Conspiracies!

I don't think I have ever read anything written by Alex Jones or listened to any of his broadcasts/podcasts. One of my sons finds him entertaining, and has on occasion told me about some one or another of Jones's "conspiracy" theories, e.g., the Sandy Hook shooting being a hoax--I ain't buying it. So, if Jones quietly had disappeared from our public discourse, I would have been among the last to realize it. But, of course, he has not just quietly disappeared. He has been "disappeared" by the combined might of Apple, Google, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Why? Well, it seems these massive American corporations, each of them with a net worth more than that of most nations' GDP, "suddenly" decided that Jones was spewing hate and unfounded conspiracy, so we, the world's public, had to be protected from that. What rubbish. What toxic rubbish.

The Jones ban forms part of a well-coordinated progressive assault on "unpopular" speech, in other words, on the first amendment of our Constitution. The ACLU, once the sterling knight who rode to the defense of the First Amendment, is rather muted about it all, only making a tepid remark. A conspiracy?

We hear progs throwing back in conservative faces the line, "Well, they are private companies, so . . ." Yes, they are indeed private companies . . . I wonder if that prog pro-property argument would hold if these tech giants also owned bakeries and refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding? Or refused to allow Muslims, blacks or hispanics access to their platforms? You know the answer.

I think we need some clever conservative lawyers to revisit the whole public accommodation argument that's been used to open up hotels, restaurants, etc., and expand the definition of a "public accommodation." I wonder if the progs would support that expansion of government power at the expense of the private sector?

Speaking of hateful conspiracies, the single most active one is the whole Russia Collusion narrative. Maybe it's time to shut down anybody pushing that factless nonsense? CNN, you're off the air!

Better Than Venezuela

Just came up with a thought to give the proper context to just about anything in our political, social, and economic world: Almost no matter what, it's better than in Venezuela.

Have you been following what's going on in that oil-rich, socialist wonderland so beloved by Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Jeremy Corbin, and Bernie Sanders?

Venezuela, about which I wrote before --here and here, for example--has gone into full failed state mode by almost all measures of the classic definition. The slow-motion anti-democratic implosion that began with the Chavez reign has turned into a massive social-political-economic-humanitarian black hole as the Chavez-Maduro "star" collapses, threatening to pull in other nations of the region. The excuses for that collapse are numerous, and you can find them in the standard swampy media. My favorite is, of course, that Venezuela was done in by the "collapse" of oil prices: a stupid, lazy lie. According to OPEC data, the average price of a barrel of oil in 1999, the year Chavez took power, was $17.44; the price of oil today is over $68. Only in prog world can that be a collapse. Furthermore, at no time since 1999, has oil gone below the price it was in 1999. During the entire Chavez-Maduro disaster, oil stayed well above the 1999 price.

Can't blame oil.

What could be the case of the Venezuelan disaster? The cause of the failure is, dare we say it, dare we say the one word of which our increasingly deranged Democrat party has become so enamored? Here goes, it's a shocker, SOCIALISM. Wow! It was hard to carry that secret around by myself.

Chavez-Maduro followed the global socialist playbook literally to a fault. They even wrote new chapters: they not only ran out of other people's money, they ran out of their own oil money, as well. A notable achievement in the annals of Socialism! The Venezuelan Socialist regime undertook the destruction of the private sector; the obliteration of the democratic opposition; fantabulous social programs costing billions upon billions; a foreign policy of hostility to the West, including promotion of and protection for drug trafficking, and of trying to buy influence wherever possible with those ever handy petrodollars, which they continued to receive from . . . the USA! Yes, we continued throughout it all to be Venezuela's biggest market. No Cuban-style embargo. And, of course, in true socialist state fashion it developed a fabulously wealthy cadre around the Dear Leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Chavez and the Maduro families have become extremely wealthy, as have favored Generals and bureaucrats--all the while ordinary people experience hunger, lack of medical care, the world's highest homicide rate, and an inflation rate, according to the IMF,  about to hit one million percent. Yes, one million percent! What does that even look like?

