Steve Decker 🐊

Go Gators! Tampa Bay Lightning, Rays, Bucs. Anti Echo Chamber. Disciplined & Researched Thinker

[Steve Decker 🐊 @sodecker]

"The truth is that an American political faction is employing third-world tactics—surveillance, censorship, election interference, political prosecution, and political violence— ... led by a man who in his mind has become the people..."

He the People https://t.co/rVCfPlBkVH

[Kimberley Strassel @KimStrassel]

This is a total hoot.
About the only thing it gets correct is that 2024 Trump voters were "pissed." As the polls spell out, very clearly, they were angry about tariffs--a word weirdly not found in this post, but which exit polls showed 65% of voters dislike. There's a straight line between those punishing costs and Senate losses in Kansas, Iowa, Ohio (farm areas) and beyond.
Angry the WH instead spent this past year talking about ballrooms and the Kennedy center. Frustrated by the complete absence of a next-two-year agenda (85% are concerned by healthcare costs. Where is the GOP plan?)
They are also unhappy about the war, though the numbers might be different if the president been clear about an exit strategy. And not sure where the "smartest" (and most anonymous) pollster in the world got the Israel argument. Exit polls show that of the 51% of voters who said our support for Israel was "too strong," only 19% of even that subset of respondents were Republican. The vast majority of GOP voters said our support for Israel was "just right" or "not strong enough."
Amusing to claim the problem here was traditional conservatives, as they were sidelined. Tillis was run out of the party, dooming NC. As was Cornyn. The WH had a pure expression of its second-term Trump/Vance agenda and loyalty in its chosen candidate of Ken Paxton. That would be the smoking carcass sitting on a 12-point loss in. . . Texas of all places. Meanwhile, who exactly is even talking about "asylum"? That's just a smear-y effort to preemptively shut down valid criticism.
The GOP strength has always been in its coalition--free-marketers, defense hawks, cultural conservatives. Trump's first-term success came from largely following that Reagan playbook. The second-term leaned into me-too progressive populism--at the veep's urging--and it ain't working.
The weird thing is that the veep remains more obsessed with remaking the party than with winning. Winning will require a lot better understanding of what happened yesterday than what is on offer in this alternate-universe view.

[Brittany Hughes @RealBrittHughes]

Yes, that sucked.

But I want everyone who is upset over last night’s election results to remember three simple things.

[Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_]

Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night.

Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one.

Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.

Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a “dog and pony show” and “political theater”.

Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott’s orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance, except for some horseback agents who were falsely slandered for “whipping”.

Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump’s border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

If you want to understand the chaos.

And how it will end.

Watch this:

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Bernie Sanders says the top 1% owns more than the bottom 93%, that fewer than a thousand billionaires got $2.2 trillion richer last year, and that it's "obscene."

It's the most seductive and most wrong economic argument of our time. Let me explain why.

First, wealth distribution follows a power law. Always. Everywhere. Books, music, startups, followers on X, goals in soccer. A small minority captures most of the value. That's not a bug of capitalism. It's the mathematical signature of every system where value gets created.

So the only question that matters isn't "how big is the rich's slice?" It's "is the cake growing, and is the slice of the poorest growing with it?"

And the answer is yes. In 1990, more than one human in three lived in extreme poverty. Today it's about one in ten. During exactly the period when billionaires multiplied.

Bernie shows you the slice. He never shows you the cake.

Second thing he won't tell you: past a certain level, wealth stops being consumption. It becomes capital allocation.

Elon Musk isn't sleeping on a pile of cash. He owns stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, xAI. Jeff Bezos owns Amazon stock. That "$2.2 trillion" isn't sitting in a checking account. It's factories, rockets, data centers, millions of jobs. Nobody can eat $100 billion. You can only decide where to invest it.

Once you understand that, the whole debate changes. The real question becomes: who allocates capital better?

The people who built Amazon, SpaceX and Nvidia? Or politicians?

A 5% wealth tax isn't "taking money from the rich." It's taking investment decisions away from people who proved they can create value and handing them to people who proved the opposite.

Because the fundamental difference between an entrepreneur and a politician is consequences.

The entrepreneur invests his own money. If he allocates badly, he loses everything. The market corrects him brutally, no appeal. That's why most startups die: the system kills bad decisions.

