Month: February 2026

I’m sorry to report that Democrats in Congress are not having a good week.

Can you believe another government shutdown?  In the Senate, 51 Republicans and 1 Democrat voted to keep the DHS fully open and 47 Democrats voted to shut down DHS agencies which includes TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard. (Sixty votes, a super majority, are needed to pass this bill in the Senate.)

So, which Party wants to keep DHS functioning, and which one opposes it?

Democrats voted to shut down funding for TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard because they are mad at ICE.  ICE arrested and removed 4000 criminal immigrants out of Minnesota. ICE also found over 3000 “lost” immigrant children in Minnesota who were released without any follow up to keep track of them. Offsetting those 7000, two disobedient protesters got killed.

Meanwhile, ICE reached a deal with Mayor Frey. We know ICE is leaving Minneapolis. We don’t know how many of the 4000 immigrants that ICE arrested and deported will have to be returned. The mayor refers to these criminals as “neighbors.” I doubt if he wants any murderers or sex offenders living next door.

Democrats demanded that ICE agents wear body cameras. A day later they demanded they not wear cameras. They realized the cameras can identify “peaceful protesters” who are disobeying, spitting, punching, and driving over ICE agents. (Note that my comments are about Democrat leaders, not about immigrants.)

Democrats in Congress do not want to restrict voting to only people who can prove they are U.S. citizens. But ordinary Democrats and almost every other American want Photo IDs with proof of citizenship. It’s common horse sense.

The Democrat Party is not the same as Democrats of a hundred years ago. Or even fifty years ago. Upton Sinclair was a popular Socialist but he never got elected to any office. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana pushed some socialistic plans (Share the wealth!) but never got any adopted. But today, the mayor of New York City, the Virginia Governor, and several candidates are adopting or pushing socialistic policies.

Republicans have changed since Coolidge and Hoover, and we can discuss that at another time.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers: (on Socialism and Communism)

        “It’s absolutely impossible for any Socialist to say anything in a few words… If Socialists worked as much as they talked, they would be the most prosperous style of Government in the World.” (There’s Not a Bathing Suit in Russia, 1927)

         “Communism is like Prohibition. It’s a good idea but it won’t work.” (WA #254, Nov. 6, 1927)

       “The idea was that the fellow managing the bank was to get no more than the man that swept it out. Well, that talked well to a crowd, but (Russia’s) got no more of that than we do.” (Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 6, 1926)

(From Moscow), “You have heard of equality of the sexes in Russia. That’s not so. The women are doing all the work.” (DT #2516, Aug. 28, 1934)

(No Weekly Comments next week.)

With the kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother in Tucson, several commentators have mentioned previous kidnappings of prominent people. Will Rogers had a close connection with Charles Lindbergh’s baby. He also was friends with the grandfather of Patty Hearst.

Charles Lindbergh, Jr., 20 months old, was kidnapped on March 1, 1932 from the home of Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s mother in New Jersey. Here’s Will Rogers the next day, “Why don’t lynching parties widen their scope and take in kidnappings? They are ten times more premeditated and performed by more normal people… What a shock to everybody…Two weeks ago Sunday Mrs. Rogers and I spent the day with them. The whole family interest centered around him. He had his father’s blonde curly hair… His face is more of his mother’s. He has her eyes exactly…He crawled up in the back of the Morrow automobile that was going to take us home, and he howled like an Indian when they dragged him out. I wish we had taken him home with us and kept him.” (DT #1749, March 2, 1932)

Five days later, “Remember it was (Lindbergh’s) judgement that first suggested ‘get the baby back at any cost,’ and then start worrying what the punishment would be if they caught ‘em.” (DT #1753, March 7, 1932)

Will wrote in a Weekly Article, “This young Bill Hearst, Jr. is a mighty promising young fellow, and looks like he is going to pick up W. R.’s [William Randolph Hearst] trail and keep the ink smearing over half the pulp wood of Canada. Then when he says, ‘The Lindbergh baby has been kidnapped,’ well, that put a different complexion on life… It was then five-thirty in the morning in New York, and he said they had been up all night working on the case. He said that [Arthur] Brisbane wanted him to get me, that I was the last newspaper man to have seen the child… So I told him what little I knew over the phone, which didn’t take me long. It’s as I have told you in my little daily blurb, we had spent the day out there.” (WA #482, March 20, 1932)

The body of the Lindbergh baby was found May 12, after a $50,000 ransom had been paid. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried and convicted in 1935 and executed by electric chair in 1936. During that trial Will and Betty had the Lindbergh’s stay at their Pacific Palisades ranch home where they could escape from the media.

