Category: Current Events

Roe v. Wade Reaction

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I have friends who were terrified of this moment.  Ever since the Supreme Court agreed to take up the Mississippi case, they worried that with the Senate and House in Democrat hands that overturning Roe v. Wade would galvanize women to force through a national abortion law to replace it.

For this reason, these folks talk about finessing the Mississippi case.  “They should leave Roe v. Wade in place but allow most of the state law’s substance to remain.”  I guess the strategy they are waiting for is a time when the Presidency, Senate, House and Supreme Court are all reliably conservative to finally overturn Roe v. Wade.  Well, I guess that’s a plan of sorts.  But to me it sounds more like never.

We have been living with unconstitutional, court mandated policies like abortion, affirmative action and gay marriage for, in some cases, half a century.  At some point you either assert the right to strike down unconstitutional laws or you give up on the Constitution all together.  The Supreme Court is admitting that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional.  Overturning it is the right thing to do.  Waiting is simply weak.  It needs to be done now.

I recognize the risk involved in allowing the Democrats to use abortion as a rallying flag.  There is an enormous base on the Left that will crank up the propaganda effort to try to frighten and anger women into going ballistic over the SCOTUS decision.  There will be marches, sit-ins, probably a few shootings and who knows, a self-immolation or two.

All of this may have the desired effect.  Senators will be swayed.  Collins and Romney are the best examples.  The Democrats may get the law they want.  A national abortion mandate written and approved by the Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden.  But the thing is, what one Congress and President can sign another one can overturn.  You don’t need the stars to align over a fifty-year period like it took to get the Supreme Court majority needed to overturn abortion.  And the way things are going the Congress component of this requirement is about to happen this year.  And the President component is looking like it will happen in 2024.  And at that point abortion will be removed again.

But finessing these things doesn’t work.  Speaking openly and honestly about what we want and why is the only way to get normal people to rally to the cause.  Currently the Democrats are immensely unpopular because of all the terrible policies they’ve espoused over the last five years.  That’s not going to change because Roe v. Wade is overturned.

People will still see that gas is double in price and food is too expensive to buy.  The cities will still be full of murderous thugs assaulting the residents undeterred by police or prosecutors.  And the federal government will still be trying to propagandize children with anti-white hate and transgender madness that puts children at risk of permanent bodily harm.  None of those things will be going away.

So, if and when the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade take it as a win and move onto the next step.  A battle to protect the filibuster or prevent the Supreme Court from being packed can be looked at when they come up.  For now, relax and don’t panic.  Let the other side panic.

Drafts of SCOTUS Opinions Leaked to Press Indicate Roe v. Wade Will Be Overturned

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Someone stole drafts of the opinions of the two sides of the SCOTUS decision on the abortion case and leaked it to Politico.  The text has Alito writing the majority opinion striking down Roe v. Wade.  If this report is true this will be a seminal moment in American Constitutional history.  This will be the first reversal of any of the non-constitutional civil rights activism from the 1960’s and 70’s.  There will surely be an initial uproar over the decision.  Then each of the states will need to craft its own solution to the question of the legality of terminating the lives of unborn human beings.

How soon we will have the answer as to whether this report is true is unknown.  It was not thought that the decision in this case was imminent.  Supreme Court rulings are very rarely leaked to the press.  How the Justices will handle this unusual situation is unknown.  Will this speed up the decision or not?

David Brooks Begs Democrats to Stop Being Democrats or Else Trump Will Win in 2024

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David Brooks the premier Never Trumper who left the Republicans to rejoin his real friends on the Left, is now warning the Democrats that in order to avoid disaster in 2024 they will have to pretend to be Republicans.  At least until after Election Day.

“We all make mistakes; the question is, do we learn from them? Over the past couple of years people on the left side of the political and cultural spectrum have made their share. These have contributed to the Democrats’ extremely bleak political prospects going into the midterms. Far worse, it is now quite plausible that Donald Trump could win re-election in 2024.”

Notice how the real danger is that Donald Trump could get back in the White House.

