Category: Current Events

Welcome to Wallymart

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So here I am on the night of the 19th and in another day and a half my brain child, “The Sniper” will officially go on sale on Amazon.com; that greatest marketplace of the planet Earth.  And I am genuinely fascinated to find out if there really is such a thing as digital marketing.  I’ve hired a professional to pick out “keywords” and select the time and method of placing ads on that tremendous sales site.  And there are other things involving Goodreads and bookbub and discounts and reviews and influencers and heaven knows what else.  But does it work?  Well, I’m about to find out.

We’ve been having snow for the last four days and so, that has kept me busy clearing the driveways.  And with it happening every day most of that effort has been sort of pointless.  Of course, the snowblower is a lot faster than the shoveling I did on the first day.  But it’s just ridiculous in my mind to use it on anything less than three inches of the white stuff.  But clearing it today with the snowblower was almost a peaceful experience.  For once, the wind was absent and so the snow wasn’t blowing back into my face.  I had to go out and get five gallons of gas for my machine and as I drove along, the snow would fall out of the overhanging trees onto the windshield and it was kind of a fun experience as it hit the glass and exploded into dust.  Very pleasant.

In the outside world I hear the anti-ICE psychos in Minnesota have been going, well, psycho!  They’re inflicting their mania on people during church services and supposedly hunting down ICE supporters and assaulting them on the streets.  Well, that’s par for the course with these antifa types.  But there were a couple of YouTube videos of some of these lefties meeting up with the wrong guy.  An ICE supporter was peacefully demonstrating on a Minneapolis street when one of the anti-ICE guys started blasting his bullhorn right in the guy’s ear.  He did this three or four times as the ICE supporter attempted to walk away.  Finally, the ICE supporter had enough and he dropped bullhorn boy with one shot to the face.  Four other lefties went after this ICE supporter but he managed to knock all of them to the ground with fairly professional looking boxing technique.  Sometimes the world just makes things go right, I guess.

Tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment.  So, I won’t be around much until afternoon.  But I’m curious to see if all this book-selling rigamarole starts to coalesce into a manifestation that I can understand.  I mean, what are keywords anyway?  As far as my book would “revenge” be a keyword?  How about “deep state” or “conspiracy?”  I just don’t know how any of this is supposed to work.  I just can’t imagine Bob Heinlein or Isaac Asimov interfacing with influencers and getting involved with something called bookbub.  But we must all march with the times.  And anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the proof of the marketing is in the sales.  So, if on Thursday I’m buried under in millions of book sales I’ll claim that I never doubted the power of the algorithm and I will swear allegiance to KDP!

If not, I’ll see if they still need a greeter at Wallymart.

Activity on the ZMan’s Webpage

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One of our friends here informed me that a new post has appeared on the ZMan’s site.

Green Door Post- Draft 6/24/25

Someone must have been given access to the ZMan’s content and he is posting some of the content that wasn’t previously free (ZMan referred to it as “behind the green door”).

Well, it’s new to me so I will have to check the site from time to time to see if there will be recurring new stuff.

Star Trek – Starfleet Academy – A Rant

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Paramount spent somewhere north of a hundred million dollars on a tv series called “Star Trek – Starfleet Academy.”  I guess they realized after the fact that it was unwatchable and so they put the first episode on YouTube for free.  But nobody watched it.  Now that’s an exaggeration.   Technically thirteen hundred (1,300) people viewed it.  But on YouTube that’s equivalent to zero.

So basically, they spent a hundred million dollars on something that no one wants to see.

If you watch the trailer you’ll understand why.  Starfleet Academy seems to be made up of fat lesbians.  Some are human, some are alien but all of them are fat and all of them are lesbians.  Once again this is an exaggeration.  They also have Holly Hunter as the captain or head schoolmarm or something.  And I believe there is a gay Klingon.  So, yay.

Just as with Star Wars, Star Trek has finally reached the epitome of destruction.  Over the course of the last sixty years or so it went from a mildly entertaining sci-fi adventure series to a Woke DEI Struggle Session.  Well, who wouldn’t pay to see that?

As with Star Wars, the makers of this new show miscalculated something about the audience and their products.  And it’s this:  The audience that enjoys the “message” they’re pushing in these shows doesn’t like science fiction.  And the audience that likes science fiction doesn’t like their “message.”  It’s like that day in math class where they explain Venn diagrams and unions and intersections and all that jazz.  Well, the circle of people who like the message and the circle of people who like science fiction do not intersect at all; open space between the blue and red circles.  No purple.

This show was green-lit before Paramount was purchased by David Ellison.  He isn’t woke.  I’m guessing that losing a hundred million dollars on a show nobody wants to see is going to make him very mad.  Hopefully this will result in the series being cancelled and the team responsible for this travesty being fired.

