Author Archives: Dana Pico

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#TrumpDerangementSyndrome I can understand not liking the way the Iranian government was struck, but it boggles my mind than any sane person can be sad about it.

As I have previously noted, I was not in favor of the United States launching the attack on Iran; I most certainly wanted the clerical government to fall, and freedom to come to that country, but I wanted the people of Iran to do the job, not have is do so. That said, it is very heartening that so many of the Iranian leadership have been sent to Jahannam and their 72 bacha bazi boys. It’s far too early to know what kind of government will arise from the attack, and leading people like the New Republic’s Michael Tomasky, who admits to proceeding from a position that he “consider(s) Trump a walking malignancy in virtually every imaginable way, a cruel charlatan and sociopath who has done untold damage to the nation and world over the years,” to write that it’s improbable that things will eventually turn out decently.

But at some point you have to wonder about the Westerners demonstrating in support of the now late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the oppressive Iranian government. Under the mad clerics, Iran was sponsoring anti-Western and especially anti-Jewish terrorism anywhere they could. The October 7th massacre was launched by Hamas, but they could only do so due to the monetary and war materiel support they received from Iran. Iran wanted the war to hold up the movement of Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Abraham Accords, because the last thing the mullahs wanted was peace between Israel and the Arab nations. Are American liberals so consumed with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome that they’d rather see girls executed for being raped, women slain for not wearing the hijab properly, and homosexuals publicly hanged by construction cranes than President Trump get a major foreign policy win?

Yes, of course that’s a rhetorical question; that’s exactly how some of our leftists feel. If Mr Trump cured cancer, they’d combitch that he was putting doctors and nurses out of work. Our left have become so stupid that they are going to support people who would happily kill them as long as those people are opposed to Western civilization. They use their freedom of speech and of the press to disseminate views in support of people and governments which would deny them freedom of speech and of the press.

The left try to tell us that they are just so much smarter than we evil, reich-wing conservatives, so much more educated, yet it seems that, today at least, when Mr Trump is in office at least, that they are a dumb as a box of rocks. I can understand not liking the way the Iranian government was struck, but it boggles my mind than any sane person can be sad about it.

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World War III Watch: Maybe this wasn’t the best idea

No, I don’t think this will result in World War III, despite my headline and stock illustration, but wars do not always turn out quite the way you expect. Der Führer certainly didn’t expect Germany to have been virtually destroyed, Hideki Tojo did not expect Japan to be utterly defeated and bombed to smoking ruins, and Vladimir Putin is still shaking his ugly head over the fact that Ukraine wasn’t conquered in four short weeks.

Did our campaign in Vietnam save the South from the scourges of Communism? Saddam Hussein was sent to Jahannam, but is Iraq the liberal democracy that the younger President Bush envisioned? The war in Afghanistan was necessary, to go after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but, after twenty years of fighting, while al Qaeda was virtually destroyed, the Taliban still run that country.

Two things can be true at the same time:

  1. The Iranian government is a cabal of scum and a plague against the civilized world; and
  2. The United States should not have attacked Iran to depose that government.

The people of Iran were already revolting, and though we cannot know whether they would have succeeded, the United States and Israel striking Iran can only lend credence to the claims of the mad mullahs that the uprisings in Iran were created and coordinated by the Great Satan. While the attacks might destroy the government, they are less likely to create a new government which will be that friendly toward Western civilization.

Iran was already suffering through real poverty, and a crippling drought. The very strained water systems in Iran could easily be damaged or destroyed in military strikes, possibly leading to the very civilians we support dying of thirst.

Though there are times when war is necessary, it is still a very bad thing.

We in the United States have too antiseptic a view of war. Even the wars we lost or in which we were stalemated, while we lost men and machines, there were no strikes on the United States itself. We have two very broad oceans which have protected us from war coming to American soil itself, while we have the ability to strike nations half a world away. We lost 58,220 soldiers in Vietnam, a tragedy for their families and them, but the United States wasn’t struck by the Viet Cong, because they couldn’t. The last war on our soil was our own Civil War, which ended 161 years ago; no one alive today remembers that war.

