Eddy Spades

I’m more of a dog guy

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

God Bless America

[GRANDPA’s FREE ADVICE @GOP_is_Gutless]

Greg Burgess writes....
So apparently Jill and I are on a plane to China with Trump, Elon Musk, half the Cabinet, and a collection of CEOs whose combined net worth could probably refinance the moon.

Totally normal day for Gen X.

And I just can’t stop laughing at how the media spent YEARS telling us:

- China hated Elon
- Trump was “finished”
- America was collapsing
- capitalism was dead
- and everybody important was abandoning the U.S.

Meanwhile, here we are somewhere over the Pacific looking like the cast of Succession meets Top Gun: Retirement Plan Edition.

Remember when China sanctioned Marco Rubio back in 2020 and everybody acted like the geopolitical chessboard had permanently shifted?

Now suddenly everybody’s still showing up to the table because — shocking development — nations tend to like:

- money
- technology
- manufacturing
- trade
- AI
- energy
- semiconductors
- and not being economically irrelevant

Who knew.

The best part is the internet meltdown cycle never changes.

Trump:
“America needs stronger trade relationships.”

Media:
“HITLER.”

Elon:
“I make electric cars, rockets, satellites, AI, and robots.”

Internet activists:
“Yeah but we posted an angry hashtag.”

Cool.
I’m sure Beijing is trembling before your TikTok resistance movement.

And flying with this group is exactly what you think it would be.

Trump walks around the cabin narrating reality like it’s an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Geopolitical:
“Great flight. Powerful people. Very high IQ. The Chinese are saying they’ve never seen anything like it.”

Elon looks like he hasn’t slept since 2019 and is simultaneously calculating orbital trajectories and wondering if the beverage cart could be automated.

Meanwhile Jill and I are sitting there like two exhausted Gen Xers who survived dial-up internet, chain-smoking restaurants, lawn darts, and drinking from garden hoses… wondering how in the hell we became side characters in the weirdest timeline imaginable.

Honestly, at this point if Trump walked into Beijing blasting “Danger Zone” while Elon live-streamed it from orbit, I wouldn’t even blink.

Because the people who told us America was over are still tweeting from iPhones, driving Teslas, using Starlink during hurricanes, and cashing checks tied to the same capitalist machine they claim to hate.

Gen X translation:
The world’s still running.
The adults are still making deals.

And the internet is still confusing hashtags for accomplishments.

Carry on.

[SightBringer @_The_Prophet__]

⚡️The deeper signal is youth risk did not disappear.

It migrated inward.

Teen drinking fell because the old physical world of adolescence got dismantled. Alcohol belonged to a social ecosystem: unsupervised time, cars, parties, local jobs, malls, basements, boredom, flirting, older siblings, house gatherings, and the chaotic peer world where teenagers learned who they were by colliding with other people in real space.

That ecosystem was replaced by phones, surveillance, parental tracking, algorithmic entertainment, social anxiety, online status games, and a much thinner physical commons.

So the surface looks healthier. Fewer kids drinking. Fewer kids using weed. Fewer kids doing reckless things in public.

The hidden layer looks worse. The young are less reckless because they are less socially embodied. Less initiation. Less unsupervised friction. Less courage-building. Less embarrassment and recovery. Less real dating. Less independence. Less contact with the physical world before adulthood demands it.

The old teenage world produced damage, stupidity, alcohol abuse, pregnancy risk, fights, accidents, and bad decisions. No need to romanticize it. But it also produced social reps. It forced young people through discomfort. It made them practice attraction, rejection, conflict, reputation, risk, repair, and status in the open.

The new world suppresses visible risk while increasing invisible fragility.

That is the trade.

A teenager can avoid drinking, avoid parties, avoid sex, avoid driving, avoid real confrontation, avoid rejection, avoid shame, avoid danger, and still arrive at 23 emotionally underbuilt. Cleaner behavior does not automatically mean stronger formation.

