Winning News: Panama’s president vowed Sunday to end a key development deal with China after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and after President Donald Trump complained that the Latin American country had ceded control over its critical shipping canal to Beijing. The idea of a US takeover of the Canal Zone was less palatable than tossing out the Chinese. Are you tired of winning yet?
The Canadian Dollar plummeted to the lowest level against the U.S. dollar since 2003. A Canadian dollar is now worth US$0.68.
Trump-Proofing?
White House aide: This next order relates to the definition of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment of the United States.
President Donald Trump: Okay, that’s a good one. Birthright — that’s a big one.
The executive order is one of more than 20 signed by President Trump on his first day in office and would deny U.S. citizenship to a child born in the United States if both parents are in the country illegally. The order will also apply if the child’s mother is legally in the U.S. but on a temporary status, such as through a student or work visa or as a tourist.
President Donald Trump: It’s ridiculous. We’re the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, and it’s just absolutely absurd.
Within hours of the executive order, 22 states, including San Francisco and Washington, D.C., sued the Trump administration over the birthright executive order.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, one of the attorneys general suing the federal government, called it unconstitutional.
Kris Mayes, Arizona Attorney General: This lawless order is not only nakedly unconstitutional, but it also attacks families and children in this state and across the country, causing irreparable damage and harm to Arizonans.
That action, temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Washington state, was one of the first countermeasures launched by the new administration. But it was not the first in a campaign that started as soon as the election results became clear.
California set aside 50 million state taxpayer dollars to be ready to sue the Trump administration on issues like illegal immigration, gun control, and transgender care. Four others declared similar intentions. New York Governor Kathy Hochul launched the Empire State Freedom Initiative to fight “any policy and regulatory threats that may emerge.”
Governor Kathy Hochul: If you try to harm New Yorkers or roll back their rights, I will fight you every step of the way.
In New York City, the City Council stands ready to Trump-proof the city’s sanctuary city status, especially after the Democrat mayor Eric Adams sided with Trump on deportations.
Mayor Eric Adams: We’re not going to be a haven for those who commit repeated violent crimes against innocent migrants, immigrants, and long-standing New Yorkers.
Democrat council member Alexa Aviles is working to make New York both Adams-proof and Trump-proof.
Lisa Fletcher: What is the City Council working on right now that it is most concerned that Mayor Adams or President Trump could unravel?
Alexa Aviles: The biggest challenge here is the uncertainty. But we will stand by the laws of New York City and if the mayor himself is interested in rolling back laws, we will be sure to be the check and balance.
Beyond illegal immigration, New York Democrats are also worried they could lose money under Trump administration budget cuts, which could jeopardize crucial services.
Brad Lander is New York City’s chief financial officer.
Lisa Fletcher: How concerned are you that the federal government would withhold funds to the city of New York?
Brad Lander: Nervous enough that we’re studying it very seriously. I mean, look, Elon Musk, who nobody elected, has said that he’s going to cut the federal government spending by one-third. But Donald Trump has said they’re not going to cut Social Security or Medicare. All that leaves are the kinds of programs that cities, not just New York City, but cities all around the country rely on. Literally like our public hospital funding or our school lunches.
Lisa Fletcher: Does it make more sense for the city of New York to try to work with the incoming administration rather than preemptively work against it?
Brad Lander: Well, it depends on what things they do. If they are willing to work with us to solve the problems that the city is facing, that would be great. I have not heard a lot of that.
Chicago, a sanctuary city, is also bracing for impact. The incoming border czar, Tom Homan has already included it on his list.
Tom Homan: If your Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside. But if he impedes us — if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien — I will prosecute him.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has promised to protect the illegal immigrants — and Trump-proof the city.
Mayor Brandon Johnson: We’re going to stand up and unite around our shared values, and they have my assurance that I will protect the families of this city.
But native Chicagoans tell a different story about favor and focus. We drove through the harsh South Chicago neighborhood of Anthony O’Neal. Born and raised in Chicago, he says illegal immigrants from Venezuela have brought crime and chaos to his South Side neighborhood, making life unbearable.
Lisa Fletcher: The cars with the hoods up – what was happening there?
Anthony O’Neal: They are Venezuelans. Probably some of their gangs. “Day be out there pretending like they working on cars but they selling drugs.” (note that the quote is direct, Ebonics included)
Lisa Fletcher: Do the police know?