But wars are not antiseptic for those countries in which war rages. Ukraine has not yet been defeated, but has suffered tremendous losses in not only soldiers and civilians, but in the infrastructure which enables a country to survive and prosper. The damage to Israel has been slight, due in significant part to their defensive technology, bit some has occurred. For the Palestinians, I do not know just what they expected after the October 7th attack, but surely they did not expect the Hell they received.

We need to look at what happens to other nations when war happens on their soil, and realize that eventually it could happen to us.

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The utter idiocy of anti-Semitism Anti-Semitism has no place among real Catholics

Carrie Prejean Boller is a very attractive young lady with a very ugly soul. She claims to be a Roman Catholic, but I have to ask: is her Bible just one of those small New Testaments that the Gideons leave in hotel nightstands? Does she cover her ears during the first reading on Sunday Mass, which is normally from the Old Testament, the ancient Jewish scriptures? Does she sit there stone-faced during the responsorial psalm, the works primarily of David, King of Israel and Judah? What does she do when most American Catholic parishes sing Oh come, oh, come, Emmanuel at the beginning of Advent?

She even depicted herself as St Joan of Arc, though, amusingly enough, she had images of Jesus and Mary, who were both Jews, in the background.

I don’t know how often she attends Mass, but she at least tweeted support when the late Charlie Kirk talked about his family going to Mass every week.

But there she is, ranting about “Zionists” and “Zios”, and supporting the Palestinians who, if they actually achieved the Islamist government they want, would put her into chattel sex slavery to a much older Muslim man, assuming that they didn’t just slit her throat.

Christianity does not exist without Judaism! The majority of our Bible are the ancient Jewish scriptures, which give us the laws of God and the prophesies of the Messiah being sent to us, foretold by Jewish prophets. Jesus himself was Jewish, born into a Jewish family, and teaching in synagogues. If Miss Boller take communion, receives the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, she is imitating Jesus and the Apostles as they gathered together for a Passover meal!

There is, however, more than just religion involved in this. Israel is our easternmost bastion of Western civilization, of freedom, democracy, religious tolerance, and free enterprise. Miss Boller can rage and rant about the Jooooos all she wants on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — because she enjoys the freedom of speech and of the press that the West provides. It’s not just those freedoms, but the existence of technology almost entirely developed in the West, including in Israel, that gives her the means to express her opinions beyond her physical circle of friends. From the first printing press, to the development of radio, and then television, and that internet thingy that Al Gore invented, she is benefitting from the technology developed in the West. Biz Stone, one of the four creators of Twitter, which she uses to attack Jews, is himself Jewish.

If she uses a cellular phone, she is using technology that was in significant part developed in Israel. If she has been vaccinated for polio, she has been kept safe by one of the two vaccines, both of which were developed by Jews.

Anti-Semitism has no place in the developed world, because so much of what has made us the modern world was developed by people of Jewish heritage. And anti-Semitism has no place in the Catholicism she claims.

The Israel she hates so much? I have been, all too briefly, to Jerusalem, I have gone to Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I have been to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane, I have walked the Via Dolorosa, all things important to Catholics, and all things protected and preserved by Israel.

The Muslims she champions? ISIS destroyed ancient relics in Syria and Iraq, because they considered them idolatrous, while the Taliban of Afghanistan destroyed several ancient sites and a library, for the same reasons. If the Islamists won in the Holy Land, if they drove the Jews into the sea, there is no particular reason to believe that they would be any less destructive of Christian sites.

But I just saw where she called Candace Owens brave, simply more proof that she hates the Jooooos.