Coincidentally, Kathleen Kennedy has just been fired from running Lucas Films over at Disney.  It was described as her desire to get back to personally producing pictures for Disney but I’m pretty sure they’ve had enough of her “golden touch.”  She singlehandedly incinerated the Star Wars brand and lost many hundreds of millions of dollars at Disney by doing the same thing that the Star Trek franchise did.  They made a Star Wars brand for girls and girls don’t like science fiction.

Well, here we are.  A decade into the complete feminization of action adventure and all the major franchises have been rendered toxic and unwatchable.  Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been losing money on its girl-boss outreach program.  Now what?

I guess we’re all hoping that losing all that money will finally get the studios to step back and reflect.  We’re about to find out.  Summer 2026 is right around the corner and we can expect to get some kind of answer from the tent pole summer movie list.  If it’s more estrogen laden, DEI boiler plate then I guess they still have some more money to burn.  But I can always hope.

The Left Coast is Finding Out What Zero Carbon Means, the Hard Way.

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California, Oregon and Washington (also known as the Left Coast) are some of the most progressive parts of the United States.  And one particularly rabid part of their agenda is green energy.  They have been punishing the oil companies for anything and everything they could think of for more than the last twenty-five years.

And now they’ve succeeded in convincing the oil companies to get outta Dodge.  That right.  California used to be a large-scale extractor and refiner of petroleum.  But those days are over and now the state no longer produces enough oil to cover the gasoline and other petroleum energy products it needs.  And this is even worse for Oregon which has a very tenuous lifeline of gasoline that travels through a single pipeline.  Oregon has literally zero oil refining capacity.  Oregon’s woman governor sent a letter to Shell Oil begging them to return to the state.  She promised tax subsidies and protection from environmental harassment.  They said no thanks.  After losing money on all their ventures on the Left Coast they’ve permanently moved on to working with the more lucrative LNG projects elsewhere on the planet.

Now Washington state has a less dire situation but only by comparison.  These states convinced themselves that electric cars and solar panels were the imminent future of transportation and energy production.  But none of that turned out to be true.  Now they’ve realized late in the game that they’ve chased away they petroleum industry and left themselves without the fuel stocks they need just to keep their economies running.  Now isn’t that special!

So, what’s my point?  Well, basically I’m just gloating.  Schadenfreude is a large part of the pleasure for us on the Right, here in the era of Trump.  I extract enormous satisfaction from watching morons like Newsom and Oregon’s Governor Tina Kotek panic when they discover that fossil fuels still provide the power that keeps their fantasylands from collapsing back into the stone age.  And that they’ve effectively driven away the people who provide these extremely valuable resources.  Listening to them beg grown-ups to give them another chance just does my heart good.

If you watch that first video, you’ll hear that Oregon predicts that if there is a pipeline problem anytime soon $9-$12 a gallon gasoline will be very likely.  Now think about what that will do to the cost of living.  All I can say is it couldn’t happen a nicer bunch.

Alright, I guess that’s enough gloating for now.

Scott Adams Died

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The creator of Dilbert is dead.  Adams died of prostate cancer at 68 years old.

Adams and I were about the same age and I will say, over the years I found his Dilbert comics hilarious.  The adventures of the well-meaning but socially hopeless engineer Dilbert and his circle of corporate stereotypes was deadly accurate throughout the 1990s and into the new millennia.  The pointy haired boss that ordered Dilbert to print out two copies of the internet for him every morning.  The female engineer Alice with a permanent Karen personality.  Wally the worm.  Dogbert the megalomaniac and Catbert the evil HR boss.  And many more.

Adams kept us laughing all the way through the defenestration of American corporate health and made it all the way to Donald Trump’s first White House victory, which he supported, before falling afoul of the leftist censors.  Some blunt statements about the danger of living in proximity to inner city denizens caused all of the newspapers that ran his strips to drop him from their pages.

I listened to several of Adams’ podcasts over the years and they were relatively mild.  I’m guessing that he had already cashed out of his Dilbert career already.  After all, how many years can the pointy haired boss run a corporation without putting it out of business.  So, I’m sure Scott looked back on his career with satisfaction.

I don’t think there is any great message in this post I just thought the passing of a man who made many Americans of my generation laugh should be given a decent salute

Farewell Scott Adams.  You will be missed.

Martyrs of Various Sorts

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So, what to talk about tonight?  Well, the crazies are out in force throughout the blue states.  I read they’ve set up a “no-go” zone in Minneapolis.  I imagine that won’t go so well.  When ICE shows up to arrest the illegal aliens among them, there is sure to be violence and probably deaths.  Similar stuff is happening in all the other crazy places like Portland and Philadelphia.  I heard about the two illegal aliens that got shot going up against ICE.  So, I guess this is the status quo from now on.  I give Trump and his people all my sympathy for having to do a really awful job.  And I’m very glad that they haven’t given up.

