The Apocalypse: No More One Dollar Diet Coke at McDonald's

The world has ended officially and thoroughly. 

This week I went to my local McDonald's to partake in one of my few guilty pleasures, a large Diet Coke. I have enjoyed this beverage for years, paying one dollar plus tax. No more. I got hit in one McDonalds with $1.20, and when I went to another in a different town, assuming there was a mistake at the first, I got hit for $1.30. I am not a genius with math, but that, my friends, is a 20-30% jump in price. Thank God, Biden's inflation reduction bill got passed by the Congress. 

Oh, my other guilty pleasure? Dirty Harry--the original, the sequels, well, meh. I suppose the cancel wokesters will eventually ban that film or re-edit it to remove "offensive stereotypes."

Can things get worse? Yes, they can. Biden's ill-thought-out adventure in Ukraine brings us ever closer either to nuclear war or, at "best," to a rebalancing of global power much to the detriment of the West. To point this out, as I have on Twitter, gets one accused of being a "Putin clown." 

Our woke/prog masters want no dissent, no reflexion on the wisdom of the path taken. We get almost no independent news out of Ukraine--no intrepid journalists reporting from the front lines, for example--and must do with the "news" as approved by Kyiv, Washington, and London, e.g., staged photo ops, and billions of dollars, pounds, euros on the way to Kyiv--well, we think, to Kyiv. We have few real journalists willing to ask real questions of the powerful.

Meanwhile, of course, the US and the West continue under assault from a ceaseless wave of "refugees" fleeing from . . . well, we are not allowed to ask. They arrive, with assistance from so-called NGOs--many of them getting public funds--and powerful Mexican drug cartels, full of demands which our struggling cities struggle to meet. Our own infrastructure goes to ruin, e.g., disaster in E. Palestine, Ohio, and our own citizens get taxed and "inflated" out of their earnings, and their jobs go overseas or to the newcomers. We continue to refuse to adopt successful policies of the recent past to control these "migrants," criminal aliens, really. 

We also refuse to adopt recent policies which produced US energy independence, and had freed us from the Middle East, Venezuela, and the kleptocrats of Russia. None of this makes sense except that we are governed by people who hate us, want us poor, subservient, hungry, or dead. 

Tomorrow, I go on another of my periodic visits to Spain for a couple of weeks. I will try to disconnect, but that is not really possible. I will see if I have the mood to write. I do write a lot on Twitter, whenever I want to get insulted. 

"Normal or Crazy" The New Battle Cry?

Despite vows not to watch it, I did. 

I am too much of a political junkie to avoid a free dose of Biden dope via his second State of the Union (SOTU) address. And? Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I hope never to go through a similar experience again. Must get myself to rehab. Maybe Hunter can pay for it?

This was the worst SOTU address, and the worst Joe Biden speech I have ever heard. I don't know where to begin. 

The lies and half-truths spilled out non-stop from start to agonizing disjointed finish. He lied about Social Security, Medicare, and then had to retract it right in front of us. He rambled on and on about airline baggage fees and hidden resort charges. What? This is a priority with the challenges we face? 

His comments about some McDonald's cashier being forced to sign a "non-compete agreement" was pure fantasy. Delusional.

He also used the line, again, about poor mothers having to park in the McDonald's parking lot so their children could use the free WiFi to do their homework. Obsession with McDonald's! So these poor people have cars and computers but don't have access to WiFi except in the McDonald's parking lot? Right. Why not Starbucks? You know, where the cool people go.

He glossed over the threat from the China, ignored Iran, ignored the disaster at the border, mumbled about some inconsequential program to fight the ravages of fentanyl, and lied and lied and lied. 

He stole whole chunks of his address--he, after all, is a known plagiarist--from Trump: his "Made in America" spiel was pure Trump but without any conviction. His description of the "booming" economy was absurd. He lied about his tax program, which will affect every American negatively. His claims about inflation and the energy industry were bald-faced lies. He virtually ignored the disaster in Ukraine except to state briefly we will continue to support Ukraine, "we will finish the job!" He bought the anti-police line of the left, and basically threw the cops under the bus. Shameful. 

I could go on, but won't. 

Governor Sanders' reply was pretty good. I thought the first one-half to two-thirds excellent, the end, however, fell into platitude territory--I can forgive that, I guess. 