Starvation is now a real possibility in Venezuela. We already are seeing massive hunger and, of course, the flight of millions of Venezuelans to safety in Colombia and elsewhere, including Brazil and the USA.  In the last couple of days, we have seen bizarre stories of exploding drones trying to kill Maduro. I am sure soon the CIA will get blamed. I am a big, big critic of the CIA, but let me tell you, drone strikes is something they actually do quite well. They, furthermore, do not buy their drones at Walmart, Big Lots, or off of Amazon or e-Bay. If it were one of our drones going after big boy, there would be a big black hole--this time literally a black hole, not figuratively as above--where Maduro once stood. It's all nonsense and goes to show how fragile and frightened the regime has become.

The insanity in Venezuela is rippling across the region. The spiraling but barely reported violence in Nicaragua, for example, is at least partly a result of the Sandinistas--more Socialist darlings--no longer able to count on receiving cheap Venezuelan oil. Haiti, too, is experiencing unrest for the same reason. I am not sure what is happening on this score with Cuba, but there could be effects there, too. While I will shed no tears for troubles suffered by the Sandinistas or the Castro klan, the instability in Venezuela could have effects in, thus far, more stable places, such as Colombia and Brazil, as the Venezuelan migration river turns into a torrent, and the regime becomes increasingly belligerent.

The solution? Well, the region has been pathetic in responding to the growing in Venezuela. It's time, however, for that apathy to end. I can see at least a partial solution being an offer of asylum to Maduro and key cohorts from some place such as Panama or Ecuador. That might get the ball rolling for a change of regime in Caracas. Rebuilding Venezuela will be an arduous and expensive task even after the Chavez-Maduro bacteria are removed, but it would be a start.

I won't complain about anything ever again . . . well . . . sorta won't . . .

Heading Back . . . if the World Doesn't End, That is . . .

Almost finished with my current stay in California. Tomorrow we head back to civilization, AKA North Carolina. Gotta see my dogs, Jeeps, and guns, and not to mention get some real BBQ. Today, however,  is another long marathon of lawyers, brokers, etc.

OK. No more whining. I am starting to sound like the editor of the New York Times.

Can you believe that guy? Please, Mr. President, stop calling us names and telling people we are promoters of the Fake. Please. Maybe you should stop being promoters of the Fake? How about that for a thought? The NYT and its cohorts have accused this President, on the basis of no evidence, of being a racist, xenophobe, anti-Semite, who has sold out the country to Russia, pushing us to the verge of a nuclear war with North Korea and Iran, and embroiling us in a "trade war" we cannot win--note to NYT, et al, up to now it's been a one-way "war" against us. They have derided his economic policies, refusing to recognize what is actually happening out in the real world of real Americans, to wit, jobs, rising wages, lower taxes, fewer regulations, industries being reborn, etc.

OK, off to see a man about a (tax) plan.

Back in LaLa Land

I am back for about a week in California working on estate issues and cleaning out my father's house and storage unit. Unbelievable the sort and amount of stuff that one keeps over a 94-year lifespan. Blogging will be light as I am spending a lot of time with lawyers, accountants, brokers, appraisers, junk men, movers, and on the freeways driving back and forth in my wife's little 2006 Jeep Liberty.

I look like like Hell. I have never looked good, but I look particularly bad right now. Quite aside from tired, sweaty, and dusty, I have a YUUUUGE black eye, gift of my dogs. In one of my last days in my beloved North Carolina, I was trying to go out the door of my son's house while shepherding four dogs--two of mine, two of his. Each of the four, of course, wanted to be the first one out the door. Well, you guessed it: running, pushing, backing up, going forward, left, right, underfoot, tangle of leashes and paws and my big clumsy size 12s, and . . . . BLAMMO! . . . down I went to meet the floor, my head hitting the door knob on that way down with a resounding thud. I lay on my back envying Cleopatra after the Asp bite with four dogs licking my face, climbing on my chest, and doing other doggie first responder assistance tactics on a downed human. I slowly got up and within minutes I had a YUUUUUGE hard-boiled egg on my forehead. I don't get it, but over the following three or four days, I guess, that as that swelling went down, blood travelled downward and encircled my left eye. I look like I just came out of a pub in South Boston after saying something nice about the Brits.

