Category: Current Events

photog Pitches In

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So, this was the tail end of a baby-sitting marathon by Camera Girl.  One of my daughters had a five-day anniversary trip postponed earlier in the year by illness and rescheduled during my marathon trip to Yellowstone.  So not only was Camera Girl watching my young granddaughter on Monday, Wednesday and Friday but she was also watching my two younger grandsons from Tuesday to Saturday (today).

Being the highly evolved and supportive husband that I am, I provided all the help of which I am capable.  This consists of me saying things like, “Honey, are these kids allowed to do this?” and “Do you want me to take them outside while you shop, cook dinner and clean the house?”  Of course, that would be under perfect circumstances.  This weekend I’m jet-lagged, dehydrated and have a sore elbow so I restricted my athletic events with the kids to watching them in the swimming pool, playing billiards and being beaten at chess by young children.  The infamy!

Seriously I used to kid myself that I didn’t have to learn about chess strategy.  I was so smart that my instincts would carry me through with anyone below a grandmaster.  Apparently, grandmasters nowadays are really short and have squeaky voices.  My older younger grandson beat me three games running before I finally got a grip and distracted him enough to win.  Then the littlest guy gave me a run for my money in which I barely squeaked out a win.

But between these duties I had a chance to read a bunch of news and opinion articles.  It seems the Left and the Fake Right are trying to convince us that there is powerful evidence that the January 6th Investigation has turned the tide of public opinion across America and made electing Democrats all the rage.  Apparently, Bison Man cavorting in Nancy Pelosi’s office is much more compelling stuff than $5 gasoline, $10 hamburgers and teachers grooming children for sterilization.

Now we’re supposed to believe this notwithstanding that this week Creepy Uncle Joe bottomed out below -20 points in the approval/disapproval scorecard for the first time in his presidency.  Apparently the most unpopular president on record is leading the way to a Democrat landslide in the mid-terms.  I guess it’s possible.  But I’m gonna say no.

Other stuff I read seems more like the beginning of panic.  One guy kept asking how the polls could be so skewed against the Democrats when the Trump Republicans are just so evil.  That one was really funny.

Another pundit was worried by a strategy on the Left of voting in the Republican primaries for what they considered “far right” Republicans in the hope that this would increase the chance of Democrats winning in the general election.  This pundit was truly scared that this would backfire and decrease the number of RINOs by electing actual conservatives.  Terrifying!

One little ray of good news did leak through this week.  That Latino guy who was charged with second degree murder for defending himself against some crazy guy attacking him in the bodega where he works had the murder charge dropped.  Apparently, New York Mayor Adams put pressure on the DA and judge to recognize the self defense aspect of the situation and ended this travesty of justice.  Who knows?  Could some sanity begin to reassert itself in New York City?  Nah.

Now that the grandkids will be away for a day or so I can try to start catching up on my writing and pictures from the trip.  But I have to say it looks like time is running out on the Biden administration.  I saw he tried to declare a climate emergency this week but nobody cared.  It’s not like he can wave an energy wand and terawatts of power will just start flowing into the grid from rainbow fairy dust.  He’s out of make believe and the economy is starting to grind to a halt.  It will be interesting to see if they pull the plug on his presidency before or after the mid-terms.  Either way, I’m thinking we’re about to see some really ugly stuff soon.  Enjoy the summer.

Return to Reality?

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So here I am thirty-six hours after returning from the wilderness where for the most part I had no internet access or information on what was going on in the world for the last two weeks.  And to be totally honest I can’t detect any change in the status quo.

Sure, Joe Biden’s approval rating has sunk three or four more points.  The economy has continued to sink into stagflation.  And the progressive cabal is still doing everything it can to destroy what’s left of the American people.  But headlines from two weeks ago look more or less the same as today’s.

What did change was that I had a chance to relax and think a little about the state of the world.  And I even had a chance to talk to different people about what they thought was going on.  And what I heard reinforced what I’ve been thinking.  Basically, the elites have the rest of us by the throat.  The mask is off.  We and they are not “us.”  They’re calling the shots and unless we want to lick their boots (and even if we do) they’re going to do whatever they can to make us disappear.

