Thursday, December 29, 2022

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.



Tuesday, December 20, 2022

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.   



Wednesday, December 14, 2022

2024 and Trump

The six or seven regular readers of this humble narcissistic exercise might remember that I supported Donald Trump in 2016 (after some initial doubts) and, again, in 2020. 

I remain convinced that he proved the best president in my life, and that the 2020 election was stolen from him--and us--as part of a long-running coup plot by the DNC and its allies within Congress, the deep state, and the media, legacy and social. Recent revelations by Twitter's new owner Elon Musk show how Trump and his supporters got censored and banned from Twitter, and presumably other social media, by the pro-DNC high tech mafia working with the FBI, CIA, DOJ, etc. 

That suppression on social media came accompanied by twisted and malicious reporting by the majority of the legacy media, and, of course, a huge vote fraud machine unleashed on election day. I have zero doubt that Trump won that election, and that that is now obvious even to those who deny or try to ignore it. The same forces that cooked up and promoted the fake Russia-collusion hoax, the deliberate and politically motivated COVID misinformation and economic shut-down, suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story and its evidence of Biden family criminality, now continue to target Trump and his key supporters with spurious legal charges and FBI raids. The aim, of course, is to destroy Trump as a person and as a political force. They might succeed.

Trump made some major mistakes in his time in office which helped his enemies rip away the White House from him. Those of us who like Trump and support him, have to acknowledge that he committed some key errors. Despite his talk about the "swamp" and the "deep state," in the end, he failed to understand the extent of the treachery by the denizens of the swamp and the permanent state. It seems as though Trump didn't listen to Trump. He appeared to think the people he appointed to key positions would prove loyal to him and his vision, and keep their bureaucratic domains under control. Wrong. 

Trump, simply put, failed to take hold of the bureaucracy. He, as a newbie in DC, relied upon, for example, House Speaker Paul Ryan to fulfill the promise of getting rid of Obamacare. Ryan, as we know, had no intention of doing that, and kept stalling with calls to "reject and replace" Obamacare, knowing full well that was a multi-year task. He also stalled Trump on the building of the border wall. Trump's succession of chiefs-of-staff also took advantage of Trump's newbie status, and frustrated his efforts to revolutionize DC. Likewise, his initial picks at the DOJ, NSC, DoD, CIA, State also put the brakes on his foreign policy. It was only after the arrival of Pompeo at State, that he had ally in the foreign policy bureaucracy. The biggest failing came with the FBI, which Trump allowed to go rogue and nearly destroy his presidency. Don't forget that as we read about the actions of the CIA, DOJ, and FBI to censor Trump at Twitter, that Trump was President. Those bureaucrats ostensibly worked for him. Those bureaucrats, however, actively worked to bring him down, not just at Twitter but with the fake Russia-collusion story and the fake impeachments.

COVID, as we now can all clearly see, was a hyped-up "crisis" used to shut down the booming economy--Trump's major achievement--and facilitate bizarre rules on voting to allow the DNC to engage more easily in massive fraud. COVID was a tough one for Trump: a lose-lose. The CDC, NIAID, and the rest of the federal health bureaucracy detested Trump, and happily collaborated in feeding the public a scare that was not merited, to say the least. If Trump defied them, the CNN "death clock" would have gone nuts, and he would have been labelled a mass murderer; if he went along, as he did, he destroyed the economy, increased the power of the permanent bureaucracy, including their power to silence those who knew better. A total disaster. 

We now come to the present. Will Trump run in 2024? It seems so. Will he have opponents within the GOP who will "primary him"? I don't know. DeSantis had initially stated that were Trump to run, he would not. Does that sill hold? I don't know. Will the Biden criminals and their allies seek to indict or otherwise smear Trump? Absolutely. Will that hurt Trump's ability to run? Yes.

Quite frankly, I also fear some of Trump's tactics in a primary. He, for example, had no excuse for how he treated Ted Cruz in 2016. He was lucky that Cruz rose above that, and was one of Trump's best allies--well, up to a point, he could have done more--I think--in January 2021 by raising objections to the certification of clearly fraudulent elector slates. Do we want Trump to savage, for example, Governor DeSantis? That's not good.

Despite the calamity now occupying the Presidency, the odds are against any GOP candidate winning the White House in 2024. If Trump runs as the GOP candidate, I will vote for him, as I would for DeSantis, and that with no expectation that either would win. The DNC fraud machine remains largely intact--as we saw in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania in November's mid-term elections. We've had some victories, Musk's take-over of Twitter certainly counts, but . . . we have so much to do to get our country back on track.

More later.


Saturday, December 10, 2022

The Continuing Twitter Saga: 2020 Election was Rigged

I have continued to pore over the information coming out of Twitter. It is horrifying to find that all certain of us suspected was accurate--look at this little blog's postings over the years. Elon Musk deserves the Medal of Freedom and so much more for cracking open the shell that was Twitter and allowing us to see the rot within. 

This company which labelled itself as the world's public square--and it was--used its enormous power to rig a US election--there are hints it might have done so in other countries, as well--and killed thousands of Americans. 

In the US, Twitter worked closely with the Deep State in the form of the FBI, DHS, and elements within the DNI to undermine a sitting US president, and do all it could to shape the battlefield of the 2020 elections. Twitter worked with the Biden campaign and anti-Trump elements within the senior ranks of the US intelligence apparatus--while Trump was president!--to help elect Joe Biden. Tweeter suppressed, with FBI support, the Hunter Biden laptop story, helping hide egregious criminal behavior by the Biden family, including Joe Biden, himself, promoting the false Russia collusion story, and suppressed in various ways pro-Trump voices, including that of President Trump, himself. We can only suspect that Tweeter was not the only high tech or mass media company that did this, in conjunction with US intelligence operatives.  Twitter also hid information, at FBI behest, of electoral fraud, and information that ran counter to the false narrative on COVID and vaccines. 

We, in effect, had a successful coup in November 2020. 

The coup which began with the fake Russia-collusion hoax, and fraudulent impeachment efforts damaged America's ability to conduct foreign policy, and, more importantly, damaged to an unprecedented degree our confidence in our basic institutions.  The war on accurate COVID information undoubtedly caused the death of thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands of Americans, helped undermine our economy, and enriched a handful of pharma companies. 

Biden is an illegitimate occupant of the White House.

I have seen no other example of anything approaching this disaster in our history.  

This is a nightmare.

I will try to have more coherent thoughts in the near future. For now, I look forward to the next Twitter dump.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Twitter Starts to Come Clean; What about Facebook, Google, Apple, CBS, NBC, ABC, NYT, WaPo etc.?

Absorbed by the unfolding drama over at Twitter, I have been reading all the messages coming out from Musk and Taibbi revealing the collaboration between the Biden campaign/Biden administration in suppressing the Hunter laptop story, and in denying pro-Trump/conservative voices an outlet. It confirms what most of us already knew, but it remains shocking to see it revealed in black and white from original source materials, in particular the White House targeting specific American citizens, e.g., James Woods, and getting Twitter to shut them down.

Ok, now what? What will the GOP do about it? Move on? Seek bipartisan consensus on some meaningless bill? 

This is the time to come down hard, and not just on former Twitter employees, who will adopt the Nuremberg defense, "Just following orders." I want a crackdown on the FBI, NSA, CIA, DOJ, IRS, and any other alphabet agency employees involved in rigging our elections and political system. It is time for Google and Facebook, also, to be brought to account. 

Let us also not forget that the mainstream “legacy” media have a lot of explaining to do. Time for CBS, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, NYT, NPR, WaPo , and so on, also to come clean about their collaboration with the FBI, CIA, White House to suppress and shape stories. How about the whole Covid narrative, for one?

Elon Musk deserves the nation's gratitude and the Medal of Freedom.

Makes you realize that the J6 protestors were not the threat to democracy; that came from within.

Back to Twitter . . . 

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Twitter, Trump, Kanye, Fuentes, China, and Britain

I have to admit enjoying my return to Twitter. I particularly appreciate the much more free environment under Elon Musk's rule: Lots more diverse opinions and better jokes. Musk, himself, quite the funny man, would make an excellent stand-up comic in case his billionaire gig goes south.

This leads me to Trump. 

Trump's once almost infallible political sense has begun to fail him. He's made some unforced errors in the past few weeks, for which there is little to no excuse. His announcement of running for President was insipid, but more seriously he should have (in my view) coordinated it with DeSantis, and others, and put on a show of GOP unity. The last thing I want to see, for example, is a Trump v. DeSantis clash wherein they damage each other, and the "victor" ends up losing in 2024 to the DNC fraud machine. This is not 2016. The DNC fraud machine is in fine shape, and as we saw in Pennsylvania, the Dems can run a human rutabaga and win.  

I also don't understand Trump's fascination, flirtation, whatever you want to call it, with Kanye "Ye" West. 

Forget Kanye. 

He is an erratic loon who will say anything to get attention, a bit like Ann Coulter (not fair?) 

Nick Fuentes is another attention-seeking loon, and, unfortunately (full disclosure) a friend of one of my sons, who thinks he's terrific. We disagree on that, strongly. 

Given the hostility of the MSM to him, Trump should avoid Fuentes. 

