Administrivia.

Wheatie Wisdom.  If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.  No running with scissors.  No food fights.  AI stuff posted, requires a link. Please use spoiler, for longer posts. Wolf Speak.  No obnoxious behavior towards fellow QTreeper(s). Freedom of Speech is honored here QTree.  But Do Know, every poster, IS personally responsible for what they post. 

APMEX https://www.apmex.com   Bitcoin https://www.bitcoin.com/

Prices pulled Friday.  Gold $4,618.20  Silver $69.72   Bitcoin $79,320

Seems like such an obvious solution.

We need a Conservative majority.

Until then, we will…

Stuff…

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Revolution of ideas

Lawrence Reed’s new book, “Born of Ideas: How Principles, Faith, and Courage Forged America,” is out September 1, and every American thinker will appreciate it.

Greg Maresca | August 21, 2026

At a time when universities are shuttering their presses, Grove City College has launched Faith & Freedom Press through publisher Whitaker House. Their inaugural book, “Born of Ideas,” written by distinguished author, academic and historian Lawrence W. Reed, frames how our nation’s founding was “born of ideas” through the lens of faith, personal responsibility and divine purpose.

Rather than reiterating the more conventional Revolutionary yarns, Reed commences his dissertation not in 1776 but with the Mayflower Compact in 1620.  Reed is a learned student of the genre and devotes nearly a quarter of his tome explaining why the Mayflower Compact is not merely a political agreement but was rooted in the Pilgrims’ religious conviction that they were acting under God’s providence.

Reed, the author of more than a dozen books that blend liberty, economic history and political philosophy, underscores how America emerged first not from battlefields or politics, but from covenantalism that shaped much of freedom’s prevailing rise.

Divine Providence is a partner to the covenant. It is with the whole of the people not just between leaders covering the whole of life and the consent of the governed mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Historically, it dates back to the book of Exodus that many scholars argue influenced the development of self-government and the later American doctrine of the consent of the governed.

Reed acknowledges America’s founding was first “a revolution of ideas” while still emphasizing the extraordinary nature of the American Revolution. As he writes in the Introduction, “Ours was first a revolution of ideas that produced a revolution in governance accomplished by heroes and ordinary Americans.”

The brevity of the 32 chapters does not diminish its clarity. Rather, it sharpens Reed’s argument and keeps the narrative moving into a fast read of 143 pages that can be accomplished in one sitting that delivers a fresh look at what makes the American experiment exceptional.

It is this mosaic approach that is the book’s defining strength. The chapters are historical vignettes that are crisp, thematic and tightly focused that absorb the founding era and its moral, philosophical and economic foundations. These engaging essays Reed says, “tells a particular story about a key figure or an aspect of the Revolution.” 

Reed introduces readers to both the known and unsung heroes whose convictions shaped a nation. Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine appear, but Reed also devotes space to lesser-known contributors: Pelatiah Webster, “America’s First Economist”; Mercy Otis Warren, “The Conscience of a Great Cause” and Joseph Warren the fallen hero of Bunker Hill that made the American experience unique and yet remain essential today.

Whether discussing paper money, Native American alliances, Lafayette’s contributions, or the Roman influence on American republicanism, Reed returns repeatedly to the same core ideas: liberty, moral courage, personal responsibility and the belief that ideas, not accidents, forged the nation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/revolution-of-ideas

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Hilariously winning, without DumoCrat whining AND Pravda News incessant playing the illegals Victim Card.

Trump’s huge deportation success story

One of the Trump administration’s unheralded recent accomplishments is the speed, efficiency, and volume of its current deportation efforts.

Andrea Widburg | August 21, 2026

One of Trump’s biggest campaign promises was that he would close our borders to illegal immigration and remove those illegal aliens already here. He has indeed almost completely closed America’s southern border, but the Democrats then managed to turn deportation into a cause célèbre that seemed to derail that effort. It didn’t occur to them that Trump would find another way to accomplish the goal, or that Democrat politicians in blue states would help him.

Early this year, the headwinds seemed to be blowing in the Democrats’ direction. When Rebecca Good was killed while aiming a car at an ICE agent and a (legally) armed Alex Pretti was killed while violently resisting ICE agents, they seemed like the perfect poster children for the Democrats’ anti-ICE and anti-deportation push. Democrats thought it helped that there were other incidents in which illegal aliens confronting ICE also managed to get killed.