I heard the code words and talking points from both sides.  Listening to the conversations among the members of the managerial class on vacation with their families and among the deplorables was edifying.  Even out there in the middle of nowhere with grizzly bears and bison as your closest neighbors, people talk about the 2020 election and the 2022 elections and the January 6th Charade and the economy.  And it couldn’t be more polarized.  The so-called Republicans who hate Trump are searching for a way to get rid of Biden without facing up to the reality that Donald Trump will still be there in 2024.

The reality that I see is we’re just going to have to grind this out.  Any talk of bipartisanship is a ploy.  I read an article from Bret Stephens, a Never-Trumper, in which he tries to apologize for calling Trump voters “moral ignoramuses” but can’t quite do it.  After all they still want to vote for Trump now after the unforgiveable sin of January 6th.  Stephens’ point is that Republicans can’t really want closed borders, safe streets and fair elections because then Trump wins and that is beyond the pale.  From my point of view there is no meeting these people in the middle.  Whether they are progressives or establishment Republicans there is no middle.  It’s capitulation or war.  So, it’s war.

And I’m totally alright with that.  They are going to pull out all the stops.  There will be BLM riots and Antifa intimidation.  The administrative state and the Biden executive orders will make our lives a living hell.  But that’s nothing new.  And the sum total of all this misery is crystallizing the opinion in more and more people of every stripe that the Democrats and their allies are destroying this country in order to satisfy their agenda.

Green energy and the New World Order’s war with Russia are making middle class life impossible for everyone but the members of the elite.  And their war on the police has turned the cities into death traps.  This is the perfect time to see if the elections are completely rigged.  If the Democrats win the mid-terms in this environment, then what the dissident right says about not being able to vote our way out of this mess is verifiably true.  But if there is a landslide that crashes the Democrats in both Houses then that seems like a very hopeful sign to me.

It’s only four months away.  Seems like something worth waiting around to see.  So apparently camping out in the middle of nowhere isn’t really shutting out the world.  It’s more like proving that a microcosm reflects the macrocosm.  People are who they are.  Whether they’re waiting to see a grizzly bear chew on a bison carcass or tweeting about Trump.  They show their true colors.  That’s reality.

Yellowstone Expedition – Post 5

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Now that I’m back I can start gathering my thoughts and describe various natural history facets of my trek.  But I think I’ll start with the adventure that is flying back and forth to this crazy corner of Wyoming (with just little slivers of Montana and Idaho added because of rounding errors on the map.

On the trip out the most memorable event was the taxi ride to the airport.  Instead of picking me up at 4:30 as they recommended, I got a call at 3 am stating the driver was outside waiting for me.  Luckily, I was up and packed but what I wasn’t ready for was my driver.  She was very old, very obese and she wanted to tell me her story.

She volunteered that she had had a driving accident a year ago and this was her first ride since recovering.  She also told me that at night she couldn’t see the road because of the lights of the oncoming drivers.  And to demonstrate the truth of this statement she several times wandered onto the rumble strip when there was oncoming traffic.  Then she told me about her drug dealer neighbor and her abusive bosses who want her to drive faster.  And finally, she told me about her cancer.  When we finally pulled up to the airport, I gave her a good tip and fled her cab like my life depended on it.

The rest of the outgoing journey was uneventful.  But on the way home things got interesting.  From Bozeman to Denver everything went smoothly.  I even managed to have a very nice Reuben sandwich plate in Denver.  And when I was ensconced in my window seat with no one in the middle seat I thought my flight home would be relaxing and comfortable.  Ah, foolish me.  As our departure time approached a thunder storm engulfed the airport and stowing baggage had to be postponed until the lightning subsided.  When the plane was ready to take off twenty minutes later, we were behind six planes on the tarmac.  By the time we took off we were thirty-five minutes behind schedule.