The politician invests other people's money. If he allocates badly, nothing happens. Worse, he gets a bigger budget to "fix the problem."

Milton Friedman put it better than anyone. There are four ways to spend money. Your money on yourself: you care about price and quality. Your money on others: you care about price. Others' money on yourself: you care about quality. Others' money on others: you care about nothing.

Government is the fourth box. By design.

Perfect example: California high-speed rail. Approved in 2008 for about $33 billion. Current estimated cost: over $100 billion. Passengers carried: zero. No entrepreneur would have survived that. The politicians who pushed it built careers on it.

And when allocation has no consequences, it eventually finds a buyer. A politician who controls billions without accountability becomes the most profitable target in the world for anyone who wants to steer that money.

The irony is that the left that rails against billionaires is itself funded by billionaires. George Soros is one of the biggest Democratic donors in history. The Gates Foundation shapes public health policy across the planet.

Politicians don't fight billionaires. They pick their own. The ones who fund the state over the ones who compete with it.

So if we actually want fewer poor people, we have to stop judging ideas by their intentions and start judging them by their results. And the results are brutally clear.

China, 1978: Deng Xiaoping opens the economy to markets. More than 800 million people escape extreme poverty. The largest retreat of misery in human history. Not through redistribution. Through the freedom to build.

India, 1991: liberalization. Same movie.

South Korea and North Korea: same people, same language, same starting point in 1953. One became one of the most advanced economies on earth. The other has famines.

Poland and Ukraine: comparable living standards in 1990. Today the average Pole is more than three times richer than the average Ukrainian.

Argentina: a year and a half of liberalization, and the poverty rate falls from over 50% to around 30%.

No country in history escaped poverty by punishing the people who build. Every single one did it by letting them build.

And if you want to see what Bernie's program looks like in real life, you don't have to imagine it. It exists. It's called France. We've been running it for 45 years.

Mass nationalizations in 1981. Two years later, Socialist president Mitterrand has to reverse course into austerity.

Retirement at 60. The 35-hour workweek.

A wealth tax for 35 years. Hundreds of wealthy households left every year for Belgium, Switzerland, London, taking their capital, their companies and their future taxes with them. Macron finally scrapped it in 2018.

Hollande's 75% tax: raised a few hundred million, drove talent out, abandoned after two years.

One of the highest tax burdens in the OECD. Public spending around 57% of GDP, a record in the developed world.

Last balanced budget: 1974. Public debt: over €3.4 trillion. Mass unemployment for four decades.

If taxing the rich and growing the state made people prosperous, France would be the richest country on the planet.

It isn't. GDP per capita in France is barely more than half of America's. It's lower than Mississippi, the poorest state in the US. Not a single global tech giant. Our best engineers build Silicon Valley instead. I've been going back and forth between Paris and San Francisco for years. I see it every week.

And California is about to replay the movie. Prop 40, on the ballot November 3rd, would take 5% of billionaires' net worth. Even Gavin Newsom, a Democratic governor, opposes it. The state's own nonpartisan budget analyst warns that income tax revenue could drop every year if the wealthy leave. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel have reportedly already started moving their assets out.

You don't fight poverty by shrinking the top. You fight it by growing the cake.

Bernie wants a society where nobody has too much. I want a society where nobody has too little.

The first has been tried everywhere and produces equality in stagnation. The second lifted a billion people out of misery.

Choose.

[Benjamin Domenech @bdomenech]

People Want To Forget October 7. America Has To Remember.

- @realDailyWire https://t.co/BLtq8c1DdL

[Steve Decker 🐊 @sodecker]

@BianchiWrites "We’ve missed the big games in a bonkers Swamp when 90,000 fans show up expecting something spectacular instead of bracing for something stupid."

Isn't that the truth! So very happy to put the soul-sucking Napier era far in the rear view mirror!

[Chase Daniel @ChaseDaniel]

The Swamp is going CRAZY….loudest college stadium I’ve heard.

Huge 4th Down stop

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

Watch this and try not to cry…

Marcus Coleman, whose daughter was paralyzed by an illegal alien truck driver, RIPS into Democrats:

"I reject your guys' sympathy to be honest with you... My daughter doesn't deserve this... I hold each and every one of you responsible for it."