I find it crazy that Trump gets accused of antisemitism when he has a Jewish son-in-law, Jewish daughter, Jewish grandchildren, and is widely recognized as the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, contained Iran, and brought peace to the Middle East. He has an unmatched track record on being pro-Israel, and of friendship with the Jewish people. He will squander that with silly mistakes.

Events in China seem quite interesting. I assume--perhaps wrongly--that the regime will manage to suppress this latest outburst of dissent, but the seeds might have been planted for future rebellion. It's always very hard to determine what is happening in China, and even whether the lock-downs have anything to do with COVID, or, more likely (in my view), with internal CCP power struggles. Xi's move to become the lifelong emperor of of China has violated the CCP's unwritten rule that no one person would ever assume the same degree of power once held by Mao. Xi, however, is going for total rule, and I would not be surprised to find people within the party resisting that, and helping foment public dissent--particlarly in a time when the Chinese economy faces some stormy weather. We'll see. That is just speculation on my part.

It, however, is certainly time, well past that, for American and other Western countries to get out of China. "Made in China" is another phrase for "Made by Slaves."

On the GOP leadership struggle, I find it imperative that the GOP resolve that quickly. Otherwise, I can see a RINO alliance with the Dems that would keep a Dem Speaker, or one backed by the Dems (Cheney?) Almost anybody within the current candidates for Speaker is better than that result. Get this resolved NOW.

Events in the UK seem emulating our own disaster. The Tories have proved themselves TINOs. Britain is being overwhelmed by illegal aliens, seeing escalating crime rates, and HMG has proven as inept or complicit as our own in the destruction of the nation. I can understand the fury of Nigel Farage, who sees his long effort to get Britain out of the EU, and to restore British sovereignty undermined by the TINOs, the Deep State, and the techno-media elite. Britain is getting sucked right back into the lethal EU embrace. 

It seems some in the UK think their country has had no history as an independent nation, and couldn’t possibly survive without the sage wisdom of the Continent. Sad. Might want to read a book or two.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Creeping up on Thanksgiving: Thoughts on University Students Voting

My two sons, their respective wives and children have descended upon us to pass Thanksgiving week--no turkey as old-time readers of this little blog know. It always has been one of my favorite holidays, and I hope we can have a good one, all the while missing David.  We spent part of the day watching the World Cup, which David once loved but I find, well, boring. The US tied Wales, 1-1. I don't know; I didn't find that very exciting. 

On the subject of soccer/football, and this is addressed to anybody genuinely in the know, why does the UK get more than one team? I know they invented the game, but hasn't the copyright expired? How do we get in on that deal? We missed it at the UN when the USSR got three seats: USSR, Ukraine, Belorussia. Just curious--oh, and how do they decide if a player goes to the Wales team or the England team, for example? Does it involve jousting? Archery? Hurling of insults? DNA? Just wondering. Too lazy to use Google. You tell me.

I see that CBS has gotten around to telling us that the Hunter Biden laptop is genuine. Next week, I understand, they will confirm that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Good journalism is about taking your time, not going headlong for some silly scoop that gets reversed later on . . . 

Still not clear what is happening in Arizona. The count goes on, I guess? Now lawyers have gotten involved. This ain't the way to run a country. One feature which I have not heard anybody address--if they have, pardon--is the role of universities in skewing voting results in certain communities. These large schools, such as in Arizona, fill up with students from all over who register to vote locally. That can seriously affect the outcome in small towns or rural/suburban areas: A huge mass of liberal voters not connected to the local community casting ballots that will affect that community for years to come. This needs addressing.

OK, off to buy a thermometer--there is some potential high temp with one kiddo-- and some lunch for all the other gathered children. 


Saturday, November 19, 2022

Back in NC

Flew back from Spain via London on Thursday. Uneventful flight, although I did find security at Heathrow chaotic and seriously understaffed. Currently in Wilmington where my now politically active Diplowife has been invited to a GOP event tonight to meet our local Republican officials. I will go along. Chance to fire up the Vette which has sat in the garage for nearly four weeks--hope the battery is not dead. If it is, well, then it's time for the nearly 200,000 mile 2005 Chevy Trailblazer, aka, the car that will not die. Indestructible.

I am curious to hear our local GOP poobahs' take on the recent midterms and the state of play for 2024. The Republicans did relatively well in North Carolina.

I, for one, refuse to get drawn into the Trump vs DeSantis debate which is being fed by the pro-Democrat media, and by some surprisingly tone deaf comments from President Trump. Now is not the time for a GOP civil war. If we don't address the serious structural issues in our election system--polite way of saying "fraud"--it makes no difference whom the GOP nominates: he/she cannot win.  

Either the GOP tackles the issues of mass mail-in ballots, no voter ids, ballot harvesting, non-citizen voting, and corrupt voting machines, or it just cedes the field to the Democrats. 

As one wise man said, can't remember who, "The Republicans chase after voters; the Democrats chase after votes." An unfortunate but accurate depiction of the state of play, kind of along the lines of the apocryphal statement attributed (False? True?) to Stalin, "It's not who casts the votes that matters; it's who counts the votes."

OK. Got to go pay the gardener and figure out why the house won't heat up. Then, I will resume my battle to save Western civilization.

 

Friday, November 11, 2022

Midterms IV: Looking Back and Ahead

Well, the dang things happened, finally. We had our midterm elections. The world now can go back to mocking American politics.

Both major parties had declared these midterm elections the most important in our history: ones that would determine the very fate of democracy and the survival of our Republic. The GOP, FOX, and assorted conservative pundits announced that the nation would witness and feel a RED TSUNAMI that would sweep away the leftist evil-doers. The DNC, the major networks, and other corporate allies said, "Nah! The Blue Wall will hold back the red fascist tide!"  

So wha' happen'd? 

As usual, neither scenario proved true. My doubts about a red wave proved accurate. No Red tsunami and no impenetrable Blue wall. There was, however, despite all the wailing on the GOP side, and despite blatant Democratic electoral fraud, a considerable red river that poked through, under, and around the blue wall in several spots, and caused significant erosion of the blue fortress. Didn't cave it or wash it away, but, nevertheless, we should not ignore some big wins. 

But first . . . 

Big waves of either color have proven rare in our history. 

We have a very large, complicated, and diverse country; its politics, as a consequence, vary considerably from one region to another. What's important in Arizona, does not necessarily register as an issue in New York, for example. Our wise founding fathers saw this, even in 1789, and created the electoral college, three co-equal branches of government, and a federal system with considerable power left to the individual states and the people; they were willing to live with a certain amount of national political deadlock or, let's say, ambiguity for the sake of restraining the central government's power. It's a good system. It's system of checks-and-balances generally has worked well for us for nearly two and a half centuries.

Today, however, we have serious trouble in America. We see that young people, ages 18-29, can be and are bought and swayed by the ludicrous promises and policies of the increasingly authoritarian Democratic Party--since its founding an odd mix of thugs and so-called intellectuals. This party, the world's oldest, promises, and ensures, no consequences for bizarre and destructive personal behavior. Our cities are a horrific mess. We effectively have no borders. Our educational institutions have become a nightmare under Democratic rule. They produce credentialed, smug, lazy, ahistorical, illiterate and silly brutes with strong self-esteem, an overwhelmingly sense of entitlement, and disconnected from the real economy. These stupid brutes basically add nothing to our material, spiritual, and intellectual wealth. They are ripe for manipulation and exploitation by the lords of the new left, and its billionaire allies in the mass media, high tech, and Pharma industries. They are the lemmings of the woke movement.

Appeals to patriotism, historical practice, and just common sense, make increasingly less headway with this mass of stupid voters. These electors now respond more to emotional appeals, often relying on fake science--e.g., men can become women, men can get pregnant, global climate "crisis," the COVID "crisis"--promoted by cynical social media "influencers" and politicos, among others. They deny the existence of a crime wave--you are racist if you point it out--and any inflation concerns are dealt with by government subsidies, e.g., COVID payments of various types, student debt "forgiveness," etc. They hate children and want to see them tortured or dead. They spout off a distorted version of history, which demands that America and the West atone for sins with reparations and open borders. They hate our country and the Western civilization from which it springs. 

All that, of course, is quite apart from the corruption of the electoral process itself. Stealing elections is a well-honed art by the Democrats. In the last few election cycles, the Dems have become evermore cynical, and less and less worried about keeping what they do out of view.  They have no shame in using the bureaucracy and law enforcement to harass and intimidate the political opposition. They are aided in this by, as mentioned, a compliant and actively complicit media complex and the high lords of high tech. 

I have to laugh/cry when I see conservatives arguing among themselves over we should run Trump or DeSantis in 2024. The Dems are quite happy to see and foster this silly debate. They run a mummy for President, a human vegetable for the Senate, and a DEAD guy for a State assembly seat, and they WIN! Their candidate for governor in Arizona just happens to be the person in charge of ensuring electoral integrity in Arizona. Yet, despite all this, we get labelled election deniers, get censored, thrown off media platforms, and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists if we express doubts about our election system. It simply doesn't matter how good your candidates are if the system is rigged to ensure they lose.

All is not lost, however. In these midterm elections we did see some good people manage to get through. The GOP will, it seems, control, barely, one and perhaps both houses of Congress. The problem is what will the GOP do with it? If we keep politicos such as McConnell and McCarthy in charge, politicos who want to "move on," "forget the past," "work constructively" with the mummy, then nothing will happen and the party and the nation will continue the slide into oblivion.

