[MAIL] Self-drive removals firm U-Haul released an eye-catching study showing that more people are fleeing California than any other American state.
For the sixth year in a row, the Golden State was at the rock bottom of the moving company's Growth Index survey.
The report comes after another year of devastating natural disasters, continuous crime, extreme woke politics and widespread homelessness.
Despite having the most people leave the state, the one consolation for California was that it had a smaller number of movers leave in 2025 than in 2024.
Four other left-leaning states joined California to fill out the bottom five spots of U-Haul's growth index: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.
Topping the list was Texas, which has been ranked the highest-growth state by U-Haul for the seventh time in 10 years.
Of the top five states, four have Republican governors. Blue-to-red state migration remains a discernible trend, according to the survey.
However, those leaving Governor Gavin Newsom's state tend to stay close, choosing locations such as Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Texas, and Arizona.
#2
And yet Democrats continue to claim the need for more affordable housing. They say we need a million more affordable housing units. Where will all these people come from? Are they grownups who've been living with their parents? A million more affordable housing units might sound good to people like that but it's a lie. Those kids would be better off if they would bug out of this state. All that so-called affordable housing won't be affordable. It never is. It never has been as long as I can remember and that's more decades than I care to specify. Affordable housing has always been a hoax, a scam perpetrated by the likes of Gavin Newsom, his developer buddies and all the crooks who have gone before them. They want to turn this state into a Third World socialist slum. If I could convince Mrs. Uluque to leave, I would.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/08/2026 12:32 Comments ||
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#3
No, I would rather them stay where they are. EVERY person I have come across from Cali , New York, New Jersey etc. seem to bring their same way of thinking with them, especially when no one asked for their fucking opinion. Goes with politics all the way down to the job level. Shut the fuck up and stay were you are.
Posted by: chris ||
01/08/2026 21:13 Comments ||
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[Townhall] Let’s start our 2026 by imagining the worst-case scenario — that Donald Trump was somehow beaten by that drunken trollop in 2024. Where would we be right now? Well, we’d be in a very different country, and many of us might very well be in cells. You’ve got a lot of black-pilling from people on our side that not enough people have been arrested, or the administration is moving too slowly on their particular obsession, or that everything isn’t perfect, which means everything is wrong. There’s some truth to that, because we can always do better, but we cannot forget that divine Providence has smiled upon us. We didn’t dodge a bullet. We dodged an 18-inch shell from the USS Kamala.
We got so damn lucky, and even as we continue to press the Republicans to do more, more, more, and more faster, faster, faster, and faster, we should never forget that. Skipping down to the conclusion:
The good Lord apparently looks after drunks and Americans, because the election of Donald Trump saved our country as we know it. Now, don’t quit complaining and whining. Being loud and annoying is important. You’ve got to keep the pressure on, because there are a lot of Republicans who would be happy to glide along until that mean Donald Trump goes away and they can get back to the business of walking around like a bunch of puffed-up popinjays being addressed as "Congressman" and "Senator" instead of actually having to do things and endure the Washington Post being mean to them. Never stop demanding more. Never quit pointing out bad ideas and the slow-walking of important reforms. Just understand the reality of the situation, that everything that we want can’t happen all at once. We’ve got three more glorious years to go, and you should be on your knees thanking God for it.
#3
Any president has the power to really screw you over and Kamala would have. I'm actually too disturbed by the very idea to think it through the way Kurt has.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/08/2026 12:41 Comments ||
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The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was barely a month old when the president ran a successful one-hour military operation, with no American casualties, that captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
Most of the responses thus far have been one-dimensional, for better or worse: “Trump grabbed a wanted narcoterrorist cartel leader to stand trial.” “He’s starting another war for oil to help his capitalist cronies.” “He’s getting us into another war of choice.” “He’s betrayed his base and done a regime change as a tool of the (insert hidden hand here).” These arguments are simple and easy to understand. They range from the politically and legally tidy to stale anti-imperialist Marxism and paranoid isolationism, which often sound like the same thing, to the ragebait trolling of the gullible. But they all fail to understand the full gravity of the administration’s accomplishment in Venezuela.
In capturing Maduro, Trump has removed a key pillar that, if played wisely, could compromise the web of entangling alliances of many of our most dangerous adversaries.
