Month: March 2023

Downfall and the Joe Biden Shuffle

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Even the most woke members of the Democrat managerial class must be starting to get the look that you see on the faces of the junior officers in the movie “Downfall.”  The banks are starting to fail, the peasants are looking decidedly pitchforky and the news from Europe is rotten on all fronts.  Now it looks like Russia and China have gotten Iran and Saudi Arabia to bury the hatchet and suddenly currency and petroleum deals won’t be an American monopoly anymore.  Add to that how food and fuel costs are beggaring the working class and you have the beginnings of a really bad situation.

And can you imagine if Joe Biden’s plan to escape from this quagmire is a wag the dog with US troops in Ukraine?  I don’t know about you but I don’t think there’s an eighteen-year-old left in this country who is itching to sign up to fight that war.  I read that military recruiters are coming up empty when they bang the drum for recruits.  And in a lot of cases the people who are showing up are either too fat or too weak or too criminal or too stupid to pass the already dangerously lowered standards that are currently required.

So short of marching Americans to war what will Joe Biden do to rally the country?  I’m guessing he’ll give us some fireside chats.  I’m trying to imagine Mumbles Biden trying to enunciate, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  It’ll probably come out as, “We have nothing!  Uhhhhh?  To fear or not to fear, that is the, uhhh, thing?  Oh, you know what I mean.  What that other guy said, the one with the cigarette holder.”

Really, things are starting to get dicey.  Lots and lots of the lower echelons of the managerial state are starting to notice that things aren’t going very well for their operations.  Despite the best laid plans of morons, involving trillions of dollars of monopoly money being dumped into the economy it is contracting and despite the millions of young slackers who have permanently moved back into their parents’ basement there are going to be a lot of people unemployed soon.

So, when unhappiness starts to peak and Joe doesn’t have any good news, we’re going to get to see just how well he can shuffle.  My guess is he’ll begin to unwind some of his stupider positions.  Maybe he’ll discover that the Russians and Chinese aren’t such bad guys after all!  Why, the Ukraine thing was Zelensky’s fault all along.  He could throw Blinken and company under the bus just for the hell of it and start cutting deals with Putin and Xi.

And maybe he’ll discover that petroleum products turn out to be really important for the economy and by golly those Greenies are just a bunch of dog-faced pony soldiers or something.  Now of course that would be wildly hypocritical based on all his former statements over the last few years but this is Joe Biden the king of hypocrites.  Changing positions and pretending he always believed something is his stock in trade.

Maybe I’m overestimating just how bad things will get in the next few months.  Maybe it’ll take another year, or even two, to crash what’s left of the American economy.  That’s definitely possible.  For all I know, Kevin McCarthy might be getting ready to cooperate on another multi-trillion-dollar boondoggle to let Joe keep this circus going for another year or so.  But even so, it is starting to feel like the final act is not so far over the horizon.

And it’s not only Biden who has to figure out how to pay the piper.  We all do.  What would be your game plan if all of a sudden hyper-inflation became a reality?  I know I don’t have one.  The good news is that the Democrats would be summarily voted out of office.  The bad news is that the Republicans would be in charge.  We don’t seem to have any serious people left in this country.  Even our generals and corporate leaders are mostly empty suits.  And that reflects what kind of people we have become.  We have gotten the leaders, that for the most part, we deserve.

If I were to assign our primary sins, they’d be sloth and greed.  And correspondingly we will suffer poverty and extreme hardship.  Maybe in the future when stained-glass windows on the cathedrals are made to provide a cautionary lesson about the sins of our times maybe Joe Biden’s leering skeletal face will be the symbol of our downfall.

El Presidente

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Hard news.  No corned beef was to be had at the local grocery store.  So now we have cabbage and potatoes and no beef.  Shocking and depressing.  Well, we’ll see.  If we have it another day it’ll count.

