Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine . . .

 OK, everybody sing along with me (and Dolly Parton)

Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine

I am begging of you please,

Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,

Don't take my arm just because you can . . .

Yielding to the demands of the Diplowife, we got our first dose of the magic vaccine. 

We went to a drive-thru venue at a local sports arena. The whole affair from showing up to leaving took about 90 minutes. Lots of confirmations that we formed part of the approved group (over 65, grumpy, jerks) and that we had no allergies, understood the risks, etc. 

Lot more checking than when we voted, that's for sure. Anyhow, in the end, it was as painless as it was pointless. 

I asked one of the very nice young ladies, all suited up in a cross between semi-hazmat gear and highway worker outfit, whether getting this thing meant I no longer had to wear a mask. See smiled--I think she smiled, hard to tell behind all that masking--and her muffled response was, "No. You still have to wear the mask . . . " OK. So the mask is the powerful juju in this absurd affair? I assume it will protect me from rioting Antifas and BLMers as well; I guess I can dump the rest of my gun collection in the river. 

Will the mask protect me from the mounting evidence of "Biden's" malicious stupidity?

As I have noted before, I am still in "news lock-out" mode. One of my Diplosons, however, insists on calling me every morning with the opening line, "Did you see what Biden has done now?" He and his friends were laughing over some fake "town hall" event that the fake "President" held. My son kept saying, "Those were scripted questions! Even then he couldn't answer them! He couldn't even stay with his script. Garbled sentences. Made no sense!" Diploson and his buddies all concluded that Biden has no idea what is happening. 

We have here a serious issue. This man is a zombie, totally unfit for any public office, much less the US presidency, and surrounded by a cabal of morons, woke maniacs, power-hungry swamp creatures, grifters, and haters of America and the West. We, in short, have here a formula for disaster. 

I keep thinking of a "Mission Impossible" episode with Martin Landau in which a group of Nazis had fled to some unnamed Latin American country to plot their return to power. Their leader, however, was, in fact, dead or comatose, and some vile number two, presumably Martin Borman, was the only one who knew this but yet brought messages "from" the Leader. Biden's people must have seen that episode. He's a fraud, an illegitimate fraud occupying the White House.

Once again with feeling!

Jill B, Jill B, Jill B, Jill B,

          I am begging of you please,

          Jill B, Jill, Jill B, Jill B, 

          Don't let your man ruin my country just because you can . . . 

Bits and Pieces

I have remained virtually "newsless" for several weeks. The few glimpses I have caught of "news anchors" prattling on, have made me furious and sad. So many lies. So much false information. So much suppression of real debate, e.g., we may not question the obviously fraudulent 2020 presidential election. To do so, you risk your job. It's STASI time in America.

The only bit of news I followed, and just a bit, was the absurd and unconstitutional impeachment trial. It shows, once again, that the DNC and its echo chamber will do anything, no matter how despicable, to smear, slander, destroy our real President, Donald J. Trump. What I particularly find unforgivable is that seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump of a fake crime. Disgusting. I am sure the attack on Trump and his family will continue from all reaches of the corrupt and dismal swamp. The IRS, the FBI, etc., will all get a crack at the Trump family. 

My two older boys came by the new house a couple of nights ago, and helped me set up the cutting edge 1990's technology media center left behind by the previous owner. A mess of wires and boxes. I gave up, but the lads persisted, and--what do you know?--we have a giant screen experience. We, well, they hooked in the new ROKU to the old ceiling-mounted projector, cranked up the "ancient" sound system, and we all watched "Saving Private Ryan," a movie you could not make today. No lesbians charging the Nazi bunkers on Omaha Beach? All those white guys! What!?! CANCEL! CANCEL!

We sat around and the topic became "experts." One son related how colleagues at the large software company where he works, were arguing for the wearing of masks, citing "experts,"some of whom now advocate for "double masks." My boys are VERY skeptical of "experts." As one son noted, "Hey, Kevorkian was an 'expert.' He was a doctor. Mengele was an 'expert,' too. The guys who persecuted Galileo were 'experts'." I think that says it all about "experts."

Sorry for the brevity of the post, but I am exhausted. The Diplowife, who has endless amounts of energy, continues to have me move things and unpack this and repack that. She refuses to accept that I am an old grumpy man, now. Sigh.