Battery is getting low on the laptop, and I will blast this off into the ether. 

Forgive any typos or overtly stupid statements. 

More thoughts to come.   


Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Midterms III

Sitting here in San Sebastián, Spain, just having returned from the dentist. We've been "supervising" the work at our place here. It's coming along, slowly, slowly. Some electrical issues, a small water leak, etc.

Anyhow, I have been glued to the computer and YouTube following developments in the US midterms. I never trust "wave" predictions, and I think a lot my GOP friends have been very busy counting the chickens before they hatch. 

Hope I am wrong, but there is going to be massive, and well-advertised in advance cheating by the Dems in collusion with their lap dog media outlets. I am deeply troubled by the attempts to "normalize" delayed vote counts and late night/early morning "spikes" in Dem votes. This is criminally absurd that we can't run free and fair elections in our country!

I guess we can hope for the best, and, meanwhile, keep buying ammo . . . and diesel, and baby formula, and car parts, and, soon, meat, veggies, milk . . . and on and on.

Monday, October 31, 2022

Heading Out

Diplowife and I are heading for our places in Spain day after tomorrow. Got to see how the work is progressing or not. Be gone for about two weeks. 

We have voted. We'll see how things turn out, although it now appears certain that the Dems are preparing to cheat in at least Pennsylvania, and a few other spots, as well. 

Was sad to see Bolsonaro lose in Brazil; as one wise pundit noted, had he had an electoral college system instead of direct election, Bolsonaro would have won big. Only one section of the country (the Northeast) voted against him. So as a pundit observed, Bolsonaro got California'ed. He seems to have won big in the Congressional elections. Note please: Brazil counted its votes in ONE NIGHT. 

The whole Pelosi story is just too weird. So many holes in it, it looks like Swiss cheese. The Dems are busy trying to pull a Jussie Smollett on us, but it ain't working. Ol' Paul seems to be a wild man who enjoys his time when Nancy is away. He crashes Porsches and had weird "hammer" events at the manse. We will never get the whole story, and we need to start right now with, "Dave is not suicidal!" Keep Hillary away.

BTW, I got reinstated on Twitter. Thank you St. Elon, the Hammer of the Libs! Hope he can make money out of the dumpster fire that is Twitter.

Will post on election night.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Midterm Elections, Part II

Diplowife, three large dogs, an old Ford E-350, and I rolled into Wilmington two nights ago. We off-loaded the hounds, and the Diplowife said, "We will be back in Spain on election day, so let's go vote now." OK, off we went to the Senior Center to cast an early ballot. We were the last voters allowed in as the place was closing up. We voted, and as we left Diplowife got into a conversation with some GOPers there handing out flyers with the party's recommendations on how to vote. Long story short, the Diplowife is now working at the polling station handing out Republican flyers and sample ballots. I have lost her to American politics. She loves it. She also tells me that many of the Democratic voters seem extremely angry, and give her a lot of lip over her party preference. The Republicans, she says, seem much more well-adjusted and have a sense of humor. There. A scientific study on voters.

Watched the three major debates last night. The Pennsylvania debate was a horror show. Why is Fetterman running? He was always a certified idiot but now with the stroke, my God, the man belongs in bed. I don't know how many votes get changed by these debates, especially since early voting is well underway in Pennsylvania, but nobody should vote for Fetterman. He looks and talks like the Goons in the old Popeye cartoons. The Michigan debate was also interesting, with Gov. Whitmer trying to rewrite recent history. She did not look impressive. The same for the NY debate. The current NY governor is a complete fraud who seems to have no interest in the job except for the power it gives her. I hope she goes down in flames. Wishful thinking? Perhaps.

If the Republicans take the Congress, what will they do with it? No more Paul Ryan blah-blah. The country is in serious trouble. Serious trouble requires serious people willing to think and act outside the box.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

The Midterms

I am always reluctant to prognosticate on US electoral politics. When posted overseas, I was pretty good at analyzing and predicting political events in foreign countries, but US politics? Not so good. Too many variables, too much volatility, and, of course, unreliable vote counting make it very tough. We also have one of the sloppiest vote collection and tabulation systems in the world. We have no clear idea of just who is voting, and how the votes are counted. It's a disgrace. 

In much of the country, we have voting systems and regulations designed when we were a much more homogeneous and even rural, small town, country where we all knew each other. Ain't that way now. We need a complete election system overhaul, e.g., voter ids, clear laws on only citizens voting, and simple counting measures that do not involve inserting a ballot into a mysterious machine that then "counts" the votes. Go back to paper and pencil with government and political party monitors keeping a close eye to avert the sort of electoral travesty we saw in 2020.  As I have said on many occasions in this little blog, I served as an international election monitor in several countries; I can tell you that I would never have certified US elections as free and fair: Guatemala, yes; Illinois, no.

That said, it seems the Republicans will have a good electoral result in November. It appears that the GOP will take both houses of Congress, augment its presence in state assemblies and other local offices, including increasing the number of states with Republican governors. The apparent growing public antipathy towards the Dems misrule might just overwhelm even that party's vaunted ability to rig elections.It seems that way, anyhow, but . . . chickens before they hatch, etc. 

OK, let's assume the GOP takes both houses of Congress, then what? Will we get that Paul Ryan/Lyndsey Graham blah-blah inaction we saw during the first two years of Trump's administration? Look, I know it's tough bordering on impossible to govern from Congress, but the least we can expect from the GOP is no-nonsense and quick investigations into major Democratic scandals which are just hanging out there: e.g., Biden laptop, Biden relations with Ukraine and China, the politicization of the FBI, ATF, IRS, CIA, etc., failure to enforce our immigration laws, "defund" the police disaster, and, of course, holding accountable the hoaxers who perpetuated the damaging Trump-Putin collusion story, and the COVID shutdown of the economy. I am not sure if the Congress can reverse the Biden anti-oil production edicts, but it should certainly apply incessant political heat on the ZOMBUS to revoke them. The GOP needs to block the insane spending by the USG and push for tax cuts.

In addition, the GOP needs to take a hard look at the leftist grifters who run our national education institutions, and cut the money to them. Speaking of money, the GOP can use the power of the purse to force a "purification"of, say, the FBI. With majority control of the Senate, the GOP could block the ludicrous Biden nominees for key positions. We could also have impeachment proceedings launched against Biden, Harris, Wray, Mayorkas and any number of other destructive morons in positions of power.

Oh yes, let's also stop the march to war with Russia, the kow-towing to China, and chasing after the Iranian creeps.

Some have suggested--perhaps in jest--that the House of Representatives make Trump Speaker. There is no requirement that the Speaker be an elected member of Congress. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this. Certainly popcorn sales would go through the roof. Not sure what it would do to Trump's 2024 plans. Trump burn out? Anyhow, your views are welcome.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

ZOMBUS: Marching as to War

Having an ever-harder time writing about US and Western politics and society. 

Dangerous buffoons head the governments of the major Western countries. Right here, once the greatest place on earth, we have leadership at both the national and local level that would prove an international embarrassment if not nearly all the other leaders around the world also prove embarrassments. 

No major Western country has a leader worth admiring or, at least, about whom one can feel moderately hopeful. Canada? Australia? UK? France? NZ? All led by morons of varying degree who have bought into the Woke nonsense destroying Western Civilization. They prattle on about equity, climate change, inclusivity, open borders, "diversity is our strength," gender "identity," etc. The only glimmers of hope come from heads of "lesser" powers: Italy, Singapore, Hungary, and--for now, though probably not for long--Brazil.

As though that did not prove enough to fill one with despair, these self-hating creeps seem determined to get us into war, the hot kind, including the use of nuclear weapons. We have ZOMBUS Biden, speaking to a conclave of Democratic donors, idly speculating about how close we are to nuclear "Armageddon." Oh, his handlers immediately say, pay no mind, it's just a passing thought, one of many pouring through the sieve that the man with his finger on our nuclear trigger calls a brain. He, or whoever writes his stuff, seeks to draw an equivalence between the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Russian war against Ukraine--rubbish of the most dangerous kind. This is even worse than when our "leaders" in the recent past kept finding an equivalence between every challenge they faced and Munich 1938. Making it all even worse, of course, is that nobody I can find trusts Biden's leadership or managerial abilities. All those who hate Trump might want to reflect on how much more dangerous an international situation the West now faces when compared to when the "Mean Tweeter" held power. Now, we have chaos everywhere we look.

Russian leader Putin has gotten himself and his country and the world into a tremendous mess. To be fair, he warned us repeatedly that Ukraine's joining NATO was a red line for Moscow. We, in response, sent Willie Brown's mistress, Kamala Harris, to Europe to announce how we would welcome Ukraine into NATO. The Cuba analogy is reversed. When Moscow pushed up to our shores in 1962, we responded with the threat of nuclear war. Ukraine is Russia's Cuba--on steroids. 

What did our leaders think ("think," who thinks anymore?) would be Moscow's response? Invasion. Poorly planned, poorly executed, but, nevertheless an invasion, a bloody and brutal one, at that. The Kyiv bunch called in their chits; they, after all, own the Biden crime family. Billions of dollars in equipment and financial support poured out from the US treasury, headed for the Kyiv kleptos. Preserving the sanctity of Ukraine's borders became the greatest moral crusade since WWII! Never mind the borders of Western Europe or our own. No! Those borders are evil and deserve to be violated! But, Ukraine's? Those are set in cement! The whole fate of the world depends on those borders! No suffering by our citizens is enough! Turn the global economy upside down! It's all for a sacred cause! 