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The absolute insanity of “sanctuary” policies It seems that none of the credentialed media wanted to report on this

You know, I get it: some of our good friends on the left really, really think that the people who came to the United States seeking a better life are, at heart, good people, who should be allowed to stay in the United States and contribute to our culture, society, and economy. But even if that is the way you feel, does it make sense to try to shield this man from Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

The Enforcement and Removal Operations Philadelphia office tweeted:

On Feb. 11, @EROPhiladelphia arrested Ibrahim George Kallon, an illegal alien from Sierra Leone in C/O (Corrections Officer — DRP) training at DelCo (Delaware County, Pennsylvania — DRP) Prison. In 2025, Kallon was charged w/ rape, IDSI, sexual assault and false imprisonment. @DelCoPa released him without alerting ICE! Now in our custody!

One of my Philadelphia friends, who goes by the nom de guerre Stinky Feat, responded to ERO Philadelphia’s tweet with this information:

🚨 I’m told that this illegal alien and accused rapist so graciously had their bail decreased to ONE DOLLAR immediately after ICE agents attempted to take him into federal custody and were denied 🚨 This is what @delcotimes should be reporting on if true

According to court documents, the image of which my good friend provided, Mr Kallon was arrested on June 21, 2025, with bail set at $250,000, a hardly excessive amount for someone charged with Forcible Rape, Title 18 §3121(a)(1), a first-degree felony in the Keystone State, which carries a sentence of greater than ten and up to twenty years in prison.

Mr Kallon was unable to make that bail, and, as an early Christmas present, on December 4, 2025, his bail was reduced to $100,000, with a required 10% to be posted to get him out of the hoosegow. He apparently could not make that, either, but then, on February 5th, his bail was reduced to $1.00, one stinking dollar, and he was released, released without notifying ICE that an illegal immigrant charged with false imprisonment and forcible rape was set free.

Fortunately, ERO was able to apprehend this alleged rapist.

Site searches of both the Delaware County Daily Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer returned nothing on the case. A google search returned nothing more than has been documented here. It seems that none of the credentialed media chose to report on this.

But really, who in their right mind, even someone who doesn’t support President Trump’s immigration policies, would set someone like Mr Kallon loose like that? This isn’t a case of a hard-working construction worker who got busted because he had a headlight burned out and no driver’s license, but a man accused of forcible rape!

I could understand a policy which attempted to shield the decent people, but policies to not report an illegal immigrant who is a real criminal to ICE? How does that make sense, other than the left hating President Trump more than they care about American citizens.

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A “five-star general” backs down

Fortunately, Kentucky Girl’s tweet that the idiotic Police Chief of Motor City was going to fire an officer for notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement turned our to be superseded by time; the officers in question will receive only thirty-day unpaid suspensions rather than losing their jobs, losing their jobs for obeying the law!

Detroit police chief won’t terminate two officers who contacted Border Patrol amid traffic stops

By Paula Wethington | Friday, February 20, 2026 | 5:10 PM EST | CBS Detroit

Reversing a stance he publicly took previously in the case, Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison says he will concur with a 30-day suspension of two officers and no longer pursue their terminations.

Bettison issued that statement on Friday, following up on Thursday’s vote from the Board of Police Commissioners to suspend a police sergeant and an officer.

The police chief said last week that he planned to terminate both officers after they contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection during two separate traffic stops, adding that their actions were against the department’s policy. The calls, Bettison said, resulted in the individuals being detained by federal agents. Should there be translation services required, the department has a contract with a company that can do so.

“There’s absolutely no reason to contact federal law enforcement agencies to assist with translation services,” he said previously about the investigation.

The two incidents happened on Dec. 16, 2025, and Feb. 9, 2026. A routine audit of body-worn cameras brought the incidents to his attention.

The Detroit News also has the story, but it’s hidden behind a paywall.

