polecat news and views: 2025

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Top O' the Briefing

Happy New Year's Eve, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Telkengraidth felt that his "Spam Krispies Treats" would be a hit at the semi-annual Dick Van Patten Trivia Throwdown.

We will once again be on a modified holiday schedule here at the Briefing. There will be a couple of "Best Of" reruns, complete with fresh video greetings from me. Thank you all for indulging me this, I promise it will pay dividends as we get deeper into the new year.

What a year this one has been, though. At the end of April, I wrote that it felt like President Donald Trump had put 100 months' worth of work into his first 100 days. It was quite the contrast to the "call a lid by 9 AM" schedule that Joe Biden had favored for the previous four years. Fueled by Big Macs and Diet Cokes, Trump kept up that relentless work pace all year long.

Some truly awful things happened in 2025, like the frightening fires that ravaged Southern California at the beginning of the year. That was all made more tragic than it needed to be because of the incompetence of the Democrats who are aggressively ruining the Golden State.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was beyond jarring. The horror of that was compounded by the soulless reaction of so many on the left, which really made it feel like the deep political divide in this country was only going to get worse.

There was a lot more, but we don't need to dwell on the negatives today.

Unfortunately, the country had gotten used to lows and misfortune when the desiccated husk of Joe Biden and his commie cabal were running the country. With Trump back in the office, however, there are some highs to go along with the lows. A lot of that has to do with the aforementioned work ethic of his. He handles whatever is thrown his way, all the while staying relentlessly focused on implementing his original agenda.

One big high has been the recent economic news. Just this month, we've heard good things about both inflation and the U.S. economy's growth rate, which we discussed on Christmas Eve. It's a great way to head into a midterm election year. Consistent positive economic news is also something that was a huge departure from the Biden years. Truthful economic news, that is. The Dems' flying monkeys in the mainstream media straight-up lied about Biden's economy for four years.

Another thing I've greatly enjoyed this year is the ease and humor with which the Trump 47 team pushes back on the adversarial jerks in the mainstream media. After a political lifetime of watching Republican politicians roll over for the media like sad dogs, seeing Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeatedly verbally gut-punch MSM hacks is high entertainment indeed.

The highlight of highlights for the year for me is the tourniquet that President Trump swiftly applied to Biden's porous border. In my latest column, I named the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency my "Person of the Year." This kind of border security is something that sane people in border states have wanted for decades. Yes, I'm annoyed that the Democrats are so on the wrong side of everything that I am now counted among the "sane" people.

It's a blessing to have a real president again, one who truly loves the Republic and doesn't want to see it transformed. Let me know in the comments what some of your Trump-induced high points of 2025 were. Now let's rush headlong into this new year and see what kind of fun we can kick up on the other side.

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2025/12/31/the-morning-briefing-2025-was-a-trumptastic-rollercoaster-ride-of-a-year-n4947719?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Some of Us May Die, But It's a Sacrifice Democrats Are Willing to Make

Some of Us May Die, But It's a Sacrifice Democrats Are Willing to Make

Amy Curtis

It's often been said that Democrats are very generous with other people's money. It's true, of course, and we need look no further than Minnesota to see it play out. Fraud in the Land of 10,000 Lakes has reached an eye-watering $9 billion, and an investigative journalist has shown not only how corrupt the state's Medicare/Medicaid programs are, but also that fraud is rife in its childcare programs, too, with daycare centers raking in millions but nary a child in sight.

State leaders have largely been silent, even as mayors of Minnesota cities began revolting against the Walz administration. Why? Well, Walz is probably elbows-deep in the fraud, and it appears he may be punishing/persecuting whistleblowers. Attorney General Keith Ellison is on the side of the Somali fraudsters, too. Officials, as all good Leftists are wont to do, didn't crack down on the Somali fraudsters, lest they appear "racist."

