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IMMIGRATION GONE WILD

It is hard now even for Democrats to defend illegal immigration, given that the Biden administration allowed in more than 10 million entrants. Among them were an estimated 500,000 criminals. No one normal believes that was wise or should ever be repeated.

Worse, the message went out that there would be few, if any, deportations and no real ICE kinetic activity beyond the border.

The world’s poor, sick, both law-abiding and criminal, young and old, understood that anyone could now enter the U.S. at will. Deterrence and legality were lost.

In its place, the message went out that if it was permissible to cross the border unlawfully, then, by extension, it would be seen as equally fine to reside illegally as well—and perhaps further to ignore laws, on the theory that the host had sanctioned all such exemptions.

Indeed, between 2021 and 2024, in the most bizarre episodes in U.S. immigration history, the border simply disappeared. There were to be no background checks, no health audits, and no identification of the greatest influx in any four-year period in U.S. history.

No one knew why. All had their explanations.

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ARCTIC FROST: “100 TIMES WORSE THAN WATERGATE”

sleazebag-caughtSenate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley revealed Wednesday (10/29) that former President Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiled what’s being described as an “enemies list” of Republicans to target, including through wiretapping the phones of several high-ranking Republicans as part of their “get-Trump” lawfare.

Grassley revealed more than 1,700 pages of documents provided by whistleblowers, shining further light on the “Arctic-Frost” inquiry. Arctic Frost was an investigation led by the Biden administration to, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland explained, “target Republicans in key battleground states.”

Then FBI Director Christopher Wray sent a memorandum to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland claiming that “fraudulent certificates of electors’ votes were submitted to the Archivist of the United States” for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Wray also asserted that these votes were part of a grand conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.

Jack Smith relied on this investigation as the basis for his anti-Trump lawfare, through which he attempted to both put the then-former president in jail and spy on the entire Republican political apparatus. Grassley made public the 197 subpoenas sought by Smith.

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WHAT SOMALIS HAVE DONE FOR MINNESOTA

Somali Immigrants Are Revitalizing Main Street America,” NBC News claimed. A barrage of similar stories hailed Somalis and other Muslim migrants for ‘transforming’ Middle America.

After President Trump’s criticism of Somali abuse, triggered by reporting of massive $1B plus frauds by numerous conservative media outlets, the media has rushed out more of these same stories about Somali accomplishments.

But let’s look at some of the facts.

Somalis are the second largest foreign-born population in Minnesota after Mexicans. 42% of Somalis fall below the poverty line. This is far worse than the 21% poverty rate for African-Americans or any Christian African immigrant population such as Ethiopians (18%) or Nigerians (8%).

40.6% of Somalis settlers in Minnesota don’t even have a high school degree. 40% of Somalis have an income at the 200% federal poverty line. 40% of Somali settlers in Minnesota earn below $35,000. Their median household income is $43,600.

This limits any taxes they are likely to pay and allows them nearly limitless access to welfare.

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WHY THE DEMS ARE IN MELTDOWN OVER TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE BALLROOM

The new White House Ballroom with new First Lady’s East Wing in foreground
The new White House Ballroom with new First Lady’s East Wing in foreground

Donald Trump has demolished an old office wing attached to the White House and begun building a large new ballroom, big enough to accommodate state dinners and other major events. Currently, those have to be held outdoors, under a temporary tent, because the White House lacks a large, permanent space.

Democrats are outraged by Trump’s move. They have filled social media with pictures of the demolition. Oh, the humanity. Tearing down any part of the White House is a travesty, they say, and an assault on one of our cherished national landmarks. They are so enraged that at least one Democrat lawmaker has made tearing down the new ballroom – after it is built and paid for – a litmus test for his party’s 2028 presidential candidates.

Call it  BDS – Ballroom Derangement Syndrome.  To explain it, we’re going to take a look at Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack.

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FROM FIREBRAND TO VERUCA SALT – THE BLONDE AOC’S HISSY FIT BETRAYAL OF MAGA

In the whimsical yet cautionary world of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Veruca Salt storms through Willy Wonka’s factory like a spoiled brat on steroids, demanding golden geese, trained squirrels, and every shiny trinket that catches her eye. “I want it now!” she screeches, her petulance sealing her fate down the garbage chute.

Fast-forward to 2025 Washington, and one can’t help but see echoes of Veruca in Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG)—once the bleach-blonde firebrand of MAGA, now morphing into the “Blonde AOC,” trading principled conservatism for performative tantrums because President Trump didn’t hand her a Senate endorsement on a silver platter.

