Category: Current Events

Something Will Have to Give

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The New York Times, a former newspaper, published the results of a series of polls that they held in the six most hotly contested “swing” states, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  Trump won five out of six.  The only one Biden picked up was Wisconsin which was within the 4% margin of error for the poll.  Of the five Trump won, all but one (Pennsylvania) was outside of the margin of error.

State   Trump   Biden
    %   %
Nevada   52   41
Georgia   49   43
Arizona   49   44
Michigan   48   43
Pennsylvania   48   44
Wisconsin   44   47

 

So, what does this mean?  Well, if I were to guess, I think it means that independents in these states think Biden is doing a lousy job running the country.  And since the independents are the least ideological voters, their opinion is probably the most objective.  Two thirds of independents are saying they’d rather vote for the guy who is being indicted in four different criminal proceedings in four different jurisdictions around the country.  They’d prefer a man who has been demonized by every news outlet, the FBI and the Justice Department.  And impeached twice by the House of Representatives.  Essentially what they’re saying is, they want to vote for this guy precisely because all of these people say they shouldn’t.

Now imagine if these poll numbers remain where they are or increase right up to Election Day 2024.  And then suppose that we have a rerun of 2020 where the people go to bed on election night with Donald Trump up by insurmountable leads in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan but the polls get shut down without a completed tally and then after a few days or weeks of “finding” absentee ballots Joe Biden miraculously pulls ahead by a few thousand votes.

Well, I think that would be the end of people believing in the electoral system in this country.  After all, the label “banana republic” has already gotten fairly wide currency after the partisan prosecutions that the Justice Department has been indulging in for the last four years.  I’m guessing that comparisons of our electoral system to Sadaam Hussein’s will become quite common after that.

But the important question is, what practical difference will people’s perception of voter fraud make?  I mean, the fraud will still allow Democrats to control the White House and maybe the Congress.  And that will eventually allow the Supreme Court to be packed with progressives.  Will it matter if no one believes in the elections?

I think it will.  It won’t immediately topple the government.  The United States still possess formidable resources and many of its institutions are somewhat functional.  But history has shown that a republic that loses the trust of its citizens in the fairness of its institutions eventually radicalizes the common people and leads to recourse to a revolutionary alternative.

Rome succumbed to revolt once the republican government became corrupt and tyrannical.  And it’s not necessary to go back two thousand years ago to see what happens to a tyrannical government, even a powerful one once the people have lost faith in its legitimacy.  We only have to look at the Soviet Union.  When people discover that elections are fake their relationship to the state is no longer one of ownership.  It becomes purely transactional.  And so, if the government that presides over these fake elections also fails to provide prosperity, then the only thing that can keep it in power is brute force.  Slaves don’t work any harder than they have to.  In the Soviet Union there was a saying, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”  Well, we’re headed there.  Inflation means that people are working two jobs and still aren’t able to save up to buy a house.  But they see illegal aliens given free housing and welfare.  I don’t think Americans are ready to live that way.

Something will have to give.

Legitimacy

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I was listening to a dissident right pundit recently.  It was about the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.  A lot of it had to do with the process the Republican Party uses to vet its members.  Basically, it was said that it selects for those who will follow the orders of the leadership and by extension align with the policies that the donors want supported.  So, for Republicans that means providing legislation that helps for example, pharmaceutical and defense companies.  But it also includes the banks and Wall Street and any other power centers that have lobbyists that Republicans are paid by.

And I can see how a lot of that is true.  Guys like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell are wholly owned subsidiaries of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and never saw a war they couldn’t get behind.  And during the recent COVID madness Pfizer was spreading all those billions it made on vaccines among the Democrats and Republicans like it was candy corn at Halloween.  So, I can see the point being made by the dissidents.  The system is rigged to keep out anyone but the kind of people who perpetuate its mercenary function.  And with such people the chance of the will of the constituents being honored is non-existent.  So, I grant that.

But then how do we recognize and support the people who somehow manage to sneak through this vetting and could be part of the solution?  Look at Donald Trump.  Trump crashed the Republican presidential primary.  He gutted Jeb Bush and disrupted Hillary Clinton’s coronation when everyone knew it was “her turn.”  Sure, he was hamstrung by Democrats and Republicans and most forcefully by the Deep State but I deny that he didn’t try as best he knew to accomplish the items on his agenda.  To claim he was just another bought and sold member of the Uniparty doing the bidding of Black Rock and the CIA seems completely false.  I don’t claim that he had immense success in reforming the federal government.  What I do claim is that he was a legitimate representative of the people who voted him into office.  He authentically wanted to fulfill the promises he made during his campaign.  He had legitimacy.

