Category: Current Events

Texas May be Taking Border Protection into Its Own Hands

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Gov. Abbott and the Texas Legislature look ready to do something about the wide open border that Biden has created.

“The state legislature is reportedly finalizing some new laws that would empower state law enforcement to take a much more active and aggressive role in securing the border and ensuring the safety of the Texans living in the affected areas. The plan will potentially include an entirely new police force dedicated to blocking illegal migrants’ access to the Lone Star State.”

And apparently they want to utilize the Texans whose property is being trespassed to help solve the problem.

“Allowing the new law enforcement agency to deputize people living near the border is another interesting twist. More than 45% of Texas households have at least one firearm in them. (Compare that to 19.95% in New York.) That puts the old expression about not messing with Texas in perspective. And many of those gun-owning Texans who have been watching bands of migrants traipsing across their property and menacing their families would likely be eager to sign up for a deputy’s badge. Also, being deputized would likely shield them from some repercussions if they are forced to respond to violent migrants.”

About damn time.

The First Cracks Appear in the Washington/Ukraine Alliance

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When a Democrat organ like Politico announces problems between Washington and Kiev I think you can assume the honeymoon is over and finger-pointing is about to commence.

 

“Multiple administration officials have begun worrying that Ukraine is expending so much manpower and ammunition in Bakhmut that it could sap their ability to mount a major counteroffensive in the spring.”

The Ukrainians have allowed themselves to be encircled in the ruins of Bakhmut and now it’s believed that at the very least they will have to abandon their heavy weaponry there.  And there are real concerns that several thousand men are also trapped there too.

 

“Meanwhile, an assessment by U.S. intelligence suggested that a “pro-Ukraine group” was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last fall, shedding light on a great mystery. The new intelligence, first reported by The New York Times, was short on details but appeared to knock down a theory that Moscow was responsible for sabotaging the pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Europe.”

This assertion seems very odd because it’s assumed that the US military blew up these pipelines.  Perhaps this is a fairy tale they’re telling to give the German Chancellor cover over his support of Washington.  The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines was a crippling blow to the German economy.

 

“There has also been, at times, frustration about Washington’s delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The United States has, by far, sent the most weapons and equipment to the front, but Kyiv has always looked ahead for the next set of supplies. Though most in the administration have been understanding about Kyiv’s desperation to defend itself, there have been grumblings about the constant requests and, at times, Zelenskyy not showing appropriate gratitude, according to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.”

Regardless of Washington’s intent, the unavailability of artillery rounds in the quantity that would offset the Russians seemingly inexhaustible supply is the sticking point.  Russia is grinding down what’s left of the Ukrainian army and even Abrams tanks and Patriot missiles isn’t going to help with this problem.  Existential panic is starting to set in.  Soon Zelenskyyyyyyyy may begin practicing his impression of Hitler in the bunker.  Being a comedian maybe he can make it more entertaining than the version from the movie “Downfall,“

Are the Wheels Coming Off?

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I would be the biggest liar on the planet if I said I know how all this madness ends.  The masters of the universe running the show in Washington and on Wall Street may think they do or maybe they’re just making it up as they go but even if the geniuses think they know how all of this turns out there have been some developments in the world.  Things have changed.

A lot of the latest developments haven’t gone very smoothly.  The COVID mess cost trillions and has unleashed high inflation on a system that was running flat for more than a decade.  So, the Fed has been raising the prime rate by a quarter of a percentage point at a time for the last year and that has started to destroy the liquidity of the smaller and weaker banks.  Two of them folded this week and Biden had to guarantee all of the big accounts that weren’t already covered by the FDIC limits.  And now the Fed will have to back off the rate increases and that will re-ignite inflation.

And now the Ukraine war is disrupting the energy supply for the whole western world and rearranging the balance of power between the West and the rest of the world.  And just to make sure no domino is left standing Biden starts a war of words over Taiwan.

Now it may be that some tremendous super computer has worked out all the moves of a five-dimensional chess game that includes all the financial and geo-political variables.  All these moving parts are completely accounted for.  And all of this ends with Joe Biden getting his face added onto Mount Rushmore.

But then again maybe not.

Starting with COVID and moving through the George Floyd riots, the breakdown of law and order in the cities and now the economic and financial disruptions, people have heard from Joe Biden and his minions how everything is getting better and nothing is unusual.  The Ukrainian war is going very well and there is nothing unusual about us engaging in brinksmanship with a nuclear superpower.  The plummeting stock market is just another sign of how dynamic the US economy is.  Empty store shelves and double digit increases in food prices are nothing to worry about.  Crime was much higher in the 1970s so what’s all the commotion about a few murders and the fact that Walmart and some drug stores have closed down in some cities?  What’s to worry about a few Mexican drug cartels taking up residence in Long Island and Washington?  Why shouldn’t the government increase taxes by six trillion dollars?  How could that go wrong?  It’s only billionaires being soaked, right?

Everything is hunky dory.  Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here.

