Month: June 2022
The 2019 Gambit
Today was a day for work. And a good day for it. So, no time for writing for the site. But, after dinner I was thinking about what a very strange place the world has become. The things going on today are qualitatively and quantitatively different and worse than anything that I can remember in my lifetime. And it’s not just the events.
I believe it’s demonstrably true that Joe Biden is much less than a mediocre or even a bad president. Gerald Ford was a mediocre president. Jimmy Carter was a bad president. But they were both fairly honest and observably sane men. Joe Biden is a documented pathological liar and all indications are that he is a crook who uses his relatives to sell influence. Beyond that he is currently incapable of speaking coherently without a teleprompter and Adderall. And even then, every tenth sentence is gibberish. He is not qualified to run this country.
This could never have happened twenty years ago or even ten years ago. We’ve reached some kind of inflection point, past which, the old ideas about normal and abnormal no longer apply. I guess that should be apparent in a world where men put on dresses and pretend to be women and idiots like the Kardashians are the leading advocates for the culture. But I keep thinking that somehow even the millennials will wake up and say, “This is crazy. We can’t go on this way.” And yet, week by week everything continues to get crazier.
Just in the last few months the polls and some of the voting, like the recent recall elections, give a hint that maybe we’ve hit bottom and are beginning to climb back up from the pit. The polls showing Biden’s approval rating dropping into the thirties and the projections of massive Democrat losses in the mid-terms provide a little evidence that people are coming to their senses. But it just doesn’t seem like the reaction I expect.
It seems to me that when gasoline is selling for from five to eight dollars a gallon and newborns can’t get baby formula and monkey pox is the pandemic threat of the week that Dementia Joe’s approval rating should be in single digits. It’s as if we’ve given up on normal and now, we just accept any crazy thing as the new normal. And perhaps that’s the most frightening thing of all. Because worse than all the crazy things happening is the idea that maybe everyone is crazy now.
I keep hoping that the awfulness of all the bad things happening will finally shock most Americans into demanding someone make things go back to the way they were in 2019. If I was writing a slogan for a presidential campaign, it would be, “I promise to bring back 2019 just as it was.”
And I think that would get me elected by a landslide that even voter fraud couldn’t beat. I think the great, great majority of people want things back the way they were. They want safe cities and $2/gal gasoline and supermarket shelves stocked with reasonably priced food and consumer products. I think that would be an unbeatable slogan.
But in order to make those things happen, I would tell the voters that the president will need a 63 seat-senate majority to pass a bill allowing him to fix the executive branch. The people would have to agree to electing a Congress that would give the president the laws he would need to defang the Deep State and eliminate all of the bureaucrats that stymied President Trump when he was in office. The voters would have to know that it was a package deal. If they provide the government that can get things done then they can have their old lives back. If they don’t then the candidate would refuse to be sworn in.
Pretty crazy idea. And I think things will have to get a whole lot worse before we could get the votes needed to provide such a mandate. But the way things are going it might not be such a long shot. After all, November 2024 is a long ways away. By then the country might be ready for a savior.
12JUN2022 – Photo of the Day
12JUN2022 – Quote of the Day
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – A Movie Review
I saw this in the movies with a buddy of mine when I was a kid. It was the first modern western I had seen.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid actually were outlaws at the tail end of the Old West. Played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford respectively, this pair are still holed up in Wyoming in 1898, robbing trains with their “Hole in the Wall Gang.” But Union Pacific head, E. H. Harriman gets tired of the gang robbing his trains so he hires the best trackers and lawmen in the country to find and kill Butch and Sundance. The pair are chased across the Southwest until finally cornered by the posse they have to jump off a cliff into a raging torrent to escape.
Figuring out that they’ll never escape Harriman’s men they decide to head down to Bolivia to steal gold from the miners. They start robbing banks and mine payrolls until finally they stir up so much trouble that the federal troops organize an ambush and at a small town they’re set upon by a large company of police. And while they are pinned down a military troop arrives complete with a cannon. The movie ends with the pair wounded and desperate charging out into a fusillade of lead to their apparent deaths.
This is a revisionist western of the type that came out in the sixties and seventies with anti-hero protagonists and questionable morals. So, if you’re more of a traditionalist this type of movie might not be your cup of tea. But in my opinion, this is a highly entertaining film. Newman and Redford are the quintessential bickering friends. Newman’s Butch comes up with the wild schemes and Redford’s Sundance reluctantly backs him and bails them out with his unbelievable shooting skill. I recommend it for the action and for the buddy comedy.
11JUN2022 – Quote of the Day
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy — I don’t disparage envy but I don’t accept it as legitimately my master.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
11JUN2022 – Photo of the Day
Avoiding the Horror
I turned on the tv last night to watch a show and immediately was confronted by Liz Cheney’s ugly mug. I had run smack into the Jan 6th show trial. I let out a yelp and switched inputs on my remote to reach the stream I was looking for on the screen. Yikes that was close! Honestly, I am trying to enjoy the summer and wasting even a single moment of it on the Jan 6th Committee is anathema.
Having avoided that death trap, I congratulated myself for my quick work and indulged in a frivolous hour of detective show fun about Harry Bosch. Of course, even this supposedly neutral entertainment has been infected with social justice of various stripes. Harry is fighting against injustice where marginalized people like blacks, Latinas and “the Homeless” are being put upon by the evil white man but at least there’s no sign of Liz Cheney or Adam Schiff. So, I relaxed and spent an hour with Camera Girl with only a minimum of it involving me yelling at some propaganda subplot of the show.
Seriously, kudos to Fox News for refusing to join the other networks in giving wall to wall coverage to this Stalinist struggle session. It’s the summer and the living is easy for a reason. Good weather, long days and the sights and sounds of summer make this the time of year that people live for. Only a dimwit would force himself to endure hours of Cheney and Schiff banging the insurrection drum.
I checked in with the Real Clear Politics Biden Approval Rating and it was at a new low. So that improved my mood.
The average has now edged below 40%. Which means that several of the polls have him in the mid-thirties. That must be freaking out the likes of Nancy Pelosi pretty strong. Schadenfreude is an addictive drug and I must admit I’m enjoying the experience of reading those headlines of Democrat political panic over the mid-terms. Dems and RINOs losing their cozy jobs in the Congress does quite a bit to salve my feelings over $5/gal gas and $6/gal milk.
I was comforted by reading that at least there were Federal Marshals on duty at Brett Kavanaugh’s house when that psychopath showed up at 1 am to kill him. Apparently even Merrick Garland isn’t blood thirsty enough to allow the assassination of a Supreme Court Justice to occur on his watch. And I’m enheartened that some of the press has linked up Chuck Schumer’s “released the whirlwind” threat against Brett Kavanaugh to this latest assassination attempt. It seems as if the Democrats and the Biden Administration just keep stepping on rakes as we continue on our way to societal ruin.
I saw an article that claimed that Biden would pivot after the mid-terms and move his policies to the middle to try and work with the new Republican controlled Congress. The lefty author of the piece was decrying this move as unnecessary. Apparently, some on the Left think things are bound to get better and they don’t want to lose out on the advantages that bankrupting the middle class will give their side. I’m not sure I think Joe Biden knows enough about what he is doing to strategize any post mid-term pivot. I think half of his administration will be bailing out after the mid-terms and we’re going to endure a really awful two years of economic chaos.
But today I’ll have some fun. I’ll take some photos and get some air. I hope you have a good day too.
10JUN2022 – Quote of the Day
Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.




