Miranda Divine: Dems Will Roll Out Their Perfect Agent of Subterfuge in Response to SOTU: The Spamburgler

It's easy to talk yourself into thinking that the party you oppose is radical and terrible...but the contemporary Dems really do look that way--to me, even...and I was a Dem up to the point at which they capitulated to the moonbat left.

Oh and: I predicted they'd never so capitulate...because, apparently, I'm an idiot...

One of the weirdest things about all this is that the Republicans are now closer to the old Democrat party than the new Democrat party is...yet there seems to have been rather limited party-switching. Some, indeed. Lots of actual liberals, including a lot of public intellectuals like Colin Wright and Coleman Hughes made the switch. I did, too. But the great mass of Democrats didn't...despite, once upon a time, at least, having considered themselves liberals...and despite the fact that the Democrats are now, by far, the most illiberal party.

Anyway. Though I know it's easy to believe such stuff of the opposition even when it's wrong...I think Divine is right...

(And, just incidentally, we should have seen this coming from a mile away--that Spanberger would give the response.)

Kids are the New Foot Soldiers of the Left

Not really new...they've been doing this since the '60s...though maybe these are a bit younger. Like drug gangs or African criminal armies, the left has discovered that young teens are perfect foot soldiers--stupid as hell and, in some cases, immune from serious prosecution. You can hear one idiot in the crowd shriek "How can you arrest kids?"

   Well, little Dakota, first, you start with a really stupid fucking kid who thinks that the USA, of all countries, is uniquely evil, and is not allowed to have borders...

   Moonbattery has power over weak minds...

State Dept.'s FREEDOM.GOV Gives Euros Access to Banned Content

Do we have to do everything around here?

Lindsey's even wronger than usual on this one. And there's a better answer to L's bad hypothetical: Anti-ICE Reavers already have the right to protest. They're even being given more leeway than they should be given--about ten times as many should be arrested, seems to me. The euroweenies can make whatever information they want available about all this--and whatever it would be, it's already available here. Does she mean: what if they sent police over here to...what? Physically prevent ICE from arresting even the very few rioters they arrest? Terrible thought-experiment.

   Anyway: better answer: we're right and they're wrong.

   We're right about free speech. They're wrong. We're already letting the anti-ICE theater kids get away with more than we should let them get away with. And that's really the bottom line.

   Lindsey's representing her side in the dispute well, though: the American left prefers Europe to America, and less speech to more speech. They've spent the last decade trying to censor and otherwise suppress speech of which they disapprove--don't think they've changed their ways just because they've pulled back a bit.

Trump Freaks Out About SCOTUS Tariff Decision; Court "Under Foreign Influence"

facepalm

He's a goddamned idiot.

He's just a goddamned idiot.

VA Dems contra the Second Amendment

Sons of bitches.

Scotus Strikes Down Tariffs

No big surprise.

I have and deserve no opinion on it.

Alicia Nieves: Why the Democratic Party Can't Moderate

link

I've predicted for about a decade that the Dems would soon move back toward the center...so I've been wrong for about a decade.

   I don't know whether Nieves is right about why it doesn't/can't...but unless it does, I continue to think we're screwed. The more radical the Dems are, the worse candidates the Republicans can run--and people like me will just have to suck it up and vote for them. The bad Pubs, that is. Or, worse, the Dems will actually win...as recently in VA...and then that state...or the entire country...is really screwed...

   I mean, honestly, I don't see any signs of moderation on the horizon. I've just generally thought that there'd at least be some kind of regression to the mean.

Ruy Teixeira: The Democrats' Fraud Problem

I think this is right on the money.

   Before the Democrats went insane, I almost always voted for them. Locked in the echo chamber of the MSM, I dismissed concerns like these--fraud, bad governance, etc. I was concerned about them--unlike some leftier types, I didn't secretly think those things weren't so bad... I still remember talking to a Ukrainian acquaintance once--she was a real go-getter and ran a couple of small businesses. She spoke three or four languages, and so hired immigrants (who I now realize were probably largely illegal) who couldn't speak English. She mentioned welfare fraud, and I emitted some standard Democrat talking-point, approximately: Well, actually, welfare fraud is extremely rare. She shook her head slowly and ruefully. She basically lived in that world--and she proceeded to inform me that it was very common, and to give me example after example of things she'd seen. Fortunately, I was merely ignorant, and I took the information to heart--I didn't reject it for conflicting with the misinformation lodged in my brain...

