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.

 

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.   

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.