But somehow, despite the Democrat base’s hysteria, the American public didn’t rally to the cause. Those illegal immigrants who were killed turned out to have been engaged in violent actions against ICE agents or had heinous personal records. There were no George Floyd-style marches and riots. Without COVID lockdowns to make people desperate for any reason to get out of the house, and with most Americans happy to see the last of violent illegal aliens in their communities, this was not going to be a winning cause.

Trump then wisely removed the grandstanding Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security, replacing her with the ostensibly low-key but incredibly effective Tom Homan. With that, the air really went out of the Democrat anti-ICE balloon.

Sure, the Democrats are still agitating over ICE. It’s their cause, and the Democratic Socialists’ cause. Indeed, the DNC, reflecting the DSA’s power within the party, just approved competing resolutions about ICE. One demands that ICE reform, while the other wants to abolish it entirely.

However, while Democrats at the national level are fighting over the finer details of leaving tens of millions of illegal aliens in America, Benny Johnson reports that ICE is going about its work with Homan-esque low-key efficiency:

The tweet continues:

…million deportations across the calendar year.

+69,000 illegals are in DHS jails waiting to be deported at this moment.

And you haven’t heard a blip about it in the corporate press. Why? My DHS source says “stealth tactics.”

“We’re everywhere in every major city. We tell no one. Plain clothes. Beat up old cars. Quick work. Tactical strikes. No one sees anything. No drama. No tears. No media circus. You’re just going back home where you belong.”

And here’s where it gets insane…

DHS tells me blue states are quietly and very secretly working with the Trump administration to assist in the mass deportation of criminals. The criminal alien issue has become so “politically toxic” and “costly” that Democrat Governors have given the green light to Sheriffs and Police Chiefs in major blue cities to drop their illegals off with undercover ICE for removal.

It’s happening. You just don’t see it.

We can track if these numbers hold, but as for now this is a historic white pill and exactly what MAGA voted for.

This is great news. We are a country of people whose forebears immigrated here legally and promised when they arrived never to become a charge on the American people (a promise my hard-working parents kept).

It is absolutely unsustainable for a nation to be flooded with people whose first act is to violate the law, who immediately suck on the government teat (whether federal, state, or local), who are often criminally inclined, and who do not share our values and cannot or will not assimilate. If you want to see how that story ends, just look at Europe and the UK, which may be majority Muslim in the next 10 or 15 years.

There’s one more thing I like about the tweet, and that’s the bit about the blue state politicians assisting ICE. They’re cowards for refusing to do this openly, and they’re hypocrites for aiding deportations but not speaking out against their party’s stance on illegal aliens in America. And of course, we know that, once the illegal aliens are gone, leading to an inevitable decrease in crime rates and a drop in housing costs, they’ll claim that it was their leftist policies that made the difference.

For that reason, I sincerely hope that, once ICE drains a blue city or state of its illegal aliens, Tom Homan turns around and thanks those Democrat politicians for all their help with getting the job done.

Image created using AI.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/trump-s-huge-deportation-success-story

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In case someone missed this one.

Trump quietly reopens Hormuz

We can now move a lot of oil without them being able to do much about it. 

Frank Friday | August 21, 2026

As I wrote at the time, Pres. Trump made a good deal in June, got the oil flowing, and left the Iranians with no leverage and few benefits. So the IRGC reneged on it in a few weeks and started shooting.

Now we learn the U.S. Navy has set up a stealth convoy system for Hormuz that is taking 9-15 million barrels a day out of the Gulf, according to Energy Sec. Chris Wright. When you combine that with the 7-8 million barrels from the Hormuz bypass pipes, we are getting back to the pre-war normal of 20 million barrels from the Gulf.

Wright was bitterly mocked by the MSM when he announced this last week, but further mainstream reporting is now conceding this is basically true. While all the national and international media obsessed about the hopeless position the United States had reached, the stalemate was carefully being reversed.

It seems our military specifically targeted Iran’s anti-ship capacity, including coastal radars and look-out boats, over the last two months. It is very much harder to hit fast-moving tankers with a missile than a fixed land target. Especially if it is being protected by Navy jammers and interceptors.