Now he gives his pals the benefit of his vast knowledge of conservative lore that he still has from his years as a fake conservative.  He gives them a laundry list of progressive talking points that have made them radioactive with the American voters.

“If we’re going to prevent that kind of catastrophe, it might be a good idea to learn a few relevant lessons:

  • It is possible to overstimulate the economy.
  • Law and order is not just a racist dog whistle.
  • Don’t politicize everything.
  • Border security is not just a Republican talking point.
  • “People of color” is not a thing.
  • Deficits do matter.
  • The New Deal happened once.

Year after year Democrats imagine that if they can hand people checks and benefits, they will be rewarded with votes, allowing them to build a dominant majority coalition. It’s not that simple. I enthusiastically supported many of these policies, but we live in an age in which culture, values and identity issues drive politics at least as much as policy.”

But if you look at that list, it’s the whole Democrat campaign platform.  If you take away all of those things all they have left is graft and corruption without even a fig leaf.

“The Democrats’ largest problem is this: We are living in an age of fear, insecurity and disorder on an array of fronts. The Republicans have traditionally been known as the party of toughness and order. Democrats are going to have to find a posture that is tough on disorder, and tough on the causes of disorder.”

This is hilarious.  Here is Brooks trying to tell his Democrat friends that everything about them is causing the electorate to run screaming to the Republicans.  And not just Independents.  Whole chunks of the Democrat coalition are peeling off.  Hispanics, black men, Asians, Jews, even suburban women are splintering off from the Democrat vote in significant numbers.  And so, since Brooks isn’t a Republican any more, he’s looking to shore up the only side left open to him.

But of course, they can’t pay heed to his warning.  He’s asking them to give up their religion.  And so, November will be a powerful experience.  Well maybe David Brooks can get a job at Reason Magazine.

Improving My Mind

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Watching Joe Biden turn into a mumbling moron with stuffed artichokes for brains has reminded me that for us older folks it’s use it or lose it.  So, I’ve initiated a cultural renaissance right here in Dunwich.  I’ve got three very different reading projects going on.  They are:

 

  1. Northmen: The Viking Saga, AD 793-1241, by John Haywood
  2. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin, by Søren Kierkegaard
  3. The Bounty Trilogy: The Complete Series: Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea & Pitcairn’s Island, by James Norman Hall (Author), Charles Nordhoff (Author)

The Kierkegaard book on “Anxiety” is the most questionable project.  I took some courses in philosophy as an undergraduate and found them to be highly annoying.  They seem to spend so much time and effort splitting hairs that by the end, all of the audience has walked away in boredom.  And they employ so much specialized jargon that the notes for the vocabulary sometimes outweighs the text itself.  But I want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.  He claims he wants to make philosophy more about what we need to do as human beings and less about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  I figure the least I can do is slog through the argument.

The Bounty trilogy is just a book I’ve always meant to read and now have finally gotten around to.  And so far, it’s a good one.  I’m finding that the 1930’s Charles Laughton movie is pretty close to the text.  It’s an exciting adventure story that has the added advantage of having actually happened.  It is a fictionalized account but it is based on the documents left by the protagonists and by their descendants.  Other than the myriad of parts of a sailing ship that I don’t know the names of the book is a fast read.  I’ll have a review of this when I finish.

The Northmen book is something I’ve been interested in learning more about for a while.  I was writing a sci-fi/ fantasy story that used Valhalla as a plot element and I just kept running into aspects of Norse mythology and history that I wasn’t up on.  This book looked to be a way to fill in some gaps and also provide me with some information I’ve always been interested in.  The Scandinavians had a very large impact on several different aspects of European and by extension world history.  I feel like I should know a lot more about their origins before I start introducing them and their culture into my stories.  I’ve just gotten started with the book but already I’ve learned a bit about the origins of the Goths, Burgundians and Vandals that I didn’t already know.

