J Mark Franklin III

[Glenn Beck @glennbeck]

If you have a son or daughter who's starting to think that socialism is the answer to our problems, I want you to try something and report back:

Next time you talk, don't argue. Sit down, ask these questions, and just listen:

- When you say "socialism," do you mean that you want the government to pay for a bigger safety net like in Denmark, or that the government owns the means of production? Because those are two very different countries.

- You say the system is rigged. Who rigged it? And who should be handed the power to un-rig it?

- Who sets the price of bread? If not a single person or corporation, what causes that price to remain steady or go up?

- Can you name a country where the state took ownership of the means of production and the poor got richer?

- When borders open or the walls fall down, anywhere in the world, which direction do people run? Towards the free market system or the socialist system? And before the boundaries fell, which way were the guns pointed?

- Would you rather be poor today, or rich in 1900? By the way, only one of those has antibiotics.

- If you and I make a voluntary trade, and we both walk away happy, who got hurt?

- Someone has to decide what your work is worth. Would you rather it be you and the person paying you, or a bureaucrat with an army who has never met either of you?

Try having this conversation with your kids this week. Don't argue. Only listen. And if you want, call into my radio show and tell me how it went.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

Dear Mamdani,

Let me explain this the way I’d explain it to a five-year-old.

Imagine Tommy has a lemonade stand. Every week, lemons cost him a little more, sugar costs a little more, cups cost a little more, and his parents even charge him a little more for the table he uses. Then his teacher walks over and says, “Tommy, you’re not allowed to charge more than $1 for your lemonade anymore.”

Tommy says, “OK… but everything I need to make lemonade keeps getting more expensive. How am I supposed to pay for it?”

The teacher shrugs and says, “That’s not my problem.”

So Tommy starts buying cheaper ingredients. Then he stops fixing his stand when it breaks. Eventually, he decides selling lemonade just isn’t worth it anymore. His friend, who wanted to open another lemonade stand, sees all this and says, “Forget it. I’m not doing that.”

Now there are fewer lemonade stands than before.

The teacher proudly tells everyone, “See? I made lemonade affordable.”

No, you didn’t.

You made it less profitable to sell lemonade, so fewer people sold it.

Housing works the same way. Property taxes don’t freeze. Insurance doesn’t freeze. Labor doesn’t freeze. Repair costs don’t freeze. The mortgage doesn’t freeze. The only thing that freezes is rent.

And if the rent doesn’t cover the bills, the bills don’t magically disappear. Repairs get delayed. Buildings deteriorate. Some landlords sell. Others stop building altogether because the investment no longer makes sense.

You can’t solve a shortage by making it less worthwhile to provide the very thing that’s already in short supply.

It’s not greed. And it’s not ideology.

It’s basic math.

[Flopping Aces @FloppingAces]

America’s ruling class has performed another miracle.

They took the most basic truths in human civilization ... crime needs punishment, borders need enforcement, schools should teach, welfare should be temporary, families matter, merit matters, and taxpayers should not be looted by professional parasites ... and somehow rebranded all of that as “extremism.”

Incredible work, really.

Apparently, a “compassionate” society is one where the violent repeat offender gets another chance, the victim gets a candlelight vigil, the taxpayer gets the bill, the schoolkid gets passed along illiterate, the fraudster gets a grant, the NGO gets another contract, the illegal alien gets services, and the working American gets told to shut up and be more inclusive.

What a beautiful system.

Soft justice did not stay in the courtroom. It metastasized. It became soft borders, soft schools, soft parenting, soft welfare, soft standards, soft men, and soft bureaucrats explaining why every obvious solution is “too harsh.”

Lock up predators? Cruel.
Deport illegals? Hateful.
End generational welfare? Lacking empathy.
Punish fraud? Complicated.
Restore merit? Problematic.
Teach kids to read? Probably colonialism by Tuesday.

A serious country protects the innocent from the guilty. A decaying country protects the guilty from consequences and makes the innocent finance the experiment.

That’s America’s real crisis.

Not poverty. Not “root causes.” Not another fake expert panel.

Consequences.

We stopped imposing them on the people destroying the country, so now the country imposes them on everyone else.
(article below)

[Mikale Olson @realmikolson]

Australian discovers Texas Roadhouse…

First, he calls it a “fancy restaurant,” and he couldn’t be more wrong. Texas Roadhouse isn’t just a fancy ole restaurant. It’s a giant slice of heaven brought down to earth.