The ball is in the Iranian court. We can now move a lot of oil without them being able to do much about it. Complicating things further, while the IRGC is firmly in control of the country, apparently each commander has near autonomy for his own forces. That leaves decision-making slow, and the guys in charge of the dwindling missile forces may not be in agreement with Tehran on what to do next.

While they figure it out, we might see a big drop in oil prices. This may lead to a situation like 1988, when the Iranians threw in the towel after President Reagan destroyed their navy and ended Iran’s first attempt to block the Gulf.

On the other hand, if the IRGC wants to keep playing a losing hand, they can strike the oil fields and desalination plants of their neighbors and try to take everyone down with them.

So far, they talk like that, but I wonder if that is more for show. All-out war would, in the end, leave Pres.. Trump and the Arab states no choice but some kind of Allied ground invasion to end the regime; much like Pres. Trump did in 2017 with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. I suspect the Iranian regime knows whose side most ordinary Iranians will be on if it comes to that.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/trump-quietly-reopens-hormuz

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Just for the hell of it.

Newsom Math:

We will spend 5 billion but get 1 billion back.

That’s 1 billion in savings.

They’re coming for your cars in California

New tire regulations will add hundreds of dollars to tire costs and drive 70 percent of tire manufacturers out of the market.

So what happens under solid blue rule when the budget gets blown out, the taxes hit the limit, the billionaires flee, and the government appetite for spending just gets bigger?

In California, they start to eye the things that make California California: Cars, freedom, houses, prosperity. It’s not just necessity, of course. They also long to make it Not California.

We’re seeing these kinds of new developments, and none of them are good.

According to the Santa Monica Observer:

Sacramento just dropped another regulatory bomb on everyday Californians.

The California Energy Commission unanimously approved the nation’s first replacement tire efficiency standards on Monday, setting strict limits on rolling resistance for tires sold in the state. Phase 1 kicks in for tires manufactured starting in 2029. The tougher Phase 2 hits in 2033.

Tire industry representatives say the 2033 standards would eliminate roughly 70% of the replacement tires currently on the market from being sold in California. Goodyear and America’s Tire have warned that applying the Phase 2 limits to today’s inventory would knock out the majority of available options.

The rules require lower rolling resistance (less energy lost as heat when the tire rolls) and a minimum wet-grip standard so replacement tires match the efficiency of the ones that come on new cars. Specialty tires – deep-tread off-road, certain winter/all-weather, competition, and some others – get carve-outs.

The Energy Commission insists the changes will save drivers nearly $1 billion a year in fuel and electricity costs statewide and cut 2 million metric tons of CO2 annually. It pegs the extra cost to consumers at just $1.50 per tire in Phase 1 and $6.50 in Phase 2, with fuel savings quickly offsetting that.

State officials claim it will add just $6.50 to the cost of a tire, a veritable nothingburger, not explaining why they needed to use an obscure 2003 law to justify it, or why they need to do it in phases. After all, why not do it all at once and reap the tax benefits if it’s just the little piddly thing they claim it is? We all know this story.

Here’s the lie sheet from the California Energy Commission, no guaranteed refunds offered when the opposite of what they promise actually happens, and it will. Many have noted that tire manufacturers are not at all onboard with this bad idea, and the supposed support from the big ones is the equivalent of CostCo getting its shops open during the lockdowns while everyone else had theirs closed, they stand to benefit from all the small fry shutting down. Meanwhile, if you like to stick your head into a live volcano, read the comments section:

More…

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/they-re-coming-for-your-cars-in-california

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Back to boilerplate…

Looking forward to Alberta leaving Canuckistan.

Hopefully joining America.

Grateful our ancestors broke the British chains, again, and again…

Thankfully, Trump is finishing off the Brits, Canucks… Along with NATO. Ideally UN.

—

Stay The Course. Trust Trump. Remember…

Never, Ever, forget what they did to us.

Celebrate America, Everyday!!!

Relax, It’s Saturday.

Night crew, your nickel.

KK

Administrivia.

Wheatie Wisdom.  If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.  No running with scissors.  No food fights.  AI stuff posted, requires a link. Please use spoiler, for longer posts. Wolf Speak.  No obnoxious behavior towards fellow QTreeper(s). Freedom of Speech is honored here QTree.  But Do Know, every poster, IS personally responsible for what they post. 