As I reported before Thanksgiving, the rampant fraud cost at least one Minnesota man his life. A fake "care agency" billed the state for 12 hours of daily care and checked in on the vulnerable man only occasionally. I've asked the question multiple times and haven't gotten an answer yet, so I'll ask it again: how many other Minnesotans have died thanks to this fraud? That number certainly isn't just one.

Which brings me to a point I've made every time I've written about DEI in healthcare. Democrats are not just generous with your money. They're generous with your lives, too.

States like New York and California have handed out CDLs to illegal immigrants like candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. The consequences have been deadly, with several fatal accidents happening thanks to illegal immigrant truck drivers who can't read or speak English, including our English road signs. The same party that trips over itself to get in front of a microphone to demand gun control, to "save one life," of course, after a shooting, shrugs and says your loved ones getting obliterated on our highways is a price we have to pay for a diverse truck driving workforce.

A great many things, but Zohran Mamdani and the Democrats don't care. To them, your life is a small price to pay to achieve their DEI utopia. Democrats, rich and privileged as they are, believe themselves to be insulated from such tragedies. Much like they get to keep their armed security detail while stripping us of our gun rights, they'll get the competent NYFD response when their house is on fire or their loved one is having a heart attack.

The common folks? Not so much.

Some of us may die, but it's a sacrifice they're willing to make.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2025/12/27/sat-vip-sacrifices-democrats-are-willing-to-make-n2668528?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Kevin Kiley Owns Gavin Newsom With Receipts That CA Is the True 'Fraud Capital of America'

Kevin Kiley Owns Gavin Newsom With Receipts That CA Is the True 'Fraud Capital of America'

By Jennifer Oliver O'Connell

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Despite the Somali fraud in Minnesota taking up the news cycle, a new California auditor report proves that it is actually this state which wins the title of Fraud Capital of America.

Because the California press corps, AKA the "homegrown team," often chooses to cover Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) behind rather than his poor governance, Rep. Kevin Kiley (CA-03) took to The New York Post to lay out the receipts from this auditor report to the nation. Above all else, Newsom wants to become President of the United States. As the biggest thorn in Newsom's flesh, Kiley knows that the nation must be continually reminded of what a feckless and dangerous leader Newsom has been for the state of California, and will be for the nation should he succeed at winning the 2028 Democrat nomination and the presidency.

Kiley wrote:

California’s nonpartisan auditor just failed eight state agencies run by Gov. Gavin Newsom, sending a clear message to residents: your state is broken.
While Newsom has hailed California’s laughable cost-cutting measures as the original “DOGE” — a model of “efficient, responsive, and accountable” government — the auditor has revealed the rot in devastating detail.
The auditor’s new report identifies the eight “high-risk” agencies that not only exhibit serious “waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement,” but also have failed to take “adequate corrective actions.”
Four of those eight agencies attained this dubious distinction during Newsom’s term, including the social services department, which was added this year.
The report found, for example, that massive payment error rates in the delivery of food assistance benefits could cost the state $2.5 billion in federal funds.
And it noted that California’s six straight missed financial reporting deadlines have put the state’s credit rating and federal funding in jeopardy.

Ouch. The massive payment errors for the state's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) certainly come as no surprise to Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins. California is one of the blue states that has refused to release its records to the federal SNAP program, so this auditor report corroborates what Rollins has been saying about massive fraud in the program.

USDA's Brooke Rollins Spikes Ball on Democrats Following Portland SNAP Fraud Indictments

But wait, there's more: On the House floor, Kiley rattled off two more of those eight agencies detailed, exposing even more jaw-dropping fraud and malfeasance.

WATCH:

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is its own basket of evils. To keep paying an ex‑employee who made over $170,000 a year for 15 months after that employee left? That's some next level brazenness. But it is only matched by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSR), the brain trust overseeing the construction of the so-called California High-Speed Rail project.