This man loves the bread, the free refills, the service.

In response to those outside the US complaining about tipping there: “You don’t have to tip… you WANT to tip. These are the most wonderful people on earth.”

“I don’t even know why some of you Americans are so angry all the time; you guys have Texas Roadhouse in your country.”

You got that right. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

#worldcup #usa

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.”

— Walter E. Williams

[J Mark Franklin III @JMarkFranklin]

@Cernovich Seems a bit more concerning than a few second rate burglars pilfering files in the DNC at the Watergate. But what do I know? 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Leo @LasVegasAdonis]

@kaitlancollins @priscialva

[Josh Wolfe @wolfejosh]

https://t.co/G7GNgKIdLx

[J Mark Franklin III @JMarkFranklin]

@DefiantLs I wonder if she has any student loans and understands how Obama used them to prop up the ACA?

[J Mark Franklin III @JMarkFranklin]

@MrAndyNgo @ICEgov This can't be. I have been reliably informed that insurrections are illegal.

[J Mark Franklin III @JMarkFranklin]

@JesseKellyDC @PeteButtigieg "All Against All" but we were familiar with and occasionally used the "STQ" moniker.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

A must watch. This video is over 30 years old.

[J Mark Franklin III @JMarkFranklin]

@simonateba DJ is a courageous young man. He's fighting his battle with a smile, compassion, and determination. The whole world is cheering for him and praying for healing. You be you, DJ! You're awesome!

[J Mark Franklin III @JMarkFranklin]

@CNviolations Welp. There go the yell leaders.

[The Real Mike Rowe @mikeroweworks]