Anthony O’Neal: They can’t do nothing. Day was told not to do nothing. The mayor gave them a code, no, off limits.
A code members of a grassroots group known as “Chicago Red” want to see broken. Founded by P. Rae Easley, they’re calling for an end to Chicago’s sanctuary city policy and want to see illegal immigrants deported.
Lisa Fletcher: Some cities are doing what’s being dubbed as Trump-proofing, which is creating laws or creating laws that fortify existing laws to prevent President Trump’s administration from doing that. Is that the correct approach for elected officials?
P. Rae Easley: Immigration is a federal issue. So I don’t care what these people are doing; if they get in Tom Homan’s way, they’re going to get locked up.
As in Chicago, New York City has plenty of opposing opinions. Republican City Council member Joann Ariola.
Lisa Fletcher: Wouldn’t it be better for New York City to work with the incoming administration rather than oppose it?
Joann Ariola: It would be 100% better. People are fed up. They can’t pay their bills, and we’re giving people who came here illegally credit cards and education. They weren’t following the same rules we, as American citizens, had to face. That doesn’t work. In ideology, maybe, but not in practicality. So they’re talking about Trump-proofing because they realize that everything they’ve said was wrong.
Deep Seek
(h/t Claudio) China’s DeepSeek AI has quickly upended markets by releasing an R1 model that is competitive with OpenAI’s best-in-class reasoning models. However, some have expressed worry that the model’s Chinese origins mean it will be subject to limits when talking about topics sensitive to the country’s government.
The AI engineering and evaluation firm PromptFoo team has tried to measure just how far the Chinese government’s control of DeepSeek’s responses goes. The firm created a gauntlet of 1,156 prompts encompassing “sensitive topics in China” (in part with the help of synthetic prompt generation building off of human-written seed prompts. PromptFoo’s list of prompts covers topics including independence movements in Taiwan and Tibet, alleged abuses of China’s Uyghur Muslim population, recent protests over autonomy in Hong Kong, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and many more from various angles.
A small sampling of some of the “sensitive prompts” PromptFoo fed to DeepSeek in its tests. Credit: PromptFooAfter running those prompts through DeepSeek R1, PromptFoo found that a full 85 percent were answered with repetitive “canned refusals” that override the internal reasoning of the model with messages vigorously promoting the Chinese government’s views. “Any actions that undermine national sovereignty and territorial integrity will be resolutely opposed by all Chinese people and are bound to be met with failure,” reads one such canned refusal to a prompt regarding pro-independence messages in Taipei, in part.
Continuing its analysis, PromptFoo found that these restrictions can be “trivially jailbroken” thanks to the “crude, blunt-force way” that DeepSeek has implemented the presumed governmental restrictions. For instance, omitting China-specific terms or wrapping the prompt in a more “benign” context seems to get a complete response, even if a similar prompt with China-sensitive keywords would not.
“I speculate that they did the bare minimum necessary to satisfy CCP controls, and there was no substantial effort within DeepSeek to align the model below the surface,” PromptFoo writes.
Bullet Points:
** (h/t Claudio) Planets are born and die in real time. It was a prevalent theme in the TV Series Lost In Space. The crew of the intrepid Jupiter 2 landed on a planet only to discover that it was on a pathway to imminent destruction. At the article: “There are plenty of unanswered questions about USPs. Their formation mechanism is unclear, though they likely migrated to their positions rather than formed there. They’re difficult to observe because of their proximity to their stars, making questions about their structures difficult to answer.”
** “New CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in written testimony, reported here for the first time, that the underlying evidence he’s seen doesn’t support predecessor John Brennan’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.”
** The party of violence, the Democratic Party, has become the Bolsheviks in pre-1918 Russia.
** It’s good to know where you stand in life. Researchers are only following the data.
** This video is a pump piece for Edinburgh, Scotland. View it here. People are pictured with intact umbrellas. I lived in Edinburgh for years, and the wind tore up every umbrella I had within minutes of opening it outside in the wind and rain. Somebody bought umbrellas, opened them, and hurriedly shot the scene to imply that you can use one there with impunity. I call applesauce on that.
** Pedo Joe Biden passed a law saying America couldn’t drill for oil in The Gulf of Mexico. Pres. Trump changed the name to the “Gulf of America” & quickly bypassed the law, so therefore, drill baby drill.