Operation Absolute Resolve, paralleling the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, just might have forestalled Communist China’s expected invasion of Taiwan. The synchronicity is perfect. Maduro joins Iran’s mullahs in a pas de deux to the bottom, while the Cuban Communist regime, constantly suckling at a wealthy patron’s teat for 65 years, now faces a fatal weaning.
Ordinarily, these would be historic wins for Trump and the United States. And indeed they are. However, this trifecta of victories is merely a prelude to greater potential wins ahead.
Skipping down:
DRINKING THEIR MILKSHAKE
The administration’s move to take Maduro now allows Trump to exert unanticipated leverage over both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. CCP war planners almost certainly never thought the U.S. would depose Maduro. Xi is unlikely to invade Taiwan under these new conditions, and Trump’s dominance over China’s oil supply can dent Xi’s seeming invincibility as party leader and the patron of the Global South, which is already bleeding.
Beijing buys as much oil as it can that is not subject to American pressure—oil that cannot be sold just anywhere because it is sanctioned, so it’s unloaded at a heavy discount.
Russia is China’s largest foreign oil supplier. China has also been buying between 60% and 90% of Venezuela’s heavy crude and 85% and 90% of Iran’s light crude. This sanctioned oil is cheap twice over for Beijing. First, China gets it at a pirate discount, and second, it generally pays not in American petrodollars but in printable Chinese yuan. Depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China’s present oil imports. (Arab countries responsive to U.S. concerns provide roughly another 40%.) With pro-American governments expected to run Venezuela and Iran soon, Trump will be able to regulate a good 70% of Communist China’s present-day oil needs. Russia, by contrast, supplies about 18-20% of China’s oil imports.
The expected quick recovery of Iranian oil production, along with the slower, long-term recovery of Venezuela’s decrepit oil infrastructure atop the world’s largest reserves, will keep oil prices down. That’s good for America and terrible for Russia.
That also means the U.S. will need to exert less pressure in the Indo-Pacific going forward, which is a net benefit to American NATO commitments in Europe. The United States might even be able to reduce its NATO expenditures further than planned, as most NATO countries spend more on their own defense—a win from Trump’s first term. The reason for this is that the loss of discounted, sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil will give China more leverage to chisel Russia for even steeper discounts.
A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
The aftermath of the regime change in Venezuela (and soon in Iran) is unlikely to topple Xi Jinping, the party boss. But a serious disruption to the CCP’s cheap oil flows would undercut Xi’s dominant narrative. It would raise his political risks, erode his room for maneuvering, and expose his weaknesses at home and abroad. All of this would diminish his standing even further if oil instability provoked an economic shock or visible failure in governance. For example, a sudden jolt to the operation of China’s National Oil Companies (NOC) trading or refining would raise energy costs, slow industry, or trigger inflation.
And skipping again:
GOODBYE, CCP?
The mere specter of Trump and his successors’ ability to regulate Chinese oil imports will not only likely delay a near-inevitable invasion of Taiwan, and the CCP’s seizure of Taiwan’s massive semiconductor industry, but it will also set back Xi’s plans for other advancements, including building a blue-water navy to project power anywhere in the world and dominating artificial intelligence.
Such slowdowns or reversals could mean an end to Xi Jinping’s rule, an end to Communist Party rule in China, and an end to the Chinese Communist Party itself, though Trump has publicly given zero indication of any such intent. Diplomats and markets don’t like to think this way, but they didn’t like Reagan’s loyalists’ idea against the Soviets, either, and those diplomats and markets were wrong.
The loss of Venezuela and, ultimately, the Cuba domino, on top of Trump’s decisive move early in 2025 to ensure American interests in the Panama Canal, will deprive the CCP of any hope of establishing naval port access in the Caribbean.
This is all, of course, consistent with the powerful restraint philosophy of the Monroe Doctrine, which aimed to protect the independence of new American republics from European empires. The Trump Corollary subtly broadened the Monroe Doctrine to exclude the Chinese Communist empire. It merits mention here that the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative did not encroach into the Western Hemisphere until 2013, the year the Obama Administration formally renounced the Monroe Doctrine.