The Emperor's New Clothes, 2.0
Hi Mike – Since you predicted Trump in a landslide, I’m wondering what you think of his most recent cabinet picks? And if you have any other predictions? I’m also curious to hear your general thoughts on the election, and hoping you can elaborate on your recent post about what the outcome might mean for mikeroweWORKS.
Dan Jennings
Hi Dan
A fine question for a rainy Saturday morning. I'll try to answer without alienating half the country.
First of all, I did not predict a Trump landslide. I did predict a red wave in 2022, which turned out to be wrong, and again in 2024, which turned out to be right. But I never predicted or endorsed the success of a particular candidate, and as long as I’m running an apolitical charity, I won’t do that. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t shared my thoughts on any number of policies that all but guaranteed the demise of the "expert class," and the return of a (relatively) conservative government.
For me, that all began with Fauci’s “noble lie” around masking, and the rank hypocrisy of so many elected officials in the lockdowns that followed. In my neck of the woods, that was best illustrated when Governor Newsom decided to arrest people for gathering publicly, even as he and his friends dined together at The French Laundry.
“People will forgive stupidity,” I wrote, “but they won’t forgive this kind of hypocrisy. Even in California, that kind of naked elitism will have consequences.”
Shortly after that, San Francisco passed an extraordinary law that allowed shoplifters to steal $1,000 worth of goods with no fear of prosecution.
“If you want to see a red wave,” I wrote, “just eliminate the consequences of stealing! People hate that!”
I wrote something similar a few months later, when CNN began describing obvious acts of violence and vandalism as, “Firey, But Mostly Peaceful Protests.”
“If CNN wants to see a conservative Congress in 2022,” I wrote, “all they have to do is tell Americans the world is not on fire, as everything around them is clearly burning."
I don’t know if those comments qualify as “predictions,” but I was a bit more direct in August of 2021, when the media told us the retreat from Afghanistan was a “success,” even as we saw bodies falling from that airplane taking off from Kabul. Even though we abandoned hundreds of our Afghan partners to the Taliban and needlessly sacrificed 13 American soldiers to a suicide bomber at Abbey Gate, we were told by many in the media that the decision to withdraw was “courageous.” Even though we could see with our own eyes, the nearly billion dollars of weaponry we left behind for the Taliban, we were told the retreat was a “long overdue triumph.”
A few days later on my podcast, I told Gary Sinise, “There’s just no way Americans will forgive this debacle. What's happened to our media?"
And then there was the whole, "Let's Go Brandon" thing. Millions were watching when a crowd of race car fans started chanting, "F@ck Joe Biden," and a reporter on the scene assured us that what they were really saying was "Let's Go Brandon." That was the day I started comparing our media to the swindlers in Hans Christen Andersen’s famous fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and that's the way I'll always remember the way this election unfolded.
For those unfamiliar, the Andersen fable centers on an impossibly vain emperor obsessed with fine garments. One day, two con men posing as weavers offer to make the emperor a magnificent outfit from a magical fabric that’s completely invisible to fools. The emperor hires them, and the con men set up looms in the palace and pretend to go to work. Then, a succession of government officials – including the emperor himself - visit the fake weavers to check on their progress. They can all see that the looms are empty, but they all pretend otherwise, to avoid being thought of as foolish. Ultimately, the emperor winds up parading through town stark naked, convinced that he’s fashionably adorned. As for the townspeople, they were too scared to acknowledge the spectacle before them. They just nodded and applauded and pretended that their emperor wasn’t naked.
For me, the last four years have been The Emperor’s New Clothes, 2.0. But unlike the original, this version had many chapters, courtesy of a media that was better at spinning yarns than telling the truth. After the "successful" Afghan withdraw, they told us our southern border was secure, even though we could see thousands of migrants surging across it. They told inflation was down, even though we could see the price of everything going up. They told us it was fair to force those who did not attend college, to pay off the loans of those who did, even though we all knew that doing so was profoundly unfair. They told us that Lea Thomas was a world champion female swimmer, even though we could see his decidedly masculine phallus straining against his ladies swimsuit, as he proudly accepted his trophy. And of course, they told us there was nothing wrong with our president. Not only was he “hale and hearty,” he was “running circles around his staff,” and “sharper and more vigorous than ever.” This is what we were told, not just by the media, but by Kamala Harris herself, even when we could see that President Biden was no longer fit to lead the free world.
In the original fable, it took a child in the crowd to snap the townspeople out of their trance, by speaking the awkward truth out loud. In America, it took a few (former?) liberals. Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Michael Shellenberger, RFK, Jr., Matt Taibbi, Barri Weiss, Bill Maher...they all spoke an unpopular truth directly to their own tribes, and in the process, transformed this election into a contest between those Americans who no longer trusted the mainstream media, and those who did. Ironically, the most important “voice in the crowd” belonged to Sunny Hostin, a diehard liberal voice from The View, who asked Kamala Harris the most consequential question of the entire campaign.
“Would you have done something differently than President Biden over the last four years?”
To which Harris replied, “Not a thing that comes to mind.”
After that, it didn’t matter which Republican was on the ticket. Because in that moment, Kamala Harris told the country that she wouldn't have changed anything about the Afghan withdraw, or the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline, or the war on Title IX, or the student loan forgiveness ploys, or the abandonment of basic biology, or the spiking crime rates, or any of the failed Covid policies…nothing. In that moment, Harris told us all that the Emperor’s new clothes still looked splendid. But this time around, the the townspeople weren't buying it.
As for mikeroweWORKS, I'm optimistic about what could happen in the coming months, just as I was in 2009, when I encouraged the Obama administration to reinvigorate the skilled trades with a national campaign. In the letter I wrote to him, I said, “It’s great that you’ve committed to creating 3 million shovel-ready jobs but filling those jobs will be a lot easier if the country has a greater appreciation for people who work with shovels.” Here's a copy of that letter. https://t.co/kFlYI3IcYs
I feel the same way today, although today's opportunities require a lot more expertise than the ability (or the willingness) to pick up a shovel. Today, it’s imperative that we make a more persuasive case for the many essential jobs currently unfilled. As I wrote last week, the math has become untenable. For every five skilled worker who retire, two replace them. A 5:2 ratio is not sustainable, and something has to be done to turn the ship around. At mikeroweWORKS, we're committed to expanding our scholarship program, as well as our work ethic curriculum, which is now in 53 schools. If the new administration likes what we’re doing, I’d welcome their support, and happily explore ways we might work together.
As for the cabinet picks, I’ve already written about RFK, and the whole VP thing. I suspect he’ll disrupt a great many things in HHS, assuming he survives the confirmation process, which should be a hell of a thing.
Likewise Pete Hegseth, who I interviewed last year, and believe to be committed to returning our armed forces to the meritocracy they once were. If you want to know exactly where’s he’s coming from, read his book – The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep us Free. He pulls no punches.
Neither for that matter, does Dr. Marty Makary, who just got tapped to run the FDA. I’m supposed to interview him in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to it. His book is called “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets it Wrong” which is also excellent.
I also had a great conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy, the only presidential candidate that I invited onto my podcast. My reason was simple. I had read that Vivek had promised to never read a political speech from a Teleprompter. I wanted to ask him why, because I believe that the TelePrompter has become the enemy of authenticity, and I was delighted to learn that he agreed.
Ironically, the TelePrompter was designed to improve the connection between a broadcaster and his audience. But today, in a world where people have become suspicious of anything that feels fake or manufactured, it's accomplished the exact opposite result. Think about it. What could possibly be less persuasive to a citizen in 2024, than a politician or a news anchor pretending not to be reading someone else’s words, when everyone knows that they are? What could be more performative or less authentic than that? For that matter, what could be more hilarious, or more revealing, than the panicked face of a sweaty pretender when their TelePrompter suddenly stops working, and the townspeople finally see just how naked they are without it?
As for predictions, I’ll leave you with three.
1. Politicians and anchormen who continue to rely on TelePrompters are going to become less and less persuasive to more and more people.
2. Media outlets that continue to tell us to ignore what we can plainly see with our own eyes will lose their audiences and go bankrupt.
3. Gen Z will eventually become the tool-belt generation, prosper wildly in the trades, and save the county.
Carry on,
Mike

