Category: Current Events

Amazon Meets George Floyd’s Stepchildren

photog Current Events

Amazon, that staunch ally of BLM has discovered that employees dodging gangbanger bullets is problematic.  So they’re pulling their employees out of downtown Seattle until the shooting stops (if ever).

But wait a minute!  Isn’t running away from urban dystopic violence a symptom of white privilege or something?  I mean isn’t being shot by urban thugs the authentic proof that you’re accepting responsibility for the systemic racism that white people caused? Or something?

I’m confused.  I wonder if Bezos will cover this news in the Washington Post.  I guess he can move the workers to Portland.  Wait!  No, I guess not.  Chicago?  New York?  Philadelphia?  St. Louis?  Wait give me a minute.

 

 

 

An Interesting Article on Putin’s Strategy in the Ukraine

photog Current Events , ,

The author’s thesis is that Putin losing the Ukraine war is probably the least likely alternative.  I thought it was a pretty good analysis of the likelihood of the various outcomes in the Ukraine War.

I think those in the West misunderstand the dynamic at work.  NATO has an agenda.  When that agenda threatens Russia too much it acts to push it back.  and now they’ve gone beyond a red line and may have permanently antagonized Vladimir Putin.  And that is a bad outcome for the West.  It is no longer a monopole world.  Russia, China, India and other states are starting to realize there is life outside of the West.  That is a very big deal.

The End of the End of History

photog Current Events , , ,

I can almost hear Simon and Garfunkel crooning, “Where have you gone Fran Fukuyama, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo, woo, woo.  What’s that you say Mrs. Robinson, Feckless Fran has left and gone away, hey, hey, hey … hey, hey, hey.

So, history ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.  Liberal Democracy was a global panacea where everyone would have all the stuff they wanted and nobody had to work and transgender soldiers wearing miniskirts and go-go boots would keep us safe from the Neanderthals until such time as we had them rounded up into reeducation camps.  Someone neglected to send the memo to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

I’m actually glad that the fantasy bubble has been popped.  I despise the boring stupid world of the future where Jean Luc Picard sits in the captain’s chair and endlessly drones on to his boring associates on how his warp engine powered mobile UN will make the galaxy safe for gender equality NGO’s.

Vladimir Putin has provided the wake-up call.  Realpolitik is real.  Hard power is the only power.  Everything else is sleight of hand.  As soon as the rest of the world saw the debacle in Afghanistan play out in real time, they knew that US military power has been dissipated.  Woke trannies call the shots at the Pentagon and other than the nuclear arsenal the United States is a paper tiger.

China will assert itself.  Its neighbors will recalibrate their own positions based on the weakness the United States has demonstrated.  Our military and economic clout have both been brought into question.  And without that aura protecting our interests, things will change.  That’s just harsh reality.  And Europe is also in a bad spot.  They depended on America’s prestige and example to lead the way.  If Vladimir Putin has his way in the Ukraine, then maybe Russia becomes the strong horse in Eastern Europe.  If nothing else, they provide the gas and oil that allows the Europeans to pretend to be green.  After all, when you eliminate your nuclear power plants and many days the wind and sun aren’t around it’s Russian natural gas that keeps the Germans and other Europeans from freezing in the dark.  It won’t be long before Russia starts using petroleum as a bargaining chip when its neighbors annoy it.  I expect to see Europe changing its tune.

All of these changes aren’t some end-of-times catastrophe.  All they reflect is the intentional self-crippling actions of the American Left.  Our military can be the strongest in the world.  We have the capability of rebuilding our industrial infrastructure at any time.  We have the resources to make this the premiere country on the planet again.  But what is required is for the American people to undeniably reject the world view of the Left that Western civilization is somehow something to be ashamed of.  The Left which is mostly the young have to wake up and see that the rainbow fantasy version of human life is just that, a delusion.  Power is real, the old values represent the formula for existing in the real world and all the feel-good blather about female and trans-whatever warriors might as well be comic book nonsense when actual men show up on the battlefield with actual guns.

Finding an Unbiased Search Engine

photog Current Events , , ,

The owner of DuckDuckGo informed the world that he down ranks sites that don’t say what he likes about Russia.  Upon hearing this Larry Sanger, the founder of Wikipedia and a self described conservatarian decide to see if he could find any alternatives that provided unbiased search results.

He looked at Brave and Quant and a few others and describes what he learned and why he thinks he didn’t find any that were both unbiased and competent.  Interesting.

