Larry’s a Utahan (is that how it’s named?). So he has a primer on each of the races to out the RINOs. If live in Utah you might be interested in his take.
Category: Current Events
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
To no one’s surprise Schumer was able to find ten Republicans willing to sign onto gun control. John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania have worked with the Democrats to draft a bill that would allow the Feds to go after gun owners using red flag laws. But just look at those names. Every one a loser. It should be interesting to see if McConnell lets it happen.
The 2019 Gambit
Today was a day for work. And a good day for it. So, no time for writing for the site. But, after dinner I was thinking about what a very strange place the world has become. The things going on today are qualitatively and quantitatively different and worse than anything that I can remember in my lifetime. And it’s not just the events.
I believe it’s demonstrably true that Joe Biden is much less than a mediocre or even a bad president. Gerald Ford was a mediocre president. Jimmy Carter was a bad president. But they were both fairly honest and observably sane men. Joe Biden is a documented pathological liar and all indications are that he is a crook who uses his relatives to sell influence. Beyond that he is currently incapable of speaking coherently without a teleprompter and Adderall. And even then, every tenth sentence is gibberish. He is not qualified to run this country.
This could never have happened twenty years ago or even ten years ago. We’ve reached some kind of inflection point, past which, the old ideas about normal and abnormal no longer apply. I guess that should be apparent in a world where men put on dresses and pretend to be women and idiots like the Kardashians are the leading advocates for the culture. But I keep thinking that somehow even the millennials will wake up and say, “This is crazy. We can’t go on this way.” And yet, week by week everything continues to get crazier.
Just in the last few months the polls and some of the voting, like the recent recall elections, give a hint that maybe we’ve hit bottom and are beginning to climb back up from the pit. The polls showing Biden’s approval rating dropping into the thirties and the projections of massive Democrat losses in the mid-terms provide a little evidence that people are coming to their senses. But it just doesn’t seem like the reaction I expect.
It seems to me that when gasoline is selling for from five to eight dollars a gallon and newborns can’t get baby formula and monkey pox is the pandemic threat of the week that Dementia Joe’s approval rating should be in single digits. It’s as if we’ve given up on normal and now, we just accept any crazy thing as the new normal. And perhaps that’s the most frightening thing of all. Because worse than all the crazy things happening is the idea that maybe everyone is crazy now.
I keep hoping that the awfulness of all the bad things happening will finally shock most Americans into demanding someone make things go back to the way they were in 2019. If I was writing a slogan for a presidential campaign, it would be, “I promise to bring back 2019 just as it was.”
And I think that would get me elected by a landslide that even voter fraud couldn’t beat. I think the great, great majority of people want things back the way they were. They want safe cities and $2/gal gasoline and supermarket shelves stocked with reasonably priced food and consumer products. I think that would be an unbeatable slogan.
But in order to make those things happen, I would tell the voters that the president will need a 63 seat-senate majority to pass a bill allowing him to fix the executive branch. The people would have to agree to electing a Congress that would give the president the laws he would need to defang the Deep State and eliminate all of the bureaucrats that stymied President Trump when he was in office. The voters would have to know that it was a package deal. If they provide the government that can get things done then they can have their old lives back. If they don’t then the candidate would refuse to be sworn in.
Pretty crazy idea. And I think things will have to get a whole lot worse before we could get the votes needed to provide such a mandate. But the way things are going it might not be such a long shot. After all, November 2024 is a long ways away. By then the country might be ready for a savior.
Avoiding the Horror
I turned on the tv last night to watch a show and immediately was confronted by Liz Cheney’s ugly mug. I had run smack into the Jan 6th show trial. I let out a yelp and switched inputs on my remote to reach the stream I was looking for on the screen. Yikes that was close! Honestly, I am trying to enjoy the summer and wasting even a single moment of it on the Jan 6th Committee is anathema.
Having avoided that death trap, I congratulated myself for my quick work and indulged in a frivolous hour of detective show fun about Harry Bosch. Of course, even this supposedly neutral entertainment has been infected with social justice of various stripes. Harry is fighting against injustice where marginalized people like blacks, Latinas and “the Homeless” are being put upon by the evil white man but at least there’s no sign of Liz Cheney or Adam Schiff. So, I relaxed and spent an hour with Camera Girl with only a minimum of it involving me yelling at some propaganda subplot of the show.
Seriously, kudos to Fox News for refusing to join the other networks in giving wall to wall coverage to this Stalinist struggle session. It’s the summer and the living is easy for a reason. Good weather, long days and the sights and sounds of summer make this the time of year that people live for. Only a dimwit would force himself to endure hours of Cheney and Schiff banging the insurrection drum.
I checked in with the Real Clear Politics Biden Approval Rating and it was at a new low. So that improved my mood.