APMEX https://www.apmex.com   Bitcoin https://www.bitcoin.com/

Prices pulled last evening.  Gold $x,xxx.xx  Silver $xx.xx   Bitcoin $xx,xxx

Seems like such an obvious solution. We need a Conservative majority.

Until we muster up honest conservative majority, we’ll…

Stuff…

Ed Dowd article below, initially posted on Wednesday. Worthy read if ya missed it.

US Disabilities Hit an All-Time High of 37 Million In July: UP 23% Since Feb 2021

The Signal No One Wants to See

I’ve been tracking this series since early in the COVID era. The charts have been public for years on the Phinance Technologies site and in repeated threads on X. Month after month the total population with a disability grinds higher. From the pre-2020 plateau into early 2021 the numbers were relatively stable. Then something changed.

February 2021 marks the clear inflection. The rate of increase shifted to a new, steeper trajectory, a 3-to-4 sigma departure from the prior trend. In the years since, the survey has added seven million people. Growth of that magnitude in a mature population is not normal aging, not “long COVID” in isolation, and not some gradual sociological shift. It was sudden. It has persisted. And it continues to be treated as background noise by the same public health authorities who spent years obsessed with every other metric.

Let me address the predictable objections, because they surface every time these numbers are posted. First: “It’s just fraud. People are gaming disability benefits.” That claim collapses under basic scrutiny of the data source. This is not Social Security Disability Insurance claims. It is not SSDI awards, which lag, require medical determinations, and are subject to administrative backlogs and incentive effects. This is the Current Population Survey, the same monthly household survey that produces the unemployment rate and labor-force participation numbers. Roughly 60,000 households are contacted each month. Six simple questions are asked about serious difficulty hearing, seeing, concentrating/remembering/making decisions, walking or climbing stairs, dressing or bathing, and doing errands alone. Any “yes” classifies the person as having a disability for statistical purposes.

I laid this out in detail years ago in threads that are still easy to find. The series is real-time, not claims-driven, and has nothing to do with benefit eligibility. The questions have been consistent since 2008. Response patterns do not suddenly invent millions of new disabled respondents because the political winds shifted. When the same survey that markets, banks, and the Federal Reserve rely upon for labor-market signals produces a multi-year, multi-sigma break in disability prevalence, the responsible reaction is investigation, not dismissal.

Second: “It’s illegal aliens flooding the numbers.” This one is equally weak. Undocumented immigrants have long been known to under-respond or avoid government surveys altogether out of fear of detection, deportation risk, or general distrust of authorities. They are not lining up to answer detailed questions about household members’ health limitations over the phone or in person. If anything, the survey systematically undercounts this population relative to reality. The sharp, sustained rise in reported disability began in February 2021, well before the largest recent surges in border encounters, and has continued in a manner inconsistent with simple demographic inflows. The data do not support the claim that the disability spike is an artifact of illegal immigration.

Public health agencies and the media have largely ignored the signal. There has been no serious, transparent inquiry into why the disability rate changed slope so sharply in early 2021 and has remained elevated. Temporary explanations such as COVID itself, lockdowns, mental-health effects of isolation all fail the timing and magnitude tests. The virus was already circulating in 2020 without producing this sustained break. The sharpest acceleration aligned with the mass rollout and subsequent workplace mandates. Correlation is not causation; we are constantly reminded. Fair enough, but when a novel medical intervention is administered to hundreds of millions of working-age adults on an accelerated timeline, and the independent, high-frequency survey of population health then records a multi-sigma regime change precisely then, the burden of proof shifts. Authorities who spent years demanding every other correlation be investigated suddenly lose interest.

The economic implications are not abstract. More than 37 million people reporting disability means a permanently larger share of the population facing barriers to full participation. Labor-force participation among the disabled remains far lower than among those without disability. Employers face higher absence rates and higher costs. Insurance pools absorb elevated claims. The fiscal pressure on entitlement programs grows even if this particular survey is not the claims pipeline. All of it is occurring against a backdrop of demographic aging that was already expected to raise disability prevalence gradually but not at the abrupt rate observed since early 2021.