This is why the marriage chart and the teen drinking chart are the same story at different stages. People are not suddenly failing to pair in adulthood. The whole pathway into embodied adulthood has been slowing for years before marriage even becomes the question.

The real truth: society solved part of the teen vice problem by shrinking the arena where teenagers become adults.

It took away the dangerous commons and replaced it with controlled isolation.

The result is safer kids with weaker initiation into real life.

[Jorge Bonilla @BonillaJL]

WATCH: CBS's Tony Dokoupil completes his editorial to close out the West Coast Evening News broadcast. In a minute and a half, he runs through what the other nightlies omit- that China is going through the suck worse than the U.S. right now. The media hall monitors will surely throw a fit about it tomorrow.

TONY DOKOUPIL: Finally, tonight from Taiwan: as President Trump and China's Xi Jinping prepare to meet, you will hear a lot about American decline and the rise of a powerful new China. The Chinese certainly believe it. But is it true? Xi’s China is a marvel by many measures, is- is the world's second largest economy, producing almost 30% of the world's manufactured goods. They have high speed rails that put the Acela to shame. And China has lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty, making things like the iPhones in your pocket and mine.
And yet, America remains the innovation hub of the world. Made in China, yes; but designed and invented in the U.S.A. New drugs, new discoveries, new inventions, new space missions. Xi boasts of the country's industrial might, and it's impossible to deny that fact. China's population is in decline, though, well below replacement rates. Unemployment is high with millions in rural provinces living in poverty, and massive housing complexes that now sit empty. Most importantly, and perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, none of these problems are a topic on the Chinese evening news. In fact, pessimism itself is forbidden on the Chinese internet. The freedoms we have, they simply do not. That's another day in America and the world. I'm Tony Dokoupil, live from Taipei, Taiwan. Good night.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

The Atlantic has a sobering, first-person look at the ramifications of legalized online sports betting. Here are a few of the more telling passages.
1/5

[U.S. DOGE Service @USDS]

What’s DOGE been working on, you ask? Oh, just: 🧵

[Sean Feucht @seanfeucht]

How the times have truly changed

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

You can now tap on For You and choose general topics, such as “Technology”!

Update your 𝕏 app to make this work.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 BREAKING: The Black History Month crowd just STUNNED the Fake News by erupting in cheers when Leo Terrell said, "Donald Trump is the greatest president in our LIFETIME!"

They won't want to show that. Racism narrative BOMBED! 🔥

"Trump FULLY FUNDED Historically Black Colleges and Universities!"

"Trump took the lead and performed criminal justice reform."

"Trump made sure that we had Opportunity Zones."

"We have the right president at the right time." @TheLeoTerrell

[Chris Nelson 🏝️🇺🇸 @ReOpenChris]

🚨Governor DeSantis pitches Federal Balanced Budget Amendment to Kentucky Legislature.

Kentucky will be the 29th of 34 States needed to send the Amendment back to the States for ratification.

“We're $38+ TRILLION in debt and it is escalating very quickly every day. We now spend more on interest just to service the debt than we do on national defense, and those numbers are going to escalate as some of these bonds have to be refinance in the future.

I'm proud to be a Republican. This is not a Democrat problem, or this is a bipartisan debt problem.

So Florida has obviously certified this. 28 States in total have. We've got a couple more that we think will happen relatively soon. Kentucky hopefully would be one of those.

The reason I'm here is because I don't think Congress is going to fix itself. I think the incentives up there are such that we're likely to continue more of the same. There's a culture that's developed. There's a muscle memory that's developed. And you can't just say elect new people and all of a sudden they're going to fix it because here's the deal. Even if somehow we did elect new people and they did fix it, the next Congress can come in and undo it.

And so unless you have changes, permanent constitutional changes to the incentive structure in Congress, you are not going to solve this problem. And the question is, how much more can you go into debt before we have a major debt crisis? I mean, at some point. Reality is going to bite, and I think the U.S. has been able to get away with this longer just because we're the best bet in town.