Out in the real world today.  Some bank business and visiting some folks.  Got back to my regular exercise routine after a week of snow shoveling.  Finally had a chance to listen to the ZMan’s podcast this afternoon.  It was a discussion of the Irish “Troubles.”  He explains how some of the lessons learned there could be applied to our situation with respect to the occupying army we face.

Looking through the news articles I saw that various federal and state prosecutors are trying to get up the nerve to indict Donald Trump for everything from soliciting sex (Stormy Daniels) to treason.  And another article said that YouTube has restored Trump’s account on the video site.  Boy, do they hate that guy.

But the biggest stories are about failing banks.  Apparently, a reckoning is finally setting in over our reckless, seemingly endless trillions of dollars conjured out of thin air.  You can see it happening.  In 2008 we saw the first wave.  After the Bush II wars and the loosening of home mortgage requirements had maxed out the federal government’s credit card, the investment banks were overleveraged and Lehman Brothers sank under the weight.  The Fed rescued the even bigger banks and GM and we saw the beginning of “too big to fail.”  The stock market has been propped up by zero interest rates for a decade and more but with the COVID debacle and the insane energy policies of the Greenies, inflation has roared back to life and so the government economists tried to raise the prime rate to tame this inflation.  But that puts all these zero rate bonds under water.  And the little banks then see people stampeding out looking for a way to get some return on their money.

And the result is smaller investment banks like SVB go bust.  Now it’s thought the Fed will stop increasing the interest rates and maybe even back it down.  And that will reignite inflation and impoverish the working class.  “Well so what?” says Joe Biden, “as long as the banks stay open.”

And we hear that consolidation is ahead and when the dust settles there will be only four or five banks left.  And since those banks are too big to fail what it really means is that the banks are really now just another name for the US Treasury.  And that’s supposed to make us feel better.

But what’s the next step?  So essentially the US government now guarantees all of our money in all banks.  And not just $250,000 or $500,000 but however much you have.  And what’s next?  When another big corporation starts failing like Google or Meta will the Feds prop it up too?  And what about smaller companies?  You see where this goes.  There will be one car company, one giant retailer, one appliance company, one social media company, etc. and all of them will be propped up by Uncle Sam.  And the employees of those companies are effectively employees of the government.

What is being described is a socialist country like Britain in the 1970s, or as the worst case, the Soviet Union.  Long before we get to that endpoint our currency will no longer be considered the world’s reserve currency.  It will be considered toilet paper.  But the way things are going nobody will do anything about it.  Nobody wants to rock the boat.  We just slowly settle into endless bureaucracy, mediocrity and dependence.

So, in this pathetic version of 1984, Big Brother is Joe Biden; a lying dementia case who smiles or shouts or cries depending on which lies he’s selling that day.  But somehow he’ll have to explain away the fact that America is becoming Cuba.  I guess he can buy an olive drab uniform, grow a beard, smoke a cigar and start calling himself “El Presidente.”  Yeah, it’s about right.

Update:

Chemist replies:

“Not so fast, Photog. The US government will not guarantee all the deposits in all of the banks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that: uninsured deposits, would only be covered in the event that a “failure to protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences.”
Josh Hawley relied: “Let me translate that, you only get protection if you’re a woke billionaire who gives a lot of money to Democrats.”

I can easily see Biden letting a red state bank fail and telling the red state depositors to suck it up. Just like he is letting the people in East Palestine suffer.
If you vote GOP you don’t matter in Biden’s America.”

You make a good point Chemist.  If Gavin Newsome asks Uncle Joe to help out he will.  If I might lose money that would be a source of humor and nothing else.

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Thoughts After a Hectic Week

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Just a busy, busy week.  Last Thursday we had a town political event that kept me tied down for a couple of days.  Then this week we had three days of a “winter storm” which was half snow and half rain and had to be shoveled by hand which, honestly, is kind of fun but eats up a lot of time.  And today I had to pay the piper or rather let my accountant do my taxes which turned out rather well.  A few thousand dollars will come back to me from state and federal governments and the peasants will rejoice (huzzah!).

