Look around, tabs are found, and the sky is a hazy shade of winter ...
LOL they took like a day to respond and it’s AI slop making fun of the fact he’s gay. https://t.co/q0rggStgLI
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 23, 2026
Ed: Gavin Newsom and Al Gore embarrassed themselves at Davos. So did most of the rest of the media that tried to push narratives that ended up falling apart completely right in front of their eyes. Newsom's social-media team is especially embarrassing in this instance, though. Why do leftists use homophobia as their attack strategy while claiming to be LGBTQ "allies"?
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Niall Ferguson at The Free Press: Here at Davos, I’ve heard numerous versions of this sentiment: “We Europeans/Canadians stood up to Trump and forced him to retreat. This is a major victory for the rules-based international order.”
This is a very wrong take. The reality is that Trump won Davos, hands down. And not only did he win it; he owned it. I have never before seen a single individual so completely dominate this vast bazaar of the powerful, the wealthy, the famous, and the self-important. ...
The reason Trump forced Greenland to be the No. 1 topic at Davos, I suspect, was to keep European leaders from meddling in America’s Middle Eastern and Eastern European policy. It was notable on Wednesday how little the president said about Iran and Ukraine. That is because his administration has plans afoot for both countries.
Ed: As always, Ferguson is well worth reading. Although he claimed that Trump didn't care much about Greenland, he still did get some concessions on exploration and expansion of our military presence. To the extent that Davos had any meaning – historically, it doesn't have much – Trump expropriated 100% of it. It was all about him.
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This is what it looks like when someone with a small vocabulary and low IQ tries to cosplay as intelligent.
— Sovey (@SoveyX) January 22, 2026
No central point, no spine, just sentences wandering around while he pauses to hunt for words he never uses, hoping complexity will cover the emptiness.
It’s verbal jazz… pic.twitter.com/JVTSd5bLZZ
Ed: This is Kamala-esque. The only cognizably coherent thoughts Soros offers here are that the US has no written checks and balances, and that Trump disposed of them anyway. Both of those are wrong. The US Constitution has written checks and balances between the three branches of government, and those still exist and are active to this moment. Soros just doesn't like the fact that Trump understands the power of the modern executive branch and the ways in which Congress has created it over the last century-plus. They could rescind that by revoking the grants of authority to agencies that operate on a shared-power basis.
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Matt Taibbi at Racket News: Trump news cycles are the same, only anchors shout TREASON! or FELON! or DICTATOR! His address on Greenland, NATO, and Emmanuel Macron’s sunglasses was blasted for a hundred reasons, many legitimate, but the real drama came from a non-Trump speech. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ripped his European hosts by declaring “Globalization has failed”:
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It’s a failed policy. It is what the WEF has stood for, which is export offshore, far-shore, find the cheapest labor in the world and the world is a better place for it. The fact is, it has left America behind. It has left the American worker behind. And what we are here to say is that America First is a different model—one that we encourage other countries to consider—which is that our workers come first. We can have policies that impact our workers.
Pop quiz: how was the previous President received at Davos? He wasn’t. Joe Biden was the first president this century to skip the WEF. It was just fine with world plutocrats that the United States was piloted by a wandering outpatient. The last major American Davos speech pre-Trump was delivered in 2024 by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, an unelected spooktocrat who declared that “major powers are vastly more interdependent than in any time during the Cold War” and pledged to stiffen “our ranks” at NATO. He earned nervous applause. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner meanwhile let the cat out of the bag, chiding European leaders that a possible Trump return required preparing for “fair burden sharing” under NATO, developing “capabilities to defend ourselves,” and returning to intra-European “competitiveness” economically. This damning speech was a de facto admission that Europe had been enjoying a world without American “competitiveness” for ages.
Ed: Read this one along with Niall Ferguson's essay linked above. It has some genuine laughs, one of which involves Kevin Spacey, and it explains the impact of Trump on the WEF even better than Ferguson.
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Ira Stoll at the Washington Free Beacon: The New York Times, whose executive editor a decade ago publicly acknowledged, "We don't get the role of religion in people's lives," and which has been afflicted with a series of errors on basic matters of Jewish literacy everywhere from the crossword puzzle to the food section, is now hoping to hire a reporter who knows something about Judaism.
A recently posted Times job listing seeks "an experienced and versatile journalist to join the National desk as a religion correspondent ... with a particular emphasis on Jewish life in America."
The posting indicates that the Times is adding a reporter focused on American Judaism and also another one "on the Muslim experience in America," kind of a Times-job-listing version of the higher-education-administrator and Democratic-politician tic of adding "and Islamophobia" every time anti-Semitism is mentioned. As even a Times editorial acknowledged, "University leaders have often felt uncomfortable decrying antisemitism without also decrying Islamophobia." The rise of Islam in America, like the Christian religious revival that is also under way in America, is a newsworthy story in its own right; that Islam-related job listing does not appear to be posted yet, but it could be a promising beat for a reporter skeptical enough to tackle, say, the Minnesota welfare fraud story.