The average has now edged below 40%. Which means that several of the polls have him in the mid-thirties. That must be freaking out the likes of Nancy Pelosi pretty strong. Schadenfreude is an addictive drug and I must admit I’m enjoying the experience of reading those headlines of Democrat political panic over the mid-terms. Dems and RINOs losing their cozy jobs in the Congress does quite a bit to salve my feelings over $5/gal gas and $6/gal milk.
I was comforted by reading that at least there were Federal Marshals on duty at Brett Kavanaugh’s house when that psychopath showed up at 1 am to kill him. Apparently even Merrick Garland isn’t blood thirsty enough to allow the assassination of a Supreme Court Justice to occur on his watch. And I’m enheartened that some of the press has linked up Chuck Schumer’s “released the whirlwind” threat against Brett Kavanaugh to this latest assassination attempt. It seems as if the Democrats and the Biden Administration just keep stepping on rakes as we continue on our way to societal ruin.
I saw an article that claimed that Biden would pivot after the mid-terms and move his policies to the middle to try and work with the new Republican controlled Congress. The lefty author of the piece was decrying this move as unnecessary. Apparently, some on the Left think things are bound to get better and they don’t want to lose out on the advantages that bankrupting the middle class will give their side. I’m not sure I think Joe Biden knows enough about what he is doing to strategize any post mid-term pivot. I think half of his administration will be bailing out after the mid-terms and we’re going to endure a really awful two years of economic chaos.
But today I’ll have some fun. I’ll take some photos and get some air. I hope you have a good day too.
Wash Post Fires Woke Woman. America LOL
Felicia Sonmez the annoying scold who got her fellow reporter suspended without pay for a month for retweeting a funny joke about women was fired today for harassing all of her colleagues for a week about the dust up.
Apparently this woman sued the Post recently for some petty crap and they have been bending over backward to keep her happy. But after she continued to pick fights with her other colleagues it reached the point today where she had to go.
The final straw was the anti-white card:
“I don’t know who the colleagues anonymously disparaging me in media reports are. But I do know that the reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other,” Sonmez wrote during a lengthy Twitter thread.
“They are all white – They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color – They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media,” Sonmez tweeted. “Of course the Washington Post is a great workplace. It is a great workplace *for them.* The system is working *for them.* What about for everyone else? The General Assignment team? The Morning Mix team? The newsletter researchers?”
I’m Calling Out This Charles Lipson Guy
Back on the 14th of May I wrote a post called “The Five Stages of Grief – Part 1.” Now I see that some guy named Charles Lipson has a post up at some rag called “Newsweek” entitled “The Biden Administration’s Five Stages of Grief.”
In my post I said, “People say that the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I think I have detected these stages in news coverage of the Biden Administration. The Left is grieving for the loss of Joe FDR Biden’s New Deal Moment, the Great Reset, the Build Back Better Rip-Off. If you think back to last year I remember when prices started to rise and the headlines were full of denial. Do you remember how they claimed that the Fourth of July cookout was something like $1.47 cheaper than the year before? And then there was the meme about inflation being temporary.”
Now here’s something from Lipson’s post, “Take inflation. The former administration spokesperson, Jen Psaki, initially denied rising prices were a problem. When that became laughable, the administration reframed the problem as a temporary one.”
What the hell! When I want to talk about an idea that someone else has written on, I always give attribution and cite the work and put a link back to the original article. But this Lipson guy did none of these things. What the hell!
I challenge you Charles Lipson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Chicago (if that is your real name!) to do the right thing and give attribution to Orion’s Cold Fire and apologize for your scurrilous behavior. Have you no sense of decency sir? Have you no shame, at last? There you are at your fancy university in your la de dah city of Chicago taking the food out of Camera Girl’s mouth. I challenge you to a debate. Who is the greater pundit thee or me?
Well, I feel better now. It’s good to get this thing off my chest. Okay, let me go see what I can “borrow” from someone else now.
California, Drowning in its Own Stupidity, Starts Flailing
What happens when a ship of fools hits an ideological iceberg? Well, if the ship is California and the iceberg is reality, various things. The true believers assemble on the deck and ask the band to play Grateful Dead jams. If you are one of the captive normies you head for the life boats. And if you’re in-between you start to panic and rethink the unsinkable nature of the ideology you’ve been fed.
For the last few years, the normies (and some not so normal) have been fleeing California by the millions. Mostly this has been a combination of toxic policies that makes life there difficult and ultra-expensive. Things like endless wild fires, clogged and crumbling roads, rampant crime, limited job opportunities, shortages of water and electricity have gone from frightening to unavoidable. The impossibility of living a middle-class existence on an upper middle-class income has driven out the young. And the old are cashing out their over priced homes to live on that value in more moderate cost areas like Nashville and Salt Lake City.