Anyhow, I have been only casually following the news and it seems to me that the world is about to end again, this time with a war with Iran. YAWN. Boring movie that.

I see--sorta through my bleary eye--that the story is starting to come out about the FISA abuse. It's only the beginning. A lot of progs are going to be eating crow . . . nah, you have to have a sense of shame for that, and they don't have it.

Hope to be back in action in a couple of days or so.

President Putin: How to Get the Progs to Love You

Dear President Putin:

I know you are very busy these days trying to maintain Russia as a major power on the world stage. You had it pretty easy for most of the past decade, as your biggest "rival"--we're not really in the same league, but never mind--the USA, was governed by "pajama boys," at best, and maybe even active enemies of the USA. I wrote some time back (here, for example) about you,

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the Shining Shooting Tsar of Eurasia-- [is] arguably the smartest national leader in the world. Let me back up. "Smartest" might be the wrong word. Yes, it definitely is the wrong one. That word is too loosely defined and too easily pinned on too many. What makes Putin successful and such a formidable geopolitical foe (thank you, Mitt Romney) is not that he is just "smart," but that he is a throw-back to a different era. He hunts and fishes, and doesn't care about the political fashion and sensitivities of the day; pajama boy has no place in Putin's cage fighter universe. Despite his upbringing as a Communist, he is now devoutly religious and wants to see religion restored to Russian life. As the jihadis have discovered, they have in Putin a rival as ruthless and religiously committed as they, and not bound by the conventions of political correctness.

So you see, I have a lot of respect for you as an actor on the world stage, and am full of genuine admiration at how you could play a pretty weak hand so very well against opponents much stronger than you, well, on paper. I also wrote that, sorry, I was glad not to be in a world where Russia was the dominant power (here) and even gave advice to my leaders on how to deal with Russia's big power ambitions (here). I have written a lot more which I am sure your world class hackers can retrieve with no difficulty, or they can just Google the stuff. As you can see, I am not a big fan of what you're trying to do, but . . . well, the situation in my country has gotten so absurd I turn to you.

In November 2016, we elected a President who has been the toughest on Russia since, since . . . well, at least since the USSR became Russia. You know all the things that Trump has done better than I, and am quite certain this man was not whom you wanted in the White House. Your folks poured a lot of money into the Bill and Hillary Clinton Crime Family, and I am sure you feel a bit burned by that pointless investment. The losers of that election have tried to play political jiu-jitsu by claiming that their opponent was actually in your pocket and that we should ignore all the collusion between your people and Hillary. Our media and "Deep State," which respond to DNC dictates much as did the old Pravda to the Kremlin's, have gone full Orwell. Well, you know all about that. No need for me to spell it out for you.

You are not getting good press here. Good press is important in the USA and West. You're not getting it. The Progs who control the bulk of the media, old and new, don't like you for a variety of reasons having more to do with Prog delusions than anything real. Let me give you some advice which is inspired by Francisco Franco and Josip Broz Tito. There you had two authoritarian European dictators who did not hesitate to sentence enemies to prison and to death. They were very similar in many ways, but Tito knew how to handle the international Progs and Franco did not. Franco talked about the Church, fighting Communism, and crushing the Masons. Tito, as much if not more dictatorial than Franco, talked about the Non-Aligned Movement (he helped found it, in fact), being anti-imperialist, belonging to no side in the great battle of the Cold War, just in favor of peace, anti-colonialism, etc. All themes from Progdam. Tito knew, as I wrote here, for example, that Progs love the FAKE. They adore the FAKE. You can go to my piece, and you will see what I mean.

So President Putin, my advice for you is to go Full Fake!