When Secretary of Transportation (DoT) Sean Duffy was officially confirmed and sworn in, Kiley petitioned the department to cut the four billion dollars in federal funding for CHSR's boondoggle. The DoT obliged and pulled the plug in July, putting Newsom's panties in a wad. He promptly got his feckless attack dog, CA AG Rob Bonta, to sue the Trump administration to get the funding back.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the Trump administration of illegal conduct after it pulled about $4 billion in federal funds from a high-speed rail project to link Los Angeles and San Francisco — the latest public clash between the president and the outspoken Democratic governor, who described the years-long project as soon entering its final stages.
Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced the funding termination Wednesday, calling the project a “boondoggle” and stating “federal dollars are not a blank check.”
Newsom on Thursday announced that California is suing the Trump administration over the move. The lawsuit alleges the termination of funding is “petty, political retribution, motivated by President Trump’s personal animus,” a news release said.

Dive Deeper: Trump Pulls the Plug on Gavin Newsom's High-Speed Rail Boondoggle

The release of this California auditor report and Kiley's op-ed have poured some serious cold water on Newsom's TDS-fire. On Friday, AG Bonta announced the state had dropped the CHSR lawsuit against the Trump administration.

California has dropped a lawsuit challenging the decision by the administration of President Donald Trump to cancel more than $4 billion in federal grants for the state's high-speed rail project, the state said late on Friday.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority, which filed the suit in July, said the decision to abandon it on Tuesday reflected the state's "assessment that the federal government is not a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner in advancing high-speed rail in California."

That's rich. Good luck trying to continue to fund this project with Californians' taxpayer dollars. At the end of 2025, the state coffers maintain an 18 billion dollar deficit, in large part due to these ill-conceived lawsuits, a majority of which Newsom keeps losing.

Kiley rightly took a victory lap.

Gov. Gaslight wanted the last word, of course, and claimed Kiley was just flat-out wrong. On Friday, Kiley appeared on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle program to reinforce all the evidence to the contrary, and encouraged the American people to do their own research. He said they should read the state auditor report, as well as other auditor reports, which have detailed Newsom's mismanagement and malfeasance surrounding his signature issue of homelessness.

Kiley's final warning in The New York Post op-ed says exactly what is stated above. If you don't want to see America destroyed, don't allow a Gov. Gavin Newsom to fail up and become the leader of the free world.

With 2028 on the horizon, whether we heed that warning will have profound consequences for America’s future.

Consider this video a reflection of Gov. Hair Gel's real priorities: to pander, virtue-signal, and further the delusion of care and competence to suit his own progressive agenda. Lest we forget, Newsom overrode the state constitution in order to gerrymander an already gerrymandered state, all to own the Republicans.

In the clip below, Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom send Californians a Kwanzaa greeting. So, it is on brand that this fraud-riddled politician sends well wishes for a fraudulent holiday while ignoring the massive fraud that happened under his leadership.

WATCH:

In Case You Missed It: Despite Prop 50's Passage, Kevin Kiley, Other Targeted Republican Reps Commit to Stay in the Fight

Newsom’s Wife Goes After Trump, Runs Smack Dab Into Her and Gavin’s Past

Consider yourself duly warned.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/12/27/ca-rep-kevin-kiley-owns-gavin-newsom-with-audit-that-shows-ca-is-the-fraud-capital-of-america-n2197524?utm_source=thdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Pseudo-Recessions

Pseudo-Recessions

Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

As the 1992 campaign approached, incumbent president George H.W. Bush was seen as a shoo-in for reelection.

The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular U.S. victory at the head of a coalition that had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait with few losses.

For much of 1991, Bush’s approval ratings hovered between 90 and 70 percent.

By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the favorite Democratic nominee. But he was written off as having little chance to knock off the popular Republican incumbent president with far more foreign affairs experience.

Bush, however, had just lost his brilliant 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to cancer. And third-party prairie-fire candidate Ross Perot had entered the race, drawing off conservative Bush support.

Most importantly, in 1990, the U.S. economy had experienced a mild recession that had bottomed out in early 1991.

By the 1992 election, the U.S. was headed to full recovery.

