TO MY CREDIT, IF THAT’S THE RIGHT WORD, I DID MAKE IT MORE THAN HALFWAY THROUGH THE FIRST EPISODE: I (Almost) Watched Starfleet Academy So You Don’t Have To. “Somewhere, Worf sheds a silent and very warrior-like tear.”

UPDATE (From Ed): Now it all makes sense:

Wait a minute… pic.twitter.com/57NtaFPIUu

— Jon Del Arroz | Pop Culture & Gaming 🎮 (@jondelarroz) January 16, 2026

WE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SELL SALUTE YOU: Lawmaker Introduces ‘Common Sense’ Bill to Eliminate Capital Gains Taxes on Home Sales.

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: How Not to Become a TikTok Sensation. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn the proper caliber for shooting up an Uber vehicle, how not to become a TikTok star, and why Wyoming really is the Cowboy State.”

IT’S A WORK IN PROGRESS: Abrams M1E3 Tank Prototype Unveiled (Sort Of).

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Feckless Gavin Admits Calling ICE Agents ‘Terrorists’ Is ‘Unfair’, but… “Someday, voters on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ will choose governors who do more than raise taxes, sign laws that compromise the First Amendment, prioritize plants over people, and lie about giving away your money to illegal aliens. Until then, there’s Feckless Gavin Newsom, the unfortunately-named Tina Kotek, and Tax Man Bob Ferguson.”

THE SMART CROWD IS SLAMMING TRUMP TODAY FOR DRIVING CANADA TOWARD BEIJING, BUT OTTAWA HAS LEANED HARDER IN THAT DIRECTION FOR SEVERAL YEARS:

Canada will never be America's 51st state, because they're already China's 24th Province. https://t.co/GF4uSwnxur pic.twitter.com/Qvc1FJXBUB

— Skscartoon (@skscartoon) January 16, 2026

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY…:

Al Capone didnt like it when federal agents came to his city either.

— unseen1 (@unseen1_unseen) January 15, 2026

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Oglala Sioux Chief Lied About ICE Locking up Tribe Members.

EXERCISE YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS: ATF Data Shows The Number of Guns in Americans’ Hands Now Tops Half a Billion.

The estimated total number of firearms in civilian possession from 1990–2023 is 506.1 million, according to data in reports such as ATF Firearms Commerce in the United States, ATF AFMER and Congressional Research Service and including the collective ATF AFMER reports up to the 2023 edition.

Total domestic firearm production reported in the 2023 AFMER was 8,466,729 – a decrease of 15.4 percent from 2022 reported figures.

In other words, Presidentish Joe Biden was the greatest gun salesman in American history.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN THE ATLANTIC WAS A SERIOUS PUBLICATION: Who Does The Atlantic Blame for Antisemitism? Who Else: MAGA’s Jews.

That makes me feel pretty old.

THEY OUT-PERFORMED OUR SO-CALLED BEST AND BRIGHTEST:

At one level, one has to admire the entrepreneurial spirit of the Somali scammers — with just a few Quality Learing Centers, they built an industrial scale fraud operation nearly on par with USAID, a feat which took our best educated deep staters decades to do … https://t.co/dxxGGh27GT

— DOGE State (@DOGE_STATE) January 16, 2026

ITS FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN: Two scammers plead guilty to $68M Brooklyn adult day care fraud scheme.

Two Brooklyn scammers pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding a whopping $68 million from the state’s controversial Medicaid home care program by paying health care kickbacks for services they didn’t provide at three Big Apple businesses.

Manal Wasef and Elaine Antao, both 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud for referring Medicaid recipients to two Brooklyn social adult day cares and a home health company in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes, the US Department of Justice announced on Thursday.

Between October 2017 and July 2024, Wasef and Antao worked as marketers and recruiters for Happy Family Social Adult Day Care Center Inc. and Family Social Adult Day Care Center Inc., as well as Responsible Care Staffing Inc., a home health care fiscal intermediary, according to court documents.

The pair paid illegal kickbacks and bribes to the Medicaid recipients for social adult day care services and home health care services at the locales — billing them to Medicaid despite never providing them, prosecutors said.

Wasef and Antao also used multiple business entities to launder the fraud proceeds and generate cash for paying the kickbacks and bribes.

More: “The pair ripped off the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), which allows those with minimal healthcare experience to care for their elderly or disabled relatives and friends, The Post previously revealed.”

Why, it’s almost as though the “controversial” program was designed as a kickback- and bribe-generation machine.

REAL MONEY: Taiwan will invest $250 billion in U.S. chipmaking under new trade deal. “The announcement added that future tariffs under the Section 232 framework will have some exceptions for companies that are building chips in the U.S. Taiwanese companies constructing new U.S. chip fabs — such as TSMC — will be able to import up to 2.5 times the amount of capacity they are building while the factories are under construction, without paying tariffs under the framework.”

THIS ALMOST SOUNDS LIKE THE START OF A JOKE: Five Ophthalmologists Caught in Lucrative Medicare Fraud.

“JOURNALISTS AT TMZ” ASSUMES A FACT NOT IN EVIDENCE:

Online users also discovered that a Florida Democrat running for Congress bought this domain and made it redirect to DHS so that he could feed this story to journalists at TMZ who are too stupid to do a whois domain lookuphttps://t.co/N1nbRFL8Y3

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) January 16, 2026

CHANGE: House Sharia Free America Caucus adds two dozen members in less than one month.

The House Sharia Free America Caucus said Thursday that it has expanded to include another two dozen members so far, bringing its total number of members to 26 since its inception last month.