I have posted the charts for years: total population 16+, the civilian labor force subset, men, women, employed versus not. The pattern is consistent. Rate-of-change moderation appears occasionally, then another leg higher. The February 2021 inflection remains the defining feature. A 3-to-4 sigma shift in trend is not something serious analysts discard. It is the kind of signal that, in any other domain…markets, epidemiology, engineering…would trigger immediate forensic review.

Health authorities have chosen another path. The data continues to accumulate. The total population survey keeps printing higher numbers. The questions asked of households have not changed. The methodology is the same one used for the official employment statistics that move markets every month. Yet the disability series is treated as an inconvenience rather than a red flag.

The conclusion from the data is straightforward. The timing, the magnitude, the concentration among the previously healthy working age population, and the failure of alternative explanations all point to the COVID vaccine campaign as one of the primary driver of the excess disability. That is the assessment I have maintained as the numbers have updated. Ignoring a sustained, multi-sigma break in a core government survey does not make the break disappear. It only guarantees that the consequences continue to compound while institutions look the other way.

The July 2026 print at 37 million is simply the latest confirmation. The trend that began in February 2021 has not been explained by health authorities, has not been investigated with appropriate rigor, and has not been reversed. Until that changes, the data will keep speaking whether anyone in authority cares to listen or not.

• Through my piss poor administrative skills, Slow Guy lost the link. Good news, Google will have it via basic search.

—

ht Wolf.

A few days back, Wolf posted this video. To REFRESH our memories, of the Covidiot nightmare we lived through.

100% well worth revisiting The J A B S.

Inside mRNA Vaccines – The Movie

The Bastards Have Doubled Down.

• 14 of 15 Must Go.
• R E S I S T We Must!

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Trump sparing lives on all sides… (Bonus. Conserving high tech ordnance.)

Trump is Using “Siege Tactics” on Iran

POTUS is perfectly content in our current position. He is utilizing a modern day version of siege tactics.

Rather than utilizing ground troops and mass casualties, he neutralized Iran from range, surrounded them, cut off their imports/exports, and is squeezing them economically.

So for those saying nothing is happening, or that Trump needs to hurry up, that we need a full-scale invasion, etc., you need to understand the approach. Trump is saving countless lives, while restructuring the global flow of energy, and waiting for Iran to collapse economically.

The only thing Iran have going for them, is that their handlers also control the US/Global media. Iran and global media, are both assets of the transnational criminal organization, known as the Deep State.

As Trump highlights below, “all they have is FAKE NEWS”. This is the only arrow left in their quiver, so to speak. Their only way to fight back is on the information battlefield, because they have already been destroyed on the kinetic battlefield. All they can do is try to convince the American People that Trump is a failure, the US MIL are losing, Iran is awesome, yada yada yada.

It’s up to you to ignore their seeds of doubt.

https://bioclandestine.substack.com/p/trump-is-using-siege-tactics-on-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=782803&post_id=210914244&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=14j1o3&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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Grateful our ancestors broke the British chains, again, and again…

Thankfully, Trump is finishing off the Brits, Canucks… Along with NATO. Ideally UN.

—

Stay The Course. Trust Trump. Remember…

Never, Ever, forget what they did to us.

Celebrate America, Everyday!!!

Relax, It’s Saturday.

Night crew, your nickel.

KK

Administrivia.

Wheatie Wisdom.  If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.  No running with scissors.  No food fights.  AI stuff posted, requires a link. Please use spoiler, for longer posts. Wolf Speak.  No obnoxious behavior towards fellow QTreeper(s). Freedom of Speech is honored here QTree.  But Do Know, every poster, IS personally responsible for what they post. 

APMEX https://www.apmex.com   Bitcoin https://www.bitcoin.com/

Prices pulled last evening.  Gold $4,357.60  Silver $64.33   Bitcoin $64,904

Seems like such an obvious solution. We need a Conservative majority.

Until we muster up honest conservative majority, we’ll…

Stuff…

placeholders for 0001 each Saturday through Sep. If any are FUBAR, AI did it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. < ht Wolf.

Likely first week Sep, some substance offered each Saturday.

—

Grateful our ancestors broke the British chains, again, and again…

Thankfully, Trump is finishing off the Brits, Canucks… Along with NATO. Ideally UN.

—

Stay The Course. Trust Trump. Remember…

Never, Ever, forget what they did to us.

Celebrate America, Everyday!!!

Relax, It’s Saturday.

Night crew, your nickel.

KK