What followed wasn't quiet reflection or a pivot back to her House duties—no, it was a full-throated Veruca meltdown. This pattern of petulance isn’t new in GOP annals—it’s the ghost of Paul Ryan haunting Capitol Hill. In Trump’s first term, the Wisconsin “Young Gun” pledged fiscal conservatism but worked overtime to undermine the MAGA agenda.

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PUTIN’S ENERGY WEAPON HAS NOW COME BACK TO BITE HIM

[I have known Ambrose since the early i990s, when he was the London Telegraph’s US correspondent based in DC. Now he is the Telegraph’s World Economy Editor. Ambrose is at the top of his game in this analysis. –JW]

Vladimir Putin’s predicament is deteriorating fast across every front of the global energy war.  Western sanctions are at last going for the jugular, and Donald Trump has finally thrown American power behind the blockade.

The Saudis are flooding the world oil market in a ruthless drive to regain lost share. A glut of historic proportions is building and is likely to last deep into 2027. Goldman Sachs has told clients that Brent crude prices could drop to the low $40s.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has drastically revised its global supply and demand forecasts. China has filled its strategic petroleum reserve to near bursting point and can no longer keep mopping up the surplus. Excess crude is now being stored on water in a giant global armada of floating tankers.

The math is brutal. The IEA expects a jumbo global surplus of four million b/d in 2026. “It is increasingly clear that something has to give,” said Toril Bosoni, head of the agency’s oil and markets division.

That something is the Russian war economy.

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IRAN’S CURRENCY COLLAPSE OF A DYING REGIME

Image by Grok
Image by Grok

Amid an orgy of executions and the accelerating collapse of its economy, the mullahs' regime has driven the Iranian people to unprecedented levels of hardship.

The latest plunge of the national currency to a historic low is not an accident of market forces, nor the consequence of global instability. It is the inevitable result of decades of plunder, corruption, and ideological fanaticism by a ruling clerical mafia whose survival depends on bleeding the nation dry.

In recent days, the U.S. dollar smashed through the 1,250,000-rial threshold (yes, 1.25 million to one dollar)* for the first time (the open market rate everyone pays, the “official” everyone ignores) shattering all previous records. At the time of the anti-Shah revolution in 1979, there were 74 rials to the U.S. dollar. State media declared that the rial "is melting away."

In truth, it is not the rial that is melting, it is the regime itself.

The catastrophic collapse of the rial is the clearest evidence of a regime in terminal decline, clutching at any mechanism, no matter how destructive, to prolong its grip on power.

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THE WORLD SHOULD CHEER IF TRUMP RIDS IT OF VENEZUELA’S MADURO

USS Gerald R Ford on its way to Venezuela
USS Gerald R Ford on its way to Venezuela

Donald Trump is preparing for a military intervention in Venezuela. You don’t send a dozen warships, including a nuclear submarine and an aircraft carrier, to interdict a few drug traffickers. You don’t deploy 10,000 troops to deter smugglers.

Many, especially in the Global South, will fall hungrily on the parallel with Russia. So much, they will say, for the pretense that Western countries uphold the international order. The US, they will aver, is no different from Russia, acting from self-interest, and then coating its Machtpolitik in cant about freedom and democracy.

The comparison is false, the opposite of the truth.

Trump has no interest in annexing Venezuelan territory. Whatever happens next, whether we end up with shots fired in anger or whether Maduro’s rotten regime agrees to free elections, no one can credibly claim that the US is commandeering Venezuelan resources.

Putin’s objective in Ukraine was to remove a freely elected government and replace it with a Russian client regime. Trump’s objective in Venezuela is to remove a Russian client regime and replace it with a freely elected government. That difference is categorical.

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THE PITFALLS OF WAR

wild-worldSEASON OF INFAMY

As we close in on the end of 2025 and are writing on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, wars and rumors of wars seem to permeate our world.

Here at Deuce Central, we just shake our heads.  We behold a world that seems to be going insane—if not clinically, in the ability of the leaders of its nations to clearly see their national interests and make meaningful decisions congruent with those interests.  If what we see happening is possible, no act of geopolitical stupidity that we would normally consider improbable is off the table.