She was clearly presenting herself as a serious candidate for President, never mentioned Trump by name but noted her youth and called for a new generation of leaders. Her line that the choices we now face are not between right or left, but between "normal or crazy" was brilliant. She said the quiet part aloud. That is the real division in the US and the West. To have a major politician state this so clearly is liberating and should embolden the normal people of the West to take up the fight against the crazies. I note that much of the MSM/DNC echo chamber is attacking her stark description and warning the GOP not to make it a slogan. That, of course, means that is exactly what should be done.  

Well, gotta go. Preparing for another lightning visit to Spain and the work on my Taj Mahal apartment. Got doctors to see before I go, and taxes to pay. Zelensky and the illegals in NY hotels need my money.

What is Real?

Back in North Carolina from Spain. Will be heading off to the DC area in a couple of days to take care of some business issues. Having to deal with leaks of the water kind, two heat pumps out, and a car with bad brakes, and two with expired tags. The joys of returning to the "real" world.

Ah, yes, "real." 

Reading the political sites and press, and watching the TV news, leaves me with no strong sense of what is or is not real in American politics and society--and the West, in general. 

The Biden classified mess. I've dealt briefly with it before (here). 

I remain perplexed as to what is really going on. Why is this issue coming up now? It seems every other day or so, more classified material is "found" in non-secure Biden locales by, well, I don't know: Biden's lawyers; DOJ personnel; FBI. Who knows? Who has sent them to the treasures?

It now seems that some of this stuff is years, perhaps decades old, and that Joe had been squirreling it away since he was a Senator. Who gave it to him? What was his personal interest in having it? Just curiosity? A source of funds? A guide to his (and his son's) business dealings? Who revealed the presence of the documents? Why? Somebody out to get Biden from within his inner circle? An attempt to cover-up a bigger scandal, e.g., the $50K/month he received from Hunter who got it from the PRC? A well-planned DNC effort to push the old mummy out of his White House sarcophagus? The questions are endless, the answers scarce.

The COVID vax has turned out to be a hoax, an expensive and destructive one, as many of us suspected and wrote about at the time. The lunacy on our southern border continues unabated, despite cheery claims from the White House that the US-Mexico line is secure, nothing to see here, move along, move along. Our cities burn and rot, and not just in the USA; crime and chaos have gone through the roof, and, again, not just here. I just got back from Europe, and can testify that the rot is spreading there, as well.

And, lest we forget, Ukraine. Nobody knows what's going on there, except that we keep pouring billions into it. No clarity.

The Woke assault also continues unabated, with all of us required to sing the praises of the transgender mental misfits, and allow our children to be sexualized by narcissistic, pedophilic school teachers. This is crazy. This can't be real. 

I hope, and pray that it is not real, but . . .   

Biden in the Classifieds (update)

Sitting in my half-painted, partly rewired apartment in San Sebastián, trying to keep up with the news from home. Not easy. Spanish media basically repeats the DNC/Mainstream Media talking points. It's quite frustrating to have to be here yelling "Lies!" at the TV set, well, "¡Mentiras!" Fortunate for me, my son, Daniel, calls from the US every day with the proper news.

It seems that the mummy who occupies the White House has hidden classified materials for several years at a couple of locations associated with something called the U. Penn Biden Center (?) The initial story, of course, is convoluted, and will change as more facts emerge, and the DNC spin cycle increases its speed. 

I had never heard of the Biden Center, although it seems to be referenced in some Hunter emails (what isn't?) as a way to get money from foreign governments akin to how the Clintons did it with their own fraudulent center and initiatives. The Biden Center apparently has received some $100 million from foreign sources/governments, most notably China and Ukraine. Where did that money go? No news, yet. What did donors expect to receive in return? We can only speculate. What seems true is that a "closet" at the center contained classified materials as did another container elsewhere. The materials apparently dealt with, inter alia, Ukraine and China. The Biden Crime Family and the Democratic Party, in general, seem to have a fixation on Ukraine and China. Wonder why? We can only speculate.

It would seem that these documents were SUDDENLY discovered by Crime Family lawyers on November 2, or less than a week before the mid-terms in which the GOP was expected to take the lower house. Coincidence? We can only speculate.

Now, of course, I don't expect any FBI raids on Biden Crime Family locations. The DNC-controlled media is already down-playing the find, noting that this happens ALL THE TIME, don't get excited, move along. In addition, we all know this is much less serious than Trump having classified at his place because, well, REASONS! 

In fact, of course, Trump had his material in an approved safe, with Secret Service protection, and under the eye of a camera. In addition, of course, Trump had been President and had the power to declassify material. None of that seems the case with the Biden trove.