So the trick is figuring out who are the other bona fide conservatives who are willing to help us win the battles that we so badly need won.  Let’s start with Mike Johnson.  I heard the arguments about how Johnson was a part of the machine that produces “Christian” lawmakers.  But when I look at the cases that he was involved in and the laws that he fought for I see a very socially conservative record.

In 2003 he wrote an amicus brief in front of the Supreme Court for Lawrence v. Texas which struck down the Texas sodomy laws. And in 2004 he defended Louisiana’s law defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.  To me this sounds like someone whose priorities are in line with my own.  And after the 2020 election Johnson voted to overturn the presidential election results.  That doesn’t sound like someone who just follows the Uniparty to get along.

The only way I think I’ll be able to tell if Johnson is a legitimate conservative legislature is if as Speaker of the House, he shows a willingness to resist the very mercenary and illegitimate behaviors that were mentioned in the dissident essay I was discussing earlier.  For instance, Joe Biden asked for a hundred billion dollars of aid that would mostly go to Ukraine but had Israel getting about ten billion.  Instead of passing such a bill Johnson got a bill passed that just gave the ten billion to Israel.  The sympathy that Israel had among Republicans after the Gaza terrorist attack ensured that such a bill would be passed.  Refusing to tack on a Ukraine payment that is an order of magnitude larger seems what I would expect of someone who is practical and smart.

I’m willing to see what Mike Johnson achieves.  That’s how I’ll decide if he’s for real.  That doesn’t seem idealistic.  It seems pragmatic.

US and EU Began Preparing Ukraine for Negotiations Last Month

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So now that the US, EU and Ukraine know what we already knew six months ago they’re letting it leak out to the general public.

“The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.”

The problem with those talks is they don’t include Russia.

“The Biden administration does not have any indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate with Ukraine, two U.S. officials said. Western officials say Putin still believes he can “wait out the West,” or keep fighting until the U.S. and its allies lose domestic support for funding Ukraine or the struggle to supply Kyiv with weapons and ammunition becomes too costly, officials said.”

What’s wrong with this whole picture.  We convinced the Ukrainians that between their manpower and our weapons the Russians would be crushed in months.  That is probably because we believed that Ukraine was just a foreign possession of Russia.  And they wouldn’t expend the blood and treasure to fight for it.

But there are millions of Russians for whom the Donbass is their ancestral home.  It would be like California breaking away from the US and the Mexicans living there trying to force the Anglo residents of Northern California to give up their language and culture.  If it came down to pictures of Sacramento being ethnically cleansed would it be surprising if the US stepped in and tried to annex the Anglo areas?  I don’t think so.  Well at least if we had a president who didn’t hate America.

After this I’m guessing the Baltic states and the Eastern Europeans will begin reevaluating their relations with the US, the EU and Russia.  Following the lead of the US in matters of war has been shown over the last twenty years or so to be a perilous strategy.

So the geniuses in the Pentagon and the State Department had already figured this out months ago but continued to spout all the nonsense about the breakout that was about to sweep away the Russians in Crimea.  One thing though, the reality of what will end up happening there should make it easier for the Republican House to put a stop to that $61 billion Biden wants to finish off the few remaining Ukrainian men.

I wonder where in the US Zelensky will end up retiring to?  Hopefully he’ll update his ensemble and stick to comedy but skip the piano playing.

With Caterwauling Like This Musk Must be Doing Something Right

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When your fired election trust and safety team leader starts bandying about terms like hate speech and misinformation it must mean that the government gatekeepers are squealing like stuck pigs.

And then there’s the sanctimony about what amounts to censoring the news.

“But free speech, the product of X that upholds democracy, is not a technology company or a physical thing. Speech is evolving, complicated, and sticky. It requires tradeoffs, flexibility, and tough decisions. It shouldn’t be dictated by an autocratic CEO with absolutist ideologies.”

“Tradeoffs, flexibility and tough decisions.”  What a pile of crap. She means hurting your enemies and helping your friends.  Another way of saying this is “some animals are more equal than others.”

Elon Musk’s immoral, dangerous, failing experiment in free speech

The Truth Leaks Out of Kiev

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Up until this summer the audience in the West heard from their leaders and the media that

  • Ukraine was inflicting enormous casualties on Russia while suffering very light losses to their own troops.
  • Russia’s population was dead set against the war and only prisoners were fighting on the Russian side.
  • The Russian troops and officers were incompetent and had rock bottom morale.
  • That with the provision of advanced western weapons and training Ukraine would sweep away the Russians and recapture all of the Eastern provinces including Crimea.

During the summer and into the fall word started getting out that the Ukrainian counter-offensive, bolstered by Western tanks and other armored vehicles was suffering tens of thousands of casualties and wasn’t able to punch through the defensive lines that the Russians had prepared in Zaporizhzhia to protect Crimea from assault.  Now with the onset of winter many in America and Europe are starting to question whether the tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid have accomplished anything more than facilitating a slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians without accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Finally, word is now leaking out of Ukraine that the leaders surrounding President Zelensky no longer share his almost religious belief that Ukraine can win the war they are engaged in.  And the news first broke in the periodical that had declared Zelensky “Man of the Year” in 2022, Time.

