Month: June 2026

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

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So yesterday three communists won the Democrat primaries for three seats in the US House of Representatives that represent districts in New York City.  And they weren’t even close.  Two of those seats had sitting Democratic law makers that were defeated and the other one saw the current Brooklyn Borough President defeated.  None of these communists were seasoned politicians.  One of them was a graduate student.  What they have in common is that Mayor Mamdani assured New York City voters that they were card carrying communists who would soak the rich and bring about the workers’ paradise on Earth that is Karl Marx’s vision of communism.  Workers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your 401K!

Now, the punditocracy is fighting over whether this is a sign of the apocalypse or not.  And who knows?  After all there are plenty of young people who have seen all prospects for normal life with careers, families, homes and prosperity disappear for them.  So why shouldn’t they throw their support behind charlatans like Bernie Sanders, AOC and Mamdani who claim they’ll take money from the rich and give it away for free to the poor?  Of course, as we know, that will end up crashing the economy right down to the ground as the Russians, the Chinese and the Cambodians discovered to their sorrow.  But why shouldn’t we get our turn in the barrel?

Well, there’s no use in worrying about something that can’t be helped.  Those three house seats will be occupied by commies in January.  How that will differ from the Democrats that occupied them before seems minimally important.  They won’t vote any way differently from their predecessors.  All that will change will be the use of Marxist rhetoric in their press releases and the disappointment of their constituents when nothing tangible will occur after they’ve taken up their residence in the Capitol.

But what is important is whether Trump and the Republicans manage to get gas prices down sufficiently before November to sooth the voters’ nerves before the midterms.  If he allows the Democrats to take back the House and the Senate this will hamstring his efforts to get his agenda enacted over the last two years of his term.  But of course, once you’re in a shooting war with the Iranians it’s probably a cinch that they’ll pull a stunt right before the election just to put the kibosh on Trump’s plans.

Well, nothing new here.  Republicans have been screwing up elections since I was a kid.  What I feel is more important is that the administration does everything it can to encourage companies to employ Americans in good paying jobs.  How he manages to do this is not my field of expertise.  He’s tried tariffs.  Maybe now he should try legislation that rewards companies with lower taxes if they employ more Americans.  Whether that is considered communism, national socialism or noblesse oblige is completely irrelevant as long as it makes this a more prosperous and happier place for my descendants to live in.

More Antifa News – Prison is in Their Future

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Down in Texas, the Antifa cell members that attacked an ICE facility last Fourth of July were sentenced for their parts in the attack.  The man who shot a police officer in the neck got one hundred years in prison.  The shortest sentence of the eight was thirty years for a conspirator who wasn’t present but hid evidence from the police.  The rest got fifty-year sentences.

Okay, no one, not even I can say that these defendants were treated too leniently.  That’s throwing the book at them.  And not only did they get what they deserved but this will be an extremely powerful deterrent to other Antifa gangs who try to act up in red states.  Of course, in places like Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota the judges and prosecutors are leftists and very unlikely to punish Antifa to the full extent they deserve.  But even in these deep blue areas these sentences are going to throw the fear of God into these psychopaths.

It was interesting to hear how the shooter in Texas tried to justify what he had done.  He claimed that he shot the officer because he thought the officer was about to shoot one of the protestors.  So, in his mind he was the one defending the law and the police were the criminals.  Well, apparently the jury and the judge didn’t quite see it that way.  Maybe they figured that police officers were entitled to carry their guns without being shot by terrorists who were attacking a federal law enforcement facility that was carrying out its lawful activity of deporting illegal aliens.

I wonder how long the shooter will actually serve?  I looked up the federal sentencing guidelines and other than some small good behavior reductions he has to serve the whole sentence.  So, unless the next Democrat president pardons him he’s going to stay behind bars for the rest of his life.  And since he’s 33 years old that could be a very long time.  And I’m good with that.  That officer that got shot in the neck and his family probably aren’t upset that this nut will be safely behind bars for the better part of the twenty first century.  As for the rest of the Antifa maniacs that got very lengthy sentences, well there needs to be a penalty for being stupid enough to help a guy who’s willing to shoot it out with the police.  And they are paying hefty penalties indeed.  You rarely hear of fifty-year sentences for even some murder convictions.  I would say the judges were making a point.