#1
I'm just a bit tired of the idea that a country behaves badly because it's ruled by an evil dictator. And, once the dictator is removed, everything will go smoothly - because People are intrinsically good.
#4
I'm not sure if this will deter Xi or push him into something stupid. Remember, when Roosevelt tried to stop the flow of oil to Japan, they attacted Pearl Harbor.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/08/2026 12:47 Comments ||
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#5
..cause they only think lineally. They could have set up numerous shell companies in South America to purchase oil and reship it home.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Denis Davydov and Andrey Khrustalev
[REGNUM] Ukrainian activists are vying with each other to convince everyone that yesterday, January 6, "Orthodox Christians celebrated the Epiphany"—the imposition of a new holiday calendar is in full swing.
And the hysteria with which collective Lviv defends the truth of Ukrainian traditions and ties with the "civilized world" becomes doubly ridiculous when you remember that in the 16th century, there was an identical hysterical campaign. Only to avoid celebrating Christmas (and other holidays) "with all of Europe."
Moreover, in Lviv, things practically reached the point of an uprising, when the Polish authorities began to forcibly throw out Ruthenians who refused to obey from churches and put pressure on the bourgeoisie, threatening them with the loss of the right to engage in professional activities.
The conflict was resolved in the royal court, with a decree in 1585 that they would never again create any obstacles to each other's celebrations, services, rituals, or the ringing of bells "until the consent of the patriarchs of the Greek rite with their father, the Pope."
The compromise was confirmed by another letter from the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stefan Batory.
And in 2023, everyone suddenly learned that celebrating Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar is an "ancient Ukrainian tradition," which the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which had adhered to the Julian calendar since its founding in 1596, immediately adopted.
And now Lvov is once again running around on the ceiling, forbidding everyone to celebrate according to the old calendar. Because it's "Moscow-style," politically irresponsible, and must be corrected by force, even to the point of throwing Orthodox Christians out of churches.
Which simply proves that there is no talk of any traditions in all this activism – the process of hysteria is completely self-sufficient.
THE ABOMINABLE CALENDAR
In the 1888/89 academic year, Zygmunt Lisiewicz (the future famous lawyer) a student of the philosophy department of Lviv University prepared an essay for a history seminar.
The work “The Introduction of the New Calendar in Lviv” discusses the events of 1582 and the following years, when the innovation of Pope Gregory XIII, who approved the transition to a new, more accurate (“Gregorian”) calendar, became a complex internal political problem in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Almost led to an uprising.
And at the center of events was Lviv, home to Orthodox Armenians and Ruthenians—the word "Ukrainians" didn't exist at the time, nor did nationalities in general: self-identification was based on religious affiliation.
In the autumn of that year, King Stephen issued a decree that October 5th would be moved forward ten days, and thus on October 15th, the day of St. Hedwig, the introduction of the new calendar was solemnly celebrated in Lviv.
However, the aforementioned communities demonstratively distanced themselves from the celebrations. The "schismatics," like the Catholics, knew how to listen to their clergy, who forbade them to accept the reformed calendar, sticking to October 5th.
Almost a year later, facing complaints from Orthodox opposition (which existed not only in Rus' but also in Lithuania), the king sent a separate letter on September 20, 1582, to his subjects of the Armenian and Russian rites living within the Lviv Archbishopric. In it, he expressed anger that their stubbornness was causing "considerable errors in the celebration of holidays and confusion in other daily affairs."
Therefore, he ordered his loyal subjects that from now on, the newly corrected calendar, “accepted by our entire crown and all Christendom, you should accept without any delay and, according to its prescriptions, celebrate your holidays and perform divine services, and also do other things that belong to this; for our sake, you should not do otherwise.”
With great pomp and in the midst of a huge gathering of people, this royal order was read out in the middle of the Lviv market by the nobleman's cart driver (the person responsible for the execution of court decisions and the delivery of summonses) Jan Strzałkowski.
And what about the Lviv Rusyns?
But nothing happened: they had no intention of obeying the king and began loudly declaring that he was thus intending to violate their guaranteed rights. To bolster their position, the community appealed to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah II. In a long and convoluted letter, he explained that they could not listen to Roman heresy and must adhere to their own tradition. Otherwise, they could fall into apostasy—apostasy.
