Category: Current Events

Tucker’s New Gig

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I saw this article about Tucker Carlson “floating the idea of hosting a Republican primary forum.”  And I thought about all the ways such an idea could go right and wrong.  But what I thought would be much more productive would be for him to assemble a panel of those on the Right who aren’t fake and allow them to speak to us about what they can and can’t do to make things better; straight talk.

Think about it.  Carlson knows all these people.  He knows who the phonies are, people like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence.  He knows things about the power structure in Washington that we don’t.  He could easily get all of the candidates with the possible exception of Donald Trump to accept an invitation.  And without a doubt he could come up with an agenda that would be illuminating for both the attendees and the public.

I’d say this could be a series of discussions where the first few episodes should completely steer clear of the 2024 election.  Instead, what is needed is an honest discussion of all the things that are pushing the country down the dark road it’s on.  Congressmen and senators could talk honestly about the barriers that prevent honest change from happening.  They could talk candidly about the way lobbyists control the direction and specifics of legislation.  Past officeholders from the executive branch could shine a light on exactly who runs the federal bureaucracy.  And I mean name names.  And they could provide suggestions on how that mess could be repaired.  The ultimate coup would be if Carlson could convince Trump to speak candidly about the way that the federal government stonewalled his attempts to enact his various policy directives.  Then he could give his ideas on how this interference could be prevented in the future.

And even more important, I’d like to see a bunch of Republican governors sitting down together; Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Bill Lee, even a waffler like Kristi Noem could be there.  They truly are the most powerful office holders on our side.  Carlson could ask them to speak to the problems they face and also what things they see as opportunities.  And he could ask them how they plan to help their constituents escape the effects of federal government interference in their lives.  And how they plan to coordinate their efforts.

I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these officeholders refused to get involved in such a project.  Even politicians who aren’t out and out crooks like McConnell and Graham don’t want to stick their necks out and get put under the spotlight.  After all, speaking the truth is treason in Washington D.C.  But with so much of the Republican electorate now solidly red-pilled to what’s really going on in Washington it is in the interest of these politicians to convince their constituencies that they aren’t just part of the problem.  Because a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that voting in Republicans is a useless activity.  If that idea gets too ingrained even red state senators and congressmen may find themselves out on their ears.

So, this is just a lot of hot air.  But Carlson could provide a public service (and make an enormous amount of money) if he can convince some of these conservative lawmakers to push back the curtain and let us know the ugly truth about our government.  The truth is a remarkably valuable commodity.  Providing the gory details to the American public would be a public service of enormous consequence.

Think of it as one of those livestream podcasts where the viewers get to ask questions.  Carlson could take the top five questions based on number of questioners and at the end of the show have his guests answer them.

And I guess he should host a 2024 debate show.  I’d be interested in his questions and his refereeing of the candidates.  It would be hell of a lot better than what the mainstream media does every four years.

Schadenfreude Moment – Manchin To Be Bounced in 2024

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It’s a well documented fact that revenge and spite are meat and drink to me.  So you know I will put aside my disgust at the monumental voter fraud that will occur in November 2024 to celebrate the ejection of Joe Manchin from his West Virginia US Senate seat.  I hope he has saved up all of his graft and corruption funds because that will be the cutoff date.

Ya Gotta Laugh

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We live in such strange times.  Sometimes the headlines are a patchwork of tragedy, comedy and just plain weird.  I guess you’d have to call the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney story a comedy.  So is the Tucker Carlson story.  In each case you have a corporation applying the woke rules and shooting itself right in the groin.

Then there’s the story of the Marine who stopped a lunatic on a New York subway car by putting him in a chokehold.  Now he’s probably going to be put on trial for murder.  That sounds like a tragedy.  And everything else is somewhere in between.

The banking industry meltdown and the studiously ignored stagflation is a looming catastrophe that we’re supposed to shrug off.  And the daily appearance of another whistleblower to announce that the Biden administration is constantly breaking the law and simultaneously shielding itself from these crimes is a tragicomedy so outrageously obvious that no one would believe it if it were the plot of a movie.