We are pretty sure DJT kept us out of one or more of these wars, and this is good.  The involvement of the United States in a large war, or more than one in particular, might do more to move the United States further to the Left politically and socially than the re-election of the Giggling Mental Patient, Zero and Right-Said Fred, or His Royal Senescence would have done.  Perhaps too far to recover.

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WHERE IS TRUMP’S DOJ ON DENATURALIZING ZOHRAN MAMDANI?

When a man seeks to lead the largest city in America, his citizenship should be beyond question. Yet the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani, an avowed Radical Muslim Communist Democrat and recently naturalized U.S. citizen, has raised a troubling question: Did he obtain his citizenship under false pretenses?

That question became official on June 26, when Congressman Andy Ogles, Republican of Tennessee, formally asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Mamdani’s 2018 naturalization should be revoked under 8 U.S.C. §1451(a) for “willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism.”

The request, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, was not a partisan stunt. It was a carefully structured one-page letter that laid out specific evidence, cited public sources, and explained why Mamdani’s own words may point to something more serious than youthful rebellion or artistic expression.

By early autumn, the issue had escalated far beyond a single letter. On October 8, Florida Congressman Randy Fine, a Republican, reignited national debate by denouncing Mamdani as “little more than a Muslim terrorist” and demanding his deportation to Uganda. Fine’s comments reflected genuine anger among voters who believe the system too often protects destroyers rather than creators.

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WHAT LYING DOES TO US

Lying takes a huge toll on our relationships, our physical health, and our mental health. But sometimes we’re not so clear about what it means to be honest. Does it mean we say everything that we think or feel?

There are very strong benefits to honesty; and also some common sense guidelines as to what’s appropriate to express.

This is common sense, but here’s where this can get tricky: I have known people who believe that if we don’t express every feeling or impulse, we’re being dishonest. I’ve watched these folks say the most awful, hurtful, vile things to each other, calling each other the most insulting names in the process. Their impulse is sometimes to hurt the other, and so they do it.

It doesn’t really work very well for them.

By this philosophy, the whole concept of honesty and authenticity becomes nebulous. By this way of thinking, if we don’t express literally everything that goes through our mind, we can’t be honest.

This is of course ridiculous. To be honest is not to be brainless. To be honest does not mean that we let fly anything that comes to mind.

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NEGOTIABLE AFFECTION IN SKAGWAY

the-brass-picWhen gold was discovered in the Klondike of Canada’s Yukon in 1896, the fastest way to get there was a tiny hamlet at the end of a long inlet of Alaska’s Inland Passage coast called Skagway. By 1898, Skagway was a lawless Wild West boom town flooded with prospectors who needed entertainment and release from the arduous travails of gold searching – and ladies who would provide it for a price.

The Brass Pic (as in a miner’s pic & shovel) was one of many Houses of Negotiable Affection in Skagway that flourished until the gold panned out in 1900. It’s preserved as a museum today in fond memory of those days of commercially consensual delight. Skagway is a terrific place to experience, drawing over a million visitors a year. Come here to see what draws them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #198 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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FLASHBACK FRIDAY: AMAZON INITIATION

amazon-initiationAugust, 2002. In the remotest Amazon jungle of Brazil, along a tributary of the Upper Xingu River, live the Xicrin-Kayapo people. They live traditionally as they have for centuries, isolated in their forests from the world. Here the young boys, painted and adorned, apprehensively await their initiation ceremonies into becoming young men. They are to be tested to show they have what it takes for the village to be proud of them.

In some of their eyes, there is confidence. In others less so. This is an ancient Rite of Passage, an enthralling experience to witness. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #229 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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HEAVEN IN THE CARIBBEAN

st-lucia-islandQuick – name the only country in the world named after a woman. It’s the island nation in the Caribbean of St. Lucia, named after the patron saint of virgins, 4th century Saint Lucia.

The charm, beauty, and serenity of St. Lucia are unequaled in the Caribbean. Here you can have your own private retreat overlooking the twin peaks of The Pitons. The St. Lucian people take great pride in the immaculate spotlessness of their island and in their matchless reputation for personal warmth and hospitality.

While an English-speaking country and member of the British Commonwealth, there is a French tradition here as well, reflected in the fine cuisine and wines in restaurants. Yet I became fond of the local Piton beer as well. St. Lucia is the easiest island in the Caribbean to fall in love with – so it is no wonder that couples come from all over the world to get married or honeymoon here.

If you want to spend a few days of bliss away from all the cares of the world, you can’t do better than this place of heaven in the Caribbean. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #190 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

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