So now what? What is the exit plan? Overthrow the regime in Moscow? Then, what? Whom do you get? Are we making any plans for a diplomatic solution? Are we giving Moscow a face-saving exit? Zelensky seems determined to push up to the Russian border--and even beyond? He calls for the West to undertake preventative strikes on Russia, and we get the usual talking heads mindlessly talking about nuking the Russian Black Sea fleet . . . no thoughts on what would constitute Russia's response.

Are the Ukrainians winning? Who knows? The information coming out of the war is so twisted and censored, we can't know. If they are, now might be a good time to seek a deal with Russia, before Russia, slow, sloppy, corrupt, inept Russia gets fully mobilized, and gets its act together--and it will.

The march to war must stop. We have no vital interests in the final shape of Ukraine's borders.


  

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Nord Stream Pipeline: Gas Blast or Gaslighting?

 OK, with great trepidation, I weigh in on the Nord Stream (NS) disruption. 

As you all know, a variety of official and non-official Scandinavian, German, and other sources reported about two days ago that the NS pipelines (both, one?) had developed huge methane gas leaks, in at least three different spots. The Danish navy provided some dramatic video of the ocean bubbling and roiling as the gas erupted into the atmosphere from the sea. 

Lots of commentary about what a huge ecological-economic disaster these leaks would prove. I will leave that discussion to the "experts." Just as they have so accurately told us everything we need to know about COVID, global climate change, and the number of genders, they will, certainly, inform us as to what we need to know in that regard.

I am more concerned about the speculation about who caused the leak. I have heard reports from Sweden and Netherlands about explosions detected by seismological equipment just before the leaks were noted. Is that true? I don't know, and the journalists" writing this stuff don't know either.  

What could be the explanation for these blasts/leaks? Lots of speculation, repeat speculation, that it was Putin's boys who did this to freeze out Germany and NATO as winter approaches. Moscow's old friend "General Winter" has been called back into service, apparently. 

Eh . . . I am not convinced. 

Now, of course, we "know" that Russia threw the 2016 election to Trump . . . and . . . oh, wait, that wasn't true, was it? But, Putin thought about it, without a doubt. 

Anyhow, it is not clear to my little retired brain why Russia would blow up a critical piece of infrastructure in which Russia has a majority stake, and which provides Moscow much needed foreign currency. To starve out NATO? Yeah, but wouldn't it be easier to shut off the pipelines? One apparently wasn't operating, and the other wasn't at full capacity anyways . . . blow up the infrastructure? Russia? Got my doubts.

Did the USA do it? Did the US blast the NS? God, I hope not; despite all the idiot talk by "President" Biden and clowns such as Toria Newland about how we would shut down NS. I would hope (a forlorn hope?) that enough reasonable people remain even in this illegitimate regime to reject such an order, or at the minimum leak it--like methane gas. Blowing up the NS is pretty much akin to war. 

Would we have done such a thing without clearing it with the UK, Germany, and NATO? Without girding ourselves for the Russian response? I have doubts, but am willing to admit I might be wrong. 

There is lots of speculation about how only a nation with deep-sea diving capabilities could have done it, in other words, the US navy. Nah. In today's computer-mad, internet world, is it too crazy to think about some sort of savvy internet hackers as culprits? Could hackers either working for extremist environmentalists, rabid anti-Moscow hackers, or, how about, Ukraine have carried out some sort of virus-laden sabotage? The US and Israel, for example, have conducted such hacking operations against Iran's computer-controlled nuclear program centrifuge machines. Computer geeks out there, tell me.

These leaks could also, of course, result from the well-known Russian managerial incompetence that gave us Chernobyl and the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. A real possibility: one which should be at the top of any list of potential culprits.

I just hope our fingerprints aren't on this. 

 

Monday, September 26, 2022

Italia in the News

I am no expert on Italian politics, and don't play one on the internet. I, however, suspect that many, if not most, of the journalists commenting in the US media on yesterday's elections in Italy aren't experts either. That, of course, doesn't stop them from referring to Giorgia Meloni's electoral coalition, headed by her party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia), as "far right," having "roots leading back to Mussolini," "proto-fascist," and so on. All nonsense. 

It seems Meloni will become Italy's next PM. This has lead to a freak-out in the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. That, my friends, can only prove a good thing. 

I went to the Brothers website in Italian and read their program--my ability to read Italian is not bad. Pretty tepid manifesto for fascists. 

The party seems concerned about Italy's economy, especially as how recent events have affected small businesses; it wants to promote "Made in Italy"; expresses anger about rising violent crime; is aghast at energy prices; seeks to preserve the traditional family; and wants to end the wide-open immigration policies forced on Italy by the EU and the Italian elite. The Brothers want, in other words, much like the conservative coalition in Sweden, for politicians to make their country "first." What a shocker! Italian politicians should think of Italy's interests first. Oh, the horror! 

While they don't make it explicit, I suspect the Brothers would not be adverse to Italy's exit from the EU.

As stated at the opening, I don't claim expertise on Italian politics. The last time I spent much time on Italy's politics was as a grad student in Brandeis in the 1970s. I wrote a paper, now thankfully lost to posterity, looking at how southern Italian villages, often very close to each other physically, and with nearly identical demographic and social strata would vote radically different from each other. One, for example, would always vote Christian Democrat, and the other always Communist. I had great insights now lost to the world of scholarship. The tears flow.

Italian politics, of course, are now much different and more complex than fifty years ago. There appears a growing sense of nationalism among ordinary folks--Italy's "Deplorables"--and rejection of the elite politics which we see dominating the Western world. Italians simply want Italy back; they want to preserve their ancient culture; they resent  the elite Woke politics which force Italy--along with Europe and the USA--into lowered standards of living, i.e., poverty, in the name of "equity" and saving the planet.  

As my son noted to me today, if the elite media keep calling that "fascism," they not only white-wash real fascism, but make it more acceptable to get called "fascist."

I don't know if Meloni's coalition will hold, and if she can fight the huge forces marshalling against her. I hope she proves a better fighter than Boris Johnson who greatly disappointed; he folded like a cheap cardboard box. 

All the best to PM Meloni.

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Moron Morass

Commuting back-and-forth between Wilmington and Raleigh tending to a variety of maintenance issues; in Raleigh, a broken fridge; in Wilmington, the pool filter has sprung a leak, wife's Jeep won't start, and a dead and very tall pine tree threatens the house. Right now sitting in Raleigh, waiting to go back to Wilmington. Trying to keep busy doing stupid daily things, and not think too much about David. Not working.

Fortunately, our political class provides an endless stream of stupid daily things for me to keep riled about. There is absolutely no excuse for the current inflationary and product shortage surge we are now experiencing. The illegitimate occupiers of the White House DELIBERATELY have created an energy shortage/crisis. This has lead us to lose our energy independence, make us vulnerable again to world oil markets and the despots who control those, raised the costs of doing business and living in the US, and put us in this deplorable economic situation. That combined with an idiotic, destructive policy towards Russia and Iran, and a needless kowtowing to the PRC and the brainless global GREEN ELITE leaves us weaker and more vulnerable than we have been since 1812. The totally irresponsible spending by the Feds compounds all these problems. I haven't even mentioned the WOKE ideology which demands unlimited immigration, defunding the local police, the use of Federal law enforcement to intimidate political opponents, an all-out war on children--to include sexually abusing, killing, and mutilating them--destroying the education system, mass censorship by government and BIG TECH, and absurd distortions of science, e.g., multiple genders, mandatory vaccines that work only when there is no virus present. And you can list more and more.

We have midterm elections coming up. Will they be free and fair? No, not really. We already see the FBI and Big Tech colluding to silence opponents. 

Vote, anyhow. Donate. Volunteer. Make it as hard as possible for the bastards to cheat and win. Would a GOP victory reverse the current stream of affairs? My faith in much of the GOP is, shall we say, limited. Too many "go along, to get along" types. But that's what we have . . . other than . . ..

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Heading Back

Tomorrow morning we take the train from San Sebastian to Madrid; we fly home to North Carolina Monday morning. We are eager to see our dogs as we have missed them a great deal.

This proved a busy trip to Spain, with the highpoint being the purchase of an old apartment in San Sebastian. Lots of negotiating; lots of paperwork; lots of bureaucracy; some minor glitches, but in the end all ended well. My sister-in-law will be supervising renovation on the place, mainly ripping out old wall-to-wall carpeting and trying to save the original wood floor. The building was built in 1941, with bomb-proof concrete, so the thought of moving walls is out. Floors and paint will have to be the core of the renovation. The apartment has a story which I want to believe is true, so I will. The owner told us that her father, some sort of local Franco regime official, hosted Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, at a lunch in 1946, at the dinner table being left behind. I did some rudimentary research and found that, indeed, Randolph Churchill came through San Sebastian in 1946, and that local officials hosted him and the British military attache for lunch. I have decided to believe the story told me by the ex-owner of my apartment, to wit, that that lunch took place in the flat and at the table now in my possession. I refuse to consider any research that shows otherwise. Period. End of story. A velvet rope is being put up around the table and guided tours will soon be offered.