I use Brave as my browser and DuckDuckGo as my search engine.  If DuckDuckGo is biased it’s still better than Google because it doesn’t track my every keystroke and sell the tracking to Amazon and Pepsi Cola.

But I do confess I would love to have an honest search engine.  As Sanger discusses, a useful search engine would be one that you could program yourself.  It would be easy to provide the user with sliders for ideology, nationalities, source size and ratings.

Until then, I do what I can with what I’ve got.

 

Political Conversation with Friends on a Saturday Morning

photog Current Events

I was talking to some old friends today.  Mostly we were discussing a get-together at the end of April.  But one of us mentioned watching a clip of Kamala Harris at a press conference in Poland.  I replied that I had seen it and my reaction was that she’s a blithering idiot.  He disagreed.  He was sure that some kind of tragic neurological accident must have recently rendered her unable to speak coherent English.  I countered that the event wasn’t recent, it was her birth.  I speculated that she might be one of those rare cases where the attending obstetrician drops the newborn on her head.  That seemed the least unlikely explanation.  After all, if the event happened right at the beginning of her tenure on Earth, then no one would notice any decrease in intelligence.

We left that speculation and talked about the prospects for reform of our present disastrous status quo.  We all agreed that the Republicans would regain control of both houses of Congress.  But I asked what good would that change do for us?  The Idiot in Chief would still be in office for two more years and the damage already done to the economy and every other facet of life in these United States would continue to afflict us.

My friends were of the opinion that the push back that we’re seeing in places like Florida and Texas over puberty blockers for young children and CRT in the classroom and men competing in women’s sports showed that the pendulum was swinging in our direction decisively.  And further they were excited by the news that Latino voters were trending Republican and that Hispanic women were running for office as Republicans in Texas.  To my friends all of these things were undeniable proof that we were “winning.”

I told them that I had seen this script play out before.  I reminded them that Ronald Reagan was followed by George Bush and Bill Clinton.  I reminded them that some of the worst cultural damage was done under Republican presidencies.  And some of the worst Supreme Court decisions were made by Republican appointees.  My point was that I did not doubt that America would respond to the awful policies and actions of federal and local Democratic leaders by voting for Republicans to replace them.  My doubt was that the Republicans would use the opportunity to change things for the better.  This was answered with rueful agreement.

Then we talked about who should be the 2024 Republican presidential candidate.  Both of these guys were convinced that Donald Trump should not be the candidate.  They wanted Ron DeSantis and added that a Latina should be the Veep candidate.  I said I liked DeSantis but that unless Trump declined to run DeSantis would not be able to claim the mantle.  This was greeted with silence.

These friends of mine are a good stand-in for the mainstream of the party.  They are conservatives but they worry that Trump is too divisive.  They want someone who attracts groups like suburban women.  I think they’re wrong.  Trump attracts the right people.  He received more votes in 2020 than any Republican candidate before him.  He will get enough votes as long as the count is honest.  I think the ticket should be Trump/DeSantis.  I think DeSantis will bring the political managerial savvy and Trump will bring his instincts.

The conversation I had today reinforced in me what I imagined mainstream conservative opinions run to.  There is optimism that a rejection at the ballot box is coming in November.  This optimism seems overblown and doesn’t question whether the Republicans will blow the opportunity to roll back some of the damage to the culture and laws.  Also, I see the white-collar Republicans continue to misunderstand Donald Trump’s appeal to the non-elitist components of the United States population.  What this tells me is that a lot more education will still have to happen before we’re past believing in the GOP establishment.  But it was, on the whole, a reasonably lucid discussion.  No one mentioned Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley.  No one freaked out about the Supreme Court ruling in favor of abortion restrictions.  People are waking up.

The Outcome of the Ukraine War

photog Current Events , , ,

Predicting the future in a war is a fool’s errand.  So many things can happen to change the situation on the ground that even a few days of almost random occurrences can undermine the basis for a prediction.  But general principles can be used to guess what is likely to happen if the difference in strength between the two sides is lopsided enough.  So let me be foolish.

My first assumption is that Biden won’t risk military intervention.  He won’t declare a no-fly zone and he won’t shelter an openly operating insurgent force in a NATO country.  I think Biden is truly afraid of Putin.  Even the embargo against Russian oil and gas is probably more risk than he’s comfortable with.  Bottom line, I don’t think he’ll step into the war because he believes that Putin would as a last resort use nuclear weapons if the West interferes on the Ukraine battlefield.