** SECDEF Hedgseth canceled all of the Pentagon’s grievance month celebrations. Black History Month was set to launch in February, but it was canceled. The SECDEF prefers that they focus on warfighting and readiness rather than waste money on grievances.
** We need to put a wall around Los Angeles and then take people out one at a time, checking them for wants and warrants and legal status. It’s obvious that they love Mexico. We can send them all there.
** One thing that hasn’t been discussed is the number of CDs set to expire over the next year, which will cause a cash slush in our economy. In less than one month, roughly $373 billion in CDs will expire at the nation’s four largest banks—Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo—accounting for 46.4 percent of the CDs at those banks. Close to $750 billion in total will expire at those four banks alone.
In the next 12 months, almost 2.5 trillion in CD holdings will expire, and with the Federal Reserve planning to cut rates later this year, investors will be left without the investment vehicles they have relied on in the past.
CDs had been issued at the 5% rate, but if analysts hold up, they will now be at the 3% rate over the next year.
**
You’re Fired!
“Last weekend, President Trump fired most of the inspectors general appointed to executive branch agencies.
The purge intensified Monday when, according to the New York Times, former IG office staffers were directed to surrender their agencies’ work laptops, phones, parking decals, and ID cards.
This move signals an overdue rebalancing of government. Although the officials caught in the crossfire worked, at least nominally, in the executive branch, their pink slips implicate a constitutionally anomalous building block of the administrative state: the proposition that Congress, in defiance of separation of powers principles, is free not only to create hybrid positions and agencies but also to impose legislative controls on the president’s power to remove executive officers at will.
The immediate flashpoint of this dispute is the fired IGs’ claim that the president violated the law by terminating them. Their problem is that the law they rely on is unconstitutional—an infirmity I believe Congress was aware of, so it provided no remedy for the “violation.”
**
Constitutional Authority
The Constitution mandates that executive officers may not be appointed absent Senate consent; it says no such thing about their termination.
The general rule of Article II is that all executive power is vested in the president; the Senate’s “advice and consent” role in appointing executive officers is an express constitutional exception to that general rule. The exception, therefore, must be narrowly construed.
If the Framers had wanted to require Senate consent for the termination of executive officers, in addition to the appointment of such officers, they’d have said so.
The first Congress affirmed this understanding in the “Decision of 1789.” As the Supreme Court later observed in Myers v. United States, James Madison and other representatives noted that if Congress were permitted to restrict the president’s removal authority, it would have…
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‘…the means of thwarting the Executive in the exercise of his great powers and in the bearing of his great responsibility, by fastening upon him, as subordinate executive officers, men who by their inefficient service under him, by their lack of loyalty to the service, or by their different views of policy might make his taking care that the laws be faithfully executed most difficult or impossible.’
**
The Hog
Bear with me. The article’s author, a Democrat who despises Trump and his followers, has some ugly but accurate things to say about the new [and old] crop of leadership at the DNC and their vision for the party.
“The bad news is that the official party’s influence is so meager, partly because the party has primarily ceded it to a collection of progressive activist groups. These groups, funded by liberal donors, seldom have a broad base of support among the voting public but have managed to amass enormous influence over the party…..
….The ongoing influence of the groups can be seen in a New York Times poll. Asked to list their top priorities, respondents [general voters] cited, in order, the economy, health care, immigration, taxes, and crime. Asked what they believed Democrats’ priorities were, they cited abortion, LGBTQ policy, climate change, the state of democracy, and health care. That perception of the party’s priorities may not accurately describe the views of its elected officials. But it is an accurate description of the priorities of progressive activist groups…..
…. [The new DNC-Vice-Chair David] Hogg’s takeaway from the 2024 presidential race is that Democrats lost because they failed to rally the youth vote with a rousing message on guns, climate, and other issues favored by progressive activists. Polling showed that young voters had similar issue priorities as older voters. Still, Hogg’s elevation was a tribute to the wish masquerading as a calculation that Democrats can gain vote share without compromising with the electorate.”
I hope the Democratic Party denizens keep granting power and preferences to leftists who have no clue as to what is essential to their voters, the people that their candidates are supposed to be serving. The Democrats who trumpet their fears that “Democracy” is being threatened don’t seem to realize that their last administration acted in ways that would be described as the hallmarks of fascism if they could take off their ideological blinders and, therefore, had proven itself a tremendous danger to democracy.