Spain, a great place to visit and live in, is facing the same ravages that the rest of the West faces, and the same threat to its history, culture, and long traditions from the same sort of leftist loons now infecting all of our Civilization. We had a lunch with a close friend of my wife's in Madrid; she is a British-trained chemist working for a large US multinational drug company. She knows the US very well and was saddened to see what is happening there as wokeness goes ever stronger. She sadly noted that the same process is underway in Spain. She said that her son, about ten years old, came home from an expensive Catholic school and lectured her on her "homophobia." She told her son and the school that she does not consider homosexuality a fit topic for discussion with a ten-year-old, and, in addition, that nothing would convince her that that lifestyle is "normal." Exasperated, she told us, "I had this discussion with nuns!" At work she said her American company is constantly lecturing the employees on "diversity" and "inclusivity." It all sounded so very familiar and sad.

Should have mentioned, the San Sebastian Film Festival has begun. It's showing a bunch of films I will never watch. They are competing for the Most Woke title, I guess.

I should also have mentioned that Spaniards are being bombarded daily with Green nonsense and are facing monstrous energy bills. It has begun to destroy the local farmers who now face restrictions on grazing, use of chemical fertilizers, and diesel. It's insanity.

Well, I will be heading back soon. My son is already telling me I must watch Tucker Carlson who, per my son, has been nailing it every night. OK. I will give his show a try.


Friday, September 9, 2022

QEII: Well Done and Rest in Peace

I am an American Republican/republican. As a rule, I don't care for monarchs and princes and dukes and counts, etc. That rule, however, did not hold for Queen Elizabeth II.

She ran the long race assigned her with grace, dignity, devotion to duty, wit, and deep love of her country, its culture, and traditions, and without a trace of scandal. A remarkable performance from a remarkable person.

Her passing, in my humble and probably worthless opinion, likely means the end of the British monarchy as we have known it. Her one great failing consisted of raising a brood of rather stupid children. The aged Prince of Wales, who I assume will now wear the crown, is a clown, who dabbles in woke causes, has a loose attitude towards the money he gets, and has a personal life far from dignified. I see none of his mother's spirit of self-sacrifice, dignity, and concern for tradition. His children, in turn, well, I don't know. The man once known as Prince Harry appears to have lost himself to the siren song of Hollywood and Malibu. William, we'll see. Maybe.

I am sorry to see Queen Elizabeth II pass on. In our modern world, she was one of a kind.


Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Back in Spain

Diplowife and I have headed off to Spain, again. 

She has gotten me involved in a real estate purchase, and we have to be physically present to close the deal. The exchange rate is good, the weather is fine, and we are now in Madrid for a few days before heading off to San Sebastian and our new purchase.

Will post something more interesting in the next few days.


Friday, September 2, 2022

Biden Goes Full Mugabe

Apologies for the light posting of late. My heart has just not been in it as I get overwhelmed with sadness for what's happening to our country. Too much, too much.

I watched Biden's "soul of America" speech which he gave last night in Independence Hall, Philadelphia.

I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. I kept thinking the speech had been written for Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Guyana's Forbes Burnham. 

The weird red lights, attempting to create some sort of Hollywood/Regal visual majesty, and the use of US Marines as props . . . all too, too strange, and so, so Third World. The speech itself was an abomination: full of hate and rage for the millions of us who do not support senile Biden, and laying down the framework for the repression that is to come. 

It is now official, if you had any doubts, the government and its allies are coming for you if you disagree with Biden's policies. 

Guess, for example, what the 87,000 new IRS agents will be doing? Yep. Going after the regime's opponents. The IRS, of course, will not be alone, the whole alphabet soup of Federal agencies is coming for you; the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago is just the beginning. 

Biden formally declared war on the Constitution and our Republic. 

Biden is a fascist. No "semi" about it, and he has tools at his beck-and-call of which Mugabe and Burnham could only dream.

These are dark days.

 

Saturday, August 13, 2022

Welcome to the United Stasi of America, Comrade!

What can I say about the events this past week at Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago? 

Let me try. 

In one fell swoop, the illegitimate Biden regime has put an end to whatever lingering facade still existed that we have democracy, liberty, rule of law, fair play, and blind justice in our country. The process that we saw launched on 11 September 2001, seems to be completing its mission. 

Let us remind ourselves that it was the Bush administration which helped create the massive internal security apparatus which now the DNC uses to crush all opposition. The Obama regime took the structure left it by Bush, and greatly expanded its size and reach. We saw, for example, the use of the ATF to slander legitimate gun store owners and murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least two US officers with operation "Fast and Furious." The Obama regime also used the IRS to target conservative organizations and got away with it; a few plaintive bleats from the Republicans but nothing happened. Obama's DOJ/FBI turned a blind eye to Hillary Clinton's blatant misuse of classified State Department messages with her infamous bathroom server. Donald Trump, for all his talk about "lock her up," never moved on Hillary, instead he had the FBI taken away from him by the DNC and used against him in the "Russia Collusion" hoax. The national security apparatus has been under nearly total DNC control for the past 10-15 years. That permitted the DNC to rig the 2020 elections freely and openly, and suffer no investigations, no raids, no nothing.

This raid is a turning point. 

If ever any doubters needed a sign of the peril we now face, this is it. 

There was no excuse for this raid and so far nothing has been offered to explain it. Instead, ZOMBUS and his crackhead son go off to vacation on the beach, and--coincidence!--the FBI Director also leaves town. And VP Harris? Who knows or cares? And the press is fine with it all.

We are crossing into GDR territory.

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

China in the News, Sorta

Some ten years ago (here), I wrote in this humble blog about the-then common belief among the Great Thinkers that the 21st century would "belong" to China much as the 20th had "belonged" to the USA. 

I had doubts about that, and concluded that the 21st century would only belong to China to the degree that we gave it away. I saw neither then nor now anything intrinsically great about the thuggish CCP that would make their China into a world leader. The PRC was and is a brutish authoritarian state, albeit with large foreign currency reserves; it does not invent, or innovate in any field in particular. China's advancement such as it is, has been obtained largely by espionage, theft, purchase, bribery, and bullying of the first degree, combined with an astute understanding of the greed and the lack of patriotism of large Western corporations. 

Well, have we "given away" the 21st century to China? 

Not quite. 

There is little if any doubt--none, actually--that the Biden crime family, and others, have made enormous amounts of money from China--and Ukraine. Over the years, we have outsourced critical components of our manufacturing and technological base to China, creating an everyday dependence on Chinese production. According to official GDP figures, always suspect, China now has the second largest economy in the world. That might or might not be given the CCP's known manipulation of such numbers, including the "padding" of the Chinese economy with essentially worthless, corruption-ridden construction projects. 

It's hard to find out what's going in China. The CCP has mastered the information shutdown to a degree that would make the old Soviets envious. On COVID, for example, we never have gotten the accurate word on what China's role was in propagating that virus. The CCP has used its dollar clout to shut up the WHO and gotten the tacit support of American technology/information giants to suppress views indicating that the virus came out of a lab in Wuhan. We now see oddities in China related to the virus, supposedly. The almost total and brutal lockdown of Shanghai is an extraordinary event which our passive press largely have ignored. It is not at all clear that the lockdown in that enormous city has anything to do with real concerns about COVID, and could well be the product of a power struggle over the upcoming 20th Congress of the CCP. I noted before in my old post referenced above that the leadership of the CCP, following the death of Mao much like the CPSU following the death of Stalin, had decided that no one man would come to hold the power that Mao had wielded. Xi Jing Pin, however, seems to have a different idea; it appears that he seeks to turn the 20th Congress into his coronation as leader for life. It also appears that CCP leaders from Shanghai have a different view from Xi's, and they are getting their city locked down in response. Hard to tell what's going on, so I might be totally wrong, but . . .. 

One of the more interesting "facts," well, I think it's a fact, is that despite China's fame as a manufacturer, the core of its economy, something around 70%, remains real estate and its financing. China's largest companies are in different facets of the real estate business. From what I have read, it seems that, despite the censorship and repression, perhaps hundreds-of-thousands--maybe more--of ordinary Chinese have grown tired of paying mortgages for houses that never get built; these citizens are simply refusing to pay. The construction companies and banks use the down payments and mortgage payments to buy or lease more land to sell never-to-build houses to other Chinese citizens. A massive Ponzi scheme on a scale never before attempted. This mortgage payment strike apparently has been sweeping the country forcing the CCP to begin to intervene. As I noted all those many years ago, Chinese banks remain a mystery. It would not be too crazy a thought that we could see a major meltdown in China's banks and real estate businesses. That would pose a massive threat to the entire CCP economic scheme of the past 25 or so years, and have serious consequences for Xi. 

China is much weaker than it appears from the outside. That, however, does not make it not a threat. We saw how Argentina's dictators tried to distract from Argentina's impending economic collapse by  provoking a war with Britain over the Falklands. China, better said, Xi might/might view an adventure over Taiwan as way to distract from troubles at home and solidify his grip on the CCP.

So, we will see how Xi reacts to the Pelosi visit and to the obvious weakness in Washington and the West.

Sunday, July 31, 2022

And Ukraine? Some Innocent Questions

Just a quick Sunday note with some questions.

