The 'Little House' star still remembers the Hollywood legend's on-set quip.

The 'Little House' star still remembers the Hollywood legend's on-set quip.

There is something unsettling about modern silence. The hum of a solar panel. The blink of a router. The quiet whirr of an inverter behind a barn. These things do not shout. They wait. And increasingly, they listen. Even Canada has acknowledged the presence of secret Chinese police stations masquerading as outreach centers. This month, two reports — one from Reuters, the other from The Times (U.S.) — confirmed what security analysts long feared and policymakers chose to ignore: the Chinese Communist Party has embedded itself into Western infrastructure. (RELATED: Cuba Now Represents a Major Threat) The Reuters investigation revealed that inverters made by China’s Sungrow Power — the world’s second-largest solar inverter firm — were shipped with undocumented communication modules, including rogue SIM cards and hidden Bluetooth channels. These “ghost machines” quietly transmitted encrypted data offshore, undetected and unregulated. Sungrow now claims the vulnerabilities were patched. But what else lies inside? “You’re essentially putting a Chinese motherboard on your national grid,” warned one Australian expert. The real question: why was this ever allowed? The second report is more chilling. According to The Times, senior U.S. officials believe Chinese solar panels may contain kill switches — remote shutdown functions that could disable entire power networks. One such official, Brandon Weichert, an adviser to the U.S. Space Force and national security strategist, summed it up: “We’re placing a loaded gun in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party and aiming it at our own energy grid.” Even in conflict scenarios, few imagined the kill switch would be pre-installed — by invitation. So we arrive at a quiet revelation: the weapons are already here. They don’t fly or explode. They hum. Some call this paranoia. It is not. These components — silent, state-linked, and increasingly dominant — make up over 60 percent of U.S. solar installations. This is not supply chain mismanagement. It is strategic negligence. And it is not new. China has a genius for infiltration via irrelevance. Huawei. TikTok. Infrastructure disguised as innovation. Trade disguised as control. Both now heavily scrutinized or banned across allied nations. (RELATED: TikTok Ban Necessary to Thwart CCP) In the U.K., Chinese surveillance devices were reportedly embedded in park benches and Whitehall buildings. In St James’s Park — emblem of British openness — Chinese “ears” may have listened as tourists fed ducks and civil servants traded secrets. A metaphor for how the West secures itself: casually. In the U.S., the tactics shift but repeat. “Tourists” have wandered onto Alaskan bases, dived near Florida rocket sites, and loitered around New Mexico missile ranges. In Michigan, five Chinese nationals were caught near Camp Grayling, frantically deleting WeChat histories. In Guam, they were arrested after entering the island illegally during a critical missile test. Not accidents. Patterns. Even Canada has acknowledged the presence of secret Chinese police stations masquerading as outreach centers. Their purpose: surveillance, intimidation, repression. Unthinkable 10 years ago. Now barely news. This, too, is part of the plan — numb the public into forgetting what should never be accepted. (RELATED: Mark Carney Is Incredibly Dangerous) This is not espionage as we knew it. Not cloak and dagger, but cloak and clipboard. A campaign of soft encirclement disguised as cooperation. A strategy built on the West’s addiction to cheap goods and moral sleepwalking. Beijing plays chess. Slowly, incrementally, and always forward. The West plays virtue games — congratulating itself for every solar panel installed, even if sovereignty is the price. Yes, Chinese tech is cheaper. But stolen goods often are. Fighting Chinese Infiltration The question is no longer if China has breached our systems. It has. The question is: how much of our infrastructure now depends on a hostile regime — and how long before that dependence is used against us? If the West is to recover even a measure of strategic control, it must begin by confronting the obvious. Our infrastructure needs a full audit of Chinese-manufactured components — grids, telecoms, surveillance systems included. We must end procurement from companies beholden to China’s 2017 Intelligence Law, which compels cooperation with state security, an arrangement no Western firm could legally accept. And above all, we must recall that national security is not an act of prejudice. It is the first responsibility of a functioning state. Because someday — perhaps not far off — those panels may go dark. Not from clouds. But because someone in Beijing flipped a switch. The question now isn’t if the system will be tested-but whether we will even notice when it is. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Cuba Now Represents a Major Threat Illegals Posing as Minors Imperil Our Children The post How China Is Quietly Outsmarting the West appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I’m filled with admiration for Ukraine’s daring and imaginative strike this weekend at high-value targets across the length and breadth of Russia. I don’t for a moment believe that, by itself, this one strategic blow will change the outcome of the war, but if the Ukrainians can continue to find fresh ways to extend the scope of the conflict, to inflict damage deep inside Russia, and to force the Russian armed forces to defend as well as attack, then the entire conflict might well take on a new and entirely different dimension. (RELATED: Russia’s Aerial Assault on Ukraine) It’s much too early to judge the larger impact of the Ukrainian attack on the outcome of the war, or even, more narrowly, on the currently planned Istanbul negotiations. But it’s not too early to step back and consider what it signifies in terms of an emerging “new warfare,” one capable of challenging the Russians, to be sure, but also one that will surely challenge us as well. I’m not talking about swarms of weaponized drones, although that’s been the focus of so much of this morning’s commentary. Every day they prove their worth, and the Ukrainians have leapt to the forefront in finding tactical — and now strategic uses — for what were once dismissed as mere toys. But instead of focusing our attention on the tools, no matter how cleverly developed and deployed, we should focus on the concept of attacking critical facilities, not just military facilities, but also crippling, well-orchestrated strikes at critical civilian infrastructure. (RELATED: Drones: We Aren’t Ready for the Next War) The Guerrilla Warfare Myth We once called it “guerrilla warfare,” and, while it exerted a powerful fascination, serious military professionals always dismissed it as merely a “sideshow,” a useful distraction for enemy forces, but never decisive. My childhood hero, Lawrence of Arabia, certainly did much to undermine the Ottoman Turks on the Arabian peninsula, but World War I in the Middle East was won by General Allenby’s regular forces, not Lawrence’s colorful band of Arab irregulars. Winston Churchill delighted in notions of “setting Europe ablaze,” and, at a time when, after Dunkirk, Britain lacked the wherewithal to do anything other than pinprick attacks against Nazi-conquered Europe, commando raids and resistance movements commanded his attention — but he never mistook them as decisive. At war’s end, General Eisenhower fulsomely praised such outfits as the SAS and the OSS and the resistance fighters they enabled, but he also understood full well that the war was won by fleets of tanks and bombers and, in the end, the pounding of artillery and the grinding sacrifice of infantry. Since World War II, a fiction has emerged to the effect that the guerrillas are undefeatable, be they Mao’s forces in late 1940s China, the Viet Minh/Viet Cong through two Vietnam Wars, or in any array of other conflicts across the globe. But Mao conquered China, not with guerrillas, but with divisions of regular soldiers armed with captured Japanese weapons — captured by the Russians when they swept into Manchuria in 1945. General Giap crushed the French at Dien Bien Phu with regular troops and, above all, a massive concentration of artillery, including modern U.S. 105mm howitzers captured by Mao from the Chinese Nationalists. And contrary to carefully cultivated myth, the Viet Cong guerrillas didn’t win the Second Vietnam War. Instead, they were largely broken during and after the Tet Offensive, ceasing to be a significant military factor. The ultimate defeat of South Vietnam came at the hands of North Vietnamese regulars in a conventional invasion led by hundreds of modern Russian-supplied tanks, an assault invited by the withdrawal of U.S. support for our South Vietnamese allies. You can’t fight tanks when your anti-tank weapons lack ammunition and your attack aircraft lack spare parts. The guerrillas, or insurgents, or whatever one wishes to call them, have triumphed in Third World countries largely because the battles were being fought in Third World countries, countries in which, in the end, no one but the locals cared deeply enough about the outcome to go on fighting. Walking away from Afghanistan was unfortunate, and the manner of the Biden-orchestrated final departure was a profound national embarrassment. But two decades after 9/11, we’d long passed the point where the American people cared deeply enough to make a difference. The ‘New Warfare’ The “new warfare,” however, is very different, and not just because