Back to the Hearst family… “Up here at Mr. Hearst’s ranch [at San Simeon, CA]… If you have missed anybody from any part of the United States and can’t find ‘em, they are guests of this ranch.” (DT #1746, Feb. 28, 1932) (When Will was invited to a huge event, he spent the afternoon on horseback with the ranch foreman checking on the Hereford cattle instead of hobnobbing with other guests.)

Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. In a weird turn of events, she was brainwashed and coerced and joined her captors in robbing a San Francisco bank. She served almost 2 years in prison and was fully pardoned by President Clinton.

Now, the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, has dominated the News all week. Officials are not sure the untraceable messages about her, one demanding $6,000,000 in Bitcoin by tomorrow, are even from the person’s who took her from her house in the middle of the night. There is no proof she is still alive. Pure agony for Savannah Guthrie of NBC News, and her brother and sister.

I’ll make one comment about the “ransom demands.” The person who sent the messages knows a lot about how to hide his identity and receive money in an untraceable way. But he needs to be reminded that our FBI and CIA just found and brought to Washington a man who helped murder four Americans at Benghazi, Libya, 14 years ago.

While we join the family in praying for Nancy Guthrie’s return home, we are confident the perpetrators will be caught. They should meet the same fate as Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

In the Super Bowl tonight, the Seattle Seahawks defense dominated the New England Patriots even more than the final score indicated, 29-13.

Are there words you are tired of hearing? They’re repeated over and over, non-stop. Your list may be different than mine, and that’s ok. In America we’re allowed to have our own opinions, in fact it’s encouraged.

Here are mine, based on newscasts the last few months: Nazi. Gestapo. Fascist. Impeachment. Sanctuary. Shutdown.

Maybe the words you dislike hearing are: Communist. Socialist. ICE. MAGA. Trump.

Several weeks ago I pleaded with Democrats to stop referring to our law enforcement officers as Gestapo and Nazis. They are showing complete ignorance of Hitler’s “officers” who captured and killed 6,000,000 people who were living in their own country, obeying the laws. Mussolini in Italy is the most prominent Fascist known to us old folks. He joined with Hitler in World War II.

Impeachment. For Democrats in Congress, it’s “who do we want to impeach this month?” Currently it’s the Secretary of Homeland Security. Kristi Noem’s job is to keep the homeland secure. Part of that job is to stop illegal immigration and kick out ones who previously sneaked in.

Suppose you hire a maid. After some time, you notice your house is overrun with mice, cockroaches, and bedbugs. She also brought in a dozen parakeets, 20 goldfish and a couple of cute puppies. She leaves and is replaced by another maid who quickly cleans house. No more mice, cockroaches or bedbugs. Half the parakeets fly away, some goldfish die, and one puppy finds a new home.

Which maid do you prefer? Are you mad at the new maid because she lost some parakeets and goldfish, and one of your precious puppies?

A few readers have suggested Will Rogers would have a more compassionate view, accepting everyone who desires to cross our border. Later this week I’ll share a story that indicates the opposite view. Here’s a hint: The Rogers family lost a 60,000-acre ranch as a result of illegal immigration that was supported by the federal government.

And another Shutdown. Yes, it’s a “partial” Shutdown, only the Department of Homeland Security. Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer wants to keep criminal illegal aliens free and roaming the streets, especially the ones in Minnesota. Sanctuary is one of his favorite words. If Mr. Schumer shuts down DHS, that includes TSA at our airports, the Coast Guard, Cybersecurity, FEMA, Border Patrol and Secret Service protection for the President. Perhaps fortunately, DHS may be allowed to continue uninhibited for two more weeks.

The main sticking point in Minnesota boils down to this: Tom Homan will remove about 90% of his ICE agents if the local police will turn over 1500 jailed illegal aliens to ICE instead of releasing them into the neighborhood. But Gov. Walz not only rejects that idea, but insists that Homan take out 100% of ICE agents, plus return to Minneapolis 3000 of the criminal illegal aliens already removed and deported.

To anyone with common horse sense, that Walz demand seems wacky. But thousands of the protesters agree with him and Mayor Frey. They want their next-door neighbor returned, even if he is a child molester who killed a young boy several years ago.

That’s all from me on illegal immigration. There will be no more mentions, pro or con, in Weekly Comments. You folks battle it out and live with the result.

Speaking of results… after one month in office the new mayor of New York City has already run out of other people’s money. He is setting up a Go Fund Me account that only millionaires are encouraged to give to.

Back to the topic at the top. I’m ready to listen as you expound on the words you are tired of hearing.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

        “Right here in Memphis today over twenty-five policemen went to a hospital and volunteered to give blood transfusions to a kid that was near death. I know that I am out of order in speaking of the good things that cops do, but I am one of the old-fashioned people who believe if somebody pounced on me, I could holler for one and he would come and help me out without me having to pay him anything.” (DT #497, Feb. 29, 1929)