As I said yesterday, our whole lives shouldn’t be railing against the progs.  As the ZMan says, a negative identity does not provide a basis for a viable society.  We must pursue the actions and goals that have intrinsic value.  If we are claiming that the Left is trying to destroy our way of life by denying us the opportunity to do things that we value then shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to do these things?  Otherwise, it’s all just cant and posturing.

So, stretch your mind and learn something new.  Then figure a way to make some of it relevant to your life.

A Hint of Summer

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As I mentioned earlier Camera Girl and I went out this morning on a photographic journey to capture the flowers and other manifestations of spring.  There’s a very large elm tree, the only healthy mature elm in the whole area of the state, that was just about to bud.  And I wanted to get a shot of the skunk cabbage that are impressively large this year.  So, we went here and there and that took up the early morning.  Then we did some more prosaic things.  I needed to buy about four hundred feet of hose for the gardens.  And Camera Girl needed some cherry tomato plants for her garden.  Then we came home and I had to do some repairs to a fence.

And about halfway through my work I realized it was way too warm to wear a sweatshirt.  So, I looked up in the sky and around the yard and thought, “Summer’s coming.”

And that’s funny because last night the weather girl said there was a frost warning for the area.  New England is a strange place.  I read that there has been measurable snow in Massachusetts in every month but July.  It’s a mighty silly way to run a climate.  That much is certain.

But we’re definitely now in the warm weather and people will start trying to enjoy life.  They’ll want to have cookouts and go to sports events and head for the lakes and beaches.  And even though they’ll have their little pleasures, each time they’ll notice that things cost too much and they can’t afford to do what they did a few years ago.  And it will rankle them.

As I said recently, Joe Biden’s regime is a tawdry and third-rate effort.  Everyone in it is incompetent, nasty and pathetic.  Between now and November this is going to be reinforced by every increase in gas and food price and every crime spree and incident at the Mexican border.  By November it’ll feel like that constant dull ache you have when you have a bad tooth that needs to be pulled.

But how do you extract Joe Biden?  He’s going to be there for the next few years and we’re stuck with him.  My plan is to strike a balance.  I won’t ignore Biden because he deserves to be mocked and ridiculed for his incompetence and malfeasance.  But at the same time, we need to spend the majority of our time planning and performing the positive things that make up living.  For me that’s spending time with family and friends, working, playing and of course, annoying Camera Girl.  And those things will keep me more than busy.  But importantly, even the part where I’m blogging won’t be completely taken up reviling Biden.  He’s just not worth it.  From time to time I will wax poetic describing his many failings.  But even then, it will be to make the point that Biden is more of a symptom of our larger problems than a cause.  Any great country that allows itself to be led by anyone as stupid and dishonest as Joe Biden has already reached a crisis and must do much more than replace him to correct the dire straits it’s already in.

This week Camera Girl and I will be getting together with friends we haven’t seen in way too long because of the COVID nonsense.  We’ll go to soccer games and tennis matches that the grandsons are playing in.  We’ll work in the yard and do our spring chores.  And we’ll be hosting the first barbecues of the season.  It’s still mid-spring but it feels like summer is opening up in front of us.

So, the winter of Biden discontent is turning glorious summer and we’ll work around him.  He’s a hindrance to enjoying life but he isn’t terminal.  What we need to spend time doing is thinking of how we escape from the Leftist death trap we’re in.  Elon Musk gave us a taste of what it means to win a victory against the Left.  Other leaders need to do their parts.  DeSantis is doing his part.  It’s time for other governors and legislatures to emulate these tactics and push back against the Left.

Summer’s coming.  I’m going to get out there and live.

Dr. Jill Bombs at the Book Store. Another Biden First.

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Americans give a lot of respect to First Ladies.  It’s considered ungracious to go after anyone’s wife, even one as unlikeable as Michelle Obama.  But once again the Bidens are breaking new ground.

Why wouldn’t Americans be beating down the doors at their local Barnes and Noble to pay $26 for Jill: A Biography of the First Lady.