it’s sometimes pursued with drone attacks or exploding pagers. The real difference lies in the changing nature of modern society and the availability of truly crippling targets for irregular warfare. Consider, for example, the recent attacks on electrical infrastructure in southern France. Just over a week ago, saboteurs destroyed two electricity substations, one in Nice, one in Cannes, the latter blacking out the final day of the Cannes Film Festival, and, overall, depriving nearly 200,000 homes and businesses of power. The leftist saboteurs proclaimed adherence to a grab-bag of causes, starting with support for Hamas, but ranging across the usual progressive preoccupations. These attacks were the work of amateurs, albeit well-organized amateurs. They shouldn’t be dismissed for this reason. As we’ve witnessed recently in this country, from the murders of Israeli embassy staff in D.C. to this weekend’s firebomb attacks in Boulder, Colorado, there is a rising tide of lethal violence being perpetrated by such amateurs. Moreover, at the next level, the various permutations of Antifa can no longer simply be viewed as amateurs — within their ranks, there’s a growing cadre of genuine terrorists. (RELATED: ‘Broken Windows’ and the Terrorism of Small Things) Arguably, the larger concern must be the potential for multi-level organized attacks akin to what the Ukrainians have just carried out in Russia. While they had to smuggle their attack drones into and across Russia to put them into position, what about the swathes of agricultural land and other properties purchased in this country by Chinese government front organizations, some of them within easy striking distance of some of our most vital military facilities? It’s not hard to conceive of these as the bases for similar drone attacks. China and ‘New Warfare’ Strategies I’ve written before in these pages about the need to think about a potential Pacific war in broader terms than a simple naval gunfight around the Taiwan Straits. That’s scary enough, and, as Xi Jinping’s 2027 deadline for “resolution” of the Taiwan issue looms, the U.S. Navy is scrambling to prepare for such an eventuality. But what if the prelude to such an attack takes place, not in and around Taiwan, but through a wave of deniable attacks across the U.S. homeland? Data centers blown up by truck bombs, substations set on fire, wildfires started, all perhaps attributed to some made-up — but highly plausible — domestic radicals, but orchestrated by Chinese intelligence agents. We know that there are plenty of those currently operating in this country. (RELATED: Trump’s Life’s Work Culminates in Confronting Communist China) The Ukrainian intelligence service, we are told, spent some 18 months preparing this weekend’s attack. The Israelis devoted a significant amount of time and they’re much-vaunted intelligence capabilities in putting together the pager attack. We kid ourselves if we assume that the Chinese Ministry of State Security is incapable of such things, and potentially on a much grander scale. We also kid ourselves if we assume that they wouldn’t try, or, at the very least, that they’re not in the business of crafting a novel kind of deterrence. A current American Spectator essay, Kevin Cohen’s “Cuba Now Represents a Major Threat,” makes this very point. Writing of the expanding Chinese, Russian, and Iranian presence in Cuba, Cohen observes: “They are constructing real-time capabilities within reach of the U.S. mainland. Their combined presence suggests a new doctrine of proximity-based deterrence and hybrid warfare emerging just offshore.” Cohen further notes that Cuba now offers “a frontline concern” and “an active platform for adversaries.” (RELATED: Cuba Now Represents a Major Threat) We would do well to heed Cohen’s warning, and we would do better still to view it in the context of steadily expanding Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence operations across Africa and in Latin America. Even Antarctica now seems to be a target of expanded Chinese interest. In other words, we’re a long way — a very long way — from a localized conflict on the far side of the Pacific Ocean. Xi Jinping has made no secret of his desire to reorder China’s place in the world, sweeping the U.S. aside, a prospect that assumes a greater military dimension even as China’s economy runs increasingly into trouble. If you can’t supplant the U.S. through economic competition, then recourse to “other means” becomes more urgent. But whether we think in terms of suffering an actual attack or simply having our hands tied via Cohen’s “novel kind of deterrence,” we should think very clearly about the challenge demonstrated by Ukraine’s action this weekend. In his book, Hue: 1968, journalist Mark Bowden (of Blackhawk Down fame) quotes an arresting exchange between a congressman and an air force