Bummer: 3 in 10 “Immigrants” Avoided Traveling Over The Holidays

By William Teach December 27, 2025 – 6:45 am

Aww, come on, those are rookie numbers. Need to get that up to like 6 in 10 by the holiday season 2026. But, it is a good start

Three in 10 immigrants avoided holiday travel due to immigration fears: Survey

Many immigrants in the U.S. are rethinking holiday travel amid concerns over immigration enforcement and visa scrutiny. A KFF–New York Times survey found that 27% avoided travel this year for fear their immigration status could draw attention.

30-year-old Texas-based IT professional Shikha S. had booked her tickets for traveling to India to meet her parents after a gap of two years. But in the past few weeks, with news circulating about H-1B professionals undergoing additional scrutiny as well as delayed appointments, Shikha had to rethink her plans.

Shikha’s dad, based in Mumbai, India, told the American Bazaar, “My daughter is on an H-1B visa, and even though she does not need an extension or stamping currently, we advised her to postpone her travel. There is too much noise around the possibility of increased vetting of Indian visa holders. And while we will miss her during the only time she can manage a few weeks off from her work, we do not want her to face any unnecessary issues.”

Too bad (BTW, this a poorly written article that repeats information several times

The nationally representative survey, based on responses from 1,805 immigrant adults, offers a detailed snapshot of immigrant life in the U.S. Respondents span a wide range of immigration statuses, racial and ethnic backgrounds, income levels, and political affiliations, helping reflect the diversity of immigrant communities.

The findings shed light on how shifting immigration policies are shaping daily life and travel behavior. The report found that 27% of immigrants said they or a family member avoided travel this year out of concern that someone’s immigration status could draw attention. Among immigrants who are likely undocumented, that share rises to nearly two-thirds (63%). Even immigrants with legal status reported similar concerns, including about one-third (32%) of lawful residents and nearly one-fifth (18%) of naturalized citizens.

I understand the illegals, but, why the rest? Are they doing illegal things? Protesting in favor of killing Jews and destroying Israel?

Specifically, 14% avoided seeking medical care, 14% skipped church or other community events, 13% stayed away from work, and 10% did not take their child to school or attend school-related activities. Overall, nearly three in 10 immigrants (30%) reported avoiding at least one of these activities since January. Among likely undocumented immigrants, that figure rises sharply to nearly three-quarters (74%).

They could do all those things in their home country.

(NPR) Immigrants who are detained by ICE often get deported out of state so quickly that their attorneys don’t have time to file petitions to keep them in the state where they were arrested.

The rest is a 3 minute listen. Good for a laugh.

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Democrats Now Defending Ultra-processed Food ‘Cause TDS/KDS

By William Teach December 26, 2025 – 3:00 pm

Democrats, and Republicans, have long had an issue with ultra-processed foods. The liberal nags and climate cultists have especially had issues, when they aren’t defending obesity. But, you know, in the Age Of Trump with RKF, Jr at HHs

The ultraprocessed food makers have an answer for RFK Jr.

Makers of ultraprocessed food have struggled all year to find a message to counter Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s, that they are poisoning the American people. They think they’ve hit on one: Kennedy’s plans are going to make already enormous grocery bills even bigger.

Food manufacturers are making that case in an attempt to stop a wave of state moves to regulate food ingredients backed by Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement. The companies think it’ll resonate, considering how affordability concerns dogged GOP candidates in this year’s elections and threaten to again in the higher-stakes 2026 midterms.

“The dynamic here is affordability,” said Sam Geduldig, managing partner at Republican lobbying firm CGCN, which represents Kraft Heinz, the Chicago-based maker of Oscar Mayer hot dogs and Kraft Mac & Cheese. “You have a MAHA movement that would like to accomplish one goal, and then you have an inflation, economic affordability issue on the other side that runs counter.”

See, MAHA is bad, because it could cause junk food prices to rise

At the same time, polls show Americans share Kennedy’s belief that consumption of ultraprocessed foods is making people sick. A survey from health research group KFF and the Washington Post in October found large majorities cite highly processed foods as a major threat to children’s health.

So, don’t feed them that food. Unfortunately, there is so much of it that it is hard to know

Calls for a federal standard that would preempt the states’ have prompted backlash from MAHA supporters and consumer advocates, who warn that leaving the decision to lawmakers in Washington, where the food lobby is powerful, will likely result in a weaker standard, or no change at all.

“A federal standard favors large multinational companies with a lot of money to lobby for less restrictive standards,” said Jennifer Galardi, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation focused on MAHA-aligned issues.

