Month: October 2023

Mike Johnson is the New Speaker of the House

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Well, the doofuses managed to get their act together and Johnson got a unanimous vote from the Stupid Party.  From what I’ve read he’s on the conservative side of things and he hasn’t insulted Donald Trump.  As far as things can be characterized as hopeful let’s call it that.  We’ll take a pause before recording how the Keystone Cops manage to shoot themselves in the foot later on in the week.  Two and half cheers for the doofuses. Hip, hip hoo.

 

Another Day in Paradise, Sort Of

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Slapping together a post late at night is a recipe for incoherence.  But that’s my claim to fame.  Fame?

Well, here we are again my old nemesis.  What shall we talk about?

I read a little about the continuing adventures of the Republican House representatives trying to select a new Speaker.  They tried another one of the establishment guys, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the majority whip.  Trump posted, “Voting for a globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!”  Well, that’s that.

Now the question that needs to be answered is can they agree on anyone as Speaker?  Maybe not.  It’s possible that the establishment would rather cause a government shutdown rather than allow someone outside of their club from controlling the purse strings in Washington.  At this point I think I’m okay with a government shutdown.  Sure, it would probably mean chaos and possibly bankruptcy for me personally but I think it might not be a bad way of getting the attention of the people running this madhouse.  Eventually the establishment Republicans will cut a deal with the Democrats and make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker.  And that’s fine.  It will demonstrate to the world that the Uniparty is a living, breathing reality.  But I have to admire the rebels in the Trump wing of the House Republicans for sticking by their guns and slapping the RINOs around like they’re doing.  It’s great theater.

It looks like mostly everybody admits that unless Donald Trump is forced off the primary ballot, he will win the nomination.  And once he’s in the general election he’s definitely going to get a crapload of votes.  Not to say fraud couldn’t beat him.  We know from sad experience it could.  But regardless of Trump’s towering lead in the primaries there are several candidates who want to stay in the race in case chicanery takes Trump off the ballot.  I’m guessing DeSantis and Haley are in it for the long haul.  I’m not sure anyone else has enough money coming in to stay in long term.  It’s just a little more than a year before that election but it will feel like forever, especially as the country falls apart around us on multiple fronts.  But it will be interesting.

And speaking of interesting, in a horrific way, the two hot wars continue unabated.  Israel is probing Gaza to see where the hostages are hidden and trying to figure out how to wound Hamas critically without losing hundreds, if not thousands of IDF lives.

And the Ukraine war grinds on.  The majority of the Ukrainian “spring” offensive is over and the Russians have taken to the offense.  The latest front is the fortified city of Avdiivka which the Russians have begun to encircle.  Today they managed to overrun, at very great cost, the high ground northwest of the city called Terrikon.  With the loss of this high ground the Ukrainians will be forced to move their artillery much farther west and north of the present positions and that will finally put an end to the artillery bombardment of Donetsk City which has been a humanitarian problem for the Russian Donbas since the beginning of hostilities in 2014.  But all indications are that conquering Avdiivka will be a slow painful grind for the Russian army in the same way as the Bakhmut campaign was earlier this year, but smaller.  I guess the wars will drag on for months and years but maybe there’s a chance we can put an end to the tens of billions of dollars that Biden keeps shoveling into Zelensky’s (and his own) off-shore accounts.  Well, we’ll see.

I won’t talk about the economy.  It’s too gruesome to dwell on.  We’re all being sent to the cleaners and we’ll all be a little poorer by and by but that’s just par for the course.  Of course, if Joe gets his $100 billion dollars for Ukraine maybe we’ll be a lot poorer and a lot sooner.  But leave that be for now.

So that’s my quick synopsis of where we are right now.  Everybody, do your best to hang in there.  Tomorrow belongs to the people with endurance.  Let that be us.

Lab Rats

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Yesterday I was skimming through an interview with Mitt Romney about his decision to retire from the Senate.  Naturally it was thoroughly self-serving and delusionary about almost everything he mentions; his motives, the actions of the other politicians in both parties and about the needs of the country.

But one line seemed true, “What he seemed to know for sure was that he no longer fit in his current party. Throughout our two years of interviews, I heard Romney muse repeatedly about leaving the GOP. He’d stayed long after he stopped feeling at home there—long after his five sons had left—because he felt a quixotic duty to save it.”