In an interview with Ukrainian leaders many parts of the real story come out.

“But his (Zelensky’s) convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

…

When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

…

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.””

And this is a Biden Administration cheerleader saying this.  If you read other sources they’re even more dire.

“Alone among his team, Zelensky seems not to understand how circumstances have changed. Shuster and TIME try their best to portray him as the last stalwart of the Ukrainian cause, but the fact that his own inner circle is the source of the torrent of revelations and complaints suggests that his immovability owes not to Churchillian resolve but rather to an impervious bunker mentality.”

What seems to be the case is the neo-cons have decided that bleeding Russia by genociding the Ukraine is a sensible policy.  Even people who despise Vladimir Putin and desire the United States to dominate in Eastern European politics should have enough basic humanity to recoil from what’s going on in Eastern Ukraine.  It’s just an update of 1914.  Meatgrinders in Bakhmut and Avdiivka are just senseless wars of attrition that kill and maim tens of thousands of men while yielding up only bombed out moonscapes to the victor.

Russia is bleeding but Ukraine is bleeding out.  Hopefully House Speaker Mike Johnson will have the good sense to put an end to this nightmarish quagmire of death.  If we stop sending them billions of dollars in “aid” the only ones who will lose will be the oligarchs that won’t be able to steal their chunk of the loot.  The rest of the Ukrainians can go back home and pick up what’s left of their lives and their future.

Reality of Voter Fraud Judicially Confirmed in Connecticut

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That case in Bridgeport CT where one of the corrupt Democrat Mayor’s lackeys dumped a bagful of absentee ballots in a drop box was decided in court.  The judge said that the videos provided enough evidence to doubt that the results of the election for the Democratic Primary for mayor was fair.

They are going to run the election next Tuesday with the crooked mayor on the ballot as the Democrat candidate.  His Democrat challenger is on as an independent.   If the independent wins then that will stand.  But if he doesn’t then a new primary will be run.  Now how this impacts the race if the Republican miraculously wins I can’t say.  After all it’s still New England and Republicans being elected in cities is an impossibility.  But finally a judge had the guts to admit that his own lying eyes saw the impossible; voter fraud.

Support Your Local Idiots

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So, Halloween is done and we begin the sprint to Christmas.  We’ll try to forget the various horrors that surround us on every side and try to enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This week is a nightmare of commitments that end probably a week from today.  That of course cuts into my writing time drastically but what can you do?

All the routine nonsense dominates the news.  The usual psychos are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, escalation in Ukraine and more illegal aliens in Texas.  Joe Biden’s poll numbers keep edging down toward 30% but everyone assures us he’ll be the candidate.  The latest attacks on Trump are to remove him from the ballot.  This is supposedly by Democrats but you know that the Republicans are assisting them in any way they can.  And every media site trumpets the extraordinary popularity and remarkable wisdom of Nikki Haley, the new manlier version of Mitt Romney.  Well, it is the stupid party.  I’m sure there are plenty of useful idiots who will parrot this swill.

As you can see, the news is not worth a post.  I think I’ll talk a little bit about the present state of “leadership.”  Let’s review.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the executive leadership of the United States government.  Antony Blinken is the Secretary of State.  The “Squad” including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are considered important legislative leaders.  Merrick Garland is the Attorney General.  Pete Buttigieg is the Transportation Secretary.  “Rachel” Levine and Sam Brinton were considered qualified to provide responsible government leadership despite being mentally disturbed.  Lloyd Austin is the Secretary of Defense.

None of these people is considered particularly impressive in their field of endeavor.  In some cases, like Joe Biden and Ilhan Omar, an honest mental health professional would probably recommend institutionalization as the safest option for the good of both the patient and society at large.

My point is that we are selecting “leaders” based on grievance group politics.  These people are representing the agenda of the various constituent groups of the Democrat party coalition.  But, otherwise, they are entirely unqualified for their jobs.  In fact, some of them are dangerously unqualified.  For instance, Antony Blinken has one of the most important jobs in the federal government.  He has an enormous amount of influence over the foreign policy of the most powerful military power on the planet.  He could literally trigger a nuclear war by some of his actions.  And yet he’s a blithering idiot and a delusional partisan.

And speaking of blithering idiots, no one can seriously claim that Kamala Harris isn’t a mental and emotional cripple.  Watching her performance in the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ debate would convince any neutral observer that Harris was an emotionally unbalanced simpleton.

And yet all these people are allegedly running the United States federal government.  It seems to me this is proof that the idea that our elected representatives “run” the government is a charade.  The actual operation is handled by bureaucrats and by the government contractors who tell the Congress what bills to pass.