Well apparently they’re not.  This fascinating page turner only racked up 250 copies in its first week of sales.  It kind of makes sense.  The people who actually voted for Mumbles Biden can’t read so until the audiobook comes out it’s a non-starter for them.

If the Biden family is looking for a money making business proposition (a legal one) they should put together blooper reels of Dementia Joe trying to say, well, almost anything.  I just saw the video of him trying to say kleptocracy.  It makes Grandpa Simpson sound suave by comparison.

You know if Joe is still in office in 2024 he may end up as an American Ceaușescu. Except that instead of shooting him they’ll take away his ill-gotten gains and make him a janitor/tour guide in the Capitol building.  That way he can tell gullible people how he saved the world from Corn Pop and Donald Trump.

Seriously there’s something so third rate and creepy about the whole Biden White House that it feels like we’ve reached third world status.  Even Democrat voters are starting to find it impossible to ignore.  The incompetence and just plain weirdness of the president’s people has become the central feature of the whole administration.

Jimmy Carter is 97 and now has finally lived long enough to lose the mantle of worst president in living memory.  Biden passed him last year during the pandemic and now has a commanding lead with galloping stagflation, war with Russia and Soviet Union-like empty shelves at the grocery stores.  And with the official opening of a Ministry of Truth he can even give Stalin and Mao a run for their money for the title of worst leader since Hitler.

This is certainly becoming a different America we’re living in.  I felt that way during the Obama years but now it’s accelerating.  It’s like the brakes are gone on this funhouse ride and we’re bound to crack up around some curve.  I guess in a way we’re at least coming to a crisis point where some important changes could be forced upon us but the whole thing is depressing and nauseating.

But maybe, finally we’ve reached the point where the Democrats haven’t got anyone worse than Biden to put up in the next election.  Maybe things will get better going forward.  But out of the corner of my eye I spot Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I realize that’s just brave talk.  There is no bottom.  It’s Bidens all the way down.

Binary America

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America is two almost opposite nations occupying the same geographic space.  Red America is a nation that mostly believes in the civic nationalism that was the official narrative of the United States up until the end of World War II.

Blue America is Woke America.  It rejects, almost compulsively, everything that defines Red America.  This goes so far as to reject normal human biology and common-sense rules of societal survival such as that career criminals must be prevented from continuously harming other citizens.

And in addition to this polar opposite contrast between these two outlooks on life, the two nations are extremely closely balanced in numbers.  So much so that neither nation has been able to dominate over the checks and balances of the American constitutional system and impose its will permanently on the other.

This situation has led to extreme animosity against the opposing citizens by each group.  It is beginning to border on what some have called a cold civil war.  It’s not clear whether a resolution of this struggle for control of the country will happen in the foreseeable future.  If it does, it may involve an actual civil war so bloody and destructive as not to be contemplated.

The idea of the country splitting in two parts by one side declaring its independence seems like a recipe for the nightmare civil war scenario that so many people imagine.  I have been thinking of a different plan to mediate the problem.  Let’s call it a patchwork solution.

Each state has to decide which of the two nations it belongs to.  Once the states have formed these two groups each group will sit down and work out the laws that would pertain to the Blue Nation or the Red Nation.  The two groups would also sit down and work out what functions both nations agree that they could share under an umbrella of cooperation.  Maybe the post office, maybe the military (maybe not), maybe highways and airports, maybe the monetary system (maybe not).

Then the two nations would work to allow citizens to migrate between the two areas for an extended period of time in order to accommodate the separation.  And both nations would bend over backwards to minimize the financial impact to the immigrants.  I could see real estate transactions being facilitated by the states so that no one would be stranded or made destitute.  After the period of immigration, the two countries would be governed by the new laws that each nation had chosen.

And everyone would get what they say they want.  Blue America would be a social justice wonderland.  There would be no police.  There would be no gasoline, heating oil or nuclear power.  So mostly people would be like they were before the introduction of electricity and the automobile.  Everyone would have their own pronouns and white people would be hounded to their graves for being white.

Red America would be … America.  Which, if you think about it, would be basically Heaven.