So even someone as dense as Mitt Romney recognizes that the Republican party is being pushed away from its current orientation, as a sham conservative organization.  Of course, Romney thinks that what he believes is the true conservative creed.  But he’s an idiot so he can be excused.  Who can’t be excused are people like Mitch McConnell and his henchmen or Paul Ryan.  These are men who used their power in Congress to sell out their constituency to the Left and to the vested interests that are their paymasters.

But the problem is that pushing the Republican party toward the right is a herculean task that only glacially makes any progress.  The inertia toward the priorities of people like Mitch McConnell is overwhelming and is continuously reinforced by the culture and business that Washington is built on.  That’s the reality.  So be it.

And that’s why anyone who is at all serious about trying to change this country has to come up with a new approach that doesn’t depend on trying to reform the Republican Party from within.  And I’m not talking about trying to create a third political party.  That would just waste incredible resources and probably achieve nothing.

What is needed is a stand-alone organization that can effect change directly at all levels and in all facets of life.  In the political arena it can be a PAC lobbying at the federal, state and local level.  When lobbying fails it can fund the campaign of a primary challenger against the recalcitrant law maker.

It can provide legal defense when the federal government and some state and local governments unfairly persecute those on the Right.  It can bring cases to the Supreme Court (for as long as we hold a majority there) to end unconstitutional laws.

It can act as a community advocate complaining to corporations about products or even corporate policies that disadvantage or anger our constituency.  In this capacity this organization can use media coverage or even advertising to embarrass or put on notice corporations disrespecting their own customers.  And if all else fails it can sue them to force change.

And finally, this organization can act as an incubator for any initiatives or programs that would facilitate conservatives flourishing inside of the progressive prison, we find ourselves in.  Maybe there could be a program for providing credit to private and religious schools in blue states so that more people can bring their children up safely.  Maybe whole industries could be financed like a real attempt to foster a conservative (or at least non-woke) film industry.  Or any one of a thousand business opportunities that would be happily patronized by the Right if they provided a competitive alternative to the woke competition.

Now none of this is new.  I’ve said it a dozen times before (my apologies to my faithful readers).  My point in repeating it here is this.  Until such time as something like this is begun there won’t be any chance of progress for our side.  Right now, we’re like the lab rats pressing the lever and waiting for the food tablet to appear.  We’re not in charge of anything.  We’re just part of the experiment.  If we want to take control of our lives we’ll have to bust out of the cage.  And until we see one of the lab rats with a file sawing through the bars of the cage we might as well stop hitting the food lever.  Starvation would be a cleaner death than what they have in store for us.

The Nitwits that Blew Up the World Whistle Past the Graveyard

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I was reading this article about how the destruction of the Minneapolis downtown would have to be repaired by turning all the office buildings into hipster artisanal breweries and drag-queen day care centers.

And I thought to myself, “Sure why not?”  In fact, really the whole Summer of George Floyd/Winter of COVID thing was an enormous stroke of luck.  All those small businesses that employed white supremacists from Old America were standing in the way of the future.  Now those areas are available for the businesses of tomorrow.  All kinds of entrepreneurs like human resource managers (pimps), pharmaceutical supply chain (MS-13) and retail redistribution (flash mob theft).

In fact they’re super-available.  Whole business districts are emptied out.  The telecommuting office workers are afraid to come back to the downtown because of rampaging gangs of looters and carjackers.  So all the lunch shops and retail stores that depended on the foot traffic from these office workers have gone out of business and their owners and workers have joined the ranks of the urban poor.

“Using the mill district as a measure, the makeover of downtown will be a long, costly process. It took decades for developers to replace mills with a lively 24-hour neighborhood, and much of it was done during a period of low interest rates. Rates are now at a two-decade high.   

The Minneapolis mayor said the city has no choice but to try. The central business district remains the city’s biggest concentration of jobs and real-estate investment, connected to the rest of the city with highways and light-rail lines.

“Downtowns are always going to be a centrifugal force,” he said. “What’s going to have to change is how we view it.””

Now this is the mayor who ordered the Minneapolis Police to stand down and allow the rioters to burn down the police precinct near the George Floyd martyrdom site.  Based on his track record I don’t think I’ll hold my breath waiting for the Minneapolis downtown to revive.