Tell you you're crazy, and no-one agrees with you. (12) Call you names, or shame you for being selfish. (13) Gaslight you, challenge your memory of events, make you doubt yourself. (14) Dismiss your opinions. (15) Play the victim if things go wrong.It's all your fault. We are now several years removed from the worst…...

6+ hour, 56+ min ago (818+ words) The president warned everyone'to avoid the airspace'over or alongside Venezuela this week. "To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY." We have positioned a serious armada on that country's shore. Among the explanations for these moves the most plausible I can find is Jeff Childers', who once again documents his views with credible links. So China and Russia are the first annoyance. But it's like an addiction; Maduro can't seem to stop himself. It's not just Russia and China. The next major irritant is that Venezuela has also been cozying up to the mad mullahs and working with various Middle Eastern terrorist groups, like Hezbollah. Headline from the Atlantic Council, in 2020: "The Lebanese terrorist group," the story reported, "has helped to turn Venezuela into a…...

6+ hour, 56+ min ago (345+ words) Joseph's petition builds on the work of attorney Chris Madel, who in the past year exposed sworn testimony from Minneapolis Police Department officials that there was false testimony about the restraint technique used on Floyd. Joseph's filing also challenges what he describes as abusive prosecutorial conduct and the presentation of misleading or false testimony during Chauvin's trial. The prosecution was driven by public pressure, a hostile political environment, and an aggressive team led by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whom I contend is an Islamic radical, and who rounded up more than a dozen politically zealous prosecutors, including several attorneys volunteering pro bono from major Minneapolis law firms. The memorandum documenting Mitchell's influence was created six months before Chauvin's trial but was filed with the court only in July 2021 during Tou Thao's proceedings. A central question is whether Judge Cahill…...

6+ hour, 56+ min ago (294+ words) Recently I heard a talking head on a finance channel waxing poetic about how wonderful A.I. (artificial intelligence) is going to be for everyone.White-collar workers like herself will be able to focus on important matters while A.I. handles dreary time-consuming chores. Let me present a metaphor, not involving anything technical, that shows how anything can be made to sound wonderful if you are focused on only a single slice of the pie. Of course, the slightest deviation from the core goal of weedlessness reveals the truth: There would be no neighbors, no crops, no nothing. As silly as this metaphor seems, it applies to A.I.The ratio of desirable outcome to total disaster is the same. A.I. "learns" by storing and reviewing alternative choices, factoring in their likelihood of success for the mission assigned.Computers have always been this way, and A.I. is a…...

6+ hour, 56+ min ago (786+ words) An 1850 image of Anthony Benezet, a colonial-era Quaker and abolitionist, instructing black children. Public domain in the United States. Through 1775, George Washington owned slaves and thought little of blacks, although he later came to embrace blacks in the Continental Army. During the revolution, Billy Lee, his slave, was his closest companion. After the war, Washington wished to see slavery abolished. This is all undisputed fact, often in Washington's own words. The problem, which Burns ignores, is that this story didn't appear until around 1870, long after both Washington and Vassall were dead. Moreover, when the story first appeared, it was about Darby's father. For Burns to include this as a documented fact is actual malice. But that's just the beginning. Burns repeats a canard central to the 1619 Project: namely, that a central cause of the revolution was Dunmore's Proclamation and its…...

23+ hour, 3+ min ago (695+ words) In the shadow of well-meaning slogans and impassioned rallies, a quiet crisis is brewing'one that threatens the very systems built by generations of American workers. Social Security and Medicaid, two pillars of our social contract, are facing demographic and fiscal strain. We can explore the question of naturalizing those who entered the country illegally through the lens of simplicity and critical thought. I have witnessed rallies across the nation, crowds of retirees and working-class citizens standing shoulder to shoulder, passionately endorsing illegal immigration and denouncing ICE as if it were an occupying force. Many of these same citizens, I suspect, have spent three, four, even five decades faithfully contributing to Social Security. Their payroll taxes were mandatory. Their sacrifices were tangible. Their commitment was unquestionable. Yet few seemed to recognize that the very system they labored to sustain now stands…...

23+ hour, 3+ min ago (613+ words) During the holidays, scam activity spikes like poorly regifted tubesocks. According to a 2025 report, 27 % of people on social media encounter scams daily during the season, and 15% of marketplace buyers face a scam every day. Meanwhile, authorities like the Federal Bureau of Investigation warn that non-delivery and credit-card fraud -- classic hallmarks of holiday trickery -- cost consumers hundreds of millions. It is not nostalgia to remember the simpler scams of yesteryear -- the ones where you paid and never got your item, or the seller disappeared after receiving your money. Those still exist. In 2023 alone, IC3 counted thousands of victims whose "payment up front, delivery never" scams cost over $309 million, with an additional $173 million lost to credit-card fraud. But the modern criminal has traded in cookie-cutter fraud for high-tech stealth, and we're talking malware under the tree, not just missing parcels. Take phishing: those…...

1+ day, 1+ hour ago (582+ words) Alone, Donald Trump will not change our national mood. Tens of millions are permanently disenchanted. The America of today is light-years away from the America I grew up in. It's not so much our demographics, or our failed education system, or our tilt towards socialism. It's not that millions are confused as to their sexuality. Of course, it's all of this and more, but what allowed these fracture lines to develop and grow rapidly can likely be traced to the fact that all of the systems that once upheld America are collapsing'and that's happening because cultural relativism forces us to pretend that they have no value. Witness so many vital metrics in freefall, buttressing the belief that whatever we are doing isn't working. Yet, institutional inertia keeps pushing us down the same dead-end paths leading to failure: 1." Spending both personally…...

1+ day, 6+ hour ago (486+ words) In recent decades, though, Democrats have dumped all ethical pretenses in favor of utilizing any tactic, any strategy, to gain and maintain power, and to squeeze out every last dime and every last privilege, no matter what the cost to anybody else. The entry of ideology into everyday politics has rotted everything it touched. A system infected by it is ruined and is best destroyed, in hopes of protecting everything else. It could be any ideology'right, left, center'the effect is the same. But America has suffered the grave misfortune of contracting possibly the worst form: leftism, that is, socialism based on the Marxist dialectic. As is true of all previous cases'the USSR, Red China, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Cuba, Nicaragua'the key element is the control of everything, whether it's political in the accepted sense or not (the personal is the political" is…...

1+ day, 6+ hour ago (827+ words) In a move that underscores a commitment to transparency and proper presidential authority, President Donald J.Trump announcedon Nov,28, 2025, the nullification of executive orders and other documents from the Biden administration that were signed using an autopen without direct presidential involvement. "I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally," Trump stated in a post shared via the White House's official X account. This declaration highlights longstanding concerns about the authenticity of signatures during Biden's term, suggesting that aides may have overstepped by using the device without explicit approval, potentially compromising the integrity of key policies. The autopen, a mechanical tool designed to replicate a president's signature for efficiency, has been a fixture in the White House since the mid-20th century. First…...