I’ve been trying to figure out what could be said against this.  From the Blue America side, they would have to be tricked into this by convincing them that they would be far better off without all those terrible rednecks that they mock and hate so much.  This will be a monumental job.  Possibly if things continue to go sideways the way they have for the last two years, it may become an easier sell.

What makes it such a difficult sell is that deep down most of the Left knows that without normal people they could never afford the enormous dysfunction that their unrealistic model of human behavior creates.  And if actually forced to pick between the two Americas millions of Leftists would try to sneak into Red America.  This would require some sort of evaluation process to try and weed out the Leftists.

Maybe the rules of Red America would dissuade the Leftists from coming but somehow, I doubt it.  So, forcing everyone to conform to these basic rules would be a good way to discourage wolves in sheep’s clothing.

What would be important during the formation of Red America is to make the rules irrevocable so that if a particular state changes its mind about certain laws that state would have to leave the group and either go it alone or ask for reintegration with Blue America.  In fact, the law allowing secession is an important change from the current American Constitution.  Constraining states to follow laws they don’t believe in is what has gotten us into the situation we’re in now.

So, there’s my mad plan.  Sure, there are all kinds of objections to making this happen but it’s my vision of what might prevent a war.  What do you think?

 

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

 

The Great RINO Hunt of 2022

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Polls continue to stream in confirming just how toxic the Democrat brand is right now.  The latest one by Susquehanna Polling & Research has the generic Republican congressional candidate up 10 points over his hapless Democrat challenger.  So, it’s getting harder and harder to believe that the Republicans won’t be the recipients of a totally undeserved election gift.  They’re going to be given majorities in both Houses.

But I find none of that compelling.  What I’m fascinated by is knowing exactly how many RINO’s are going to be primaried out of office.  To my mind this is a much more important number and one that will determine whether the GOP will be useful or useless to us over the last two years of the Biden reign of stupid.  After all, if a bunch of traitors like Liz Cheney and Lisa Murkowski get kicked to the curb in November it will have a salutary effect on other RINO’s like Mitt Romney who were not up for re-election in 2022.  For a slug like Mitt losing his senate seat would be tantamount to disgrace.  So, if he sees his fellow mollusks cast out of their cushy sinecures this year he will scurry back to the middle where he will try to portray himself as a “severely conservative” culture warrior.  Who knows he might even start swearing and claiming that he’s not happy about the January 6th protestors being left to rot in prison for years.

Trump has a list of the ten Republican congressional representatives who voted to impeach him and seven senators who voted to convict.  Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the only senator up for re-election in November but of course the terms for all ten representatives are also up then.  But already four of them have decided to retire.  The six remaining reps are all being vigorously pursued by primary challengers who probably have a very good chance of bumping them all off.  And Murkowski is also in a dog fight to survive her primary senate challenger.  I understand that Rep. David Valadao of California is a friend of minority leader Kevin McCarthy and will get as much support as he can hope for from that ally.  But I’m sure Valadao is sweating pretty hard about his chances.

There’s nothing scientific about how I’m looking at this RINO hunt.  But I think the results can be used as a good barometer of whether election results will track the will of the conservative voters.  First off, if Cheney isn’t booted out then there is something hopeless about the chances of getting good Republicans in Congress.  From what I’ve read her approval rating is in the neighborhood of 10% of the Republicans in Wyoming.  And even if a bunch of Democrats vote for her, she should lose in a landslide to the woman that Trump endorsed.

The Valadao race is in California and between the dominant nature of the Democrat party there and the likelihood of voting skullduggery I wouldn’t be surprised if he survived the primary.  And there are two other candidates from Washington state which is also highly progressive.  So at least three of the six have some doubts attached.  But Cheney and the other two races should be slam dunks.  And to my mind Murkowski should be toast too.

So, let’s just say that if any of those four dead ducks survive that will provide strong evidence that even where Republicans are in the majority that RINO’s aren’t going to disappear.  I’ll characterize this as a test to see just how stupid the Stupid Party really is.