BOOM

[Sassafrass84 @Sassafrass_84]

Life Before Barack Obama hits different when you actually remember it.

No ISIS carving up the Middle East.
No BLM turning cities into war zones.
No Antifa burning down businesses while cops were told to stand down.
No “war on police” narrative.
No Russia Hoax witch hunt.
No expensive Obamacare disaster.
No full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome.

We had problems, sure. But we weren’t drowning in manufactured chaos and identity politics.

Obama didn’t “inherit” this mess — a whole lot of it bloomed on his watch.

[Steve Decker 🐊 @sodecker]

@linadreaamy 98

[Ellen Carmichael @ellencarmichael]

The most interesting part of the red card saga isn't the ruling. It's how differently Americans and Europeans process the idea that they might have been wronged.

Europeans are fundamentally different from Americans in one particular way: they expect life to be aggravating and at times unfair. It's just a fact of moving through the world. I joke that in Europe, the customer is always wrong. You didn't read the fine print. The only pharmacy in town is closed every other Tuesday for three hours, and even if the times weren't posted, that's still your problem. Too bad if you want the bill, because the waiter's on his union-mandated half-hour smoke break, and you're just going to have to wait.

To quote the great Mark Knopfler: sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. There's something freeing in that. Things are less in your control, so there's less angst in managing your expectations.

In America, things couldn't be more different. We simply can't accept a wrong left unrighted.

The flight attendant sneezed handing you a drink on your one-hour flight? 15,000 frequent flyer miles. Didn't like your appetizer? A replacement is on the way, and the whole course comes off the bill. There's a reason our interstates are lined with trial lawyer billboards.

Europeans have turned complaining into a continental pastime with no expectation that the universe owes them a remedy for their grief. You gripe about the train being late, your friends nod solemnly and everyone goes back to their apéro. In America, we launch a full-blown investigation of the train system, sue the government (and its contractors) that allowed for the tardiness and hold a Congressional hearing on the state of national infrastructure.

So to an objective observer, the red card shouldn't have happened, and VAR was a travesty. To Americans, our star player shouldn't be unfairly banned from a match we couldn't afford to lose for a card he so obviously didn't deserve.

Who cares that FIFA used a little-used reversal to fix it. Who cares that other people are mad about it. We. Were. Wronged. It was unjust. It must be corrected. We would accept nothing less.

Europeans waxing poetic about the sanctity of the game are, of course, talking about a governing body whose last tournament host was decided via confirmed cash bribes — one that imposed dress codes on women, shrugged off widespread allegations of modern slavery and reconfigured the entire tournament calendar to suit the host country. Which is exactly the point. If you've made peace with all of that, at least enough to watch the tournament four years later, a probationary suspension isn't actually a scandal.

Maybe that's the real divide. Over millennia, Europeans have made peace with being the bug. Americans have never once considered it, and apparently, we're not about to start now.

[Steve Decker 🐊 @sodecker]

"... Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.

Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man. ..."

All perfectly said. Thank you, Dr. Peterson.

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Have you ever heard the Declaration of Independence read out loud?

You should. It’s the greatest break-up letter ever written.

At just 33 years old, Thomas Jefferson, with cold moral clarity, told the British government to pound sand:

“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to ABOLISH it.”

The power of that line isn’t just what it says. It’s how it’s said.

Jefferson wasn’t writing from a place of outrage. He was transmitting conviction—moral clarity delivered from a steady frame of mind.

It’s said Jefferson revised the Declaration of Independence with the help of Franklin and Adams dozens of times before it was finalized.

And that deliberate, cutting language, paired with emotional steadiness, is precisely why the words still land 250 years later.

Today, we’re blessed to be the inheritors of the great nation those steady hands wrote into existence.

Happy Birthday, America. 🇺🇸

[The Reckoning 💥 @sethjlevy]

If you think Democrats refusing to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary is all about Trump then you haven’t been paying attention for the last 30 years.

[Robert Davi @RobertJohnDavi]

You decide!!!
No Kings explained for people who think they're fighting fascism.

You're standing in a crowd on Saturday. You look around and think yeah. No Kings. This is what democracy looks like.

Bro.

You're holding a sign made by a communist billionaire who lives in Shanghai.

You live in a constitutional republic.