The Russians have fought several wars in the last thirty years.  Some larger, some smaller.  The most difficult one was the Chechen insurgency.   Initially when the Russians attempted to occupy Chechnya the Chechens fought a brutal guerilla war that the Russians basically lost.  But in the second phase of the war the Russians figured out how to deal with guerilla fighters.  They surrounded them and then reduced the cities to rubble without engaging.  This limited the Russian casualties but increased Chechen civilian casualties.  I think that’s what they intend to do with the Ukrainian militias.  They’ll empty the cities of anyone who wants to get out and then starve the fighters out or blast them out.  This will tear the Ukraine to pieces and make it more likely that the Ukraine government will surrender.  But it’s not just the government that counts. Even if the Ukraine government surrenders guerilla fighters could extend the war indefinitely.

I guess the biggest unknown is just how committed the militia fighters are.  The Chechens were fearless and full of hate.  We’re about to find out what these Ukrainian militiamen are all about.  If they’re like the Chechens this thing won’t be over for years.  And that may exhaust the Russians ability to sustain the war while the West maintains sanctions and provides material aid.  If that happens Putin may decide to do something drastic and that could be disastrous for everyone including us.

But if the militias aren’t prepared to fight for every square inch of ground, then this thing will be over in a matter of months.  The Russians will be methodical and brutal.  They’ll reduce the cities to rubble and reclaim the country piece by piece until the militias have to surrender.  Putin has decided what he wants done and he will go about it in a determined fashion.  When the Ukrainian government surrenders, Putin will tie them up in a peace treaty to keep the West at arm’s length.

So that’s my read.  The only variable that matters at all is the fire in the rebels.  If they’re willing to fight to the death, they can hold up the war long enough to exhaust the Russians’ patience and resources.  If not, then the Russians will win.  It’s as simple as that.

Firing the Deep State

photog Current Events, Trump , , , ,

After reading about the color revolution in the Ukraine back in 2014 I am now convinced that unless a United States president puts a maximal effort into defanging the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department, we will never get our country back.  These federal agencies have unfettered power to pretty much do whatever they want around the world and in the United States.  Reading the techniques used in the Ukraine; the street riots, the use of martyrs; I can see the George Floyd riots for exactly what they were.  2020 was our color revolution.  BLM and Antifa were the shock troops that goaded on the violence and chaos.  George Floyd was the martyr to the cause of social justice.  And the Justice Department and the FBI made sure no one interfered.  The flip side of this was January 6th.  Here was the FBI entrapping normal people who thought the BLM “protestors” proved that protesting and occupying government buildings was legitimate.

We now live in a country run by the Deep State.  And if they don’t approve of a president then they ignore his orders and cancel him out with phony investigations and worse.  In order to eliminate the Deep State a president will need to have the cooperation of the Congress and the Supreme Court.  He will have to have signed legislation that authorizes him to dismiss any bureaucrat that he deems stands in defiance of the presidency and he’ll need the Supreme Court to over rule the inevitable lower court rulings and injunctions when the president attempts to use this legislation to drain the swamp.  The real test of all this will be if the FBI and the NSA attempts to defy authority and refuse to vacate the premises.  At that point it would be necessary to call in the military to force obedience.

And then the question has to be asked, is this even possible?  The bureaucrats have successfully stiff armed one president who intended to run things his own way.  They wasted half his term in office with phony investigations and completely ignored most of his orders to change their behavior.  Would a more government savvy man with a cadre of seasoned managers be able to push back and effectively clean house in these powerful government satrapies.  Could Donald Trump succeed where he previously failed?  Could Ron DeSantis, do it?  Could anyone?

I admit that I just don’t know.  But I will say that if it isn’t attempted then any hope of restoring republican government to this country is doomed to failure.  Leaving the people in charge who allowed the BLM riots and set up the January 6th victims for prosecution is tantamount to admitting that equal protection under the law is a laughable absurdity.  Allowing those who set up the Russia-gate fraud to escape serious prosecution proves that President of the United States is not running the US federal government.  It’s run by a cabal of bureaucrats who run the FBI, the Justice Department, the CIA, the NSA, the DHS and the rest of the alphabet agencies that spy on us and make sure we can’t interfere with how they run their global empire.

I would like to believe that we can win back this country.  But as I’ve repeatedly said before, it’s going to take an incredibly smart and a remarkably brave man to do it.  Let’s hope God provides a man like that for us.