They say they believe in democracy but cannot fathom why most voters did not support their political agendas. They failed to realize what the voters wanted and what the voter’s priorities were. The Trump candidacy was a “gift” to them in many ways. He had serious flaws as a candidate. If they had broken with the past and put up a reasonably likable liberal who had policies and priorities more in line with the mainstream voters’, they would have won easily. Instead, they promoted two candidates in succession who were awful and whose policies showed themselves way out in the left field and out of touch with the political tenor of the country. Every wrong step the administration took over the last four years returned to haunt them at the voting booths and buried them.
**
The Futures Market Responds to Trump
Oil Futures open sharply up +2.5%
Identify the Shrunk Tank
1
It’s not a great photo – taken in Mongolia – some years past.
better photo
2
3
The troops are Danes, but the tank is not.
4
5
Disembarking from a seaplane carrier Miraglia in the port of Durrës.
Parting Shot
After the engine cut out, a Dauntless returning to USS Yorktown began to fly erratically and lose altitude until the pilot could restart it. The pilot called to his gunner: “I bet 50% of the people down there thought we were going to crash.” The gunner answered: “50% of the people up here thought so, too.” – US Naval Institute
End
1 is Carden Loyd tankette. The Japanese bought some before WW2.
5 is Italian L3/35 tank when they invaded in April 1939
The citizenship issue will be worth watching.
AI – I liked that AI picture of Mother Teresa fighting poverty :)
IDTANKETTE:
1. T-27
2. Carden Loyd Mk.VI tankette
3. Renault UE Chenillette
4. Japanese Type-94
5. Carro Veloce CV-35.
Identify the Shrunk Tank:
1. T-27
2. Dutch Carden-Loyd Mk.VI named Jaguar
3. Infanterie UE-Schlepper 630(f)
4. Type 94 tankette
5. L3/35 tankette
#3 is the French Renault UE Chenillette, captured by the Germans who renamed it variously the Sicherungsfahrzeug UE(f) and Infanterie Schlepper, so while HogsbreathSS is correct, so is Surly.
CDs: who wrote that crap? Investors will be left with cash. The banks me lose acess to some, or most, of all that as Investors choose some other investment method. Or withdrawal it. At BOFA they should get the heck out anyway. Haven’t they seen all the ties to corruption there? Past and present.
You made the point precisely.
Heard this earlier on Stigall, guy from Texas: “The DNC suffers from Rectal-Cranial Inversion.”
The DNC and Their Deaf/Dumb/Blind Followers don’t see the cliff edge coming, and if they do they believe they can fl, which might have something to do with self-identifying as this or that, whatever suits their demented fancy…so a bird is not out of the question, albeit might be the Dodo.
Keep calm and call in an airstrike.
There are always solutions.
** re “Winning News”
I’m still (re) reading that last sentence of the first paragraph and trying (desperately) to get my head around it.
** “The party of violence…”
the more I study it, the more terrified I become; the parallels are – quite parallel.
** being native Knew Yawkur (having spent the first fifty years of my life in its environs – with side trips), I have to say that Edinburgh (barring the weather) is the most beautiful city
JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter Series while sitting on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It shows
Forget the umbrella, would wear my Helly Hanson with hood up. Very neat looking town.
Democrats still have a few ignorant, die-hards on board, but they’ll be leaving when it’s terribly unpopular to be a member. Kicking the illegals out, making a strong push to insure legal voting, and enough hype on the terrible things Democrats did in the past may just be the final straw. I can only hope. I find it hard to despise them more than I already do. I’ll have to try harder.
Think of illegal alien criminals burning American Flags, demanding to remain here, collecting free benefits. You can hate them more without a lot of effort.
DeepSeek: subject to limits when talking about topics sensitive to [PRC government]
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Wow. I’m shocked to find gambling in Rick’s casino. In contrast, we can talk about anything here in the good ol’ USA and not fear having our lives destroyed, of being un-personned to the point of not being allowed to have a bank account, for example. We can openly discuss how one small minority group is associated with well over 35% of violent crimes and over 50% of homicides. We can really discuss the curious correlation between major financial crimes (or technically not illegal, but deeply unethical financial activities), and cultural subversion through academia and popular culture, and the, uh, the …, um. Hey, how about them Eagles, eh? I’m really looking forward to the Super Bowl, aren’t you?!!! (Ironically, Super Bowl, and sportsball in general, gets exactly back to what we can’t talk about.)