It turned out the row behind me in the back of the plane was occupied by a single father and his two sons, Mal and Max.  I’d guess their ages as four and six.  The six-year-old, Max, was sitting behind me and he early demonstrated that kicking the back of my seat with both feet was something he needed to do.  His father begged him endlessly to stop kicking it but the boy responded by going into hysterics.  Finally, I told the father to switch seats with his son so the son could kick the back of the empty seat next to me.  This worked but it couldn’t prevent me from having to listen to the endless screeching from both boys demanding that they be allowed to leave the plane.  Somewhere over Kansas or Missouri I contemplated how I could help them fulfill this wish.  But eventually I rejected the idea and spent the rest of the flight contemplating which of my earlier crimes was being atoned for by my proximity to these howling lunatics.

As we travelled along our flight path, we were constantly surrounded by a line of thunderstorms that buffeted the plane.  Somewhere in the Midwest we took a detour to escape these storms and this caused our arrival time to slip further.  And finally, before landing the captain came on the radio to inform us that the long runway was unavailable to us so we would be making a screeching halt on the short runway.  And he wasn’t kidding.  The plane hit the ground and skittered around the runway like a jitterbug.  Inevitably the terror twins behind me were inspired to even louder ululations of outrage at their imminent demise.  But as we bounced to a stop, I smiled knowing it would all soon be over.  How wrong I was.

The captain came on the intercom again and in a jovial manner explained that we had been given a different gate but that there already was a plane at that gate and we would have to wait about twenty minutes to use it.  This twenty-minute delay and the time it took for the rest of the passengers to exit the plane in front of us sparked a performance from Mal and Max that can only be equated with some passages from Dante’s Inferno.  I’m surprised none of the stewardesses administered a tranquillizer dart from across the cabin but toward the end I would have welcomed a bullet in my direction just to distract me.  Finally, as the moment approached, I turned around and told the father of the M & M boys to leave ahead of me.  He thanked me and I assured him no thanks were necessary.  I left the plane last.  I wanted as much space between me and those whirling dervishes as I could arrange.  The last I saw the two of them were attempting to push their poor bedeviled father down an escalator.

So here I was at 12:30 am, about an hour after my scheduled arrival.  I gathered up my luggage and headed for the taxi stand.  By some miracle the taxi was still there and the driver wasn’t the poor pathetic woman who had driven me out.  She had made it seem that she was the only driver on the night shift and I was dreading the suicide run she was fully capable of providing.  Instead, it was a younger guy who drove with considerable skill and speed and I was home in record time.  I gave him an even handsomer tip and was greeted by Camera Girl with marked warmth even considering the fact that I badly needed a shower.

So, there is my tale of woe.  Now that I’ve recovered from the trip it almost seems silly to let things like these bother me.  But at the time I had dark thoughts about the way the universe was being organized.  In the next post I’ll limit myself to a photo exposition of Yellowstone natural history.

Biden’s Approval Rating – The Gift That Keeps On Giving

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While I was gone Creepy Uncle Joe broke through the -20 point approval/disapproval rating.  Isn’t it a beautiful thing?  Well I’ll be winging across America today but I won’t be home until the wee hours of the night so this is just a howdy to all the folks out there in the interwebs.

I’ll do my homework and start making fun of progressives almost immediately.  Enjoy the summer sun.

 

2022 Yellowstone Expedition – Post 2

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Today I’ve had a chance to look at the news for the first time in a week and there have been some interesting developments.  It seems that the Left has conceded that Biden is doomed and will need to be replaced either in 2024 or sooner.  That alone is a notable situation.  I’ll have to get up to date on exactly how damaged the Democrats are when I return to “civilization” on Thursday.  But I will say that this tells me things are even worse than I thought a week ago.  Ah, the political advantages of living in a country where your opponents are seen to be responsible for collapsing the economy and unleashing chaos against the law abiding citizens.

Well back to climbing the mountains of Wyoming.  Talk to you soon.

 

 

2022 Yellowstone Expedition – Post 1

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So I’ve been here in Wyoming for almost a week and it has been amazing.  I’ve seen wolves, bison, grizzlies, cinnamon black bears, pelicans and other beasties.  We’ve visited the thermal effects, climbed the mountains, visited the lakes and rivers and made an excursion to the Tetons for a couple of days.