Will the DNC trot out Obama who will claim he declassified the material? That avenue seems closed given that Biden claims not to have known the material was there, but . . . .

We will see how they try to spin this away into the ether. 

Back to the fumes.

UPDATE: We now learn that the head of the Biden Crime Family had classified material "stored" in his garage at his Wilmington, Delaware home. It was stored next to his Corvette, which means, of course, that it was safe. We all know that any place safe enough for a classic Corvette, is safe enough for our nuclear codes. In addition, of course, the Capo di tutti capi has SUV-level clearance. I completely trust the Special Counsel, who used to work for the head of the FBI, to get to the bottom of this . . . no, not one bit. I am sure we will hear, a la Comey, that Biden had no malicious intent in stealing these documents. 

In Spain: New Year, Three Kings Day, Paint Drying, and Stuff In-between

Well, we left Raleigh December 31; that's a good day to travel if the weather holds up--and it did. Fairly empty airport, no delays, and then an eight-hour lay-over in Philadelphia. We ate lots of stale peanuts and warmed-over taco meat in the Phili Admiral's Lounge, while we waited for our flight. One positive development was we got upgraded to business class from our premium economy seats, for free. Good flight with surprisingly good food for an airline. Arrived early in the morning of January 1, to Madrid, and a nearly empty airport. No lines, no waiting, baggage at the belt, and off in a taxi to what appeared a deserted city.  

We enjoyed walking around in what looked like a set for a dystopian future, post-nuke, or post-pandemic film. No zombies or Mel Gibson, however. 

The night brought back the old Madrid magic. Huge festive crowds appeared and packed the sidewalks and plazas. It was great. Some things, however, still did not make sense. Out on the streets, we were jammed in with a bazillion maskless people, shoulder to shoulder, but when we boarded a bus or train, we had to put on our little paper masks, or risk getting fined. What's the science behind that?

Early on the 2nd, we caught the fast train to San Sebastián, not crowded but had to wear our masks for over six hours. The train did not prove so fast; car no.3 caught fire as we crossed the Ebro River. We came to a halt over the river; the peasants from car no. 3, insisted on escaping the smoke by moving into our previously serene car no. 1. 

Don't they know that on the Titanic the steerage passengers had to die? These folks should have jumped off the bridge into the frigid river below. Sigh. What has happened to Western Civilization? 

We eventually got towed off the bridge, and transferred to a train obviously just removed that day from the salvage yard. No bathrooms, no food, no drink, no first class. Got into San Sebastián over three hours late, but learned we would get a full refund on our tickets. Not bad. Worth risking my elderly life over the Ebro for free tickets. 

Had a wonderful Three Kings Day. Watched the parade from a friend's balcony. The Kings appeared, tossing hard candy at the crowd, but also making an appearance were clowns on unicycles, giant dancing squids, seahorses, and sharks--and a loud fire truck. Don't remember those in the liturgy, but, maybe I didn't read it closely. 

We then took a gaggle of friends and relatives to our not-yet ready apartment in San Sebastián, and continued the party with the help of several bottles of champagne, Danish beer, La Rioja wine, and, of course, blue bottles of Bombay Gin. I stuck to fizzy mineral water--don't like alcohol since my Foreign Service days. 

One of my wife's cousins, a drum major in past parades, insisted on re-enacting the role. While his brother played music from a phone, he drum majored around the apartment, weaving among the paint cans, ladders, and other debris, singing--quite well, actually--at the top of his lungs while directing the invisible marching band behind him with a long broom handle. This at 3 am; no neighbor said even a peep of protest then or the following day. Gotta love Spain. David would have enjoyed it.

Spent the next couple of days visiting some wonderful rustic farm house restaurants out in the beautiful countryside. Foggy, rainy mountain landscape. No tourists. Spanish barely spoken. 

The Basques love their farmers, and treat them with great respect. The farmers, in turn, produce some fantastic food and chefs.

Also spent a lot of time sitting in our apartment as various handymen did a lot of rewiring, switching out of appliances, painting, and delivering and assembling furniture. The Diplowife passed much of the day today with lawyers, hashing out all sorts of inheritance and property registration and taxation issues. 

In other words, I literally watched paint dry, and kept wondering if this place will ever be ready. There is always something more. 

I also followed the battle for Speaker of the House. 