Have you noticed how the mass media have gone almost totally silent on the war in Ukraine? 

What happened to the sturdy and brave, nay, stallworthy newsmen and women, wearing imitation combat kit, standing in front of some building in Kiev telling us in stentorian tones about the battle to come for the capital of Ukraine? What happened? No news gatherers imbedded with the "victorious" Ukrainian forces inflicting defeat after defeat on the evil Russkies? All we see are tired old politicos and grade B actors from America and Europe visiting Zelensky, when he is not posing for Vogue, that is.

What's going on with the billions in weapons the US and NATO supposedly have sent to Ukraine? Where are they? Who has them?

We censored nearly all reporting out of Russia, have we now censored nearly all reporting out of Ukraine?

Kind of like pandemic and Trump-Putin collusion reporting. Poof!

Monday, July 25, 2022

ZOMBUS and a New Definition for BS, to wit, a Biden Story

Got back from Spain last week; had a rough time adjusting to jet lag, and, above all, not having my son David to talk with about everything. Not how I thought my "Golden Years" would go.

We hit Madrid in the middle of LGBTQRSVPXYZ "Pride" celebrations. Never understood what these folks have done to be so full of "Pride," or what exactly they have to celebrate. Well, maybe that's just me. 

Anyhow, we found Madrid full of Gerald Baker rainbow flags (our only export now: cultural crap). Nearly all the stores had been festooned with those things: McDonalds had gone full Pride, but so had just about every other business. Rainbow colors everywhere! Either they smell money in this LGTXZSAWCRAP thing, get driven by fear, or both. I don't know. Hundreds of thousands, probably more, "activists" from all over Europe and elsewhere showed up, held giant street parties, wore bizarre outfits, engaged in lots of PDA, and heard and gave speeches about how oppressed they feel. I wondered if I were watching a Monkey Pox Super Spreader event, but surely the politically correct health authorities would tell us if that's so . . . I mean, they haven't lied to us about Covid . . .. The only bright light came from the politically conservative head of the Provincial Council who did not attend any "Pride" events, and, to the outrage of "activists," scheduled a bullfight in the middle of the "Pride" days. I like her.

On another front, friends and relatives expressed serious concern about Joe Biden's performance at the Madrid NATO conference, which took place just before "Pride." To them, he seemed weak and confused--uh, maybe because, well, he is? Not a good look.

His wife, La Doctora Jill, also did not give off good vibes. 

Not breakfast tacos this time, but shoes. 

"Dr." Jill envied the Spanish Queen's shoes; she wanted a few pair just like them. So, of course, she had the center of Madrid shut down so she and her inner circle could go shoe shopping while protected by our Secret Service and the Spanish police. Without a doubt, all those limos and SUVs were environmentally friendly, and she shopped in honor of Ukraine. One cent of every purchase will go to fund abortion clinics in Ukraine for poor women of color . . . 

Got back to NC in time to hear the supposed President of the US, aka, ZOMBUS Biden, tell another BS BS (Biden Story). This time around, we hear a woeful tale about his poor mother driving him to school, having to switch on the windshield wipers to remove the oil residue which, in turn, gave Biden and everybody around him in Delaware cancer, blah, blah, blah. Last time he told this story, they all got asthma from the fossil fuels in the air and on the windshield. 

So, friends, did "the big guy" suffer cancer/asthma when named to Annapolis? Worked as a truck driver in Maryland? Coal miner in Pennsylvania? Came under arrest in South Africa trying to free Mandela? When confronting Corn Pop? When helping fabricate the Russia collusion story? When cashing his bank drafts from the CCP and Ukraine? When destroying our energy independence?

Ah, my fellow truth seekers--alas!--before we could digest the full import of this vital and latest weepy travail in the Biden "blue collar" saga, it turns out, per his trusty handlers, that the World's Most Important Vaccinated Man, the ZOMBUS Himself, got the feared COVID--yet AGAIN! Don't worry, he--right pronoun?--will do well, because the vaccine proves so very effective . . . OK, OK.

BS BS . . . so many diseases . . . so many BS BS.

So, ZOMBUS aficionados, we must all ask ourselves, what's with Biden?

What makes ZOMBUS the worst President in modern times? Cancer? Covid? Asthma? Dementia? Hair plugs? Vaccine? 

No, you say; it's more simple than that. How about his renowned stupidity? His long-proven inability to tell the truth? The leftist loon jackals around him? 

Take a pick.

Meanwhile, of course, the economy circles the drain while the Dems worry about pronouns, and how best to disassemble our Supreme Court, military, border, and, for good measure, police.

UPDATE: Thanks to Angry Webmaster for bringing the vision to life:



Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Heading to Spain

If Pete "Chest Feeder" Buttagieg allows it, we will be flying to Spain today for a couple of weeks. 

As we get ready to go, I can't help but remember one of the last conversations I had with my son David, quite the expert on Spanish history, in which he noted many signs of a coup underway in the USA by the left. I had noted before such moves starting most overtly in 2016, and continuing throughout the Trump administration. I had asked him to write a piece on it. He, of course, never got the chance.

I will try to write something when/if I get to Spain. I hope my brain will emerge from the fog.

 

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Many Thanks

Just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for your kind comments and prayers. 

We still are in turmoil dealing with the funeral home, medical examiner, David's estate issues, and his doctor. No answers yet as to what happened.

Thank you, again.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Apologies

I have all sorts of posts half done, one almost ready to go, but life, better said, death has gotten in the way.

 My oldest son, David, died suddenly at my home in Raleigh in the night/morning of June 9-10. We don't know why. The police and medical examiner took his body away and I need to call tomorrow for a report.

The Diplowife and I are devastated; those of you who have gone through the loss of a child know there is no other pain quite the same.

I will try to be back as soon as I can.

Thank you in advance for your kind thoughts and prayers.


Sunday, June 5, 2022

Again, On Red Flags

I know I have written about this before, but let me a bore.

The standard response by a true conservative to any proposed new public institutions, and laws and regs overturning decades or longer of practice should be, "No, thank you." 

Just about any institution created for whatever ostensibly noble means, will sooner or later get taken over by our progressive masters, e.g., public schools, and twisted, and reshaped, used in evil ways. 

On guns, we already have plenty of laws, regs, instituions (e.g., ATF) that infringe on the second amendment. We don't need more. That's not the "solution" to violence, or even gun violence.

We all know, for example, that a "mental" red flag will quickly get misused. Look at the weaponization of no fly lists or the Visa Viper process about which I have written before.

Get the criminals off the streets; reestablish respect for our laws, including immigration laws, and crime and violence will decline quickly. 

Twenty-one to buy a rifle? OK, then twenty-one to vote, to drive a car, ride a motorcycle, get married, sign a contract, etc.

Enough with fake "common sense" gun control. It's a sham and any Republican for it, should be booted. The second amendment has all the gun control we need.

Friday, June 3, 2022

Red Flags, Guns, and Real Targets

In light of Biden's absurd "gun control" speech, and the bipartisan nonsense I am hearing about "red flags," I re-post a couple of little somethings I wrote years ago. Two posts for the price of one. 

One on "red flags" and one on progs real targets.


Thursday, May 29, 2014

The War on the Second Amendment: the Mental Health Gambit

Whenever we have a "mass"--a word with a highly flexible definition--shooting in the US, we have the predictable calls for more gun laws, for more gun "control." All the usuals put out their tweets, go on the talk shows, pontificate from the legislative floor, issue editorials, etc. The anti-second amendment crowd, generally the sort who can find the right to abortion in the US Constitution but can't find the right to bear arms, are getting more and more desperate. Despite years of anti-gun propaganda and false statistics, gun sales are at a record high in the US with manufacturers barely able to keep up with demand. More people now own guns in the US than at any time in our history; the courts have struck down bucket loads of anti-carry legislation so that concealed carry is now a possibility in every state; and, worst horror of all, the homicide rate continues to decline.

At times I get the feeling that the anti-gun boys and girls hope for mass shootings, which are actually quite rare, and for the shooter to be a white, good ol' boy Tea Partier who uses the n-word, hates women, gays, and liberals, and denies the "settled science" behind the theories of evolution and global climate cooling warming change disruption. The shooters in reality, of course, happen to be far from that, and give credence to Ann Coulter's long-ago stated observation that violence in the US comes from the left. The "mass" shooters, including the Santa Barbara creep, come from liberal/progressive backgrounds, and fall on the left end of the political and cultural spectrum. They are often well-off economically, and generally come from the sort of dysfunctional families that form a core component of the Democratic party electorate.

The gun issue in the US is much more than about guns. It is about culture and about the role and scope of government in our lives. The gun controllers want more government in our lives and want to suppress America's gun, aka individual freedom, culture. They want to make it seem that gun violence is rampant, and that we all face horrible deaths in a cloud of gunpowder. They want us to ignore that homicide, including with guns, is not equally spread among all sectors of our country. Homicide rates are much, much higher among Democratic constituencies--I have written about this before--than among Republican constituencies--compare Detroit with Utah, for example. Above all else, there is an enormous racial component to murder in the US. Please note, for example, that 3/4s of those arrested for murder in Chicago is black, while blacks only comprise about one-third of the city's residents; the overwhelming majority of murder victims is also black.