I’ll have photos for weeks but I’ll start off with one that I quite like.

 

The Hour Approaches

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Tomorrow is the flight.  In fact, I’m heading out the door in eight and half hours.  So, the era of radio silence is upon me.  I’ll try to monitor the news in case Creepy Uncle Joe morphs into a giant cockroach or centipede or something.  Or if Joe and Kamala resign and Nancy Pelosi takes up residence in the White House.  If that happens, I’ll have a lot to say.  But short of that I’ll probably be incommunicado for most of the trip.  I’ll post pictures as well as I’m able and I may put up some posts with my impressions of the mountain west.  The daily photo and quote are already loaded and scheduled for the whole trip.

I hope everybody’s summer is progressing as planned.  Unless I’m eaten alive by a grizzly bear, I expect to re-emerge on July 21st revitalized and rededicated to insulting leftists whenever they say stupid things, which is always.  I’ll check on the comments so feel free to leave them.  This the longest I’ll be away from the site in six years so I’ll probably suffer withdrawal symptoms out there in the wilderness.  But it’s probably good for me to unplug and deal with life without the internet for a change.

Hasta la vista baby.

Baltimore and Philadelphia – Real Life Clockwork Orange

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Two recent headlines demonstrate unmistakably that some of our cities are solidly ensconced in third world lawlessness.  In Philadelphia a pack of seven feral children beat a 73-Year-Old Man to death with a traffic cone.  And in Baltimore a “squeegee-man” shot and killed one of his “customers.”

Reading either of these stories brings home what the reality is for residents of these two cities.  Philadelphia has a district attorney that will not prosecute even violent felons.  The chance that he will prosecute these minors for murder is slight even if they are ever found.  As for the squeegee killer, no one saw him and it doesn’t sound like law enforcement is even looking for him.  The tone of the article is more about finding good paying jobs for “squeegee workers” which leads me to wonder if there are now squeegee women.  You go girls!

These two stories coming on the heels of the Harlem bodega worker who was charged with second degree murder for stabbing a man who assaulted him in his store bring home the fact that Barack Obama was successful in using a race-based color revolution to destroy America’s cities.  He unleashed the Justice Department to strip away the police shield that protected law-abiding residents of these cities from the feral under-class that Democratic city governments breed with their dysfunctional schools and welfare programs.

And these three examples are just this week’s sample.  Any week you can find cases just as brutal and hopeless.  Murder has skyrocketed and the percentage of crimes solved has plummeted.  It’s obvious that the police don’t even bother to look for the criminals because the Soros-funded prosecutors won’t even indict them.

Eventually there may be such a backlash among minority residents that actual law and order city government may be elected.  Or maybe it won’t.  There is such a thing as a tipping point.  If a large enough percentage of normal people leave the city it can disintegrate to where there aren’t any capable people left to run it.  If the city becomes economically unviable then the rich will flee altogether.  At that point city services will deteriorate to the point where the working and middle class also flee.

What’s left then, is Detroit.  The city will be run by whatever local grifter can corral enough votes in the election by promising to hire his supporters into city government.  Of course, the city will sink into bankruptcy and the state will control the purse strings in the background.  Eventually trees will start growing in streets and whole blocks will disappear into small forests that sane people would never come near.

Up till recently Detroit was the cautionary tale.  Places like New York and Chicago had avoided the fate of Motown back in the nineties.  But now it seems like there will be further examples.  Philadelphia and Baltimore look like the standouts.  Each of them has sunken pretty deep into lawlessness and there don’t seem to be any mechanisms to lift themselves out by their bootstraps.  The police force, the voters and the district attorney in each city are already solidly locked into their part in this drama.  The voters haven’t shown any willingness to vote out lawless prosecutors and the police aren’t going to risk prison by arresting criminals especially if they’ll only be released anyway.

The only interesting aspect of this destruction of cities is for any relics of old America still trapped in these places.  Will Independence Hall with its Liberty Bell have to be disassembled brick by brick and moved to Harrisburg?  Will the Orioles have to be airlifted out after a double header by a special forces battalion using attack helicopters and miniguns?