general. The congressman asks the general what he needs to whip the North Vietnamese, and the general simply answers, “Targets — we need targets!” Bombing easily rebuilt bridges, wooden bridges on the Ho Chi Minh trail, required resources all out of proportion to the results. So, too, bombing caves in Tora Bora. A modern, highly-integrated, highly electrified, and computerized society such as our own, however, offers the most target-rich of target-rich environments. An open society where military assets exist cheek-by-jowl with interstate highways makes the Ukrainian achievement look like child’s play. It’s not drones, then, or any other clever device that should arrest our attention, but rather the degree of our interdependency and the vulnerability of our critical infrastructure to even the simplest of attacks. The “new warfare” answers the general’s plaintive quest for targets with a richness of which he could never have dreamed, targets accessible by the simplest of weapons. By all means, let’s see if we can build a “Golden Dome” to protect ourselves against nuclear-tipped missiles, but let’s also reckon with drone attacks on our own air force bases, or any of a hundred and one other simple scenarios. (RELATED: Could Trump’s Golden Dome Fulfill Ronald Reagan’s Dream?) Witnessing what the Ukrainians just did to the Russians, we’d best start thinking hard about what we’re going to do to protect ourselves — before it’s too late. READ MORE from James H. McGee: Mirrors Instead of Windows: America’s Failed Foreign Policy Perspective Splitting Xi From Putin: A Comfortable Delusion Who Won World War II? James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A soon-to-be-published sequel, The Zebras from Minsk, finds the Reprisal team fighting against Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges from West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post The ‘New Warfare’ Comes of Age: Are We Ready? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I remember a time when neighborhoods sounded remarkably human. Infants wailed and toddlers shrieked. Parents, bleary-eyed and jittery with caffeine, barked orders like half-deranged lieutenants trying to hold the line. Arms flapped, milk spilled, and cereal launched across kitchens like shrapnel. It was chaotic, yes — but it was life. It means we’ve stumbled into a kind of post-familial fog — a secular monasticism dressed in sweatpants and matted with dog hair. Today, however, the soundtrack is fading, and fast. In cities from Tokyo to Toronto, the noise has changed. Now it’s a different kind of barking — the soft jingle of collar bells, and grown adults crooning “Who’s my darling?” to a creature with four legs, a wet nose, and zero chance of ever giving them grandchildren. Welcome to the era of dog-as-child, the cuddly endpoint of a demographic decline so severe it might warrant a trigger warning. In nation after nation — Germany, South Korea, Italy, Japan, even the U.S. — fertility rates are plummeting while the pet industry booms. Millennials and Zoomers have discovered a curious workaround to the terrifying trifecta of diapers, debt, and domestic drudgery: don’t have kids. Buy a dog. Dress it like a toddler. Whisper sweet nothings into its floppy ears while sipping overpriced lattes and posting paw-dicures (pedicures for pets) on Instagram. It’s cute. It’s tragic. And it’s spreading like kennel cough in a rescue center. To be fair, dogs have always held a special place in the human heart. They’ve guarded us, herded for us, hunted with us, and died at our sides. But never before have they been mistaken — earnestly, insistently — for our literal children. The rise of the “fur baby” isn’t just a cultural quirk. It’s an evolutionary bait-and-switch, a psychological shell game that rewires primal instincts and redirects them toward something easier, softer, and ultimately sterile. (RELATED: The People Who Came for Your Plastic Bag and Straw Now Want Your Dog) This isn’t parenting-lite. This is parenting cosplay. One recent study found that 37 percent of dog owners identify as “pet parents.” In America and beyond, some dogs now have more elaborate birthday parties than most humans. These aren’t the mutts of yesteryear, raised outdoors, taught to behave, occasionally fed table scraps. These are pampered, stroller-bound companions wearing matching family Christmas pajamas, complete with their own social media accounts and treat-based reward charts. There’s even a booming market for doggy fertility clinics. No, seriously. While human birth rates plummet and governments beg women to have just one child, people are forking over thousands to help golden retrievers ovulate on schedule. We won’t fund daycare, but we’ll bankroll canine IVF. If that’s not the final punchline of a dying civilization, it’s at least the setup. (RELATED: We Told