Nationwide, even when "white" is loosely defined, black homicide rates are some 8-10 times those of the white population. All that presents a dilemma for progressives. Instead of trying to deal with the real problem, i.e., that the most likely victim of a murderer is an unarmed black person, the progressives find distractions on which to spend their efforts. As I have written endless times, the progressives don't give a hoot about our black citizens trapped in situations where they become prime candidates for murder--those situations, after all, have been created by decades of progressive policies implemented by progressive urban political machines. The history of the Democratic party, one of the world's oldest political parties, is one of constant warfare against black people: slavery, segregation, the KKK, opposition to black suffrage, making generations of black people wards of the state, are all Democratic party contributions to race relations in the USA. The progressives want power for the state and they intend to control that state.

Progressives focus on bogus issues such as "assault" rifles and magazine capacity. The latest bogus distraction is the mental health one. The argument goes something like this, "We don't want to take guns away from law abiding citizens but want to put into place laws, regulations, and procedures that keep guns away from criminals and mentally disturbed persons." They are quite vague about what exactly those new constraints will be, and we just have to take them at their word that they are not really out to stifle gun ownership at large, and that the new constraints will work better than the old ones.

Mental health, really?

If you think the science of global climate whatever is up in the air, wait until you delve into the looney world of mental health. The mental health profession is full of quack "therapists" and quack theories; few things there are settled science; and that profession is as subject to the vagaries of the winds and tides of fashion and politics as any other. Let us not forget the uses of psychiatry in the dead and unlamented Soviet bloc. Even, however, without going back to the USSR, I would point out that my father was a psychiatrist, and in his old Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSM) homosexuality was listed as a disorder, "a sociopathic personality disturbance" to be precise. It was a disorder or mental disturbance until it just wasn't--you can read the account of how that change happened here.

Would then those persons treated for homosexuality, and have that on their medical records, be denied their second amendment rights? This, in turn, leads to the raising of many other questions: What standards would be used to determine mental illness for the purpose of gun denial? Who would make those standards? How would authorities running a background check gain access to those medical records? How would we redefine the ancient notion of patient-doctor confidentiality? How would those mental health sessions be flagged in the Great Database? How would one prevent that information from leaking and from being used for political or blackmail purposes? How would this not dissuade people who need some help from getting it? I am sure you can think of dozens more questions.

We live--alas!--in a time that I never thought I would see in the USA. We see the IRS used to stifle political dissent; we see the ATF used to sell guns to Mexican cartels and to make it seem that lax US gun laws are to blame for the violence in Mexico; we see the NSA and FBI used for purposes for which they were never intended; we see local police forces with more firepower and sophisticated combat training and gear than most armies in the world.

Given the progressive track record, should we trust their "good intentions" when they seek to protect us from armed "crazy" people? I don't. I would rather rely on my old friends Messrs. Smith & Wesson.


Tuesday, June 23, 2015

On Rebel Flags and Progressive Targets

In the wake of the Charleston mass murder, apparently carried out by a piece of delusional and racist scum from a highly dysfunctional family, we saw some of the usual gun control blather, but without any real energy behind it. Most progressives, pace the idiotic foreign millionaire Piers Morgan, have learned that their usual factually incorrect nonsense about needing "more gun control" tends to fall on deaf ears, and, politically, is going nowhere. In fact, the trend seems running in the opposite direction, with many states--and Puerto Rico, I might add--scrapping anti-gun legislation and regulation. So, in keeping with their tactics outlined in my June 5 post, the progressives have launched an attack on a different target, the Confederate battle flag which flies over the South Carolina State Capitol building in Columbia since 1961 (here is one version of the history of that). Let us not forget, of course, that the Confederate flag is not the real target either.

Full disclosure: My view on the Rebel flag and other Confederate symbols is clear. I do not, never have, and never will fly or paste any Confederate symbol, flag, battle or otherwise, over my house, or on my vehicles, clothing, or coffee mugs, etc. I spent my professional life representing one flag, that of the USA, and have no loyalty to any other. I admire the courage and fighting spirit, as well as the tactical and strategic talents of Confederate Generals and soldiers, love reading about the Civil War and visiting battle sites such as Gettysburg and Vicksburg. I, however, am pro-Union, pro-Stars-and-Stripes, anti-slavery, pro-Lincoln, pro-Grant, pro-Sherman, pro-Frederick Douglass just about all the way. I do not share in the sympathy for and romanticism of some for the Southern cause in the, ahem, "War of Northern Aggression." Slavery was an inherited curse on our nation which we should have dispelled long before it came to war--and, yes, I do see slavery as the overriding reason for the great 1861-65 war, and, of course, as the proximate cause for the creation of the Republican Party shortly before that war. Men such as Washington and Jefferson, both slave owners, knew slavery was evil, but compromised with that "peculiar institution" to our long-standing misfortune. Great men, great flaws. I fully understand why black Americans could and would find Confederate flags and other symbols offensive. We, of course, can debate all this in saecula saeculorum and never reach consensus. End of Full Disclosure

OK, back to the issue at hand. All that said, I also think that the issue of the Confederate battle flag and whether to fly it over State properties is a decision for the people of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas or anywhere else it flies. It has nothing to do with gun violence, and, let us remind the progressives, it was the Republican party that defeated that flag and for what it stood in the first place. In addition, the greatest practitioners of gun violence, of course, are found in liberal Democratic constituencies, e.g., Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, east Los Angeles, etc.

Understatement Warning: The practitioners of gun violence tend not to be whites. Whites, racist or otherwise, killing blacks is a rare phenomenon in the USA. The shooting in Charleston proved a horrid exception to that; so, of course, the progressives and their echo-chamber media seize on the exception, ignoring the many black on black killings that took place the same day, and look for ways to use it to advance The Agenda. They also pervert history by trying to tie the Confederacy to the Republicans--a grotesque distortion made possible by the low-information consumers of media and Hollywood nonsense. End of Understatement Warning.

While we should not forget it was Democratic governors who hoisted the Rebel flag, and that the KKK was the armed wing of the Democratic Party, and that Jim Crow segregation was instituted and maintained by the Democrats, and that it was a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, and a Republican Chief Justice, Earl Warren, who began dismantling the Democratic party's segregation policies, let's put all that history aside, for now. Let's, instead, look at the shooting in Charleston. The alleged killer, whose name I will not reproduce here, had a website (I won't link to it) on which he published a "manifesto." One of the things that comes through most clearly is that he could find no other male Southern whites to go along with his plan to murder black citizens. He complained that all he heard at school, yes, school in "racist" South Carolina, was talk about getting along with all races. Yes, "racist" South Carolina which has elected the daughter of Indian immigrants as Governor. His hatred for black people came from somewhere else in his twisted mind. He adopted the symbols of the Confederacy, Rhodesia, and apartheid South Africa, and posed himself burning the US flag--much as do many of the progressives who demand the elimination of the Rebel flag. He was no Tea Party "radical"; no member of the GOP; no fanatical supporter of Mitt Romney; no ardent follower of FOX News. Nope, none of that. The Confederate battle flag did not drive him to murder anymore than I, assume, the Black Panther flag drove the black mass murderer at the Washington DC Navy Yard nearly two years ago.

None of this, however, stops the progressives when they get a bone in their toothy jaws. They drove the media into a frenzy about the Rebel flag. As I said before, whether States remove the flag or not from their public properties is an issue for those States; but the crowd was whipped up and South Carolina's Republican Governor and legislature gave in. Democrats are very good at lynch mobs. That's not the way I would have liked to see the issue decided. The more important point, of course, is that progressives aren't stopping there. They already have Mau-Maued big retailers, e.g., Walmart, EBay, Amazon, into pulling merchandise with Confederate symbols. A major flag maker has announced that it will no longer make and sell Confederate flags.

No gun deaths will be averted by all this. Racism will not decrease because of this. Neither of those is the real target. The real target is attacking white male culture, especially the hated "Redneck" culture, which progressives cannot stand. The real target is trying to stigmatize white males and cowing them into politically correct submission. For you see, in the Hollywood movie that runs in an endless loop inside the heads of progressives, white males, especially in the South, are all Rebel flag-waving, pick-up driving, gun maniac racists just dying to kill black men and rape black women.

BOLD PREDICTION: THE NEXT STEP WILL BE TO DEMAND THAT CONFEDERATE SYMBOLS BE DECLARED HATE SPEECH. We will see kids sent home from school for having Confederate flags on their shirts; cars with Confederate decals will be banned from certain areas; and we might see the expunging of CSA symbols from movies and books and prohibiting Confederate flags at re-enactment events, etc. History must conform to the Progressive dictate of the day. END OF BOLD PREDICTION.

If that is to be--and it will--I, in turn, demand progressives stop wearing Che t-shirts. I insist they stop waving the "Palestinian" flag. I propose that we all demand that Maryland alter its flag which consists of the heraldic banner of Lord Baltimore. I find offensive the yearning for royalty and feudalism. The Union Flag must be struck from the flag of Hawaii. I find offensive this paean to colonialism. The Alabama flag has troubling similarly to the Scottish flag and might prove offensive to those of Welsh descent. Will Walmart stop selling items made in China, an offensive state if ever there was one? Will there be a ban on Mexican flags considering the horrid history of human rights in that country? What about the Japanese flag? Why should Japan be able to keep the flag under which millions of Chinese, Malays, Filipinos, Koreans, Pacific Islanders, Indians, and whites were tortured and murdered? I am sure we can turn this into a drinking game.