There is a fight on for the future of America.  2022 and 2024 will tell us whether we can vote our way out of this mess.  Pessimism says no.  Fraud and the stupidity of suburban women threaten to allow the Democrats to stay in power.  Optimism says yes.  Empty store shelves and 9% inflation say Congress flips in 2022 and the White House in 2024.  I’m going to stick around and see.  Won’t take long.

Another Ticking Time Bomb Goes Off

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Posted July 6th 2022

Re-Posted for Updates July 9th 2022

I was reading about the latest maniac, Robert Crimo who killed those people in the July 4th parade in Illinois.  Of course, no one knew he was crazy.  But back in 2019 he attempted suicide and later stated he was going to “kill everyone.”  How is that not the warning sign needed to alert the authorities that they are dealing with someone insane?  And if you’re this kid’s father, how do you not try and save your kid from himself.  Maybe the answer is that he was taking something that made him crazy.  Nowadays I guess that’s likely.  Maybe his family did try.  Maybe they even thought he had improved.  I wonder.  I know the world has become a bleak place for the young.  Opportunities for marriage and success in business are sadly reduced.  Add on the boredom and isolation caused by the COVID folly I can see why depression and mental illness must be rampant.  But he was only 21.  Had his family already given up on him?

And if they had maybe they should have at least warned the cops that he wasn’t safe for gun ownership.  That seems like the bare minimum they could have done.  After his suicide attempt, I imagine he was put on at least anti-depressants.  Shouldn’t something like that be enough to make his family think they were dealing with a dangerous individual?  And after looking at the social media videos where he basically signaled that he was going to commit a gun massacre wouldn’t his family know time was running out?

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m uninformed.  Maybe the country is filled with 21-year-old zombies with dead eyes and lives so empty of human contact and hope that going on a killing spree is their highest aspiration in life.  If that’ so then we’re already doomed as a country.  If our kids are ready to check out at 21 then maybe we should give up and let the Guatemalans and Nigerians have the place.  Probably most of them aren’t ready to give up the ghost at 21.

Even though this is the hundredth time this scenario has played out this should be a wake-up call for anyone with a troubled kid to wrack your brain to find some way to connect with him and put him on another path.  Of course, don’t wait until 21 or 18 or even 12.  Stay involved in your kid’s life and push him in the right direction.  Look for the danger signs in his behavior and the friends he associates with.  Don’t let him be alone all the time.  If he has no one else then you be his friend.  Do things together.  Join groups together to allow him to make connections to the world.  Look at his social media posts.  Don’t let him live his life on-line.  Show him there’s a larger world filled with other people.

This stuff is horrible.  We have a sick world.  And the sickness goes after the young.  If you have children and grandchildren pay attention.  It’s dangerous for the young out there.  Keep an eye on them.  It could save their lives.

Updates

Chemist

This nut job threatened to kill his entire family in 2019. The cops removed dozens of knives and edged weapons from the home but did not arrest.
Then his father (one of the people he threatened to kill) signed off on an Illinois State Firearms Ownership Identification card (FOID) which is necessary to even touch a firearm in the great state of Illinois.
He posted videos of his rants about wanting to kill people and even posted the parade route.
So, to answer your question Photog: His family knew. The cops knew. Facebook knew. And nobody did anything.

 

Milo Mindbender

SSRI class drugs have been used on 2 generations to replace learning coping skills with happy pills. When someone stops taking their meds for whatever reason they are not emotionally or intellectually equipped to deal with the real world they just plunged into. Big pharma has a PR team that suppress any linking of the use of SSRI class pharmaceuticals and “they just snapped” shooter/driver/arsonist in an attempt to stay out of the conversation and courtroom.
“Known to Law Enforcement” is almost becoming a mantra with the shooters, and needs to be looked at seriously. Red Flag laws as they are written now are too ambiguous and open to exploitation by vindictive Ex’s, neighbors, political appointees, and generally violate any American concept of “Innocent until judged Guilty”.
This is my opinion based on the observations in the real world, and only has to fit me comfortably. Your mileage may vary.