George P. Shultz, RIP

Read yesterday that former SecState George Shultz died 100 years old. I always liked and admired him, and was proud to have worked for him

By today's right-wing standards, of course, he was an old-fashioned globalist. By today's left-wing standards, of course, he was an old-fashioned imperialist. By my standards, he was a man of his times, and, much missed nowadays, a patriot. He was not a revolutionary when it came to government affairs. He did not question the structure of international organizations or the existence of treaties. When, for example, he took over the creaky State Department bureaucracy, he did not launch some radical restructuring or purge, he accepted it for what it was and--horrors!--made it work. He was a superb manager who knew how to pursue the mission's objectives, and get the best out of the people and the equipment he got handed. He was, after all, an old US Marine. 

He, an ardent anti-Communist, was determined to bring down the Soviet Union, which he saw as the biggest threat on the planet to the United States and the cause of freedom. He loved America, and even before the term became known, believed in a foreign policy that put "America First." I was just a lowly Pakistan desk officer, but even I knew that we were work to "roll back" the Soviets. His formidable Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Larry Eagleburger, made that clear to all of us, no matter how low our ranks. Eagleburger, btw, was famous for calling lowly peons, such as myself, directly and summoning them to his office--which he had decorated with a ceramic eagle atop a hamburger--and quizzing us mercilessly about some topic or another without our immediate superiors present; he wanted the info raw, and unrefined by the ponderous "clearance process"--unheard of in the State Department. Shultz and his team had a very visible and tangible presence in the Department. They insisted that the bureaucracy work--and it did. I never saw the Department work as well either before or after Shultz. 

Sure, perhaps, in retrospect he had a limited vision. He, as noted, was not a radical. To my chagrin, for example, he accepted the advice of the Near East Bureau on how to handle the Middle East, and went along with their nonsense about "engagement" with the Palestinians and appearing "even handed." He also accepted the UN, and only made limited efforts to reform that horrid organization. A group of us lowly dissidents wrote him a memo urging the US to get out of the UN; we never heard back. OK.  Understandable.

Despite all that, I still thought he was a great SecState who saw the US as the essential country and wanted to keep it that way.    

George Shultz, RIP.

Chaos in the Time of Biden

Sorry for the long delay in posting. 

As noted before, we have been involved in buying property in Raleigh. Done! We finally have begun moving in our stuff, getting internet, etc. Hate the process. The Diplowife loves it. She must have been Eisenhower or Hannibal (Barca, not Lecter) in a prior life. She loves logistics, leading and designing great operations with lots of moving parts revolving around precise timing. I prefer the more simple, sweat-pant life, but with the Generalissimo around, no hope of that . . . Anyhow, all is not lost: I am having a man-cave built that will house me along with my 150 or so pistols, rifles, and shotguns in secure splendor. In recent days, I have added to that mostly peaceful collection: a Colt Defender .45, a Guncrafter Hellcat 9mm, another STI Staccato 9mm, and a Baby Desert Eagle 9mm. I will, of course, dump them in the nearby lake very soon.

The political scene continues depressing beyond all belief. 

This Obama 2.0 fiasco will prove even more disastrous than the original version. We will all be POWs (Prisoners of the Woke) as we go MIA (Mad in America). The fraudulent "Biden" administration has begun with a flurry of Executive Orders, and vows to redesign our economy (more below). The progs, of course, are chasing after Trump, trying to "impeach" and convict him after he's left office: the precedent is set, my friends, for future endless persecutions of political rivals. I propose, for example, impeaching Obama for "Fast and Furious," Benghazi, and, along with VP Biden, for Russia-Gate--just for starters, mind you. The GOP, however, seems hopeless when it comes to fighting back, and most probably wouldn't do that, or even lay it out as a possibility. They can keep blowing up my phone asking for money: ain't gonna happen.

The "Biden" plan to deal with the fake pandemic is catastrophic. The vaccine roll-out is, to put it mildly, awkward, inept, and inefficient. They can blame it on Trump, of course, but that won't wash for long. The numbers of dead keep getting adjusted as it now turns out the New York State numbers are wrong. Cuomo should be impeached. Every day the media is reporting on COVID "variants"--the UK variant, the South African variant, etc. All meant to keep us terrified, drinking the prog Kool-Aid, wearing our absurd masks, and looking to Von Hidenburg, aka Biden, for salvation.  

On the economy. What can I say? 