In the last six months of 1992, GDP rebounded at over an astonishing four percent.

The inflation rate in the months before the election was often less than three percent.

Even stubborn unemployment was starting to fall to 7.3%. The eight-month recession officially ended in March 1991, followed by continual positive economic growth.

No matter. The brilliant Clinton campaign still ran on the directive “It’s the economy, stupid” and the slogan “Putting people first.”

The Clinton theme song was the upbeat Fleetwood Mac hit “Don’t Stop,” highlighting the young Clinton-Gore ticket in supposed contrast to the 68-year-old Bush.

Key to the Clinton campaign rhetoric was the false charge of “the worst job growth since the Great Depression.” By November 1992, Clinton had convinced voters that the prior year’s recession was still in full force.

The doom-and-gloom, near-depression “recession,” together with Perot’s third-party candidacy and Bush’s sluggish campaign, won Clinton the presidency with 43% of the popular vote.

In response, the Bush campaign had tried to trumpet the administration’s many foreign policy successes.

The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

The Cold War ended in a U.S. victory.

Germany was reunified in October 1990.

In December 1989, Bush successfully removed the narco-dictator Manuel Noriega of Panama, who threatened the viability of the Panama Canal.

The Gulf War was won brilliantly by February 1991.

The nuclear START treaty was signed with the Soviet Union in July 1991, just before the USSR itself collapsed in December.

By any normal reckoning, Bush should have been a shoo-in: spectacular foreign policy successes and a rebounding economy after a brief recession that had ended 15 months before the November 1992 election.

Instead, the pseudo-recession of 1992 dominated the campaign. Indeed, Bush’s many achievements overseas were cleverly distorted by Clinton as proof that the globe-trotting president was more interested in the world abroad than “putting people first” at home.

As in Bush’s prior 1988 campaign, Lee Atwater would have torn the Clinton campaign apart as inexperienced and disingenuous. Atwater would have ordered Bush to talk nonstop about virtually no inflation, robust four percent economic growth, and declining unemployment.

Instead, the lackluster Bush campaign team never caught on and was crushed by Clinton, with help from the economic populist Ross Perot.

The pseudo-recession of 1992 should remind the Trump people not to repeat the same mistake in the 2026 midterms.

Trump’s first ten months of foreign policy achievements are almost as impressive as Bush’s entire four years.

He neutered the feared Iranian nuclear bomb project. He ensured Israel could devastate the terrorist cabals of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, as well as their sponsor, theocratic Iran.

Instead of a trade war, increased tariff revenue and fair trade agreements were signed.

The border was closed shut.

Military recruitment rebounded to near record levels.

NATO was strengthened, and the intractable Ukraine war may end in a ceasefire.

Compared to the prior moribund Biden economy, Trump’s has set new precedents: record energy production and falling gas prices; inflation now below the three percent he inherited; and third-quarter GDP growth at a remarkable 4.3%.

But more importantly, 2026 may see even stronger economic growth, given a historical $10 trillion in foreign investment, tax cuts, deregulation, ever-greater energy production, huge investment in new technologies like AI and nuclear fusion, and dozens of favorable trade deals.

Yet, the left, like the Clinton campaign of old, is talking nonstop bout “affordability”—both ignoring the Democrats’ own dismal 2021-2025 economic record and claiming Trump, like Bush, cares more about those overseas than at home.

Whether the pseudo-recession of 2025-2026 works as well as the fake 1992 recession now hinges on whether the Trump campaign learns from the past and from now on fixates on the economy.

https://victorhanson.com/pseudo-recessions/

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Washington Post: Socialized Medicine is Struggling in the UK

Washington Post: Socialized Medicine is Struggling in the UK

John Sexton

The Washington Post editorial board continues to challenge its progressive readers today with an editorial taking a shot at socialized medicine in the UK. As the paper notes, the UK's National Health Service is in the midst of an annual winter crisis reminiscent of COVID. The cause this year is the regular flu which is overwhelming hospitals and causing the nation's health secretary to warn sick people to stay home unless absolutely necessary.