Tito and Franco, for example, both wore colorful military uniforms with lots of Goering-style medals, but Tito had a snazzy Red Star on his cap. He would wear the uniform of a bloody military dictator but talk about peace, non-alignment, freeing the poor, etc. Not Franco, no, the fool was too honest for that. He just wanted to talk about crushing the Communists and the Masons. In the end, of course, Spain turned out to be a much better place to live than did Yugoslavia (RIP), but Franco (and Pinochet in Chile vs Castro in Cuba) would get no credit for that.

If you go Full Fake, then it will be OK for our President to meet you. Nobody will object. Get on MSNBC and decry the evils of imperialism in Africa and Latin America; quote Marx; talk about Frantz Fanon. You can do it. The Progs in the West will eat it up!

Regards to Sergei Lavrov and tell him I think of him often and of our days at the UN. Ask him if he remembers being trapped in a car with me in a Swiss park . . . a funny story that . . . please don't have him shot because of it . . .

Go Fake!

Solving Russia for the Progs: A New "Blue Division"

OK, OK. We are on prog/DNC/MSNBC/CNN meltdown in utter OUTRAGE! over Trump number 375 umptillion, give or take a billion. Yes, the President misspoke in his press conference with Putin; yes, he conflated, as do the progs, the issues of Russian meddling and Russian collusion.

It does not matter, I guess, that this "gaffe" comes nowhere near, not even in the same league, as non-gaffe statements by Democrats in the past. It does not rank with FDR giving away Eastern Europe to the Soviets; Truman's bungling of the Korean War; JFK's acquiescence to Soviet rule in Cuba and the Berlin Wall; LBJ's bungling of the Vietnam War; Bill Clinton's hash in Somalia; Hillary Clinton's "what difference does it make"; Obama's open mic, "after the election I will have more flexibility"; and, of course, Obama's tacit allowance of massive Russian and Chinese espionage ops against the USA; Obama's allowance of massive Mexican interference in our elections; Obama's "Fast and Furious" disaster, etc. The list is long.

Doesn't matter.

You see, you gotta understand, Trump's gaffe MEANS THE END OF THE WORLD! It is TREASON! TREASON! I tell you! OUTRAGE!

And that's where I come in. You see, it's NOT treason because we are not at war with Russia. We are currently in a stance that's about as close to war as you can get--no President has been tougher on Russia and Putin than Trump--but we're not at war.

But, but, my faithful six readers, your Diplomad has a solution so that we can accurately call any dealing with Russia an act of TREASON!

War! Well, sorta .  . .

Watching the fascist ANTIFA thugs in action made me think of Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco. Once Franco took power in Madrid with Nazi help, Adolf Hitler began pressuring him to pay back German assistance with Spanish entry into WWII. At a minimum, Hitler wanted Spain to take Gibraltar or at least allow passage of German forces through Spain to do so. Franco kept stalling on Hitler's request for Spain to become an active belligerent. Cagey ol' Franco, you see, was never 100% certain that his pals Hitler and Mussolini would win the war. Franco, furthermore, had a lot of respect for the British Navy, and didn't want a redo of the Armada or Trafalgar. Franco, an ardent anti-Communist, was about as anti-Moscow as you could get--well, except maybe for Rachel Maddow--and was willing to help Germany against the USSR, but without unnecessarily antagonizing the British. His son-in-law, Foreign Minister Ramon Serrano Suñer, had the solution: Spanish "volunteers" to serve as a Spanish unit within the German Army against the USSR. As they used to say in the old days in Vegas, "Winner! Winner! Chicken dinner!" Off the (mostly) "volunteers" went to fight and die in Russia in the "Blue Division," called that because of the bright blue shirts of their snazzy dress uniforms. Nearly 50,000 Spaniards--and some Portuguese--fought in Russia for a couple of years or so until Franco ordered them home when it became obvious that the Nazis had an appointment with the dustbin.