And heaven only knows what tomorrow will reveal.  Today we heard that the Ukrainians launched a drone attack on the Kremlin to assassinate Vladimir Putin.  The repercussions of that attempt may turn out to be the biggest tragedy of the century.  As it is, the Ukraine war has the potential to destabilize the balance of power in the world.  This new twist may cause an escalation that takes on a life of its own.

But none of these things changes the fact that we all have to live.  We fret about the tragedies and wonder about the looming catastrophes that threaten from every side.  But we still have to laugh.

So, I read about Anheuser Busch’s corporate leaders declaring that all of this was a mistake and that there was no campaign to make Mulvaney a spokesman for Bud Light.  And they’ve promised to triple the advertising budget and fill up the television commercials with young people wearing cowboy hats at Zac Brown Band concerts.  And I can’t help but laugh.  Anheuser-Busch-InBev has hundreds of beer products.  They could have selected a dozen craft beers and dedicated them solely to transgender awareness and the drinkers of Bud Light would never have known or cared.  But someone at corporate, probably that ditz Alissa Heinerscheid or maybe her boss Daniel Blake, decided that it was time to replace all those rednecks with the millions of Audrey Hepburn impersonators who must drink Bud Light while soaking in the bathtub in full pancake makeup.

They just couldn’t help themselves.  When you’re a woke evangelist, you’re always fighting the good fight.  And so, they not only announced the Mulvaney sponsorship they released the video of Alissa Heinerscheid denigrating the present patrons of Bud Light as being not only benighted knuckle draggers who suffered from being terminal “fratty” but also were declining in numbers and therefore responsible for their product’s declining market share.  This will be a beautiful thing to watch.  Anheuser Busch won’t go out of business.  But this will be so painful that the people in the front office will never forget it.  And hopefully a lot of people who have right-wing customers for their products will also take note.  And I just have to laugh.  They did this to themselves, the chumps.

And right at the very same time Fox News fires Tucker Carlson.  The replacement for his show is getting 48% of the audience that he used to bring in.  And it’s had a knock-on effect on the rest of the line-up.  And it’s getting worse.  Enormous numbers of people are canceling their memberships in the premium plans that Tucker contributed to.  Fox is losing a lot of viewers.  And Tucker Carlson has the potential to take his audience wherever he decides to go next.  And I just have to laugh.  They did this to themselves, the mooks.

So, in the midst of the meltdown that is Joe Biden’s America there is still a way to have a laugh now and then.  It’s a wry chuckle and it’s mixed with a groan.  But it’s a laugh nonetheless.  And we go on and we live our lives.  So, until the Russian ICBMs start landing in Dunwich, I’ll continue doing my best to enjoy my life and share a laugh with you.  And Alissa Heinerscheid, this Bud’s for you, ya dope.

Can Powell and Yellen Thread the Needle?

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Trying to disguise the US economy’s virulent case of stagflation by alternately increasing interest rates and printing multi-trillions of dollars of phony money seems to be a very difficult balancing act.  Lately it has resulted in a string of large banks failing as the depositors pull out their cash to find interest bearing government bonds.

Now I hear they’re talking again about minting some “trillion-dollar coins” to get around a battle with the Republican House leadership about balancing the budget.

Will Biden and company be able to blame the crash of the economy on the Republicans?  Well, it wouldn’t surprise me too much.  Do I care?  No, not really.  There doesn’t seem to be any limit to how much damage the Democrats do to this country without any noticeable consequences to their re-election chances.

But it is interesting to speculate on exactly when the economy may collapse catastrophically.  Banks collapsing, even somewhat large ones doesn’t seem to worry the Masters of the Universe.  Apparently, we only need five or fewer ludicrously large banks to handle all the corrupt financial operations needed to facilitate wealth being sucked out of the rest of the country and into the coffers of the obscenely rich.

So, if it’s not collapsing banks, what will signal the final chapter of the country’s death spiral?  I suspect it will occur when the last of the middle-class disappears into poverty.  After all that was always this county’s strength.  And in fact, all the way back to 5th century BC Athens a large flourishing middle class was the engine of a healthy democracy.  Now that we’re no longer a democracy it makes sense that the priorities of the aristocracy will sooner or later kill off the golden goose that created their wealth.