Now without a doubt the convicts will appeal their sentences and that is something I’ll be keeping an eye out for.  The fact that it’s Texas this is happening in leads me to believe that even shortening those sentences will still leave the convicted Antifa members with a very long time to think over what they did.  So, this is a story where justice triumphed and chaos and anarchy took it in the neck.  About time.

Tom’s World – 23JUN2026 – Oil Rig

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TomD

Just happened to be near the Port of Pensacola yesterday and saw this.

 

This is a Gulf of USA (Mexico?, can’t get used to that) open water oil drill rig. It Is not a ship, it is built on a barge and towed to location. The drill rig has been in port for a few weeks for maintenance and repairs.

We have a years long history of getting some strange looking oil field boats in port for refit. If you look at the bow (left side of the image), you can see the helipad used to get workers on and off.

This rig can drill 35,000 feet deep. Hope the workers speak Chinese.

I’m definitely not a Naval Architect and I can’t fathom (to coin a phrase) how this can remain upright when loaded with the drill heads, pipe and whatever else is hanging on up there while in a 10′-15’+ sea.

NO PETS FOR YOU!!!! NEXT!!!

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For many years Camera Girl has been legendary among her friends and family for keeping an actual menagerie of varied pets.  She has kept insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mollusks, worms, marine invertebrates, salt and fresh water fish, frogs and toads, salamanders, various lizards, snakes, turtles (mostly tortoises), parakeets, canaries, finches, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and decades of dogs (everything from Newfoundlands and basset hounds to miniature long haired dachshunds and German short haired pointers).  She even has adopted some local wild life having become a close friend to a crow pair (Moe and Flo), an acquaintance of a raven pair (Poe and Mrs. Poe) and a witness to the frightening visitations of a pair of hawks that habitually pick off the less cautious mourning doves at Camera Girl’s feeders.  So, it goes without saying that she’s no amateur at keeping critters.

This week it was decided that in deference to Princess Sack of Potatoes’ summer sleep over schedule, her request to add a hamster to the local zoo would be granted.  Now why the present rodent in resident (guinea pig Laylee) isn’t sufficient representation for that phylogenetic order (Rodentia) in the house I could not say.  But youth must be served so we headed off into the rain today to bring home a handleable (and cute) representative of Mesocricetus auratus also known as the Syrian hamster who will forthwith be known as “Chucky.”

And we were successful in finding Chucky and establishing her bona fides vis-à-vis “nipping” and were requesting the sales help to package Chucky for the trip home when a catch appeared.  We were asked to provide “proof of enclosure.”  Now this is a New England thing.  The states here are more concerned with the rights and privileges of hamsters than they are with the rights of people.  And it’s not even close.  So, what these two young people wanted was a photo on a phone showing the cage that Chucky would inhabit when we got her home.  Now Camera Girl and I both travel through life “sans phone.”  Other than a land line back at the Compound we are solely connected to the world around us through sounds produced by our mouths without any electronic amplification.  So, no phone, no pictures of a hamster cage.

This floored the young sales staff.  They said it was forbidden to send out a hamster without proof of enclosure!  I thought this was hilarious but Camera Girl was incensed.  Basically, they were accusing her of not knowing how to keep a hamster which from her point of view was a deadly insult.  She began describing in gory detail the dietary, housing and psychological regimen for hamsters that she had learned over the years.  She demanded to speak to the manager and know why this requirement had not been communicated over the phone when she had called earlier to find a hamster at the store.  The young sales staff were noticeably chastened and retreated to the manager’s office for more instruction.  And of course, the manager used discretion noting that the “proof of enclosure” was understood to be a way of ensuring that novice keepers didn’t get home with their pets and promptly lose them because of inadequate housing.  And of course, Chucky was promptly packaged and purchased and headed home with us.

But on the way home I quickly adapted the scenario into a variant of the Seinfeld episode “Soup Nazi.”  In my version it became “Pet Nazi” with a short mustached tyrant in a Pet Smart uniform shouting to customers who wanted to buy hamsters without cage photos, “No hamster for you!  Next!!!!

And this was a comical event but just multiply this aspect of life by a thousand and you get an idea of the suffocating nature of life in the nanny states of New England.