Meanwhile, the people of Charleston showed real class as they honored the victims and sought to promote unity rather than division.

Thursday, May 26, 2022

The Freaks' War on Children

Along with all of you, I feel horrified and disgusted by the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Once again, it seems, some fatherless, lonely, narcissistic, maladjusted freak has vented anger, frustration, and evil on children. We now see lots of politicians running around trying to gain points from the horror, starting with our inept zombie "president," who gave a divisive political address full of stale DNC talking points, and continuing with that grandstanding idiot, "Beto."

Is this really about guns? Guns are the problem?

No. No.

As kids, my friends and I had lots of guns around, with them much easier to obtain than nowadays. You, for example, could buy them at swap meets, gun stores, pawn shops, Sears, and, in fact, almost any department or general stores. You also could buy them from mail order catalogues, and an agent of the US Government, i.e., the postman, would deliver them to your front door. It never occurred to us, despite raging hormones, watching Westerns, wielding cap guns, playing war, flying flags, and all the rest, to pick up a real gun to go kill real people, especially at school. 

I remember in Mr. Small's sixth grade class, in Palo Alto, California, no less, doing a report on Civil War firearms, and bringing two black powder revolvers into class as part of my presentation. No worries. No panic. No lockdown drills. No "active shooter" alerts. No SWAT team. No funerals. No pathetic teddy bears and ribbons. No mourning parents. No preening pontificating politicians.

A different time. A different people. A different attitude.

Did American and Western society, in general, act more repressively in those days? Probably. 

Did we have less tolerance of eccentric behavior and persons? Yes. 

Did social approval/disapproval carry great weight, and act as a brake on certain behavior? Sure. 

Could this social control manifest itself, at times, in "unfairness" and, even, "cruelty"? Yes. 

You certainly didn't want to get labelled a "sissy." 

You, however, could walk the streets.

We children could and would play outside until well after dark with no worries about lurking strangers or a neighborhood pedo. We rarely saw cops, except on TV and at school as presenters on "career day." The burly WWII or Korean War vet sitting on his porch or in his front yard, frequently cleaning guns for the upcoming deer hunt, provided all the security we needed. We walked to clean, disciplined schools run by dedicated and smart administrators and teachers, many of them war vets; we said the Pledge of Allegiance, learned history and science, along with reading, writing, and arithmetic, and got back home alive and safe. We lived in a country that invented and made things, that valued science and education, felt pride in its history and achievements, and where adults had real jobs. 

I won't go on about the past; those of you my age know what we've lost. I don't need to tell you.

Well, in our modern social media age, the social brakes are broken. Anything goes. 

Social trends now get dictated by influencer freaks on social media. Our kids, many without traditional homes, badgered by woke culture in school and at play, glued to their screens, drink in the noxious messages put out by those freaks and their progressive high-tech enablers. There seems little in the way of public shame, unless you question that men can become women. We see a daily assault on respect and common sense, on the most essential glues holding a society together; we, for example, have a confirmed Supreme Court Justice who cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman, because "I am not a biologist." OK. How about cats and dogs? Can you tell those apart? How about planes and trains? Moon from sun? Right from wrong? Constitutional from unconstitutional?

Our kids now broadcast every thought they have and every move they make on Facebook, TikTok, etc., in a hunt for "followers" and "likes." Back in the day, the young might keep a diary; the "freak" might enter a few odd words in his own diary that few if any, other than his psychiatrist, would ever see. Now the freaks are everywhere, and demand to be taken seriously, or else you are a bigot of some type--and the list of types is long and expanding. 

Impressionable kids get lost in the chaos. Definitions and standards that had held for centuries--poof!--gone, and replaced by a bewildering mental salad of lies, empty words, platitudes, and evil.

As with the creepy murderer in Uvalde, the main target, as I have written before, of this chaotic woke society is children. Our "leaders" talk tearfully about children "murdered by guns," as though a gun does anything on its own, but send our tax dollars to Planned Parenthood, which has killed millions of children, mostly black children. For its advocates, abortion, now, is not just a "right," but a revolutionary act, and something worthy of praise. Infanticide is no longer a forbidden topic. 

We have a Supreme Court Justice (see above) who, while a serving judge, could not bring herself to give convicted pedophiles and child pornographers the long sentences they deserved. 

The wokester freaks defund the police, gut the justice system, leave the borders wide open, cut-free hardened criminals; they give not a thought to the victims of the ensuing chaos. 

Our society, above all, increasingly devalues children, and treats them like disposable plastic commodities: molded, shaped, pulled, twisted, and then discarded. Children are seen as a burden on Gaia. We're better off without them--especially boys. 

We have people in authority arguing to make boys into girls and girls into boys. We have a senior health official in this country, an obese delusional male, who thinks he's a woman, giving advice on child-rearing. The media gurus take this loon seriously. Yes, indeed, give your kids untested puberty blockers and have them undergo radical life-altering surgeries. The gender fluid crowd poses a grave moral, mental, and physical threat to our children. 

The freaks want our children to join their circus or die. Yes, literally, die. 

The Uvalde massacre forms part of this ongoing war on children.


Friday, May 20, 2022

Back In NC

Made it back. 

It was the flight from hell; not because of anything that American Airlines did or any defect in the plane (a fabulous B-787). I ate something in the VIP lounge in Madrid that went definitely sideways. Sick as sick can be the whole flight; a situation not helped by the kindly steward commenting repeatedly, "Sir, you don't look well." Thanks, I know, I know. 

Anyhow, made it back. We will return to Spain in about six weeks. Lots of paperwork remains.

I despair of our situation in this country. A tiny bright spot: the ponderous Durham investigation has begun to produce some fruit. Well, better said, after all that slo-mo investigation we find what this humble blog (I shall toot my own horn) said from the start, to wit, that the Trump-Putin collusion story was fake, made up by the Clintons/DNC, and pushed on America by a media and, most shamefully, an FBI willing to go along with the hoax. We all knew the story as fake, and yet it persisted, partially crippling the White House, and making it impossible to establish decent relations with Russia. We now pay for that.

Time to defund the DOJ and, especially, the FBI until a thorough house-cleaning takes place. 

Also need to go after the 51 "intelligence experts" who labelled the Hunter Biden laptop "Russian disinformation" when they knew it wasn't. 

Tasks, inter alia, for next year's Republican Congress? We'll see how much spine they have.

Well, there exists another, small, bright spot: the apparent "death" of the Biden Ministry of Truth. 

That laughable "misinformation" governance board, or whatever they called it, has collapsed, and its buffoonish head gone off, almost certainly, to a lucrative gig with MSNBC or some other purveyor of actual misinformation. The lefties, however, will try again in some other form. They desperately want to censor and control the information we receive, and the thoughts we hold and express. I have written about this before and noted that the wokesters understand that words comprise the ammunition of debate. Make your opponents fire blanks that you issue, or get jammed up in confusion, and you've won the battle. That effort to monkey with the language continues daily in the schools, the media, and, of course, in the very "halls of power." 

The economy continues to sink into the classic Democratic abyss. There is no reason for the disaster now upon us. Well, there is a reason: Biden, et al. Baby food shortage? In America? WTH! The stores in Spain and France were full of baby formula.

Off to one of my many doctor's appointments. I had hoped to drive the 427, but the top has gotten jammed open--I don't know why--and it looks like it might rain. 

How he suffers . . . and yet, he blogs . . . oh, the courage . . ..

Monday, May 16, 2022

Heading Back to Madrid

On the train trying to do this via a hotspot on my phone. I am horrible at this sort of stuff.

I give up. Had to resume once we got to our place in Madrid. Too many tunnels and a bad signal kept interrupting and defiling my discovery of the HOTSPOT.

Love San Sebastian. Not even the modern world and Spain's obsession with being European could damage the place. I spent many years there as a child, and as a callow youth. Hadn't been there in years and the first big change I noticed was a lot less interest in politics, and Basque nationalism.  No more long conversations into the night on the history of Euskadi and how it is not a part of Spain. The kids speak a mix of Basque, Spanish, and English and nobody seems to get excited about it any more.  ETA and the violence of those years is just a dim memory, and nobody wants to talk about it. 

What do they talk about? Football (soccer) and food. The people here love their soccer team, and live and die with its ups-and-downs. The folks in Euskadi also love food, and love their farmers and cooks. They have tremendous respect for the people who produce food; that food, as I have said many times, is probably the best in the world. Amazing what they can do with basic ingredients. I won't bore you with the meals we had, but they were tremendous.Woe to the restauranteur who becomes known for catering to foreign tourists; the locals won't go there.

Spent a wonderful day in Hendaye, France, the border town famous for the meeting between Franco and Hitler. Hung out with some relatives and--horrors!--watched the Eurovision musical competition. Europeans do many things well, but Eurovision is just about the tackiest, most stupid, but still fun competition I have seen. Watch the Will Ferrel movie about it on Netflix. It's spot on. As expected, Ukraine won with a weird sort of copy of American hip-hop/rap etc. Lot of fun over some great food.

We leave on Wednesday for North Carolina, and reality. We will be returning to Spain in July to continue with the legal process for my wife's inheritance. The bureaucracy here is amazing. There is always one more piece of paper or stamp needed.

I will try to be more interesting in future posts.