Elections. Term limits. A free press that spent four years calling the president a fascist without one journalist being arrested.

The modern left's definition of fascism:

You love your country? Fascist.

You want to enforce the border? Racist.

You think parents should raise their kids? Bigot.

You want to know who's voting in your elections? Jim Crow.

Being patriotic is fascism to the modern left.

But every country has borders and enforces them. 176 countries require ID to vote. That's the definition of a country.

But the Democratic establishment told you otherwise. And you believed them.

Congress has a 15% approval rating. 80% of Americans disapprove. 97% of incumbents got re-elected.

Chuck Schumer. 46 years. Longer than Stalin.

Steny Hoyer. 45 years. Longer than Mao.

Mitch McConnell. 42 years. 5x more than Napoleon.

Nancy Pelosi. 39 years. Longer than Henry VIII.

Maxine Waters. 35 years. Longer than Mussolini.

Bernie Sanders. 35 years. Triple Hitler's entire reign.

Trump. 5 years and 3 months. Won the popular vote and the electoral vote.

But Trump is the king. Okay buddy.

You don't hate kings. You hate kings that aren't yours.
And Saturday they had you in the streets carrying their water.

The Democratic Party installed a president without letting you vote. Biden quit on a Sunday. By Tuesday your queen was crowned.

No primary. No debate. No ballot. First time since 1968.

Three days before your march every Senate Democrat voted against photo ID to vote.

During COVID you carried a vaccine card everywhere like a hall pass from the government just to eat at a restaurant.

But getting a birth certificate or waiting two hours at the DMV to prove you're a citizen before you vote? That's oppression.

The Democratic Party is pro illegal immigration.

Counts non-citizens in the Census. Census determines congressional seats. More non-citizens means more seats means more power. No voter ID means no way to check.

That's how you keep power without wearing a crown.

Biden built a censorship machine.

Pressured Facebook to suppress true information and admitted it in writing. Censored scientists. Censored doctors. Censored JOKES. The Biden White House told Facebook to remove "humor and satire."

They literally went after people for making fun of them. UK does it better tho...

Everything they censored turned out to be right. They just outsourced the silencing to Silicon Valley.

And it doesn't stop at speech.

The extreme left justifies taking children from families.

Six thousand schools rewrite children's identities without telling parents. And the State has the right to intervene.

The Hitler Youth did this. Mao's Red Guards did this. The Soviets built statues of a child who reported his own father.

Same playbook.

During Covid, your bakery got shut down. Church closed. You couldn't hold your dying mother's hand at the hospital.

But thousands packed together during BLM to burn Minneapolis and THAT was essential civic engagement. Obviously.

$2 billion in damage. 25 dead. 2,000 cops injured. 20 states burning. VP Kamala promoted a bail fund for the rioters. No investigation. No hearings.

January 6. One building. Few hours. 1,000 prosecuted. Two years of televised hearings.

Kings decide which violence counts. The left decided.

Charlie Kirk spent his life walking onto campuses asking for honest debate. He was assassinated.

CSIS terrorism database. 2025 is the first year in 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber right-wing. Yet no one brings this up.

75% of liberal students say preventing a speaker from talking is justified. 27% say violence is acceptable.

[toddstarnes @toddstarnes]

I'm very happen to explain this to the national media - but here's EVERYTHING you need to known about the lies being spewed about "racist Republicans" in Tennessee and specifically Memphis. Dems claim the GOP is taking away their "black district." That's not true.

In 2006, black voters first chose white man Steve Cohen over a black man in the Democrat primary.

In 2008, black voters chose Cohen over a black woman in the Democrat primary.

In 2010, black voters chose Cohen over Willie Herenton in the Democrat primary.

In 2012, black voters chose Cohen over a black woman in the Democrat primary.

In 2014, black voters chose Cohen over a black man in the Democrat primary.

In 2016 black voters chose Cohen over a black man in the Democrat primary.

In 2018 black voters chose Cohen over a black woman in the Democrat primary.

In 2020, black voters chose Cohen over a black man in the Democrat primary.

In 2022, black voters chose Cohen over a black woman in the Democrat primary.

In 2024, black voters chose Cohen over a black man in the Democrat primary.

Meanwhile, during that same time frame predominantly white voters Republican voters nominated a black woman to be their nominee against Cohen SIX times.