And when that happens, I expect the aristocracy to start reducing their ranks to make their shrinking rents from the serfs stretch a little farther.  That’s going to be a rude shock for the bugmen who have groveled and scraped to remain in the various concentric circles of the outer hive.  Being forced out of the hive as winter sets in will be truly sad.  But the death by freezing of drones is a fact of life.

Of course, it’s likely the House Republicans will fold before much damage is done and give Biden his trillions out of fear but I have an almost morbid fascination with guessing when the death blow will fall.  Maybe the day is close now when the rot to the commercial sector becomes so pervasive that even the major banks like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America just can’t make the math work any longer.

At that point will the “people” finally revolt and beyond the scope of even ballot harvesting norms could the Democrats be hurled out of power?  I guess it could happen.  At that point probably the ultra-rich will gather up their assets in the form of tons of gold and platinum ingots and fly off to New Zealand to ride out the cannibal zombie apocalypse and plan their return to a pristine continent swept clean by the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Well anyway, let’s just enjoy the spectacle of “experts” explaining how bank runs are really a sign of strength in the banking sector.  And someone please put Jim Cramer out of his misery.

Who Runs This Country?

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Of course, that title question is a joke.  Everyone knows who runs this country.  Just ask the people who thought they were protesting on January 6th.  The managerial class runs this country.  They control the federal bureaucracy, almost all of the private corporations, the non-profits, the media, the colleges and the schools.

Using the federal bureaucracy, they can crush any resistance regardless if the threat is a well-financed opposition party or a single citizen speaking his mind against tyrannical overreach.

I was reading an article that speculated that the Supreme Court was likely to rule against the long-established precedent that allowed federal agencies to essentially write laws by utilizing “expertise” to decide how a law allows them to regulate some aspect of life in America.

For instance, the EPA gets to decide that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.  The gas that is emitted by every living thing on earth is a threat to the planet that needs to be taxed, banned and demonized.  This ignores the fact that fire has been a human tool that produces light, heat and power for eons while producing a carbon dioxide as a necessary part of the combustion reaction.  It also ignores the fact that penalizing the use of fossil fuels is already bankrupting western countries and threatening the health and well-being of poorer individuals.

So, there is the chance that the Supreme Court could decide that Congress and the courts should be allowed to overrule unelected lawmakers in the federal bureaucracy when they decide to promulgate laws that no one voted on and most people don’t want.

But the first thing that came to my mind was that this will push the next Congress to add six more justices to the Supreme Court and in the meantime the agencies will just ignore whatever the Supreme Court says that they don’t like.

The Trump administration proved to me that the managerial class can and will game the system to resist any attempt by the common people to wrest power away from them.  It’s as simple as that.

Now that might sound both horribly pessimistic but I think the happenings of the last few administrations bears it out.  No outrage by anyone working for a federal agency has caused the least harm to that individual.  Even the one guy who was convicted of perjury during the Russia-gate scandal was reinstated and had his conviction reduced to a misdemeanor that didn’t even cause him to lose his law license.

And on the flipside every enemy of these bureaucrats has been put through a meat grinder where just waiting for a trial is made an ordeal that may include imprisonment in a dungeon with unbelievable abuse heaped on innocent Americans.

So, our enemies are immune from punishment for any and all offences and at the same time they can destroy the reputations, livelihoods and even lives of anyone who dares to challenge them.

I’d like to think that disgust at the tyrannical methods being used by this junta would eventually rally enough Americans to vote the Democrats out of office and allow the Republicans to defang the FBI, CIA, IRS and the other enforcers of the regime.  But I no longer think that likely.  The younger people in the country are mostly brain-washed to obey their masters.  And a huge chunk of the country is made up of people dependent on the federal government to continue a lifestyle that doesn’t include work.

I realize this is a pretty depressing post.  But I also think it’s necessary to face facts.  As far as any bright side, well, I guess the only advantage is you’re almost completely immune to horrible surprises.  You can basically see these things coming a mile away.  And alternatively, if anything goes unexpectedly right, you’re always pleasantly surprised.

I hope I haven’t ruined anyone’s week.  As I’ve been writing about lately it’s still possible to work around these odious people but expecting the feckless Republicans to beat them is laughable.  And America isn’t united in wanting them gone.  For the foreseeable future they own the country.

