Tex's Place

By Matt Margolis Normally, I wouldn’t give a hoot about an interview with Barack Obama, but his recent exchange with Brian Taylor Cohen did catch my attention. I don’t care about his thoughts on policy, Donald Trump, or anything even remotely connected to politics, but Cohen did ask Obama a question that probably wasn’t entirely serious, and yet the answer he got was actually rather significant. “Are aliens real?” Cohen asked. Personally, I don’t believe he expected a straight answer. If anything, he probably thought Obama would say, “If they are, I couldn’t tell you.” But that’s not what Obama said. “Uh, they’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and, and, and, uh, they’re not being kept in, uh, what is it?” he said. “Area 51,” Cohen interjected. “Area 51,” Obama confirmed. “Uh, there, there’s no underground, uh, facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they, they hid it from the President of the United States.” He wasn’t being jokey, either. He was being quite serious. H...

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Getty) By David Marcus When I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a galaxy of left-wing, even socialist, intellectual stars such as Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal whose works were like an inkwell that politicians and commentators could draw from. Judging from the Munich Security Conference this weekend, that inkwell has run dry. Take this gem of a comment on global order from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, queen of the democratic socialists: "What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes." Allow me to translate this into English: "The West is bad and mistreats the marginalized rest of the world." The use of 25-cent words and highfalutin sentence structure cannot hide the banality of what AOC is saying. Not even the assuring allure of assonance would help, ...

By Ben Smith National broadcast  networks  have missed a major environmental and public health story unfolding in Washington, D.C., even as contamination levels were revised upward by a factor of 100 and repair timelines stretched into months. A  review  of ABC, CBS, and NBC flagship morning and evening broadcasts reached a blunt conclusion: “The major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC have refused to mention it on their flagship broadcast network morning or evening shows.” That is not a minor omission. The story in question involves more than 242 million gallons of raw sewage spilling into the Potomac River between January 19 and February 6. The failed sewer pipe near I-495 and Clara Barton Parkway will take another  nine months to repair . This is happening in Washington, D.C., not a remote region far from newsroom headquarters. Independent testing confirmed the presence of serious pathogens  in the water . “Testing by folks from the University ...

By Ben Smith Early  IRS  filing season data show taxpayers receiving larger refunds compared to the same point last year, according to the agency’s latest weekly statistics. The increase is meaningful,  not marginal . The average tax refund is 10.9 percent higher so far this season compared to the same point in 2025, according to early filing data from the IRS. The percentage is attention-grabbing. The dollar figures show the scale. As of Feb. 6, the average refund was $2,290, up from $2,065 a year earlier. The IRS also reported that more than $16.9 billion in refunds had already been issued, a 1.9 percent increase in total dollars compared to last year. Those are  processed returns  and issued payments, not projections. “Average refund amounts are strong,” the IRS said in its latest weekly filing report. That is how the agency is  characterizing  the early data. The weekly report also shows that filing activity itself is tracking close to last yea...

By Jennifer Oliver O'Connell No matter how much California Gov. Gavin Newsom gallivants around Europe, fluffs his supposed presidential creds, and tries to pretend he isn't the person who drove California into a ditch, the stench of the state's fraud and corruption clings to him like cheap cologne. Now the CalDOGE team, led by Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, is hard at work to ensure Newsom will never be able to separate himself from the corruption he furthered both before and during his eight-year, accidental governorship.  CalDOGE's first report out of the gate exposes the California Cannabis Tax Fund shell game. A game that was engineered by Hair Gel himself. When Newsom was lieutenant governor, he was the face and the staunch advocate for marijuana legalization with his Proposition 64, the "California Cannabis Tax Fund (CCTF)" Act. In legalizing cannabis distribution and use throughout the state, the proceeds were supposed to be used f...

By Ward Clark It's Valentine's Day, a day when we show our significant others we love them by fattening the wallets of greeting-card makers and florists. Now, if I seem cynical about that, I am, and if that surprises you, I'd ask, how long have you been reading my work? But on this day in mid-February, the first hints of spring are in the air - yes, even here in the Susitna Valley, where it's cold and we have three feet of snow, but the days are growing notably longer, and the chickadees are starting to sing their spring songs. But in some places, that dash of spring comes with a distinct... odor, which brings us to a place called San Rafael, California, where the local skunk population is feeling romance in the air. Well,  some of them are . Forget love, it’s stink in the air for some Californians this Valentine’s Day. Residents near San Rafael in Northern California have complained of a pungent smell interrupting the season of love. The perpetrators? Female  strip...

By M. D. Kittle From Chuck Schumer’s race-baiting false equivalencies to Lisa Murkowski being, well, Lisa Murkowski, it was a great week for bad people.   Yes, the weekend is finally here. Does it feel like a century since the Super Bowl and Bad Bunny’s carnival of crotch-grabbing and  “dry-humping ”? Muy malo.  Speaking of very bad, the week in politics was filled with a parade of awful. From Chuck Schumer’s race-baiting false equivalencies to  Lisa Murkowski  being, well, Lisa Murkowski, it was a great week for bad people.  Here are the Worst of the Worst from the week that was.  Chuck ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ Schumer Did you know that asking people to present identification before they vote is like making some voters drink out of separate water fountains and attend segregated schools? Well, at least it is to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his band of insane Democrats who went about this week painting the  SAVE America Act  as “Jim Cro...

By Kevin Downey Jr. Remember back in 2015 when your bourbon-chugging, conspiracy theorist "Uncle Kevin" stunned the family at Christmas dinner by stating, "A bunch of rich pedos are trying to form a one-world government. They'll take away your steaks, cars, and dogs and blame it on 'climate change.' They'll tell you men are women, and label you a 'bigot' if you refuse to let them control your mind. They'll fill your kids full of SSRIs and tell them to cut off their genitals, and they'll take your children away if you don't play along. They'll replace cash with digital currency and freeze your funds if they don't like your latest tweet. And if you don't stop saying things these lizard people don't condone, they will arrest you. While all of this is happening, the New World Order will flood the West with third-world Muslim savages who will rape and murder with near impunity. They will live off of your tax dollars whil...