What caught my eye was the photo of Toad Todd Bettison. I have previously mocked the habit of police chiefs like former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw wearing four stars on their uniforms, like they are full generals in the United States Army, and have previously and positively noted how Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers wears only the eagle of a colonel. But Chief Bettison had to go one step further, and wear the five-star collar starts of a General of the Army or Fleet Admiral. That’s some major self-aggrandizement there! The last American promoted to a five-star rank was General of the Army Omar Bradley, in 1951, then Chief of Staff of the United States Army, the promotion being made so he would not be outranked by his subordinate, Douglas MacArthur.

But Chief Bettison wears five stars! Perhaps he’ll start carrying a Field Marshal’s baton next.

The size of the Detroit Police Department coincides with that of a regiment in the Army, and a regiment is normally commanded by a colonel or a brigadier general.

Of course, five-star generals don’t back down, but little General Bettison did, from his promise to fire the two law-abiding officers.

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World War III Watch: Yet another leftist wants to send Other People off to war!

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator. He is a former Guardian foreign editor, US editor, White House correspondent, foreign leader writer and Observer foreign affairs commentator. As you’d expect from someone who writes for The Guardian, he is far to the left of the political spectrum, absolutely hates President Trump, but, for a columnist who complained bitterly that Mr “Trump talks peace but he is a man of war“, yet it seems that more war is what he wants:

Ukraine is the biggest and most consequential of all the American betrayals

As the war enters its fifth year, it’s time for Europe to take the fight to Putin on its own terms and tell Trump to get lost

by Simon Tisdall | Saturday, February 21, 2026 | 1:00 AM EST

Viewed from Europe, the US’s failure to defend the people of Ukraine against Russian aggression is the greatest and most consequential of a host of recent American betrayals. It’s not just the sickening subservience shown to Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal and mass killer. It’s not only the victim-blaming and bullying of Kyiv into making concessions. It’s not even Donald Trump’s crass attempts to monetise the war and milk the misery of millions for Nobel glory, while undercutting Nato allies and trampling sovereign rights.

What really shocks, and hurts, is the sheer bad faith shown by a country that Europeans always counted a friend. As the 18th-century English gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe noted, “few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted”. To echo Trump’s dark warning after he was rebuffed over Greenland: Europe will remember.

“Europe will remember,” huh? Does Europe remember the history of its wars?

Mr Tisdall then proceeds through several wordy paragraphs to place the blame for the war not having been won squarely at the feet of President Trump, even though he at least mentions Presidents Barack Obama, who did nothing during Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and Joe Biden, who supplied limited aid to Ukraine following the 2022 invasion, before he gets to this:

Here’s what must be done: deploy troops from a European “coalition of the willing” to secure and defend Kyiv and other unoccupied cities; Russia cannot be allowed a veto. Enforce a no-fly exclusion zone, as I have repeatedly urged. Surge defensive missiles and drones. Beach Russia’s shadow fleet. Step up covert “active measures”, including cyber and sabotage, to counter Kremlin hybrid warfare. Seize assets, expel spies, expose lies, change the narrative. Europe must demand an immediate ceasefire, followed by phased Russian withdrawals, and assume a lead role in any final settlement talks.

Who, I have to ask, might make up that “coalition of the willing” and send troops, combat troops, into positions in which they might come in direct military combat with Russia? How will European voters react in any of this fanciful coalition nations when their sons are sent to possibly fight and die in a war for Ukraine? I’m old enough to remember how Americans reacted to our long years fighting in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.

Russia’s military has been seriously degraded after four long years of inconclusive war, but Vladimir Putin still controls a strategic nuclear arsenal. Given that Russia has been sending attack drones to damage Ukrainian infrastructure, there are no guarantees that the troops from the “coalition of the willing” won’t be struck by Russian weapons while the European troops “secure and defend Kyiv and other unoccupied cities.”

Winter is coming to an end now, but November is only nine months away, and much of Europe is dependent upon natural gas shipments from Russia to keep its people from freezing to death in the winter.