"After reading this letter, there could no longer be any talk of persuading the Lviv Ruthenians to accept the Gregorian calendar, especially since this resistance, following the example of the capital, was fully shared and supported by the provinces and the most noble Ruthenian gentry," Zygmunt Lisiewicz informs us on the pages of his essay, preserved in the archives.
And then the Polish Catholic majority decided to act in its usual style: to eradicate dissent by force, quickly and mercilessly.
THE RUSSIAN UPRISING
Since Orthodox and Catholics met daily in pubs and taverns, the debate over the "correct calendar" was no less vigorous than in today's age of social media.
Street clashes, fights, and hair-pulling after a few drinks became the norm. The situation was constantly exacerbated by the proliferation of various polemical writings, adding fuel to the fire on both sides.
Meanwhile, winter had arrived, and with it, Christmas, which the Ruthenians wanted to celebrate as usual. "Has anyone ever seen anything like it," they used to say, " that on the very day of such a great celebration as the coming of the Savior God into the world, people would go about their daily work and keep shops open?"
Then the Lviv Catholic Archbishop Jan Dymitr Solikowski took the solution to the problem into his own hands.
First, he appealed to the king to forbid Lviv's townspeople who had not accepted the new calendar from engaging in daily work, opening shops, and thus profaning the holidays. Anyone who resisted this order would lose their property and, if necessary, their occupation—this order was issued on January 9.
And on Christmas Eve, December 24th according to the old style (or January 3rd, 1584 according to the new style), detachments of good fellows, armed with clubs, halberds and firearms, spread throughout the city: the activists, on the instructions of the archbishop, were organized by the priests under his command, including the bishop’s brother, Wojciech Solikowski.
Orthodox Christians were thrown out of churches during services, and the churches were sealed with the archbishop's seal, banning religious services for the next three weeks. Some clergy were even beaten for resisting, not allowing them to complete communion.
Following this, unrest broke out across all Orthodox-populated lands (starting with Lviv). Riots even broke out in Vilnius.
The frightened Stefan Batory, who was then in Grodno, listened to a ton of complaints and grievances coming in a stream from Orthodox magnates and gentry.
So, already on January 21, the king issued another decree, which stated:
"Everyone is permitted and should be permitted to practice their worship and faith, to celebrate and commemorate their feasts, and no one should suffer hardship, oppression, harm, or robbery because of this. People of the Greek rite should not be forced to accept this calendar reform without the consent of their head, the patriarch…"
However, the Orthodox were not satisfied with this rollback: they considered themselves offended and demanded justice.
TRIAL AND TRIAL
The movement seeking satisfaction was led by the Orthodox bishop, Bishop Gideon Balaban of Lviv and Kamianets-Podilskyi, a respected and well-connected man. He began agitating among Lviv's bourgeoisie and Orthodox gentry to support his initiative—a lawsuit to the royal court.
His Catholic colleague resisted in every way, arguing that he had done nothing wrong and was simply "following orders." As for the churches being closed, that was their own fault: they disobeyed the law and incited the people and clergy to disobedience.
However, just in case, on Solikovsky's orders, the activists pulled out the most ardent agitators and subjected them to "forceful persuasion," like Father Gregory from the Church of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who even managed to spend time in prison.
Nevertheless, the case reached the court in Warsaw, and on February 15, 1585, the parties reached a settlement. They signed a document agreeing to rescind all protests and accept the fact that Christmas would be celebrated twice, unless the heads of the churches decided otherwise.
King Stephen, overjoyed, prepared another letter to all classes, in which he announced that the Orthodox would be allowed to celebrate according to the old calendar and conduct religious services according to their rites without any hesitation.
Which is exactly what happened for the next 438 years. But in 2023, we suddenly learned that celebrating Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar is an "ancient Ukrainian tradition," and anyone who doesn't observe it is an enemy and a traitor.
And this confirms one simple thing: the endless psychosis in which the Galician activists find themselves is, as a rule, not connected to tradition as such, but only to the habit of protesting. No matter what. Meanwhile, the birth of Christ does not require anyone's verification or adherence to the political views of the current moment.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