All things considered, I thought it turned out pretty well. The score of hardcore stalwarts played their hand about as skillfully as could be expected, and extracted what seem some significant concessions from the McCarthy wing of the party. Look, as I have noted before, I am a disaster at predicting US politics, but think we got a good result given the lackluster midterms. If we can get some action to restrain the outrageous behavior of the FBI, correct the narrative on J6, revisit our Ukraine policy, see some movement on securing the border, get some accountability for the COVID disaster, and hold down spending, that's a lot. Impeachment of Biden and his cronies would also be quite nice--but I won't hold my breath.

It's 2 am, and I guess should try to get some sleep. I don't want to say anything too stupid at this late hour. I will wait for daylight to do that.

Happy New Year, again.

End of Year Musings

This is where I go full old man.

This no-good, horrid year of 2022 draws to a close--none too soon for my taste--and I can only hope that 2023 will prove better. Will it? While I have no great powers of observation and foretelling, what little I do have tell me that things will not get any better. Sorry to be so cheerful.

The impending death of the current year has me reflecting on my own life, and what I have done and not done with it.  First, my own life. What have I done? Not much really. I spent some 34 years in the State Department; my tenure there will pass, as they say in Spanish, "sin pena ni gloria," i.e., unnoticed one way or another. I devoted my adult life to what I thought was my country, its values, and interests. I am now wracked with doubts that that was the case. As we see from the "Twitter Files," the doubts I had about what was really going on have proven out. I am deeply saddened and depressed by that. Those institutions with which I worked closely for so many years, e.g., FBI, CIA, DOJ, have turned out to be the real enemies. The Taliban, AQ, PRC, or the USSR, could not undermine our nation to any degree comparable to what has been done by our high-tech mafia, allied with the pro-regime media, and the key institutions of the Deep State. The enemy is here; they are in our house, and as we so graphically see every day on our border are openly working to tear it apart. Not just here. I see the same happening in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and all over Western Europe. 

The assault on the values, even the most basic ones, of our civilization is relentless. The world we leave our grandchildren is a horrid one: Twerking drag queens in our libraries and schools; feral youth owning the streets; malicious cretins dominating our legal, educational, and public health institutions; an entertainment industry promoting violence and perversion. Not cheerful.

My own life? 

Well, I can't really complain. Misbegotten though slightly adventurous career aside, I have been fortunate in finance and family. My investing motto always has been, "Don't invest in anything you don't understand; invest in what the progs are against." I, for example, stayed away from Enron or bitcoin because I simply did not understand the business models. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I bought GTO: Guns, Tobacco, and Oil. The dividends and capital gains from Ruger, Raytheon, Philip Morris, and BP, put my kids through college--now, that would be a waste--and got me into real estate, when it was still good. Can't complain on that score.

Day after tomorrow, the Diplowife and I leave for a couple of weeks in Spain. We will see family, enjoy great food, and check on the work underway on our places there. The reports seem positive. I hope those prove so, and that that silly entertainment will keep us from reflecting too much on David.

Anyhow, we will soon be off--weather permitting. I will try to write something or another from Spain. Maybe more cheery.

All the best, and despite everything, let's try to make 2023 a better year.

Happy New Year.

Hanukkah Ain't Christmas or Dewali

This time of year, every year since I was a kid, I get extremely irritated by attempts to make Hanukkah into some sort of Jewish Christmas or Jewish Dewali. 

So tiresome to hear of Hanukkah portrayed, mostly by ultra-liberal Jews, as "the Festival of Lights." Some sort of holiday to spread peace, joy, and cheer to one and all. 

Ugh.

Hanukkah ain't that at all. It's about picking up a sword, and killing the foreign oppressor AND killing those of your own who have sold out to the foreign oppressor. The Maccabees were warriors, not spreaders of love and peace. They rose up against the Seleucid empire, but also mostly against those "Hellenized" Jews, who backed the Seleucid rulers and their attempt to eradicate the Jewish faith. The revolt was a long-shot affair, led by the Maccabee family. The Maccabees, however, eventually defeated the Seleucids, and restored their right to practice the Jewish faith. The Maccabees also proved true to Jewish history in another way: once they became victorious they began fighting among themselves, but that's another story. The Romans eventually moved in, and the rest, well, you know the rest.

Anyhow, we in the West might do with a little more of the original Maccabee spirit as we see our societies colonized from within and without. 

A little less peace and goodwill, and more "This We'll Defend."  

With that said, Merry Christmas to all.