If not, why not? For consider the alternatives: endless war, endless killing, or an unsustainable, unjust peace on Trump-Putin terms. Europe is on notice: the US cannot be trusted. The challenge is indeed existential. All that it stands for and holds dear is potentially at stake. No matter how it’s done, for the sake of Ukraine’s exhausted, undefeated people and their own future peace and security, Europeans (including Britain) must finally find the unity, courage and wherewithal to take the military, economic, diplomatic and moral offensive.

Europe must take the fight directly to Putin’s door. And tell Trump to get lost.

Throughout their history, Europe has been very good at getting into wars. The first World War is a lesson in point, in which none of the nations truly wanted to get into war, but coalitions and posturing and odd visions of what each country had to do let the entire continent stumble into a war they everyone, on every side, expected to end in quick victory, yet which deposed government after government, and left half a generation of young men laying dead in the mud.

I’m old enough to remember when the left were the ones who were most adamantly anti-war; now it seems that has been reversed, and the left are the first ones to issue a call to arms. But wait, it’s different, because, just like the pro-Palestinian protesters, today’s left might agitate for a side during a war, the left aren’t the ones actually picking up rifles and heading for the fight, but expecting Other People to be the ones on the firing line.

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No one is above the law, and that includes our immigration laws We need to go after the people who knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

Thanks to my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach, I found this wonderful story:

Immigration arrests left NC restaurants short-staffed and job sites idle, owners say

By: Ahmed Jallow | Friday, February 20, 2026 | 5:30 PM EST

For two weeks last November, kitchens at David “Woody” Lockwood’s restaurants ran short of dishwashers, prep cooks and servers as workers stayed home, afraid to leave their houses during a federal immigration crackdown that resulted in more than 400 arrests across North Carolina.

“We had a lot of people, mostly in the kitchen, that didn’t feel safe coming to work,” said Lockwood, a co-owner of Trophy Brewing and The Bend. That meant managers working extra shifts, longer waits for customers and paying employees who were not on the job to help them get by.

“We decided, at least for those two weeks, to pay those people for the hours they missed, which is not a sustainable thing,” Lockwood said.

So, Mr Lockwood now knows exactly who among his employees is here and was working illegally. Perhaps he didn’t look at their I-9 documents closely, or perhaps he ignored legal requirements on hiring illegals, but now he knows who was working there illegally, and has absolutely no f(ornicating) excuses: he needs to discharge them all immediately, and inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, exactly who they were. If he does not disclose this information to ICE, he needs to be arrested for knowingly harboring illegals, along with the penalties for not insuring that those he hired were legally eligible to work in the United States.

It is possible that a few of his Hispanic-looking employees were in the country and working legally, and should now have their documents in hand to prove that if ICE comes calling, but the odds are that most were not legal.

It’s simple: if the illegals cannot find work in the United States, they’ll go home on their own.

Business owners and educators said the effects of the crackdown extended well beyond those taken into custody, disrupting construction and hospitality – two of the state’s largest industries – and keeping some students home from school.

Mikki Paradis, chief executive of PDI Drywall, said construction sites fell silent for more than a week during the November operations.

“There was not a single person working on those jobs,” said Paradis, who has relied on Hispanic workers throughout her 21-year career. She said these labor shortages would slow housing construction and drive up costs.

Translation: Miss Paradis has been knowingly hiring illegals, and ICE needs to visit her offices and start pulling the company’s I-9 files. If it can be proved that she knowingly hired illegals, she’s in a heap of trouble. Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Six months behind bars ought to teach Miss Paradis and Mr Lockwood the error of their ways, and scare the poop out of the other employers of illegals, scare them enough that they get rid of the illegals right away. If the illegals then self-deport, it just makes everything easier for ICE and law enforcement.

Will it cost Mr Lockwood and Miss Paradis their businesses? Perhaps it will, but if they were knowingly employing illegals, they deserve it. That, too, will get other employers to straighten up and fly right.

No one is above the law our Democratic friends told us when they were trying to get Donald Trump thrown in jail. Well, if no one is above the law, then no one is above our immigration laws as well.