People Not to Have Kids — Now We’re Surprised They Listened) One has to wonder: Did humans become so efficient at avoiding hardship that we engineered ourselves out of existence? It’s a fair question to ask. Make no mistake, dogs are easier. They don’t need braces. They don’t ask about the meaning of life. They don’t grow into angsty teens who hate you for chewing too loudly. They won’t go to college. A dog’s loyalty is unflinching, their dependency flattering, and their death conveniently timed — 12 to 15 years, give or take, leaving just enough emotional runway for the next “child.” It’s surrogacy as lifestyle branding. A cycle dressed up as devotion: love, lose, replace. Grieve, adopt, repeat. What was once a biological imperative — raising actual children with minds of their own — has been quietly outsourced to creatures that can’t speak, won’t vote, and will never challenge your politics, your priorities, or your delusions. It’s comfort without consequence. A Dog-Dominated Future? Which begs another question: What does this mean for the future of humanity? It means we’ve stumbled into a kind of post-familial fog — a secular monasticism dressed in sweatpants and matted with dog hair. The nuclear family is being replaced by the solo adult, curled up under three weighted blankets, spooning a rescue mutt with separation anxiety and severe gluten intolerance. And for millions — especially women — the message is clear: those ancient, biological instincts to protect, nurture, and raise the next generation? Channel them into a French bulldog with a collapsing trachea and a wardrobe more expensive than most toddlers. Forget the cradle. Embrace the crate. Is it empowering? In a carefully marketed, serotonin-on-a-leash kind of way, maybe. Is it dystopian? Absolutely. The apocalypse won’t be televised. It’ll be livestreamed on Instagram, filtered through soft light, and captioned, “My baby.” We’ve survived plagues, wars, famines, and tyrants. And yet, the soft suffocation of comfort, loneliness, and postmodern individualism may be what finally wipes us out. I’m certainly not saying dogs are bad. They’re loyal, loving, and often more tolerable than most humans. But when entire societies start trading bassinets for BarkBoxes, we should be alarmed. It’s a symptom — of atomization, cultural fatigue, of a species slowly forgetting its purpose. We may yet rebuild. We may yet crawl out of this sterile comfort and remember what it means to raise something that outlives us. Something unruly, defiant, human. We may rediscover the beauty in legacy — the kind that cries at 3 a.m. and slams doors at 13. The kind that breaks your heart not because it dies, but because it grows up, moves out, and keeps going — without you. But that kind of love requires courage, and courage is a currency in short supply. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: The Vatican’s New Low: Sainthood by Search Engine Why Morgan Wallen Terrifies the Left The post From Boston to Berlin: How Dogs Are Replacing Babies appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

While President Donald Trump declared earlier this year that “DEI… is dead,” June’s Pride Month antics will provide the testing grounds for whether the diversity gods still have a pulse. In past years, Pride Month has seen countless corporations displaying rainbow flags over their social media logos to signal bold support for the Pride ideology. But the first days of June have shown a noticeable shift from previous years. Even CNN has noted that many prominent brands are “avoiding prominent campaigns and visible public support.” (RELATED: Pride Month Won’t Be As Prideful) Although many companies still made an obligatory June 1 post, in 2025, the list of companies changing their logos for Pride Month is remarkably minuscule. In 2023, 10 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies updated their X logos for Pride Month. This year, none of those 10 companies has a rainbow logo. Gone are the days of blanket corporate participation in this sacred symbol.  Among other examples, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Paramount+, and Vogue all had Pride logos in 2024, but so far have abandoned the sacred ritual in 2025. Unlike previous years in which the major U.S. airline companies uniformly updated their social media logos with rainbows, again, not a single major U.S. airline has done so this year. Four years after the NFL proudly announced on X that “Football is gay,” not a single major men’s sports league has changed its logo, and of individual NFL teams, only four have adopted a Pride logo, even though many of them did issue a Pride-related post. (RELATED: Pride Month Is Awful. I Won’t Participate.) This represents a major step in the right direction. While companies ought to forgo Pride Month pandering entirely, corporations’ silent retreat from rainbow displays on their logos can be considered a cultural win for conservatives. Even among diehard supporters of the DEI regime, enthusiasm is muted and hidden. Target, for instance, has relegated its physical displays of Pride merchandise to select stores after several years of backlash, and it is largely limiting Pride items to online sales. This is a welcome sign of timidity and restraint.  