But last night we got to see the in-betweens reacting to the utter madness that has been unleashed in the last two years by the combination of BLM policies and Soros funded district attorneys. Last night ultra-progressive San Francisco voted to recall Chesa Boudin by a 60% to 40% margin. This continues the trend where all the school board members up for re-election were booted out because of their fanatical anti-white and radical anti-meritocratic agenda outraged parents especially Asian-Americans.
In addition to this election, we saw Los Angeles, the epicenter of everything fake, advance a fake Democrat to the brink of being their new mayor. Rick Caruso, a billionaire and Republican, switched party flags to run as a Democrat and is the top vote getter in the primary that will see him compete in November for mayor. Both Los Angeles and San Francisco are reeling from the effects of the crime epidemic that followed the BLM riots in 2020. Homelessness has become endemic and neighborhood stores are shutting down under the weight of endless smash and grab robberies. The regular people are frightened and confused as to how to return to normal life.
But the elites and other true believers are still telling anyone who will listen that all is for the best in this best of all possible Californias. And to confirm that fact Governor Gavin Newsom took more than 56% of the vote in last night’s primary. Well, after all what does a governor have to do with tackling crime and homelessness? And he did do such a great job with the pandemic. And he does have really great hair. But it’s going to be long hot summer and if the rolling brown outs and the wildfires really start to take their toll, who knows, maybe the in-betweeners may decide they can’t afford to keep Governor Nuisance for another four years.
As an outsider, I prefer to see California continue to stew in its self-appointed insanity. And even the change of a few mayors and DA’s and even a governor won’t fix California anytime soon. What might do the trick is when the last of the legacy nuclear power plants are soon decommissioned. Once the cost and the reliability of their electricity falls off the cliff and their mandate for battery cars goes into effect then the clownish aspect of their policy decisions may finally break the back of the true believers. But that’s a ways away. So, in the short term enjoy the music on the deck, California.
S.F. DA, Chesa Boudin Expected to be Recalled Today
In one of the few signs of intelligent life to be detected coming from San Francisco, psychotically pro-crime DA Chesa Boudin is up for a recall election today. Even brain-dead San Fran liberals are tired of stepping in human feces on their homeless strewn streets and suffering assaults and robberies on an hourly basis.
But you never know. Maybe the voters there will step back from the precipice of sanity just in time to retain their mantle as the stupidest humans on the planet.
Check the election results later on tonight or tomorrow to find out.
07JUN2022 – At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Today was a day to get some stuff done out in the yard. I had to do some measurements to figure out some volume and pH control problems for the pool. Where’s that slide-rule? Then I had some ultra-glamorous weeding to do, followed by fertilizer application. I had to replace some components on the hoses I use for watering the gardens and I had to disassemble the lawn mower to find out why it was smoking. Stupid mice.
But while I was doing that stuff, I checked on the elecampane (Inula) I planted in the spring. It’s finally starting to actually grow. About time! I checked out the barn swallow nest and followed the parents darting back and forth and spotting from a tree for insects and keeping an eye on the nest. Probably still on the lookout for that stupid blue bird pair from last month.
I went and looked at the sequoias and metasequoias and marveled at the growth they’ve put on since I planted them. I spotted the first garter snake in two years. After they were mysteriously absent the whole of last year one popped its head out of the day lilies and shot back in after seeing me. I’m glad they’ve returned. Otherwise, the frogs and toads might get too uppity. I noted that the wolfsbane was doing better in one location than the other. Maybe I should move it.
I turned over a muck bucket full of weeds near Camera Girl’s mulch pile and a couple of field mice or voles skittered away. There are a lot of mice around this year. That has me thinking of a new project. I’m thinking of buying some black rat snakes and breed a few clutches of eggs a year and release the hatchlings around the yard, especially in the rock wall. I think they’d improve the rodent ratio around here. A big black rat snake can get over seven feet long and not only could eat plenty of mice but chipmunks and squirrels would be on the menu too. Raising the rat snakes would take up time for cleaning and feeding the buggers but if I could establish a population, it would be well worth the effort.
When I finished outside, I read through the news articles. Same old, same old. When Camera Girl got back from the supermarket, she said it’s not so super anymore. In fact it was depressing. The half empty shelves were stocked with food almost too expensive to buy. I commiserated with her and told her that hopefully this situation will get the Democrats fired sooner than later. She said some very uncharitable things about Dementia Joe and I chuckled.
So today is a day for getting stuff done outside. Not very good for writing on the blog. Later on I have to find the next author for the Quotation of the Day. I think Mr. Hobbes has had enough days for his say. Who will be the next H? Tomorrow I’ll write something mordant and wise about our political situation. Today I’ll enjoy a June day with sunshine and warm weather. I could do worse.
Reagan’s 40th Anniversary of D-Day Speech
A different world.