Well, there is the point of wondering whether the federal government, heck, state governments, should be regulating this stuff. If consumers want it, leave it alone. This certainly could be considered a case of too much government. Regardless, it is amusing to see Democrats and their pet media having fits over better food and making America healthy.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 26, 2025 – 1:00 pm

…

The blog of the day is Jihad Watch, with a post on the strikes on the Islamic State in Nigeria.

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Judge Says Hawaii’s Tax On Cruise Ships Is Great

By William Teach December 26, 2025 – 10:30 am

Skeptic Chris Martz tweets: “The government invents imaginary problems, then demands you pay more taxes to solve them. This scam needs to be shut down.”

Federal judge upholds Hawaii’s new climate change tax on cruise passengers

A federal judge’s ruling has cleared the way for Hawaii to include cruise ship passengers in a new tourist tax to help cope with climate change, a levy set to go into effect at the start of 2026.

U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake denied a request Tuesday that sought to stop officials from enforcing the new law on cruises.

In the nation’s first such levy to help cope with a warming planet, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed legislation in May that raises tax revenue to deal with eroding shorelines, wildfires and other climate problems. Officials estimate the tax will generate nearly $100 million annually.

The levy increases rates on hotel room and vacation rental stays but also imposes a new 11% tax on the gross fares paid by a cruise ship’s passengers, starting next year, prorated for the number of days the vessels are in Hawaii ports.

Honolulu’s tide gauge goes back to 1905, and shows just .51 feet of sea rise per 100 years. Exactly average for a Holocene century. It should be way more during a warm periods. Erosion is not ‘climate change’, they are islands. Wildfires are manmade problems

Cruise Lines International Association challenged the tax in a lawsuit, along with a Honolulu company that provides supplies and provisions to cruise ships and tour businesses out of Kauai and the Big Island that rely on cruise ship passengers. Among their arguments is that the new law violates the Constitution by taxing cruise ships for the privilege of entering Hawaii ports.

Plaintiff lawyers also argued that the tax would hurt tourism by making cruises more expensive. The lawsuit notes the law authorizes counties to collect an additional 3% surcharge, bringing the total to 14% of prorated fares.

Look, Hawaiians voted for the people who put this tax in place. Every experiment needs an experimental group, right. Let’s see what happens to the economy of Hawaii, see if the peasants enjoy the fallout. And, anyhow, if the doomsday cultists in Hawaii hate fossil fuels, why not ban cruise ships, gas powered boats, airplanes, and helicopters?

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Washington Post Wants You To Stop Using Wood In Your Fireplace

By William Teach December 26, 2025 – 7:15 am

The doomsday cult wants to restrict you from using natural gas fireplaces, wants to restrict natural gas heat for your homes, restrict coal energy, do away with nuclear, and make you dependent on unreliable wind and solar

From the screed

In 50 years, my father-in-law has never run out of wood.

Since building a wood-heated cabin in Maine in the early 1970s, he has started each summer collecting balsam, birch and maples that fell or died over the winter. That’s kept the wood pile stacked and the cold at bay.

Many fireplace lovers — myself once included — assume burning wood to stay warm and cozy is a climate win: trees regrow, suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and keep fossil fuels in the ground if forests are managed responsibly. My father-in-law’s forest in Maine is as vigorous as always.

But my intuition was wrong, according to hundreds of scientists who have examined the question. Thanks to the physics of combustion, wood emits 2.5 times as much CO? than natural gas and 30 percent more than coal when burned for heat, except in a few narrow circumstances. When it comes to nasty particulates lodging in our lungs and organs, it’s far worse than any fossil fuel.

Oh, piss off.

That doesn’t mean we should extinguish fireside nights. After all, fireplaces emit a tiny, tiny fraction of total emissions. But we can dramatically improve what we burn and where we source it.

Here’s how to burn better (and why electricity is still the hottest thing around).

Yeah, I’m done, these people are such nags.

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Unhinged Judge Tells ICE To Not Arrest Criminal Illegals At Courthouses

By William Teach December 26, 2025 – 7:00 am

Um, is there federal law that states this, or did the judge just make it up?

Federal judge blocks ICE from arresting immigrants who show up for court appointments in Northern California

A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Justice Department counterpart from “sweeping” civil arrests at immigration courthouses across Northern California, teeing up an appellate challenge to one of the Trump administration’s most controversial deportation tactics.

“This circumstance presents noncitizens in removal proceedings with a Hobson’s choice between two irreparable harms,” Judge P. Casey Pitts wrote in his Christmas Eve decision.

“First, they may appear in immigration court and face likely arrest and detention,” the judge wrote. “Alternatively, noncitizens may choose not to appear and instead to forego their opportunity to pursue their claims for asylum or other relief from removal.”