The NHS has existed for years in a perpetual state of emergency. This was the case before the pandemic hit, and it has only gotten worse. Hospital corridors overflow and routine procedures get canceled due to a catastrophic event commonly known as “winter.” It comes around every year, yet the system, despite annual funding increases, still somehow remains unable to cope.
A campaign to keep people away from hospitals during the holidays is underway, which includes begging the public to seek out other forms of treatment for “less serious” injuries and ailments. The British press compares the messaging to “Covid-era stay-at-home pleas,” which included asking patients who needed care to avoid medical facilities in order to “protect the NHS.”

The Post is right about the current crisis. Wes Streeting, the UK health minister, compared the health system to a Jenga tower just two weeks ago, i.e. a system on the verge of collapse. Part of that strain is being caused by an impending strike by doctors.

Doctors’ strikes could cause the NHS to collapse over Christmas as a “tidal wave of flu tears through our hospitals”, Wes Streeting has warned.
The health service said it was facing a “worst-case scenario” this month due to an “unprecedented wave of superflu” that threatens to overwhelm hospitals at the same time as the strike...
Writing for The Times, Streeting, the health secretary, said the number of people in hospital could “triple by the peak of the pressures” and that it will be the most challenging winter for the NHS since the pandemic...
Streeting said: “The whole NHS team is working around the clock to keep the show on the road. But it’s an incredibly precarious situation, and Christmas strikes could be the Jenga piece that collapses the tower.”

The result of an overwhelmed system is what has come to be euphemistically known as "corridor care."

The stats also showed that A&E departments are experiencing “worryingly high” levels of corridor care and demand heading into winter.
In November, some 50,468 people waited 12 hours or more in emergency departments, often on trolleys in corridors. This is the highest on record for that time of year. Some 2.35 million people went to A&E in November, the highest on record for that month.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has asked the union to call of the strike to avoid further collapse, but of course this is a perfect moment for the union to make demands.

Sir Keir Starmer accused the BMA of behaving irresponsibly and urged doctors to call off the strike, saying that “in their heart of hearts, they probably don’t want to do this”.
Speaking on a visit to Norfolk on Thursday, the prime minister said: “I’m very concerned with the action of the BMA. They are being irresponsible in my view. We have already put in place quite a significant pay rise. I’d just say to the BMA, do the responsible thing, accept the offer that’s on the table and we can all move forward.”

So it's not just the single-payer system per se, it's also the unionists who are a big part of the current (and recurring) problem. But unions are part and parcel of the same socialist bargain. Socialized medicine doesn't exist without socialist unions looking to maximize their private gain from the public system. The Post calls it a "cautionary tale."

This is the dark reality of single-payer and a cautionary tale for the third of Americans who mistakenly believe Medicare-for-all is a good idea. Both funded and run by the taxpayer, the NHS relies on rationing treatment to stay afloat. This results in patients with serious health problems forced to wait for months or years to access treatment, hoping they don’t die before the doctor sees them. Wait times get exacerbated by the politics that inevitably become intertwined when government, rather than consumers, calls the shots...
Reform is largely impossible because of a religious-like devotion to the NHS. Once someone gets an entitlement, it becomes virtually impossible to pull it back — no matter how costly or inefficient.

There's a related story in the Daily Mail yesterday. In addition to having a Jenga tower for a health care service, the NHS is also apparently chock-full of incompetent staff. A record number were let go this year.

There were nearly 7,000 dismissals in 2024-25, according to NHS data, up nearly by double two years ago when around 4,000 were dismissed.
This is a record figure since figures were first collected in 2011.
More than half of these NHS staff were let go on 'capability' grounds.

That's a lot of incompetent staffers, nearly 2% of the total number of NHS jobs. Of course any large organization is going to have a certain number of incompetent people, we can see that in our own school system where bad teachers rarely get fired once they achieve tenure. Once again, the unions are a big part of the problem.