Ed: I wonder when they'll get around to hiring a reporter who has some knowledge about the practice of Christianity. And I wonder whether any of these hires will be anything other the anthropologically oriented missions that the NYT uses for communities of any kind outside of the Academia-progressive epistemic bubble.
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Official source: USS Lincoln carrier strike group NOT yet in CENTCOM AOR, and has not crossed the line of demarcation from INDOPACOM to CENTCOM in the Indian Ocean.
— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) January 23, 2026
This means that the USS Lincoln is NOT yet in the Gulf of Oman within striking distance of Iran.
It will be days,…
It will be days, if not a week, before the aircraft carrier strike group will be on station, based on distances involved and speed of strike group from open source information.
Ed: Color me skeptical about this report. The strike group has been on the move for a week or more now. The US can conduct Tomahawk strikes using the surface fleet already on hand in the Persian Gulf area; they need the carrier strike group to deal with Iran's retaliation. I'd bet that action is coming soon, if it is coming at all.
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.@POTUS issues a stark warning on Iran, signaling U.S. military readiness:
— Salem News Channel (@WatchSalemNews) January 23, 2026
“We're watching Iran. We have a lot of ships going that direction just in case… We have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won't have to use it. We'll see.” pic.twitter.com/0WNXFoghkt
Ed: I think they're already there. And, as Ferguson wrote, I think Trump wants people distracted for a few days.
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Noah Rothman at NRO: In fact, it’s not even clear that the school officials who managed to set the record on this case have the slightest idea what they’re talking about. “The school officials also said they don’t know what happened,” CBS News admitted. “They want the public to get involved as this is happening to students all across the state of Minnesota.”
So these school officials weren’t dispassionately describing the events they witnessed. They were issuing a call to action, one that mainstream media outlets laundered into the national conversation to buttress Democratic talking points about ICE’s tactics.
There is some dispute over whether the Ramos family was a legitimate deportation target at all, but that’s a different matter from the charge that ICE treated a small boy inhumanely. But discrepancies like that are unlikely to agitate the public and foment unrest. And that was the goal here – not honest reporting but instigation on behalf of Democratic messaging shops, even if that enterprise wrecks national comity in the process.
Ed: John has more on that story. Be sure to read his post as well, but the explanation from ICE suffices to explain the circumstances, and accusations of extraordinary character require extraordinary evidence to make them creditable. The media has gotten nearly every one of these ICE-abuse stories wrong over the last couple of weeks.
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The number saying deportations have gone too far is up 5 points from a week ago https://t.co/hPYfb4dCgx
— Scott Rasmussen (@ScottWRasmussen) January 23, 2026
Ed: These narratives are having an impact, however. This is something that the administration will have to consider when pursuing criminal absconders in Minnesota and other sanctuary cities. The Left will make Trump pay for enforcing immigration law.
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Politico: The Republican National Committee approved a rule change during its winter meeting on Friday that would allow the party to hold a convention during a midterm election year.
“I’m incredibly excited about the possibility of hosting midterm convention to highlight what President Trump and Republicans have been able to accomplish this year,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said after the rule change was adopted. “If the president wants us to host a convention to highlight the great work this administration has done for the American people, we are doing the work now and will be ready to act when that time comes.”
The amendment was approved at the RNC’s winter meeting with no objections. An unusually high number of RNC members had already left the meeting to catch early flights ahead of winter storms bearing down on much of the country by the time the vote was brought up.
Ed: It's an interesting idea, but also a costly event. Is the investment worth the potential return? It may be the best way to get the GOP midterm message out past the Protection Racket Media gatekeepers. At the very least, it will make for an interesting experiment. I wonder if the DNC will feel pressure to create a competing event.
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I don’t think this is going to go over the way that the @NFL hopes it will. New age. New time. New rules. New consequences. @nflcommish is a moron if he allows this to go forward. There are things he needs that’ll be tough to get after this. Watch @TPUSA’s halftime show instead! https://t.co/ZdlBvwB8eR
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 23, 2026
Ed: I've given up on halftime shows, since my kind of music clearly won't be the focus at this stage. I enjoyed Lady Gaga's a few years ago, but otherwise I just skip them. But I do wonder how many NFL fans are all that interesting in queering the experience.
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Today I made seven stops in 3.5 hours…
— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) January 23, 2026
Walmart
Burger King
Nursing home
Home (to pick up pretty wife)
Doctor’s office.
Walgreens
CVS
Here’s a photo of me after leaving CVS… pic.twitter.com/sK4gn9gOkr
Ed: Stay safe, everyone!
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