But it’s kind of kept me from being on top of events and also significantly interfered with both fiction writing and blogging (booo!).  But I hope we’re now past most of the problems.  The forecasts I’ve seen for the remainder of March and the beginning of April seem more spring-like than wintery and I don’t foresee any major disruptions to my very carefully planned laziness by the forces of entropy.  But who knows.  C’est la guerre.

But enough complaining.  All of this is a long-winded way of saying, “I’m back.”

And I guess a thing that’s worth discussing is the depths to which Blue-State politics infects even Republican party policy with woke madness.  I heard from an official that a plurality of Republican officials voted to empower a committee to select candidates for public office on the basis of race and sexual orientation.  Supposedly the fact that only a small number of voters were present saved the party from having to accept the results of this vote but think of that.  If even the Republicans are now choosing representation by the diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense then what chance is there to have our side of things heard at all?

What the official told me is that the Republicans from the larger towns and cities feel compelled to toe the line coming from people who are obviously not even Republicans.  But with such supermajorities among the voting population, they’ve been emboldened to send ringers in to infiltrate the Republican party and essentially take it over.

So what does that tell you about the trajectory of Blue State politics?  Well, think of it now as an echo chamber inside of an echo chamber.  These northeastern states will soon be vying with California for being beholden to state worker unions but without California’s Silicon Valley tax base.  It’s already the case that the teacher’s union dictates the state budget process and because of this the pension liabilities estimated for the retiring baby boomers will very shortly make a balanced budget impossible.

If there were a responsible administration, they would be looking at this coming tidal wave and calculating how to restructure this debt and also rein in the pay and benefit packages to something that would be sustainable.  But the current administration wouldn’t dare do this.  So, we’ll be going over Niagara Falls without the barrel.

Now the smart thing to do is get out of Dodge.  But unfortunately, I’m tied down by family necessity so I’ll be getting a ring side view of the whole sickening spectacle and probably will be rendered penniless and homeless into the bargain.  But such is life.

And it will probably give me endless stories of death and destruction with which to amuse my readers.  Huzzah again!

But the whole reason for this cautionary tale is that creeping socialism is a disease for which there is no cure.  Amputation of the gangrenous appendage is the only treatment.  With that in mind the healthy Red States should think long and hard how they can inoculate themselves from the kind of citizens who inhabit these Blue States.  Government employee unions must be kept from exerting power over the legislation by whatever means are necessary and things like welfare must be minimized to avoid the situation you see where homelessness and drug addiction begins to dominate in the large cities.  And they should do this as a group , coordinating their efforts and sharing information.

Well, that’s enough for now.  How’s that for some gloom and doom for a Thursday.

Bakhmut Battle Reaches Critical Stage

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The mapping sites following the Ukraine war now show the encirclement of Bakhmut by the Russians reaching a critical stage where the two remaining paved roads that allow re-supply of men and materiel and retreat of vehicles, are under fire control by the Russian positions.

The descriptions I’ve listened to by Ukrainian soldiers of the situation on the ground are horrific.  The combat situation consists of small groups of Ukrainians hunkered down in sheltered positions and Russians sending small patrols to draw their fire followed by artillery and mortar fire being used to dislodge or destroy those Ukrainian positions.  They say morale is rock bottom.  They describe what seems like endless barrages of artillery forcing them to retreat to new positions day in and day out.

Grim stuff.

Update:

Warpig’s analysis:

“Standard Russian tactics. Little change from WWII other than the range of missiles and artillery. Putin and his commanders care little about casualties. They just bombard everything, including civilians and hospitals and children, then throw masses of infantry and tanks at the target. That wouldn’t work against NATO but Russia carefully picks less capable targets. NATO would hand them their heinies, especially in air supremacy. But Zelinski is short on air power. Russia is corrupt and incompetent but they have a crapload of artillery and conscripts, and numbers can be a power of their own. I would love to be the US commander of a division if Russia tried to invade Poland, but as a Ukranian, not so much.”