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

For my British and European friends who are "shocked" and "surprised", here are 10 reasons you didn't see this coming.

Read this short post and then read the replies from our American friends who will confirm what I'm saying.

1. Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world. America is a nation of people who conquered a continent. They love strength. They love winning. Any leader who appeals to that has an automatic advantage.

2. Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline. They don't have Net Zero here, they believe in producing their own energy and making it as cheap as possible because they know that their prosperity depends on it.

3. Prices for most basic goods in the US have increased rapidly and are sky high. What the official statistics say about inflation and the reality of people's lives are not the same.

4. Unlike you, Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don't care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don't resent success, they celebrate it.

5. Americans are the most pro-immigration people in the world. Read that again. Seriously, read it again. Americans love an immigrant success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming illegally. They believe in having a border.

6. Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country's imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.

7. Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left's reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.

8. Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump's rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.

9. Americans are deeply optimistic people. They hate negativity. The woke view of American history as a series of evils for which they must eternally apologise is utterly abhorrent to them. They believe in moving forward together, not endlessly obsessing about the past.

10. America is a country whose founding story is one of resistance to government overreach. They loathe unnecessary restrictions, regulations and control. They understand that freedom comes with the price of self-reliance and they pay it gladly.

[Defiant L’s @DefiantLs]

Hands down one of Trump's coldest moments.

[Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11]

CNN—yes CNN—exposes just how far left Kamala Harris is. According to an ACLU questionaire from 2019 Kamala is in favor of decriminalizing illegal immigration, taxpayer funded gender transitions for illegals, defunding ICE, ending ICE detainers, and decriminalizing ALL drugs including heroin, crack, and even fentanyl.

CNN even asked for clarification and Kamala Harris didn't deny any of it.

This is wild.

[Eric Abbenante @EricAbbenante]

When then Senator Kamala Harris called for Donald Trump to be banned from Twitter, even Jake Tapper was horrified:
Jake Tapper: "You wrote to Twitter and the CEO Jack Dorsey and asked him to take away the president's Twitter handle.
How is that not a violation of free speech? The president has the same rights that you have, that I have, how would that not be a slippery slope where they have to ban half of the people on Twitter?"
Kamala Harris: "A corporation has obligations. Their Terms of Use dictate who receives the privilege of speaking on that platform, and who does not. And Donald Trump has clearly violated the Terms of Use, and there should be a consequence for that.
Revoke someone's privilege, because they have not lived up to the advantages of the privilege."

Dictator on Day 1 Kamala Harris would end the 1st amendment, because she sees it as a 'privilege' instead of a right.

[Simon Ateba @simonateba]

EXPLOSIVE: Man completely destroys the left, the Democratic Party and policies. Why he left and will never ever return. WATCH