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insider corruption international affairs media and media people

Goofy Wig and All

James O'keefe, WEF, World Economic Forum, chemtrails, conspiracy

One of P.J. O’Rourke’s better books is Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut. My purpose in mentioning it is not to praise it but merely to adapt it for the James O’Keefe story, where middle age and guile and a bad haircut beat Creepiness and Guilt. 

“Disguised and undercover,” explains the O’Keefe Media Group article, “James O’Keefe embeds inside the World Economic Forum, slipping past armed security and exclusive guest lists to capture what the global climate elite say when they think no one is listening.” 

The bad haircut? A goofy blond wig that Mr. O’Keefe (1984– ) donned to fool the European bigwigs (er, elites). He looked like Andy Warhol as a special guest on “Sprockets.”

What did this subterfuge accomplish? “Posing as an employee of a fictional climate engineering firm, O’Keefe and the OMG team are welcomed into late-night events, luxury hotels, and mountaintop forums where climate financiers openly discuss carbon taxes, geoengineering, and weather modification, commonly referred to as ‘chemtrails.’”

Yes, chemtrails!

I’ve been programmed to chuckle right now, hence that exclamation point.

Speaking of programmed — Grok gave me plenty of excuses to keep on chuckling. It also gave me the wrong URL for the O’Keefe Media Group (O’Keefe’s successor to Project Veritas) and words of wisdom like this: “If O’Keefe’s video shows attendees discussing it casually, it might be speculative chit-chat rather than official policy.”

One thing Grok couldn’t understand is the “optics.” O’Keefe is not wrong to note that some of the WEFers cheerleading for BlackRock do indeed “look like Bond villains.” A conference where people enthuse about seeding the upper atmosphere with chemicals to cool off the planet? That should be the premise of the next James Bond flick.

Has weather modification actually been going on . . . for decades? 

I don’t know. But if these folks are talking about climate geo-engineering, what wouldn’t they do?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Grace Brewster Hopper

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

An old saw often repeated by Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Hopper, computer scientist.
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Today

Oil’s Well That Ends Well

On January 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s’ oil glut.

The deregulatory move had been begun by Democrats in Congress, but had been placed on a gradual schedule, and the whole effort clouded with President Jimmy Carter’s talk of taxing the “windfall profits” that would immediately result from lifting the regulations.

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Accountability crime and punishment public opinion

ICE Melt in Minnesota

ICE, Minnesota, shooting, protest, riot, violence

Americans are strongly united against people being gunned down on our streets by federal agents. 

Saturday, the victim was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse working at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. Pretti was an American citizen with a conceal-carry permit. Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino quickly informed the public: “During this operation, an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol agents with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots.

“The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID,” added Bovino. “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Had this farfetched narrative been even close to true, maybe we could partly reconcile the killing we witness relentlessly in cellphone videos. I like to reserve judgment until all the facts are in, but to me the videos don’t implicate Pretti as a “terrorist” in the slightest and leave little doubt that, in law enforcement lingo, this was not at all a “good shoot,” i.e. a justified use of deadly force.

Yesterday, President Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he had a “very good telephone conversation” with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. “The president agreed the present situation can’t continue,” offered Frey.

This change is driven democratically: Republicans at the White House, in Congress and across the country know the voters will crush them if this continues through the fall elections. 

Now if voters can only unite on reform beyond merely stopping the shooting. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), p. 217.

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Today

American Conscription Ends

On January 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force.

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies partisanship

Not This King?

imperial presidency, power, executive branch, Kings

“This is why more Americans today identify as an independent than a Republican or a Democrat for the first time in American history,” argued Sarah Isgur during a panel discussion on ABC’s This Week program, the day after another fatal shooting by ICE agents in Minnesota. “Because no one actually believes that either side believes what they’re saying.”

Isgur, a writer and podcaster for The Dispatch, has worked on both Democratic (2016) and Republican (2012) presidential campaigns and even landed a job at the Department of Justice during President Trump’s first term, only later to be fired. 