We are in for a disastrous ride. "Biden" wants $15/hr minimum wage. Right. The real plan, of course, is to kill the lower cost red states, wipe out the generally pro-Trump small and mid-size businesses, and create unemployment requiring dependence on government and Dem-run programs. In one stoke of his pen, Governor Le Petomane, aka Biden, has devastated a great swath of the US (and Canadian) energy industry. He has once again halted the Keystone pipeline, and certainly anti-fracking actions will follow. His moronic, evil, entourage wants to destroy US energy independence, and put tens-of-thousands of energy workers out of jobs in the name of Gaia. All this, of course, benefits Putin (remember him?), the Iranians, and the rest of OPEC. The Paris Climate Accord is again the darling of the "President"; an accord that should properly be known as the China & India Coal Industry Promotion Deal

The "President" has begun recreating the chaos that, prior to Trump, had existed on our southern border, to the chagrin of the Mexicans who were quite happy with Trump's policy. For the first time in decades, order was being established along that border. Now Mexico sees the prospects of renewed Central American "caravans" and, as noted, renewed chaos, violence, corruption, etc., along the border. Just what Mexico needed. Not to mention just what our border communities needed. A massive betrayal. 

In the Middle East, Trump's gigantic steps towards peace are being reversed as the Iranians get placated. The Israelis and the Arabs will have to strike their own accords and engage in other actions, no USA, to deal with the Iranians. 

Civil liberties have come under an assault not seen since the days of Woodrow Wilson. The Biden mouthpieces in the media and high tech are demonizing conservative voices, getting them "deplatformed" and "demonetized." The universities have gone full steam ahead suppressing dissent among faculty and students. Fake science is being promoted and resistance will not be tolerated.

The communists/fascists have taken power. Beijing licks its chops.

From Real to CGI: From Trump to Biden

It's mourning for America. 

It remains unclear when/if we will rebound from the disasters of 2020; between the fake pandemic that disrupted our economy and society, and the fraudulent elections that destroyed what little trust remained in our political institutions, there seems little hope for a quick recovery. The fake inauguration of January 20, has installed a fake president, what one of my sons calls "America's CGI president." I would add, it's not very good CGI; many cheap movies and video games have better CGI--note to programmers, don't make the "president" character out as a gray, gaga, crooked, pervert. 

The coup which the progs, aka Communists, had plotted for years, decades, went off better than they could have hoped. With little "opposition" resistance from the GOP, a total collapse of the justice and the judicial systems, the use of targeted violence, massive electoral fraud, and the active complicity of both the new and the legacy media billionaire titans, nearly 250 years as the world's most successful and powerful democratic republic vanished in a blink of an eye. Our venerable Constitution, the superb guide for those almost 250 years, has become an old document in a museum, something held up and derided as an example of "toxic white male culture."

Donald Trump was by far the best president America has had since Abraham Lincoln. 

He gave us renewed hope that freedom and liberty could trump the hopelessness and negativity promoted by the left. He questioned and challenged the corrupt and self-anointed global elite; restored economic growth and prosperity which benefitted the majority; began the process of re-establishing us as an industrial power; refused to undertake pointless wars while at the same time re-building our military; and began to reassert our control over our border, energy, and educational policies emphasizing respect for our sovereignty and traditions. 

Trump's proved a masterful performance. He was not the usual politico: he did not lie to us, and did not enhance his personal finances. We will miss him, miss him greatly. He will, undoubtedly, now face endless tribulations as his enemies come after him, his family, his businesses, and his supporters' freedom; the left needs to destroy him and the "deplorables" as a political force. I hope, and trust, that "We the People" will not allow that to happen. We'll see.

Taking the suggestion of an astute reader of this ultimately doomed blog, I reluctantly took down Old Glory from in front of my house, and replaced it with the Gadsden flag. The Diplowife predicts it will not last long; some irate neighbor will either rip it down or call the cops--"I feel threatened!"

 

Dark days.

On Martin Luther King

On the occasion of MLK Day here in the USA, I repost a little something I wrote back in 2014--seems like a hundred years ago. A few minor edits, nothing major.

January 21, 2014
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the US; the TV and other media were full of stories about King and his times, and what it all means today. He has been compared to Gandhi and Mandela, become an icon for American "progressives," and, of course, a historical symbol of the nonviolent civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, almost every major American city has a thoroughfare named for him, and, as noted, we have a national holiday in his honor--making him and Columbus the only ones to have such holidays. Gunned down in 1968, at the age of thirty-nine, he left the civil rights movement to less capable and less visionary successors who undermined his legacy and his goal of a color-blind nation.

Was he a great man? 

He showed great courage, commitment to his cause, insistence on nonviolence, strong political and leadership skills, patriotism, and became a highly eloquent spokesman for civil rights. "I Have a Dream" is one of the great speeches in the English language. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" more than equals any Thoreau or Gandhi writings, and is not something that today's civil rights leaders, such as they are, could match, nor could the typical graduate of almost any university in the world today. (The letter's pacing, erudition, and, above all, the surgical preciseness with which it takes down opposing arguments bring to mind General Sherman's letter to the Mayor of Atlanta.) King's life made a difference to millions of people. The answer, therefore, to this paragraph's question is yes, he was a great man.