Whatever problems we have, a lot of these other countries have other problems. But so why would you guys want to be involved at the state level? Because that's what our founding fathers envision. This is America's 250th anniversary of independence, and obviously it took them a decade or so to fashion a Constitution.

But when they created the Constitution, they believed that the states were the most important units of government. They were creating a federal government, but it was limited and enumerated to certain tasks. There were local governments created by the state governments, but ultimately was the states that created the federal government and that ratified the Constitution.

So they saw the states having a very, very important role. What about with constitutional amendments? Well, I think we just think muscle memory is, well, yeah, Congress proposes these amendments. You need two thirds of each house.

They can propose it, and then it goes to the states for ratification. That's one way to propose it. The other way to propose it is via the states with Article V, and you have two thirds of the state certified.

A proposal can be fashioned, and then it can go to the states for ratification. The founders knew that Congress could be the problem. So they obviously wanted to provide a mechanism for we, the people working through our states to be able to institute the reforms that would be necessary.

We have the power to do it in our states. Many states have stepped up, and obviously I think Kentucky would be a great, great candidate to join the movement to prevent Congress from bankrupting this country.

And if we can do that, that'll be one of the best things these states have ever done.”

[Kaizen D. Asiedu @thatsKAIZEN]

No, it's not racist to require voter ID.

[Josh Howerton @howertonjosh]

🚨You are in a PROPAGANDA WAR. Still don't believe me? Give me less than 10 minutes 👇

[Josh Daws @JoshDaws]

Send this to every woman on Instagram in your life. They are falling for lies.

[Just Jen ℞ 🫡🇺🇸 @JustJenRX]

LEGAL IMMIGRANT shares his experience of being pulled over by ICE on 2 separate occasions….

SHARE THIS SO THE PEOPLE ON THE LEFT WILL SEE IT!!!

[Catherine Herridge @C__Herridge]

BREAKING: Former ATF Senior Executive and Acting Director FBI Counterterrorism Forensics Center says Investigation Into Anti-ICE Protestors Signal Operations Could Result in Federal Conspiracy Case

And That Viral Videos of These Incidents Don’t Tell The Full Story

Straight to the Point: Minneapolis Signal Leaks

TIME CODES

00:38 No Trust Between Agencies After George Floyd Fallout

02:13 Videos of Alex Pretti and Renee Good Shootings Don’t Tell Full Story

02:48 Feds Investigate Anti-Ice “Signal Chat” Operations

03:50 Crime Scene Evidence Contaminated, Destroyed

04:30 Alex Pretti Case: Was There An Accidental Discharge?

06:00 Grey Jacket Man: Key Witness

06:50 Supreme Court Precedent: Use of Deadly Force

08:16 Minnesota Law: Open Vs. Conceal Carry At Protests

08:50 Alex Pretti Actions At Violent Anti-ICE Protest Before Fatal Shooting

09:50 Key Evidence: Renee Good Shooting

11:10 Did Agent’s Actions Increase Likelihood of “Deadly Force” Event?

12:15 Renee Good Autopsy Reveals “Directionality” of Shots Fired

13:40 Confrontation Filmed With Government iPhone: Was the DHS Agent Distracted?

15:15 Tom Homan: How Can The Trump White House Correct Course?

16:15 Surgical Approach to Enforcement

17:55 Lesser Force Options: Pepper Spray, Pepper Bullets

19:20 Arrests Should Be First Option: Has Chilling Effect

20:04 Criminal Civil Rights Investigation

21:30 How Does This End?

@thelatmg @latimesstudios_

[Eddy Spades @EddySpades]

@Thebestfigen @grok what is the name of the song playing in this video?

[Eddy Spades @EddySpades]

@Shelpid_WI3M Based on this profile, the account went -230k at one point….

[Eddy Spades @EddySpades]

@AutismCapital @grok how long ago did Nikita post this and has it been resolved?

[US Oil & Gas Association @US_OGA]

This is the most vastly under-appreciated office in the federal government and yet it is one of the most important to you and me.

They are fixing the rules that will finally get the government out of the way of itself and let us build things again.

Give them a follow.