There you go! No charge. It seems the progs want a war with Russia; we, therefore, should give them the opportunity to put their snowflake bodies where their mouths now reside. Let's put together a prog division to go fight the Russians! Let's give them a war to call their own. We can even--BONUS!--keep Franco's original name for the outfit, in honor of how they vote and the result of their political ideology, to wit, Blue and Division.

Our Blue Boys, Gals, and Others could have their own uniforms, too. Maybe something based on the ANTIFA costume? A face mask might prove quite useful in the Russian winter. Footwear designed by the holders of the San Francisco Pride parade? High heels could be a bit slippery on the ice, but, hey, it's worth it to fight the Russkies. Weapons? Well the progs are anti-gun, so maybe some sustainably grown bamboo poles? The Spanish Blue Division had regiments named for major Spanish cities--Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla--and ours could do likewise: you know, Blue prog wonderlands such as Chicago, Baltimore, San Francsico, Detroit, Flint, Gary, and even Londonistan for the British volunteers who undoubtedly would join. The Brits could fly their Trump balloon just to let the Russians know exactly where they are located!

Let the progs have their own little war against Russia. MSNBC could imbed with the Blue warriors, and keep us informed on the progress of the progressive march on Moscow.

It's a win-win.

You're welcome, America.

Progs: Lovers of the Fake

Dear readers, have you ever seen so much FAKE? It is breathtaking in its all encompassing nature. The Fakeness is almost everywhere you care to look.

None of this is new to my five or six faithful readers. They know about the scourge of the Fake. The progs revel in it; in fact, the Fake is essential to the whole prog weltanschauung.  As the Beatles would say, "Nothing is real." Well, a couple are, and we'll mention them at the end.

First, let's do a casual walk through the Fake fields of progressivism and examine some of its most prominent fruits.

So hard to pick just a few, there are so many.

In no particular order:

Hate crimes: Almost non-existent in the real America, but not in the Hollywood version that runs through the heads of the typical progs. Nooses on black profs office doors? "N-word" written on dorm doors? Hijabs ripped off innocent girls by nasty white men? Racist notes left black wait staff by nasty white men? So many more of this variety of fake fruit . . . don't get too full on just this one, we got lots more;

Climate change: A biggie this one. So much to gorge on. Weather is not climate, except when it is! It's man-made permanent winter; it's man-made permanent summer; it's man-made drought; it's man-made flooding; it's man-made dearth of hurricanes; no, no it's more hurricanes than ever! No snow! More snow! Fewer sharks! More sharks! Pant. Pant. Please, please go on without me . . .

We now run into fake fruits one after another, too fast to categorize.

Putin-Trump collusion!

Army purging immigrants!

Migrant children ripped away from their "parents"!

Universities are rape farms! Must suspend due process!

The progs love fake NATO! The progs love fake health insurance! Fake borders! "Undocumented" migrants need a pathway to citizenship so they can vote! Citizenship should not be required to vote! Progs love fake African-Americans and fake Native Americans! The progs decree that "hispanics" are a race, except when they do something progs don't like then they are "white hispanics"! Let's have fake women! Let's have fake science say there are no genders! No, no let's have fake science say that there are millions of genders and that we can each choose one! Let's have fake trade deals that wipe out whole chunks of the American working and middle class, all in the name of Gaia and the poor!

Above all, let's have outrage 24/7/365!

A couple of things are not fake, however. The progs love power. All of these fake "crises" and "issues" require intervention by the state to resolve. Guess who controls most of the levers of state power? One guess. As I have written before about progressives and their "targets,"

The idea is to create turmoil, chaos; keep society and its institutions reeling from one punch to the next. The only solution to this turmoil? Why, naturally, more progressive government and regulation.

The other thing that is not fake is the hatred for Donald Trump. He's not fake. In fact, he relishes identifying the progs fakeness. He knows that as they now stand NATO, NAFTA, the EU, the Paris Climate Change Treaty, and the Iran Deal are all fake institutions and agreements meant to cover up the prog drive for power, the drive to disrupt the real world. Trump has the guts to say so. Unforgivable in prog world!