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 . . ..

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.