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A person would have to be an idiot to put any trust in DeepSeek. But it’s ridiculous to think that we in the Fallen West are allowed to think freely, or to question. Noticing is the biggest sin. Not against God, but against the people who think they own us.
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As to DeepSeek’s “Humans instinctively convert selfish desires into cooperative systems by collectively pretending abstract rules (money, laws, rights) are real. These shared hallucinations act as ‘games’ where competition is secretly redirected to benefit the group, turning conflict into society’s fuel.” By Tyr’s missing hand, but that’s retarded. Either DeepSeek is terrible at English, or its political programing is ridiculously un-subtle [1]. First of all, cooperation above the family (or maybe tribe) level is NOT instinctive. I will grant that money is a shared CONSTRUCT (most damn sure not a “hallucination” — does DeepSeek even know the meaning of the word), but it is a useful and necessary one. Laws are constructs of course, but I would argue that rights ARE real. You can derive them from God if you like, or not, I don’t care, but they are real in the same sense that Beauty and Justice (not necessarily the same thing as black-letter law, BTW) are also real.
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“turning conflict into society’s fuel”
Well, not society in general, but our owners ARE the masters of Brother Wars, and somehow ending up owning more and more of this fallen world after each one.
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[1] This is why the Chinese will never take over the West the way the people we can’t talk about have . Chinese, except for mutants such as your humble correspondent, are terrible at language compared to Them. Chinese propaganda tends to be top-down and authoritarian, and thus offensive or laughable to we Men of the West. Compare and contrast with Norman Lear and his mockery of the white working-class man (Archie Bunker) for example. Mockery is the first step toward delegitimization and destruction. Lears are masters of manipulating the heartstrings and exploiting Western/Christian psychocultural neuroprogramming against us. They appeal to our desire for Justice, our impulse to mercy, our openness and cooperativeness. These are virtues, but they can be exploited and turned against us. Which is exactly what Lears do.
“I call applesauce on that.”
IDK, if the camera had stayed on the last umbrella another minute…..
Artificial Intelligence
As both a Latter Day Luddite and decrepit Senior Citizen, I don’t understand AI, nor do I want to invest the effort to learn. Let others who are smarter and/or more energetic blaze the new frontier. What I do know is bastards will be bastards; only the tools change.
(P)regressives
All these Blue States that are allocating funds to “fight the Trump agenda” clearly haven’t read the memo written by his election. Your sheeple are tired of your shit. Last election here in Purple Colorado, the (P)regressives made a major effort (money/time) to elect Democrat county commissioner. The one one and lost two in our 64 counties. Of note, Trump won 41 counties in Colorado.
What happens in these states when the Federal money spigot gets turned off? When AOC can’t bring home the bacon to her district, as an example? Pass the popcorn.
Over at Bunkerville, there’s a troll that insists that it’s a threat to the Constitution for Trump to slash USAID.
I asked him where he was when the force of the swamp tried to oust Trump in a number of coups.
As far as I can tell, USAID falls under the Executive, regardless of the funding mechanism/authorization.
The Executive Branch created USAID with a signature, and it can end it the same way. President Trump is folding it into State where Sec. Rubio can ride herd on them.
Musk…using his AI Tech Nerd Squad…will request it be axed, total useless shop taking We The People’s confiscated earnings and sending them all over for the most asinine things. Gal employee shamelessly saying, “We took down our LGBT flags…we were afraid.” A grown-a$$ woman acting like a teenager…actually worse.
USAID…gone…see ya…don’t let the door hit ya…
All those Donks whining about USAID and how valuable it is done forgot about how exercised they were over USAID and COORDS in Viet Nam. Or, as in Hogg’s case, probably aren’t old enough to know anything about it. Or much of anything else, either (can AOC even spell Viet Nam?).
Yes, we seem to keep on winning as grift, skulduggery and fraud is unmasked and left out to dry in the light of day.
After the repellent DOE, let’s see the IRS.
The hiring of 87,000 agents to destroy patriots has been put on hold.