 

War PIg

It would be interesting to see if he was on antidepressants. He may have gotten control of himself so that it was assumed he was okay. Then, the side effects caused him issues so he stopped taking them or did not have the money and told no one. Young people are overprescribed and when they quit or run out they can be suicidal or murderous. I do not think these drugs should be administered outside of a controlled environment, but there is not enough bed space for all the people taking them. A conundrum indeed. I put these psychosis down to overpopulation. Americans do jot take well to being crowded. That and the political left’s attempts to destabilize the nation.

 

 

The Bigger Picture

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When things get as bad as they have now, you start to think that just tweaking the system won’t ever be enough to fix things.  After all, we went through this cycle in the seventies and eighties of the last century and here we are even worse off than then.  What it seems to say to me is that just fixing a few laws and getting rid of a few programs isn’t going to change the direction the country is going.

The rot is now spread to almost every facet and organization of American society.  The litany of organizations is too long and familiar to bother repeating again.  But the anti-American and specifically anti-white programs that the schools, media, colleges and corporations have adopted has to be opposed by state and federal law.  It will require drastic measures.  The playing field will have to be tilted drastically to frighten these people.

And worse still, the American people have become dysfunctional.  They want the government to run their lives and take care of them.  They want to study basket weaving at a college and then complain when they can’t find a basket-weaving job to let them pay off their student loan.

And the recent Supreme Court rulings has reinforced the feeling that drastic change is needed.  If a law is wrong then it can’t be tweaked.  It has to be thrown out.  If an agency is corrupted you can’t just fire the boss.  You have to purge it and start over.  If a program is harming the country it has to be ended and replaced with something that helps.  If a company is abusing Americans, then it needs to be put out of business.  What is needed is the right-wing equivalent of the New Deal.

The central idea needs to be restoring American civilization.  One thrust of it would be to strip away all the laws and regulations that have strangled the freedoms in the Bill of Rights.  That will require taking a chainsaw to whole agencies of the bureaucracy.  The IRS, FBI, Justice Department and the agencies that regulate banking will have to cease and desist torturing citizens and stealing their rights and money.  And innumerable other agencies and departments will need to be pruned.

Another change will be re-industrializing the country.  All the corporations that off-shored their factories will be informed that they are now considered foreign businesses and will be taxed and tariffed accordingly.  And alternatively, any company that expands its industrial and commercial operations to employ American citizens will be advantaged handsomely with respect to taxes.  And an important part of the business plan will be a long-term energy policy.  Everything possible needs to be done to stabilize prices for gasoline and heating fuels.  In addition, the government must spearhead a program to restore the use of nuclear power for electrical generation and other energy needs.  Currently only nuclear power has the hope of replacing petroleum at the point where reserves of gas, oil and coal are depleted.  Of course, questions of safety must be addressed so that the public will be confident in the program but the current fantasy of powering the electric grid with windmills and solar panels is just that, a fantasy.

But a final plank in any program to restore the country has to address the moral decline in the country.  And this will have to involve education and re-establishing a partnership between the government and the families of this country.  The schools have to stop poisoning children’s minds.  They need to prepare children to take their place in the world.  The children must be taught that one day they will have to have families of their own and assume responsibility for other lives.  They need to know that growing up is a part of American life not something to be avoided.  And the government needs to provide financial incentives and aid in raising a family.  Anyone who marries and works full time to support his wife and kids needs to have the government on his side.

I’m not saying we should pay for his life but we should make it possible to achieve a middle-class existence for being an honest working-class American.  These are just commonsense ideas that outline the bare bones of what is needed to restore this country to normalcy.

But they need to be adopted and preached by a leader smart enough and persuasive enough to galvanize the people in this country who want to save it.  He has to make it a crusade to save America.  He has to paint the moment for what it is.  This is a desperate situation we’re in.  Think of it as a ship with no one at the wheel that’s approaching an iceberg.  Either someone is going to make a drastic course correction or total catastrophe will occur.  That is how it is and how it needs to be sold.