Texas GOP Reps. Chip Roy and Keith Self launched the caucus on Dec. 18, 2025, which was created to “counter the alarming rise of Sharia Law in the United States,” claiming that it was not “compatible” with the U.S. Constitution.

The new lawmakers include House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Florida GOP Reps. Byron Donalds, Randy Fine and Cory Mills, and Arizona GOP Rep. Andy Biggs. The new members hail from a total of 17 states.

Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.

WHEN SECURITY THEATER MEETS PIRATES OF THE MINNEAPOLIS:

I’m frantically chugging a 24oz bottle of water my kids forgot they had in their backpack in the TSA line and Somalis are walking through with $700 million in cash.

Insane.

— C3 (@C_3C_3) January 16, 2026

NOTE: Sorry about the broken X embeds, but X and Grok are both down at the moment. No clue when service might be restored.

DESTROY IS WHAT COMMIES DO: Mamdani’s Rent Czar Wants to Destroy the Private Housing Market.

MAYBE TRUMP SHOULD PREDATE BLANKET PARDONS AND TELL THEM TO GET STUFFED:

Enforcing duly-enacted immigration laws is not illegitimate, third world stuff. But vowing to prosecute vast swaths of your political enemies as soon as you’re back in power is. https://t.co/7M6EGimTJe

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 16, 2026

Plus this from Will Chamberlain:

Coming up with same vague bullshit non -crime and then threatening to prosecute the entire administration with it?

What if we just arrested you instead – for seditious conspiracy? Thats at least a real crime

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) January 16, 2026

ABOUT THAT RECORD CHINESE TRADE SURPLUS: It might be entirely BS.

After customs announced the “historic surplus,” Chinese media began reporting widespread export fraud across multiple provinces. Shell companies were created solely to purchase fake export data from customs brokers. These fake numbers were then used to claim local government export subsidies.

Even worse?

Local governments weren’t just tolerating this — they were encouraging it.

Why?

Because Beijing demanded that provinces “stabilize exports” at all costs. And when real exports slowed under tariffs, the only way to hit targets was to manufacture numbers.

In many regions, the incentives were explicit: export $1 → get ¥0.03 in subsidies.

Export $100 million → collect ¥3 million. No real goods required.

More:

According to basic economics, a $1.2 trillion trade surplus means $1.2 trillion in foreign currency flowing into China. That money should appear somewhere:

• Central bank reserves
• Commercial bank FX deposits
• Higher imports
• Rising overseas investment
• Inflationary pressure

Instead, China saw:

• Deflation
• Weak consumption
• Stagnant imports
• No surge in FX reserves

In fact, official central bank data shows that foreign currency deposits rose by only ~$200 billion — nowhere near $1.2 trillion.

So where did the money go?

The uncomfortable answer: it never existed.

Full report on X.

China’s official import/export figures have been largely reliable (grading on the Communist curve, of course), but Grok had this to add: “The official Chinese data reports a record $1.19T trade surplus for 2025, with exports up 5.5% despite a ~19% drop to the US. However, analysts note discrepancies: FX reserves rose only ~$156B, not matching the surplus, possibly due to outflows. Reports from Chinese media and investigations reveal export data fraud via shell companies to claim subsidies, inflating figures. While not proven widespread, this raises questions about accuracy. Sources: Reuters, SAFE, SCMP.”

Stay tuned.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Aging Melba Toast Mobs Are Further Proof of Dems’ Irrelevance. “The American left is absolutely polluted with septuagenarian and octogenarian hippies who are disgruntled that all of their Ravi Shankar dreams from the 1960s didn’t come true. I live in a neighborhood full of them. They’re a prime source of shrieking bodies for Dem protests, which is becoming ever more important for our friends on the other side of the aisle.”

IRAN PROTESTS: Money – and the Lack of It – Can Change Everything.

What we haven’t covered is ‘the money’ and the bank crisis that many are saying precipitated this wholesale eruption in the streets to begin with. I thought I’d try to give you all a little of the background on that since we seem to be in somewhat of a news lull.

At one time, there was a bank in Iran called Ayandeh Bank. It was run by a man named Ali Ansari, a ‘well-connected’ Iranian businessman from one of the richest families in the country. Ansari had taken two state banks and merged them with a bank he already owned to form the new Ayandeh Bank. So, this is the first issue – this ‘new’ financial institution is run by nothing but cosy regime insiders.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s report, this Ayandeh Bank was a flashy self-lender and spender, and had plenty of help staying afloat using loans from the central state bank.

All good pyramid schemes, whether built on your own money or someone else’s, come to an end, and such was the case with Ayandeh Bank.

When the money runs out, a regime learns for sure who is committed to the cause and who was just paid off. If there’s a case where it wasn’t enough for the former and too many of the latter, I haven’t heard of it.

ICYMI, IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: One Thousand, Four Hundred, and Eighteen Days “After 1,418 days of fighting, Putin’s ever-changing set of generals has conquered an area a little smaller than South Carolina. Zhukov might have accomplished that on a Tuesday.”

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Japan, Philippines sign new defence pacts amid surging China tensions.

The Philippines and Japan signed two defence pacts Thursday, including a deal allowing their forces to exchange supplies and services, the latest in a series of agreements aimed at countering China’s regional assertiveness.

Tokyo and Manila have significantly deepened military ties in recent years, joining a security partnership with Washington, and Japan supplying patrol boats and radio gear to the Philippines.

The Philippines and China have engaged in frequent clashes in the contested South China Sea, which Beijing claims in nearly its entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

If Beijing doesn’t like old enemies allying against them, maybe they should try not being such asshoe.