But regardless of how ancillary the office holders in the federal government may be, it still seems clear to me that having morons and the insane as our elected and appointed leaders will pretty quickly lead to chaos.  Already we have reached the point where hyperinflation is threatening.  Pretty soon the national debt will become impossible to service.  At that point very bad things can be expected to happen.  And yet, currently Americans keep voting these people into power.  It’s extremely hard to assume that the average American isn’t also a moron.

I guess I understand why many people have been investing in commodities.  After the crash these materials may be the only way to avoid complete bankruptcy.  But hopefully something will happen to stave off such a catastrophe.  Maybe nuclear Armageddon.

Hey, Here’s A Guy Who Agrees with Me

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A couple of weeks back I said that the simplest way to knock out the Gaza tunnel system would be to pump seawater into it and flood it.  Well, here’s a guy trying to steal my idea!

I’d say great minds think alike but I’m too incensed that he got the idea linked on Real Clear Politics.  Oh well.  We geniuses are never recognized within our own lifetimes.  Well, there’s always my anti-gravity ray.  Maybe that one will take off.

I’ll Wait for the Movie Version

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“Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as they warred against each other, beginning to write as soon as the war was on foot, with expectation it should prove a great one and most worthy the relation of all that had been before it; conjecturing so much both from this, that they flourished on both sides in all manner of provision, and also because he saw the rest of Greece siding with the one or the other faction, some then presently and some intending so to do. For this was certainly the greatest commotion that ever happened among the Grecians, reaching also to part of the barbarians and, as a man may say, to most nations. For the actions that preceded this and those again that are yet more ancient, though the truth of them through length of time cannot by any means clearly be discovered, yet for any argument that, looking into times far past, I have yet light on to persuade me, I do not think they have been very great, either for matter of war or otherwise.”

In 1629 Thomas Hobbes the philosopher (or we should say the social scientist) translated into English, Thucydides “Peloponnesian War.”  Above is Thucydides’ introduction.  He believed that this was the greatest war that had ever been fought among the Greeks.  And in this belief, he was probably right.  And in a sense every major war that was fought afterward in which European peoples fought amongst themselves became the greatest war.  After the Peloponnesian war, Sparta fought with the other Hellenic city states such as Thebes until they wore each other down.  That allowed the related Macedonian nation to conquer the Greeks and that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire.  And the squabbling of the successor kingdoms of Alexander’s generals was the incubator for the Roman empire.

But when the rotted corpse of the Caesars’ world disintegrated sometime during the 5th century A.D. it formed the fertile soil that nurtured our Western civilization.  And now the United States of America is approaching the point where it will need a new name.  Calling it a democratic republic is sort of a bad joke.  The form of the government is some kind of self-perpetuating bureaucracy.  And its extent is no longer defined by the outline of the fifty states.  Much like Rome it has many vassal states that while technically not American territory nevertheless are almost completely controlled by America.

And like Rome the American Empire has an enormous amount of momentum.  Even in the midst of precipitous decline in many aspects of its existence the shear mass of this human organization is staggering to behold.  And because of this scope it will take a long time for the creature to die.  Unfortunately, we will be the witnesses to the early stages of this downfall.  And it is already on display.  Just as the Roman republic died with the destruction of the small Roman farmers so our society will degenerate into a feudal existence with the dominance of the corporate oligarchs over small independent businesses.  And in fact, the last few years has greatly accelerated this process.

And our age’s equivalent to the Roman “bread and circuses” is the vision of welfare and the metaverse where everyone commits slow suicide to make room for the depopulated Gaia model.  It almost makes 5th century Rome sound humanistic.

I was recently skimming through Macchiavelli’s “History of Florence.”  It begins with the Fall of Rome and after the Carolingian period quickly devolves into endless petty wars between a long series of German Holy Roman Emperors named Frederic, French Kings named Louis and Neapolitan Dukes named Rodrigo battling the Popes for control of Tuscany and Lombardy.  And it occurred to me that someday that will be North America.  Idiotic descendants of the Pilgrims will be warring endlessly with some Asiatic warlords and Neo-Aztecs for possession of Lake Winnipesaukee.  And if that’s the case then my ancestors might as well have remained in Southern Italy and at least have had the comfort of snow free March weather.

If I were a Stoic, I’d look at the whole thing as the way of the world and just make the best of it without whining about it.  But my ancestors made a tradition of bitterly complaining about just about everything that was outside of their control and just about everything was outside of their control.  At the same time, it meant trying to make the most of the things we could control; family, food and friends.

But just as Thucydides did with Athens and Tacitus did with Republican Rome, we will get a chance to see up close and personal how a once free people get turned into serfs.  It won’t be pretty but it will be momentous.  I hope the movie version has good CGI effects.