   Though, for the record, I was very much in favor of Clinton's welfare reforms (which happened long before my conversation with the Ukrainian...) That put me at odds with some of my more lefty friends, as you might expect...

   I don't know whether the fraud issue will really hurt the Dems, because so much of their base and quasi-base either refuse to believe it's real, or refuse to even consider it because BRAIN SHUTS DOWN RACISM! RACISM! RACISM! BRAIN SHUTS DOWN... But it should hurt them.

   And there seems to be plenty such fraud in rural/red America, too...I've read pieces that suggest that it's kind of become a way of life in some quarters, especially where good jobs are hard to find. If so, Republicans should go after that, too.

Rubio's Munich Speech

I had heard a vague rumor of rave reviews, but really hadn't heard much about it. I want and watched it and was, well, again, trite and lame as it is to put it this way: I was just blown away. I honestly can't think of another speech during my life that I found so affecting. I thought he was right on all points, and that, rhetorically, it was just about pitch perfect. I don't know who's on his speechwriting team, but they deserve extraordinary praise. I wish this is the tone we'd struck with Europe/NATO from the beginning of the administration. I hope Trump doesn't fuck it all up right away.

   I used to think that Rubio was a lightweight. I already knew I was wrong about that, but this speech helped drive home just how wrong I was.

   

VDH: Why, Exactly, Did They Destroy the Border?

I don't know what to think about this hypothesis. I don't know what motivates more nuts-and-bolts operators among the Democrats. The hysterical shrieking anti-ICE protestors seem more motivated by (crackpot) moral/political (is there a difference to them anymore?) conviction. Sometimes groups have motives they don't even quite recognize.

   I DO agree that, if masses of future Republican voters were pouring across the border, the Dems would change their mind(s) on the issue... But that doesn't exactly mean it's their motive. (Incidentally, in that case I'd still be against it, as I hope is obvious.)

Coulter: Without Victory There Is No Survival

I'm afraid she's right.

Not as in: I hate to tell you, but she's right.

But more literally, as in: I have a fear--the fear that she's right.

I fear it because I think the goodness of all immigrants and immigration--the more the better--has basically become another article of faith on the left. There may be no evidence that can arise to change the mind of the now-very-large core of radicals over there.

We may be left merely hoping that we're wrong--that may be the only way the nation survives...

FIRE Alleges that Trump Admin's Anti-Anti-ICE Efforts Resemble Biden Admin's Tech Censorship Regime

Big if true.

Apply the same standards and make 'em stop.

Again: if true.

The key seems to be the claim that the apps and groups are not being used to thwart ICE operations in real time.

   In a way, I want the hysterical anti-ICE mobs to keep it up. It's rather like the soul of the left on parade: puerile, hysterical fools trying to thwart the legitimate enforcement of critical, democratically-enacted laws. Let the country see who they are...not that we haven't seen plenty over the last decade...

   It does seem to me that much of what they're doing ought to count as impeding... So seems to me that a lot more of them ought to be arrested. And if more were, there'd have been fewer killings--I don't know about Good, but Pretti should have been arrested for kicking the taillight out of a government SUV.

   But anyway: FIRE has historically been pretty trustworthy on such issues...so I'm inclined to be sympathetic to their point of view here.

Rubio's Munich Speech

This...I don't know what to say, really.

I'm not even done listening to it yet.

It's blowing me away.

Carolina 58 - State 82

Smoked.

I didn't find this surprising in the least, given the absence of Wilson and Veesaar.

Stealth Extremism: Mainstream Democrat Institutions Do Things Their Own Base Thinks Are Just Wingnut Propaganda

We could, of course, add: DEI-based racial discrimination including race-based hiring, promotion of de facto (or at least quasi-) open borders, indoctrination of various kinds--including "gender" ideology, CRT, climate apocalypticism, etc. (including: of children), using tax dollars to fund highly-politicized leftist NGOS, tolerating welfare fraud by left-favored populations...and I suspect we'll eventually discover: widespread electoral fraud...:

This is what I dubbed "stealth extremism": mainstream liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, routinely doing stuff their own supporters dismiss as an urban legend, because no one would *do* that https://t.co/eiNh9o7gTL https://t.co/Ynxei0aTj7

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) February 17, 2026

Not to Mention Cows...

It’s literally impossible for cowboys to have been here before the Spanish because horses weren’t here before the Spanish brought them over https://t.co/SCGSZCW4Hy

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 16, 2026