So, you tell me which party is racist.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

You need to understand the Democrat mind.

They don't care if the Southern Poverty Law Center committed wire fraud.

They don't care if the SPLC made false official statements to the federal government.

They don't care if the SPLC engaged in conspiracy to commit money laundering.

They don't care because to them, the ends always justifies the means.

Rank-and-file Democrats see the SPLC as being virtuous, so therefore they don't care about the crimes.

The Democrat leadership sees the SPLC as one of the very most effective tools they have to achieve and maintain power, and since power is all they care about, they don't care about the crimes.

[Paul White Gold Eagle @PaulGoldEagle]

I DIDN’T WRITE THIS BUT A VERY SMART PERSON DID!!! This should be read by every news station and every single person that is against what president Trump has done, not just for America, but for the world!!!

WRITTEN BY MICHAEL HUNTSMAN

I keep hearing “Trump doesn’t have a plan”.

First off, it doesn’t seem like the greatest idea to tell everyone what your plan is. (Especially when so many from within want you destroyed.)

However, for those of you who are unable to see it. Let me remind you.
One of Trump‘s biggest campaign promises was not only to make America energy Independent, but also to be the energy leader worldwide.

Take a look at the moves he’s already made. If you can’t see his plan, it’s because you refused to.

He told us from the start exactly what he would do when he said “America Will Lead the World in Energy”

He started almost immediately.
On February 9, 2025, he began his energy dominance plan by changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
He did this to circumvent policies designed to stop American oil drilling, refining, and shipping in the Gulf.
(The crazy half of the country lost their mind and called it racism)

Then with no delay at all, he went after the Panama Canal and regained its passage rights. (Again, the lunatics lost their mind and claimed it was about stopping innocent refugees, and therefore, ‘Racist’.)

Next came Venezuela. In a matter of minutes he captured a dictator, freed millions of people, and secured the absolute largest oil reserves in the world. (Suddenly the crazies poured into the streets, waving Venezuelan flags and demanding the dictator be returned)

Greenland came and went before their tears over the Venezuelan dictator even hit the floor.

With Greenland, he secured not only northern shipping lanes but strategic defensive positioning and mineral rights to one of the largest deposits of rare earth minerals in the world. (Think batteries, electrical components, semiconductors, etc..)

After gaining control of North and South American shipping lanes, oil, and rare earth minerals. He sets his sites on the Middle East.

Which brings us to Iran. So far he has decimated their highest leaders and military, while protecting their infrastructure of oil distribution (And the people of Iran are ecstatic).

At this very moment the U.S. is blockading the Gulf of Oman.(Arguably, more strategic than the Strait of Hormuz itself.)

In the meantime (while waiting out Iran in the Gulf of Oman) He has secured the strait of Malacca, and guaranteed control of shipping rights to the Eastern Seaborg. (Who knows how the Looney Tunes will spin that one when they find out.)

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this was the plan all along. Just like he said,
“America Will Lead the World in Energy”

Keep your eyes open, because it ain’t over yet. Next on his list will be to secure the shipping lanes around Cuba then the straits of Bosporus and Gallipoli. Completing his plan and making America the world‘s leader in energy.
Just like he said he would.

If you still fail to see the plan? Forget I mentioned any of this. Wait for the newest outrage, or stick with your most recent “Orange man bad, he has no plan”.

Whether you march in the streets waving some other countries flag, or protest a King that doesn’t exist.
His plan is being executed and is working beautifully.

America will be the Leader in World Energy.

The truth is: You, Me, and the rest of the free world will benefit greatly from his plan for generations to come.

God bless the President and God bless the United States of America. 🇺🇸

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

Well it looks like the Pope’s interference in American politics is still top of the news cycle, so I want to repeat something.

The Democrat/Media Complex deliberately set this up so faithful Catholics would be forced to choose: Trump or your faith?

That’s a false dichotomy. The Pope is speaking on politics, offering his opinion only and he is not speaking ex cathedra.

You are not obligated to agree with the Pope in these matters where he speaks as an ordinary human.

If you are a Catholic, you can still support Trump, and disagree with what the Pope is saying about the Iran War and American politics, and still remain true to your Catholic faith.

Please do not fall for the either/or con job.