This evidence isn’t just anecdotal. Trump’s campaign against DEI has produced real statistical results.  A poll by Gravity Research found that 39 percent of companies surveyed planned to reduce Pride-related engagement in 2025, while no respondents sought to increase their Pride involvement. Perhaps the most revealing part of the poll is the reasoning these companies gave for pulling back. Sixty-one percent of executives cited pressure from the Trump administration as a primary reason for rethinking Pride strategies, and 39 percent included the threat of backlash from conservative activists and consumers. The fact that a significant majority of executives fear the Trump administration means that the president’s anti-DEI policies are not just affecting the government but are producing demonstrable ramifications in the broader culture. Among numerous examples, companies such as Mastercard, Citi, Pepsi, Nissan, Anheuser-Busch, and Comcast have backed out of sponsorships for Pride parades across the country. (RELATED: Trump Takes a Wrecking Ball to DEI) Major companies’ trepidation over coming out swinging for Pride Month is a stark contrast to previous years’ excesses. It shows that conservatives have the institutional power and cultural momentum to combat DEI until it is well and truly dead. While tepid bows to the Left’s most sacred holiday continue to some degree, companies are learning to be fearful that extravagant Pride Month displays will have consequences. READ MORE: Beyond DEI: How a Top US University Became a Marxist Factory DEI Destroys the Beauty of a Great Opera The High-Water Mark of Woke Corporate Activism The post This ‘Pride Month,’ We’ll Find Out If DEI Is Really Dead appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Get access to Range Day and IRL events - https://lukeunfiltered.com/ WHOA: Trump Might PARDON Diddy? ? Highlights ? The trial exposes conflicting testimonies from Diddy’s accusers, including claims of brainwashing and emotional manipulation. ? Tens of millions in settlements to accusers raise questions of possible “money grab” motives. ?️‍♂️ CIA connections and secret tours involving Mike Myers add a layer of intrigue and conspiracy theories. ⚖️ The Southern District of New York is depicted as a political gatekeeper suppressing full investigation into the case. ? Donald Trump’s indecisive comments on a potential pardon create uncertainty in the court of public opinion. ? 50 Cent actively opposes any pardon, fueling public debate and media attention. ? Promotion of independent media platform “lukefilter.com,” emphasizing self-defense and alternative narratives. Key Insights ? Psychological Complexity of Witnesses: Mia’s testimony about brainwashing highlights how trauma and coercion can produce seemingly contradictory behaviors, complicating juror decisions and public perception. This illustrates the complexities victims face in navigating abuse cycles, which legal frameworks must carefully consider. ? Financial Settlements and Legal Strategy: The large monetary payouts to accusers prompt reflection on the strategic use of civil lawsuits as mechanisms for both justice and potential exploitation. Such settlements may affect public trust and skew narratives, balancing between victim compensation and accusations of opportunism. ?️‍♀️ Intersection of Entertainment, Politics, and Intelligence Agencies: The references to the CIA, Mike Myers, and Barack Obama interject elements of political espionage and influence into what might otherwise be seen solely as a criminal trial—an example of how cultural figures sometimes intersect with national and international power structures. ?️ Judicial Political Dynamics: The Southern District of New York’s reputation as a politic..

by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics: The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has opened the public’s eyes to the truth surrounding the COVID-19 plandemic and authoritative mandates that permanently damaged public health and confidence in governments. The Food and Drug Administration announced it will no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine to children and pregnant women, […]

by John M. Grondelski, All News Pipeline: 100 years ago today, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a landmark blow in favor of parental rights. The Court’s bold words deserve to be recalled today: “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him […]