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What actual evidence is there that leftists are intelligent?

With every day that passes, I become more and more persuaded that our good friends on the left, who believe that they are just smarter than conservatives, are really not very bright. They see a guy like the late Robert Dorgan who shot his ex-wife and kids, who didn’t believe that a guy who looked like this could possibly be a woman, and want to blame the family for not accepting his ‘transition’ for his barbaric rage. We saw another mentally ill male who thought he was a girl shoot up a high school in British Columbia, and the Associated Press told us the shooting was committed by a “woman”, even though the fact he was ‘transgender’ was already public knowledge, as though no one would ever find out the truth.

The left were also blaming that idiot’s actions on the (assumed) fact that the people who knew him wouldn’t accept him as a girl.

Now there’s this, in which the pro-Palestinians try to make people feel sorry for the poor, poor Palestinians, for the idiots who started a stupid war that they could not win, thinking that people will forget or ignore just who started that war.

But, perhaps it’s unfair to call the fine gentleman who posted that a leftist. What he was assuming is that the people who would see his tweet and feel sympathy would be Western liberals, and that they would be stupid enough to feel sympathy for the Palestinians who started that war, and who celebrated the October 7th massacre in the streets of Gaza.

Then we have all of the stories about innocent Americans killed by illegal immigrants, immigrants who had no intention of assimilating into peaceful American culture, but brought the savagery from the [insert slang term for feces here]hole countries they fled, and what do we get? We get practically the entire Democratic Party resisting the efforts of President Trump to find and deport those people who are in the country illegally. There’s not even the nuance of the left saying, “OK, we’ll help you deport the bad guys, but let’s find a way to regularize the decent people,” but them going all out to defend even the thugs and scumbags.

Realistically, what evidence is there that liberals in the United States are intelligent at all?

Thinking, as in actual thinking, seems to be beyond them.

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This is what country people do!

From Miller’s Creek Fire and Rescue:

Stella moved to safety.

This morning (Monday, February 16, 2026) just before 10 AM MCFR received a request for assistants in reference to a cow that was down and could not get up. Unit 8 and Squad 8 responded with 3 firefghters trained in large animal rescue and several other firefighters assisted. Crews were able to setup a high point rope system and raised the cow, slid a stokes basket under and moved her to an open area to be cared for. We want to thank our partners with the Estill County Rescue Squad for assisting in making this a successful rescue.

We just finished our fundraiser to order our large animal equipment and will place that order soon. We are looking forward to adding this equipment to make our job easier.

We are happy to report that “Stella” is doing well and gaining energy.

Thank you 4hooves large animal services and Dr. Grimes for your advice today.

There are more photos at the original.

Miller’s Creek Fire and Rescue is a volunteer fire station, men doing what needs to be done on their own, helping people without getting paid for it. Chad, the station chief, helped out my family during the flood of 2021, when our HVAC system was underwater and the flood floated the propane tank, so we couldn’t use the fireplace for heating; our house itself did not flood. We still had electricity, so Chad brought over some electric space heaters to help keep the place livable. This was before the volunteer fire station was established, which started in 2024.

I stopped by the fire station last spring, because I had a piece of metal that had to be cut, and wanted to borrow a torch. Well, the fire station didn’t have a torch, but gave me the name and phone number of a neighbor who did. I called him, and he drove right down, cut the metal for me himself, and wouldn’t hear of me paying him; he was just being a good neighbor.

Out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky, I can’t just walk a couple of blocks and pick up freshly baked croissants from a French boulangerie, and our restaurant choices are few, basically diner food. We don’t have the luxuries that some of my Philadelphia and other ‘urbanist’ friends have, no high-class restaurants, no city nightlife, no Wawa coffee 🙁 but we do have one thing: we have great people around here!

While my wife and I grew up in the Bluegrass State, we aren’t from Estill County, yet the people here accepted us as if we were old, old friends. That’s something you just don’t get in the city.