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2025/12/26/washington-post-socialized-medicine-is-struggling-in-the-uk-n3810249?utm_source=thdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-eUu4V8TVt5&_nlid=eUu4V8TVt5&_nhids=nc1pYuo5iz4kls

One 'Journalist' Shows Just How Insane the Left Is Willing to Be in the Name of 'Morality'

One 'Journalist' Shows Just How Insane the Left Is Willing to Be in the Name of 'Morality'

By Brandon Morse

I don't know if you've seen this clip going around the internet, but it's a jaw-dropper. It features MSNBC "journalist" Paola Ramos debating Malcolm and Simone Collins, a Trump-supporting couple, about genetics.

Ramos asserts that there is no scientific evidence that there are genetic differences between races, to which the Collinses assure her there is. This goes back and forth for a while, with Malcolm, in particular, trying not to lose his mind as he pushes back against Ramos' assertion that black women are no different from any other race on a genetic level. Eventually, Ramos says these claims aren't hers, but the NIH's.

This is demonstrably false, as a simple search of the NIH will confirm that the Collinses were correct. While the genetic differences between races tend to be small, these small differences make for a wide amount of variability between people, including melanin levels, facial structures, and even disease susceptibility and reactions to medications.

Ramos is dead wrong, and I have the distinct feeling that "journalists" like Ramos know they're wrong.

But the point for Ramos isn't scientific or factual accuracy. What she was doing was trying to enforce what she sees as a moral point, not anything based in reality. This is, in the eyes of ideologically-driven hacks like Ramos, the hill that needs dying on, and it's one she shares with her fellow ideologues.

A while back, Democrat congresswoman and socialist radical, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), said the quiet part out loud when she said, "I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

This was effectively AOC admitting that embracing a lack of factual evidence is okay because sometimes putting the truth away and embracing a lie is the "good" thing to do.

In this case, the lie being embraced is that there is no genetic diversity because if there is, then that means there's a path to people viewing race as scientifically different, which could lead to racism, eugenics, etc., against people who aren't white. This is an assumption being made by leftists who see everything as an identity issue, while simultaneously missing the part where understanding these differences is actually necessary for a range of things, be it tracing one's ancestry through DNA or understanding these differences for medical reasons.

The latter point is the most important if you want to keep people healthy and thriving, which isn't as important to the Left as keeping even the threat of racism at bay.

This is an insane thing to do. A complete denial of reality is, ultimately, the path to insanity, and leftists are willing to embrace that to keep the narrative that they're the good guys in the room alive.

However, what's even more remarkable is that this isn't necessarily done to sell their ideas to others, at least not anymore. Ever since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, selling absolute lies to the public has become significantly harder. Nowadays, selling these lies is much easier and better to do to each other. Ramos is signaling she's one of the "good ones" to her peers because it keeps her employed, accepted, and one of the brave ones fighting the fascism and hatred of their enemies.

In much the same way, AOC says these things because it keeps her in office. For leftists, a principle is whatever the body politic says it is. The Borg mentality is what defines reality, not facts and truth. If you're willing to embrace the lie, then you're accepted and rewarded. Professing the lie in a setting like the one Ramos was in, where it's both being televised and said to the faces of Trump supporters, is less of a truth-telling event and more of a declaration of association.

Off-screen, it no doubt won her back pats, invitations, and acknowledgements of her bravery and superiority from her peers. She'll win awards, get job offers, and become a "trusted source" from elitist and legacy organizations.

Hilariously, this alone is an immoral reason to embrace anything. The truth doesn't lose or gain moral standing based on how much it's accepted by your peer group, but the Left has made group consensus the ultimate good. No matter how false, how damaging, or how evil, if the group says it's good, then it's good.

So ultimately, real morality doesn't matter. What matters is that the shared insanity is upheld and displayed.

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2025/12/26/behold-the-lefts-acceptance-of-insanity-as-virtue-n2197499

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