That said, serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as happened with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died--we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their "progressive" media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assumed a Republican killed King--today's college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family--his father, a prominent rights leader in his own right--endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.

Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limits on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats--let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer--along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.

Before I return to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties "switched places." This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR, or so, they argue the parties "switched" places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention would serve to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. They aimed to keep black Americans dependent on the largess of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats succeeded in this objective.

Back to King and the civil rights movement. By the time of his death, King was losing control of the movement. It was fragmenting. King's vision of a nonviolent effort had come under assault by radical elements. The messages of non-violence and a concentration on individual liberty were losing traction. The thirty-nine-year-old King seemed old, thundering out a message from another time. A new generation of black activists, inspired by the increasingly confrontational and violent atmosphere in the country, challenged King for the spotlight, and found allies in violence in the largely white anti-Vietnam War movement. The civil rights struggle increasingly became part of the noise of the very bad closing years of the 1960s, years which saw bloody race riots shake nearly every major American city, and numerous acts of domestic terrorism. In addition, what had been a largely grass-roots, private sector movement was being sabotaged by growing government involvement. Many black leaders got siphoned off by government programs to "fight poverty." Activists increasingly focused on getting handouts to their followers rather than, as noted above, on King's more lofty, ancient-sounding focus on liberty, and the goal of having people judged not by their color but by the "content of their character." This new generation of government-oriented and dependent leaders did not fit in with King's conservative, Southern, church-based movement. They wanted racial turmoil, not racial harmony. We need also remember that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had King under FBI surveillance, including the making of compromising tapes of King's extra-marital liaisons, providing the government excellent blackmail material against him.

All these factors, in my view, had begun to take a toll on King; he aged dramatically in appearance, and started talking about issues not directly related to the civil rights struggle, e.g., the Middle East, Vietnam. Had he lived longer, we likely would have seen King becoming radicalized, pushed leftward as he sought to retain control of the movement--but, as noted before, we will never know.

In sum, he was a great man with a great vision. His successors, many of them frauds of the first rank, largely have not been faithful to that vision of liberty and color-blindness, and we all have suffered for it.

Waiting for a Ceausescu Moment?

In Raleigh, to visit the kids, and put the semi-final touches on a protracted--ugh!--real estate transaction. We spent a lot of time watching old movies--e.g., Fail Safe, the 1964 version--and trash TV from the past and overseas--e.g., a tacky but funny Brit series Benidorm. All the boys refuse to watch any news outlets, and, of course, consider the "election" of Traitor Joe and Cali Ho as the ultimate bad joke. They were even more pessimistic than I about the future; they, after all, along with their children will have to live with the consequences of the Great 2020 Theft much longer than I. That's, perhaps, the major benefit of being old.

We got to talking about solutions for the current crisis. As I noted, they seemed extremely negative, and very down about what could be done in light of the massive censorship and, clearly, the plans for a continued lock-down in the name of "fighting the virus." 

They saw the first and second amendments as, in essence, burnt toast. All three blamed the GOP more than they did the DNC. As one son put it, "The Republicans were supposed to be on our side. We know the Democrats hate us and hate America. The Republicans did nothing to stop the Democrats!" One son swore he would never vote again, "What's the point?"

It was hard to argue against the view that all is bleak. 

One hope, I told them, was for a "Ceausescu moment," something I think could come in the not too-distant future. 

The corrupt, gaga old dictator of Romania and his hideous wife, Elena, who, by the way, insisted on being called "Doctor," stood on the balcony of Communist Party HQS in Bucharest's Piata Palatulul, December 21, 1989, to give a standard Commie end-of-year speech. The video of the event, widely available, is worth watching. It proves fascinating to see the crowd in the plaza begin to turn on Ceausescu, and how, at first, the dictator doesn't absorb what is happening. As the insults from the multitude grow louder, the much more alert Elena realizes the plan has not survived first contact. She frantically tries to quiet the crowd; hubby begins promising raising wages and increasing this and that benefit. Too late. The people won't buy it; the cops refuse to suppress their fellow citizens; the Commie couple flees. Three days later, Nicolae and Elena face a firing squad--also available on video.

Romania was one of the tightest dictatorships in the East Bloc, right up there with the GDR. I remember dealing with the regime's reps in the UN, and they were evil fanatics. In the end, however, not even the Romanian secret police, once a much feared and powerful organization, could defeat the power of the truth and the righteous anger of the people. 

A Ceausescu moment, without the execution. 

Maybe, maybe . . .