“Look, honestly,” Isgur continued, “if Barack Obama’s federal officers had killed a member of the Tea Party, who had shown up, who had a concealed-carry permit, who was disarmed before he was shot, that [the protester was armed] would not be what the Right is saying.”

She went on: “And, frankly, the left was all for big executive power, as long as it was Joe Biden. They’re not ‘no kings.’ They just don’t like this king.”

Throughout President Donald Trump’s first term, I recall shouts that he had overstepped his authority under the law only to discover, oftentimes, that the power he was wielding had been bestowed upon our president by a feckless Congress. What I found even more disconcerting was that at no time did those complaining seek to limit these excessive presidential powers.

It appears, as Sarah Isgur suggested, that their concern was not with an imperial presidency, only with this current person as that imperial president.

“If you actually want to do something about the problems, both sides need to actually say, presidents shouldn’t have this power,” Isgur explained. “The federal government shouldn’t have this power.”

Wise government depends on limiting power . . . no matter who is president.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Richard Whately

[T]here is a proverbial maxim which bears witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an observant bystander over those actually engaged in any transaction. “The looker-on often sees more of the game than the players.” Now the looker-on is precisely (in Greek θεωρòς) the theorist.

When then you find any one contrasting, in this and in other subjects, what he calls experience, with theory, you will usually perceive on attentive examination, that he is in reality comparing the results of a confined, with that of a wider, experience; — a more imperfect and crude theory, with one more cautiously framed, and based on a more copious induction.

Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.

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Today

Boris!

On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.

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Update

How Dead Is Machiavelli?

Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, delivered a special address at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos on January 21, 2026:

President Milei began by proclaiming that “Machiavelli is dead,” and in general championed free-enterprise capitalism as not only the most productive economic system but also the only morally just one. He structured his speech around themes of justice, efficiency, and ethics, arguing that capitalism aligns with natural law, Judeo-Christian values, Greek philosophy, and Roman law. Milei drew on economists like Adam Smith, Murray Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, Israel Kirzner, Hans-Herman Hoppe and Jesús Huerta de Soto to support his points, emphasizing that free markets foster entrepreneurial creativity, dynamic efficiency through innovation and coordination, and increasing returns without government intervention. He rejected the idea of market failures justifying regulation, claiming interventions violate property rights and the non-aggression principle, leading to lower growth and injustice.

He also referenced the Bible, according to The Jerusalem Post, in an article titled “Milei says Bible shows ‘where woke-ism leads’ in Davos, urges return to Judeo-Christian roots”:

In the closing section of his speech, Milei referenced Moses’s confrontation with Pharaoh and the final three plagues described in Parshat Bo: locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn.

The Argentinian President cast Pharaoh as “the symbol of the oppressive power of the state,” and argued that the sequence of plagues illustrated how societies slide from economic ruin to moral confusion and, ultimately, collapse when they deny freedom.

In comparison, U.S. President Donald Trump boasted about America’s “fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in history” under his second term, citing 5.4% Q4 growth, core inflation at 1.6%, 52 stock market highs adding $9 trillion in value, over $18 trillion in secured investments, and lifting 1.2 million off food stamps. He attributed this to policies like massive tax cuts (no taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security for seniors; 100% expensing), slashing regulations at a 129:1 ratio, firing 270,000 federal bureaucrats, cutting the deficit by 27%, and imposing tariffs that reduced the trade deficit by 77% without inflation. Trump criticized Biden-era “stagflation” and Europe’s “Green New Scam” as a hoax, praising U.S. record energy production (oil, gas, nuclear) that dropped gasoline below $2.50 per gallon and positioned America to lead in AI.

Both leaders’ appearances underscored pro-capitalist stances, with Milei hailing Trump’s U.S. as a “beacon of light,” echoing Trump’s MAGA with “Make Argentina Great Again” rhetoric, aligning on deregulation, free markets, and socialism critiques. But Milei’s speech was, on the whole, an example of politic ideological libertarianism, while Trump’s was far more about deal-making and nationalism.