As far as the Iranian and Venezuelan and the Greenlandian fronts, what can I say?  Venezuela is easy.  They’ll do as they’re told.  Iran is going to be interesting.  It’s obvious that the Israelis have infiltrated the country and have in the last couple of days begun assassinating IRGC commanders, even using drones in the process.  If that is the case then I assume they’ll start lending support to the rebellion.  I guess they’ll provide them with guns and intel about troop movements and whatever other aid they can muster.  But how this ends up is anyone’s guess.  The Islamic Republic has been a nexus for evil and death since I was a very young man.  I would dearly love for this to be their last gasp.  And I wouldn’t even care if the Ayatollah was packed off to Moscow or anywhere else they’d have him.  Just having Iran as a normal country would be an amazing improvement for the whole world.  Hezbollah, Hamas and all the other crazies would be deprived of a base and a source of funding.  And all the countries around Iran could finally relax and try to fix their own problems instead of battling the religious maniacs that the ayatollahs kept unleashing throughout the Middle East.

As for Greenland, who cares?  Does it really matter one way or another?  For pity’s sake it’s just a big chunk of ice in the middle of the Arctic.  If Trump wants to haggle with the Danes, let him.  No harm, no foul.

I finally saw the video from the point of view of the ICE agent who shot the female driver.  Her crazy “wife” was taunting the ICE agents and it looks like the driver just sped into the agent.  I wouldn’t fault the shooter at all.  A car is a deadly weapon when you drive it at someone and a cop knows that someone who tries to run him over is basically asking to be shot.  I’m sad for her kids especially ending up in the custody of the crazy lesbian who married their mother but Minneapolis and places like it are full of martyrs to the cause of Leftism.  They need useful idiots to do stupid things like what she did.  The question today is how many more like her are there willing to get shot.  We’ll know soon.

Ancient European History – Part 4

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At the end of the last installment of this essay I said:

“And the stalemate between the Left and Right is maddening to anyone who wants this country fixed.  We seem to be at a dead end.  What’s the answer?”

I think the answer is we’re not one nation.  We’re at least two (and maybe several more than two) nations trapped in the same constitutional system that requires unanimity.  The people who are the majority in the blue states and the people who are the majority in the red states want diametrically opposite things.  It’s not just that they disagree on the details of how things should be run.  They want different realities on the ground.

Right now, people in Minnesota, Illinois, New York and California are actively conspiring to battle ICE agents to prevent them from fulfilling their lawful duty to deport illegal immigrants.  And while Biden was in the White House, he used his office to allow illegal immigrants to enter the United States in the millions.  These two examples underscore that the two major political positions in this country have no middle ground and cannot find a way forward that will satisfy both sides.

And this is just one of a large number of issues that are irreconcilable differences between the Left and Right.  Social, economic and moral differences exist and will not go away.  What seems clear to me is that some change is needed to allow the different groups to exist separately and peacefully on the same continent.

And actually, that doesn’t seem to be a difficult situation to create.  Look at the present situation between Canada and the United States.  If you met people living on either side of the US/Canada border (say between Ontario and New York State) you probably couldn’t tell them apart if they were mixed in a room.  They’re essentially the same culturally and even ethnically.  They belong to two separate countries.  But they can cross back and forth over the border and the companies that do business around there can buy and sell their services on both sides of this border.

The same kind of arrangement would be possible between two or more successor states existing where the United States is now.  The only thing that would change would be the status of citizens in each of these new states.  Citizens of the blue states wouldn’t be citizens of the red states and vice versa.  So, no one would be moving from California to Texas anymore without the equivalent of a green card.  Now theoretically the blue states would have this open border mentality and would allow anyone in the world including red state citizens to just settle in their country willy-nilly like they do now.  But I predict that once the split is made the blue states will change their immigration policy at least with respect to the red states for spite.  Which is fine.  But I would guess that once they aren’t spiting the red states through their open border policies anymore, they’ll probably re-evaluate how happy they are with this status quo.

But immigration is only one aspect of what would drive a separation between the red and the blue areas of this country.  We can talk about social issues and whether this would cause a separation into two nations or possibly more in the next installment.

Rename it Trumpland

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Trump had a press conference about opening up Venezuela to American Oil Companies.  Of course it was full of “Trump speak;” the greatest this, the greatest that, etc.  But what it came down to is Trump is telling the Venezuelans that American oil companies will be returning to Venezuela and will be under the protection of the American military.  That’s pretty damn good.

These companies had all of their oil extraction and processing equipment seized when Communist Hugo Chávez became the leader in Venezuela.  He nationalized the industry and it proceeded to fall apart.  Instead of engineers the industry was handed over to political hacks.  They brought in the Cubans to help them and they proved that they could make a fabulously oil rich country into a basket case in just a decade or so.