I don’t know.  It’s usually wrong to bet against the ability of the American people to believe the unbelievable.  But we may be getting close to the tipping point.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t believe that the people in charge would let a little thing like popular sentiment get in the way of winning the federal elections.  Far from it.  But we may reach a point where our country resembles the situation that existed in the Soviet Union right before the fall.  People will be told about the glorious conditions all around them but all they’ll see is incompetence, injustice, plundering and poverty.  They will understand that everything they are told is a lie and their entire loyalty will be to whoever can help them survive in an irrational world.

So, we’re going to find out just how smart our rulers really are.  Maybe they really are super geniuses and their plans to get rid of the majority of us through attrition will succeed.  They’ll control the temperature of the pot and slowly boil the frog without any fuss or muss.  And once we’re all gone they can get back to returning the planet to a pristine eco-paradise where transgender elves frolic through the fields while the few necessary serfs harvest the organic crops and enjoy their cricket based diet.

But I kind of think the wheels are beginning to fall off the cart.  Maybe the plan isn’t quite as perfect as advertised.  Maybe Big Brother won’t win.  What do you think?

Banking Expert Quiets Jittery Nation

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This about sums up my thoughts on the state of our economy.  The only thing I would have added would have been a giant dump truck filled with hundred dollar bills that are overflowing onto the roadway.

Maybe we could have “Send in the Clowns.” playing in the background.

Honestly, it’s gotten way past mockery and anger.  I don’t know if they’re crashing the system on purpose or whether they just don’t care or they’re just too stupid to fix what they’ve broken and just keep doubling down on every crazy thing they can think of.  But we can’t have much longer to wait for the meltdown.  But think of it.  This clown act has another year and a half before we can pull the plug.

A Capitalist Tells CNN the Truth About Investing in Blue States

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Don Lemon and his colleagues sit in shock as Kevin O’Leary tells them the sad truth that states like NY, NJ, MA and CA are dead zones for capital investment and new businesses.  Shockingly Lemon seems like the most realistic of the three “journalists” getting the news.  Pretty funny to watch.

Never Waste a Civilizational Crash

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We live in the proverbial “interesting times” of the Chinese saying.  Joe Biden twists and wriggles in the slime that is his element, excreting lies into his surroundings as naturally as an octopus discharges ink to confuse its enemies.  Woke banks crash, even more woke crypto exchanges are revealed as Ponzi schemes and Biden will declare that unless he can raise taxes by six trillion dollars the United States will descend into fiscal anarchy.  I’m curious if Keven McCarthy has the cast iron stones it would take to call his bluff.  I guess we’re about to find out.

I read that Saudi Arabia and Iran have decided to bury the hatchet.  This rapprochement was brokered by the Chinese and is just another indicator of how the United States is no longer the center of global diplomacy.  China and Russia are now routinely consulting with the Indians and the Saudis about trade and energy and the United States is definitely an outsider in these discussions.  In fact, in many cases the consultations are about avoiding Washington’s meddling in their affairs.

The Ukrainian war drags on with Russia using cruise and hypersonic missiles to cripple Ukraine’s electrical grid and rail system in advance of the long heralded Ukrainian spring offensive.  Now that Russia is at the point of collapsing Ukraine’s hold on the regional rail and road hub at Bakhmut through a glacially slow encirclement action it will be more difficult than ever for the Ukrainians to bring up supplies and troops from the West until sometime in May.  The spring thaw will render anything but paved roads completely impassable for tanks and other heavy fighting equipment such as the Bradley vehicles.

Based on what I’ve learned from watching the winter campaign, the Russians are using a very slow advance in conjunction with massive artillery bombardment to pulverize the Ukrainian army one square block at a time.  Because of the Ukraine’s policy of contesting every square inch of territory the Russian artillery strategy produces continuous casualties.  And with the estimate that western artillery shell stockpiles will be completely depleted by sometime this summer, the Ukrainians will be in a very difficult position with respect to defending many of the larger cities in Donbass such as Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.  There has also been speculation around Russia attempting to occupy Odessa and possibly reabsorb the breakaway Moldovan province of Transdniestria.

Many people wonder how this whole thing started.  Well, all of this is the State Department’s brain child.  Along with the CIA they sponsored the color revolution in Ukraine and funded the buildup of weapons and bunkers that have brought us to the present conflict.  And even as they continue to antagonize a country with a massive nuclear arsenal, they consider this outcome a success.

And every day we are treated to the spectacle of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the rest of the cavalcade of clowns slowly destroying whatever is still left of the United States.  Rail cars full of toxins burn in American cities, Mexican drug cartels murder American citizens with impunity, small businesses are folding up and dying by the millions and local communities and their citizens struggle to pay their fuel bills and buy food.

I guess Joe Biden has adopted the same strategy that the Russians are using against the Ukrainians.  He will just use a constant bombardment of misery against his own people until they just collapse, roll up and die.  It seems like a winning strategy.  It’s agonizingly slow and painful but hey what the heck!  He has to fill up the year and a half until the next election and there’s no way he can fix all the stuff he’s destroyed.  He might as well finish the job and destroy the rest of the country.  I suppose if your life has been destroyed and you’ve lost everything, voting won’t be a high priority.  So, he won’t even have to do much voter fraud this time around.  A real win/win.