Supporting the Revolution

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Every aspect of our lives is touched by the division that splits the people of the United States into two almost completely non-overlapping groups; the Left and the Right.  Sure, there are people who claim they are outside these two groups but they’re wrong.  And that’s because the Left will not let you be exempt.  You’re either inside their orthodoxy or you are a pariah whose destruction they will pursue doggedly.  And for those of us on the Right, we have to struggle to survive this pursuit.

But no one just wants to survive.  We want to enjoy all aspects of life.  We want family, friends and things we can do to make our lives enjoyable.  And we want to forget about the Left and their lunacy whenever we can.  Now I won’t delve into the problems of avoiding the governmental controls that the federal government imposes or the even more onerous controls that blue states force their citizens to endure.  Let’s save all that for another day.

Instead let’s talk about what we can do as individuals to create the options we want in our lives.  A trivial example is the recent outrage over Anheuser Busch and their fake spokeswoman.  Here is an opportunity to use your status as a consumer to punish a company that went out of its way to antagonize its patrons and you can make a statement to the rest of the beer companies that you value a company that at worst stays neutral in the culture wars.  Even better would be finding a company that openly supports traditional values.  But neutrality will do.

Now look at that example.  And translate it into as many other choices and decisions that you make in your life.  The bank you keep your money in, the stores where you buy your groceries, the places you shop for your hobby supplies, the browser you use on the internet, even the social media sites where you interact with the on-line world.  All of these are potential choices.  Of course, some of them will be non-starters.  Amazon, Walmart, Target and the rest of the retailers are hopelessly left-wing.  The best you can do is occasionally try to shop directly from manufacturers who you know to be non-leftist.  That’s not such an easy thing.

But in other cases, there are choices.  Recently, Elon Musk has significantly reduced the anti-right activities on Twitter.  He’s un-banned numerous people on the Right and openly refused to silence even outspoken right-wing voices.  As an experiment I’ve recently decided to pay him his eight bucks a month to get the controversial “blue check” and I’m not saying it’s been some kind of golden ticket to viral success but I do enjoy some of the content I find on Twitter and I feel like I’m supporting a platform that doesn’t hate me.  So, if you have a choice between using Twitter or Facebook well that should be easy.    And I feel a hell of a lot happier with what I pay Twitter compared to the cable bill that supports the likes of CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the lefties that inhabit the various cable networks.  One of these days I’ll cut the cable and just use the channels that don’t hate me.  That will be a big day.

For another example, I use the Brave and DuckDuckGo combination as my browser and search engine respectively.  They respect privacy and block a lot of the ads that usually follow you around the internet.  As for news I use the sites that at least provide both sides on current events.  Real Clear Politics balances their articles about 50/50 between Left and Right.  It’s not ideal but I can just pick and choose based on the sources.

In the future I’m expecting that there will be a major dedicated right-wing news site on the internet with some free and some paywalled content that I will be willing to pay for.  That’s because I expect that Tucker Carlson will be participating in some kind of a larger news/opinion project with some of his more ethical colleagues.  Maybe it will be on Twitter, maybe on substack, but I suspect soon there will be a service that will be worth a few bucks.

And I expect in the future more companies and platforms will start trying to brand themselves as friendly to the Right or to conservatives or traditionalists or some other words to that effect.  Now it’s going to take some vetting to eliminate the phonies and the grifters who just want to jump on a bandwagon.  Probably word of mouth from trusted sources will be most helpful.

But in general, I think it’s a good idea to go out of your way to find a product or service that is produced by people who don’t openly despise you and buy it.  Don’t get ripped off doing it.  The premium for patronizing someone on our side should be reasonable.  Is that 10 or 15%.  Sure.  But not 100%!  And the quality should be comparable, not noticeably inferior.  I remember I tried using a coffee brand because they advertised their sympathy for the military but the coffee wasn’t any good.  So, I had to drop that.

Anyway, you get the picture.  It’s time for us to start putting our money where our mouths are.  Look for worthwhile products on our side and support them.  And if they pan out, pass the info along on social media.

Fight the power baby!