H/T to the Conservative Treehouse for Primer on Ukraine Politics

photog Current Events , , , , , ,

Sundance at the conservative Treehouse has many great links.  I never thought I’d be linking to a documentary made by Oliver Stone, the grandfather of the conspiracy theorists but I found this long (90 minutes) video very informative. Now without a doubt we are getting the Russian take on what happened in Ukraine but it looks like it describes pretty closely what happened in a “color revolution” staged by the CIA and the State Department.

And of course, the neocons and Joe Biden make their appearances.  I think Vladimir Putin is now my favorite evil dictator.  Maybe I looked into his eyes and saw his soul (or something).

What Passes for Logic in Academia

photog Current Events ,

I read an article entitled “Down With Primaries!” by some genius named Kevin D. Vallier who is an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University who wrote a book called “Trust in a Polarized Age.”

This learned scholar wrote the following:

“Most democracies don’t have democratic primaries. By and large, party elites choose candidates, and the people then vote for the parties or the candidates. American democracy, by contrast, relies on popular primaries: Ordinary party members select the candidates, or we have open primaries, in which voters can select candidates from either party.

Why do we do this? American anti-elitism. We see party elites selecting candidates as corrupt backroom dealing. We don’t trust parties to evaluate candidates themselves, to help us make a better democratic choice.

Americans are wrong about this. We should abolish democratic primaries.“

You see the party elites are the ones we should trust to look after our interests.  Think of the last few presidents before Trump and ask yourself how that worked out.  George W. Bush and Barack Obama are the shining examples.

And then he gives examples to “prove” his point:

“Consider some recent illustrations. In 2016, GOP party elders would have blocked Donald Trump from the outset. I’m sure that many people reading this are still happy that Trump broke through as he did. But for most Republicans, and most of the country, this proved to be a bad outcome.

If Republican Party elders had had their way in 2016, Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush would have been the nominee. I have no love for Rubio or Bush: They are too hawkish for my tastes. But Trump damaged the country’s democratic system in ways that Bush or Rubio would not have done. Conversely, had Democratic Party elders not gotten their way four years later, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might have been the nominee in 2020. If a strong left-wing candidate had become president, instead of Biden, most Americans would have regretted it.”

So from the author’s point of view Jeb Bush instead of Donald Trump would have been a win for democracy.  And Joe Biden instead of Bernie Sanders was also democracy in action.  Even though in each choice he is advocating for the less popular candidate.

Finally he sums it up:

“Backroom deals? They’re the stuff of democracies around the world – and of American democracy before the advent of the primary system. We should bring them back.”

It’s amazing what passes for political thought in universities.  So his thesis is that letting the parties give us the choices for president will make it more “democratic.”  Of course, what if the two parties are just two sides of the same coin; heads I win, tails you lose.”  Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle Dee work for the same masters and just act out parts that reinforce the script that we can change the conditions we live under.

Well, I have to assume “Professor” Vallier represents the pragmatic reality based side of academia and is considered a radical by the Bernie Sanders majority at his university.  All that tells me is that subcontracting to BLM to burn down the universities is a noble idea.

Winter Returns to Dunwich, Again!

photog Current Events, OCF

There’s something ironic about the weather around here.  My snowblower is broken, my snow shovel is broken and now my sense of humor is broken too.  The forecast said “scattered light snow showers leaving less than a dusting of snow.”  I went out with my broken shovel and cleared the driveway and by the time I finished it the snow had recovered the ground even deeper.

Man, I hate this place.  I took some pictures of daffodil sprouts pushing through the mud three days ago.  I made plans to go to a car show this Sunday.  And now this crap.

Sure, I know this is probably the last real snow of the season and next week it’ll be in the sixties but this place sucks.  It’s probably the reason the people here are so weird.  The weather has left its mark on the soul of the inhabitants.  They’re scarred by the perverse, malignant foibles of the climate here.

Alright, I got that out of my system.  So this isn’t going to be that big a deal.  I’ll go out again tomorrow morning and shovel it away with my broken shovel and before you know it this will just be a dim memory receding behind me.

There!  All better.  So I really enjoyed making fun of Dementia Joe in that last post.  I think I’ll do more of that.  He really deserves it and there are plenty of other dimwits in his administration that deserve to get their 15 minutes of fame too.

After the debacle of the Polish MiG fighters I wonder what new brilliance will hatch out of the State Department.  Hearing about the bioweapons labs that they sponsored in the Ukraine I wouldn’t be surprised if smallpox reappears in our lives.  There really isn’t any limit to the imbecility that rises out of our government.  But as someone recently commented, the American people are getting what they voted for.  The only question remaining is have they had enough?