World Didn’t End in 2023. Greta Thunberg Exclaims, “How Dare You!”

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I think her punishment for being wrong should be for her to be put in one of those dunk tanks and let all the non-climate alarmists get five baseball pitches to try and dunk her.  With any luck she’ll drown.

An Epiphany

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Listening to ZMan’s latest podcast was something of an aha! moment for me.  The way he laid out how the managerial state arose and evolved gave me a moment of clarity.  It made it clear what we are dealing with.  This is a system that interlocks all of the decision makers and their supporters across government, industry, academia, schools, NGO’s and almost every major institution in the western world.  This is not something we’re going to overcome by voting in a President and Congress.  Even if we had the Supreme Court, the White House and supermajorities in the House and Senate these people running the government will refuse to implement whatever programs those elected representatives legislate.  They’ll figure a way to stymie it.  And they will attack the leaders of those bodies and destroy them.

And let’s face it, we’re not going to have supermajorities in the Congress again.  The Left controls the federal government and unless they do something so disastrous that it destroys the support their programs have with the managerial state that’s how it will remain.

Okay.  That’s the starting point.  I’ll stop counting electoral college votes.  That at least saves me some time and aggravation.  I’ll stop worrying about the House and the Senate too.

So, what can be done?  To my mind the hopelessness of changing the federal government just reinforces the idea that the only place change can occur will be in states that have a solid Republican voting base and leaders who understand what needs to be done to protect their people from the federal government and its poisonous influence.

But the podcast on managerialism clarified what that protection looks like.  It’s wonderful to see Ron DeSantis and some of the other governors getting laws passed and using executive orders to cancel out the worst aspects of the federal overreach.  Banning drag queen story hour and criminalizing juvenile transgender medical treatments are wonderful ideas in and of themselves.  But you can’t win this fight by being against things.

What must be done is to think clearly about what things must be preserved in order for our lives to be worth living.  And then to transmit this information through schools and colleges to inculcate the young.  And then you have to have the state and local governments legislate a coherent program for enforcing the actions that will preserve the values that have been recognized as necessary for the survival of a healthy society.

These laws will impact every layer of society and every institution.  Corporations, towns and cities, religious organizations, even professional societies like the AMA and the state bar will be held accountable.  The laws will be clear and enforced stringently.  During a transition period maybe the state can accommodate helping dissidents to relocate to blue states when life becomes too much for the lefties that find themselves left high and dry in red states.  For instance I’m guessing that the majority of people living in Austin, Texas will have to flee to California if my plan were carried out.

Now this all sounds very draconian.  And the idea of all society bound by an inflexible code that doesn’t allow for many behaviors that we have grown used to allowing seems almost outlandish.  But think of where we are.  We now have teachers telling impressionable young children that they are not boys or girls but the opposite.  We have men playing in women’s sports and sharing locker rooms with them.  If what we have now allows for these dysfunctional and frankly insane situations then drastic actions to get things back to normal and keeping them that way are completely understandable and necessary.

So, this is what I’ve realized.  We need to fix things from the ground up.  And the federal government will fight this tooth and claw.  I don’t doubt that everything from intimidation to assassination to military action may be brought to bear.  And maybe there’s no hope.  The federal government as I’ve said is backed up by the managerial state that encompasses an enormously powerful collection of organizations.  They really do control a lot of what we call America.

But this is the only way it’s going to happen.  Someone somewhere has to get the ball rolling and begin the process of standing up a state government that is committed to restoring all the things that make life worth living.

What are these things?  I’ll leave defining the full list to wiser heads than mine but what I know is indispensable is preserving families.  Whatever has to be done to allow men and women to raise their kids in functional and healthy families is the most important business of society.  After that we can add the Ten Commandments and go on from there.

ArthurinCali Has a Post on NeoCon Madness

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Arthur has a post on what the endless NeoCon wars meant to him on the receiving side:

“If a young enlisted kid could recognize the futility of trying to establish the concept of liberal democracy amongst the former nomadic Bedouin tribes that now, playact as “nations”, surely the men and women at the highest positions of US political power and advisement knew this as well. To believe otherwise is a sure indication of their lack of sanity.”

ZMan Clearly Explains the Managerial State

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ZMan has a podcast (below) providing a very convincing explanation for how our present bureaucratic system allows government bureaucrats and bureaucrats in business and education control essentially all aspects of our lives.  If you’re interested in understanding how the system you live in works, listen to this hour long podcast.

What the ZMan does not explain is how we get rid of such a system. He says the whole system has to be replaced.  That leaves the question how exactly you go about such a thing.  Curtis Yarvin would tell us we would have to somehow install a King/CEO who would fire/pension off the entire federal bureaucracy.  It would be interesting to hear these two fellows discuss this idea but it would probably turn into a food fight.

Highly recommended listen.

Managerial Polyarchy