Of course, Trump didn’t provide a lot of the details on how these things will be arranged.  But based on how things worked before Chávez botched it up, the oil companies and Venezuela will both make lots of money.  And all of that extracted oil will lower the price of American gasoline and oil by quite a bit once it’s going strong.

As I said, “Trump speak” is maddening.  It’s like listening to one of Muhammed Ali’s jibber-jabber brag sessions before his fights.  Everything is over the top and outrageous but the results are there.  Ali was the greatest fighter of his generation and Trump is the only President in forty years to actually produce the results he promised.  So, I’ll let him have his bragging session and then I’ll look for a translation into English and the bottom line.  He’s pretty smart.  Increasing oil production (enormously) will have a major positive effect on consumer costs in the United States.  And the revenues that these oil companies will gain will also improve our GDP.  And capturing Maduro let’s Latin America know that Trump doesn’t play games with tin-pot dictators shipping fentanyl to this country.  I expect to see positive results in Mexico and maybe even China because of this.

Okay so where does that leave us with Iran and Ukraine and Greenland?  Well, I may have underestimated the people of Iran.  The actions there have grown from protests to open rebellion.  They’re burning down police stations and IRGC barracks and so far, the military doesn’t seem to be able to stop it.  The size of the crowds is staggering.  There are literally millions of people in the streets of dozens of large cities.  I think the Ayatollah is going to take a plane ride to Moscow and join Assad in the section of Moscow reserved for former Middle Eastern dictators in retirement.  It looks that active.

Ukraine is hopeless.  The Russians and Ukrainians will fight to the last man.  God help them all.

Now what the hell are we going to do with Greenland?  Military bases, oil and mineral extraction?  Ice for drinks?  Trump says he wants to buy it.  I mean, who figures out a fair price for Greenland?  But as I’ve said, after you get finished with the bluster get a translation into English and chances are you’ll discover that Trump is right about Greenland too.  But what do you bet he wants to rename it Trumpland?

ArthurinCali Wants to Discuss American-Balkanization

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Now this is a topic near and dear to my heart.  In my soon to be released novel “The Sniper,” I do a thorough job of smashing up the Union but that’s fiction.  Arthur’s talking fact.

Pondering the Idea of American Balkanization

I think we all have our theories about how this country could and maybe should split up.  And by the same token there are lots of theories about changes to the Constitution that would allow greater regional freedom without the necessity of busting up the USA.

Check it out.

Minnesota in the Balance

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So, what is next in Minnesota?  One of the Left’s acolytes tried to play “chicken” with the ICE agents and got herself killed.  That’s pretty scary stuff.  The real question is what comes next?  Will they escalate and attack the agents again?  Or will they back off?  I start to wonder if even they know what they’re doing.  These are highly emotional almost emotionally disturbed individuals who have been preached to by people on the Left who don’t seem to care that they’re going to get some of them killed.  These provocateurs are the same sort that attacked Kyle Rittenhouse during the George Floyd riots of 2020.  They rile up the useful idiots who follow these protests and that is exactly how you end up with a woman who has no idea how dangerous it is to drive into a police operation and then disobey the orders of those police when they point their guns at you and tell you to get out of your car, get herself killed.

I heard Walz addressing his constituents and begging them not to give Trump an excuse for declaring martial law or invoking the Insurrection Act.  And this makes me wonder whether this is just cover.  Would Walz be happier if things blow up in Minnesota or would he prefer the fraud investigation to be the top news item in the country.  I honestly don’t know the answer to that.  Minnesota is a bottomless pit of leftist madness so it’s almost impossible to know which crazy cause or interest group will erupt into madness next.  But it looks like Minnesota is going to be ground zero for all of the problems that Donald Trump is trying to fix; fraud in government programs funded by the Biden administration, sanctuary state activities that interfere with ICE arrests of illegal aliens, transgender policies that lead to minors receiving dangerous medical treatments and finally discrimination against anyone who doesn’t follow the progressive mantra.

The flip-side of this question about Minnesota is what will Trump do?  Will he back off after the death of Renee Good or will he continue to arrest illegal aliens that are emphatically present all-around Minneapolis.  This is million-dollar question.  Trump has staked his presidency on deporting the millions of illegals hiding in the blue states.  If he lets Minnesota or New York or California defy him and prevent the deportations he will lose his backing.  But at the same time, he knows he can’t spook the moderates by appearing to turn the country into a battle ground.  So, he has to strike a balance.  And that is why the death of Renee Good is a tricky problem.  Will it scare Trump?

I hope the answer is no.  I think in the long run the vigorous enforcement of the immigration law will have both a positive effect on Trump’s voters and a negative effect on the Left’s morale and election turnout.  So, I think along with his efforts to improve the economy Trump shouldn’t be afraid to go after sanctuary states like Minnesota as hard as he can.  That’s my opinion.