Wednesday’s decision blocks ICE and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review from lying in wait for asylum seekers and other noncitizens at routine hearings throughout the region — a move that would effectively restore pre-Trump prohibition on such arrests.

So, the judge was applying federal law, right?

The designation was first established decades ago under ICE’s predecessor agency, Immigration and Naturalization Services. ICE absorbed the prohibitions when the agency was formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Courts were added to the list under President Obama. The policy prohibiting most courthouse arrests was suspended during the first Trump administration and reinstated by President Biden.

In fact, there is no law that prohibits federal law enforcement from detaining anyone who violates federal law at any courthouse. Read the decision, and nowhere in there does Judge Howdy Doody cite federal law prohibiting the just exercise of federal law, in this case, picking up people who are in violate of federal immigration law.

“That widespread civil arrests at immigration courts could have a chilling effect on noncitizens’ attendance at removal proceedings (as common sense, the prior guidance, and the actual experience in immigration court since May 2025 make clear) and thereby undermine this central purpose is thus ‘an important aspect of the problem’ that ICE was required, but failed, to consider,” Pitts wrote.

Well, yeah, people who are breaking the law tend to avoid places where it is easy to arrest them. Anyhow, this only applies to Northern California and parts of central Ca. The Trump admin will appeal this.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 25, 2025 – 1:05 pm

…are Bad Weather clouds from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Victory Girls Blog, with a post on Christmas peace at the Battle of the Buldge.

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LOL: Climate Cult Preacher Working More On Going To The Courthouse

By William Teach December 25, 2025 – 8:00 am

Thou shalt have no other gods before me, nor bow down to any carved images

No faith in fossil fuels? Why some religious leaders are speaking out on climate change

Anglican Deacon Michael Van Dusen typically has plans for the Christmas season that do not involve a Toronto courthouse.

Perhaps he would be preparing his Christmas Day sermon or visiting with family. But on Tuesday, he stood beside a painted banner that read “no faith in fossil fuels” and spoke to a small crowd, including some of his parishioners, about what had brought him before a judge — and not of the divine variety.

For the first time in his life, the 80-year-old was arrested and charged with trespassing last year during a sit-in at a Royal Bank of Canada branch in protest of the bank’s fossil-fuel financing.

Canadian banks, he said, were choosing to ignore climate science to profit from the destruction of the planet, and he felt a moral obligation, affirmed by his baptismal covenant, to take a stand.

The golden calf of Climastrology

Van Dusen, a co-chair of the spiritually minded Toronto group Faith and Climate Action, is among the faith leaders who are speaking out, and even facing arrest, for their climate activism. At his court date Tuesday were a handful of other people in the group, including a 78-year-old Catholic sister who had been arrested at two recent bank sit-in demonstrations.

I could agree with them if they were standing up for real environmental concerns, but, perhaps this is the wrong time of the year, and they should focus on the birth of Jesus

Meanwhile, the share of Canadians who consider the environment to be a top issue has cratered in recent years, down to below 20 per cent from as high as 42 per cent in 2019, according to recent polling from the Angus Reid Institute. A strong majority of Canadians say they think climate change poses a serious or very serious threat to the planet, but the number has declined and is now about the same as it was a decade ago.

It’s easy to demand we Do Something about ‘climate change’ when things are going well, but, since the recovery from COVID still goes on, people do not feel the same. Anyway, it’s a very long piece, let’s skip to near the end

When his name was called, the prosecutor indicated the arresting officer had not produced their notes about what happened at the bank. Van Dusen, who stood silently before the judge, was free to go.

As he returned to the street, Van Dusen lingered and turned his thoughts to the future. Toronto would inevitably see more wildfire smoke, floods, and extreme heat in the coming months. So, too, would it see more direct action from him and his partners, he said.

I wonder if he will turn to doing his job as a preacher for Christmas, or just do cult stuff?

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Merry Christmas Pinup (sticky for day)

By William Teach December 25, 2025 – 7:58 am

Merry Christmas, all! A few others

Read More »

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Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

By William Teach December 25, 2025 – 7:00 am

Every Christmas, once everyone is up, Christmas greetings were made, hugs were exchanged, the presents were opened, and breakfast was being made, I would read this first in the paper (ye olde parental units get an actual paper, and they live in NJ). It is a Christmas classic that has always touched my soul. While some people outside of the Tri-State area have heard of it, rarely do papers outside of the NY-NJ-Conn area see it in print, and I always direct them to read it online. Especially since we keep getting news pieces as to whether or not we should be telling kids the truth about Santa (we shouldn’t. Let them be kids). I humbly bring it to you, and hope it touches you as much as it touches me:

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, If you see it in The Sun, it’s so. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.

If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

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