Category: Current Events

Even If You Are from Queens

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At long last the abysmal presidency of zombie Joe Biden is finally about to end.  His re-animated corpse has been submerged in a large bottle of formaldehyde and all the pardons have been printed out and prepared for publication.  And now that they’re making up constitutional amendments out of whole cloth maybe we’ll find out that cats have been given citizenship just so the blue-haired crazy women will have another victory to embrace.

But the imminent departure of Biden has me considering the Trump phenomenon.  Even David Brooks had to grudgingly admit that “Trump is the most consequential politician since Reagan.”  And he means that negatively in that the American people have chosen Trump for the things that Brooks thinks are faults.  Well, what can you expect from David Brooks?

And you know, for most people the idea of Trump being part of our political world only began with 2016.  But I remember when Trump was trying to involve himself in politics as a young man in New York City.  It was back in the mid-eighties and New York was, as usual, broke and the skating rink in Central Park had completely disintegrated through neglect and there was no money in the budget to fix it.  Ed Koch was mayor and he was trying to spin some plan for Albany to pay for it but they wouldn’t bite.  Now this was about the time the city was going into another decline.  Violence was starting to resurface after a lull in the early eighties.  I think that maybe Trump was thinking of running for mayor or something.  Well, he volunteered to rebuild the rink and pay for it himself.  And he did, under budget and on schedule.  But New York City had not yet hit bottom.  It wasn’t ready for a Republican.  That would happen after New York’s first black mayor, David Dinkins unleashed anarchy on the streets of New York.  And that proved to be Rudy Giuliani’s time to fix the city.  But he had a lawman’s background as a prosecutor.  And he knew that the police would be the key to saving New York City.  So, Donald Trump retreated to his business and his entertainment projects.

But thirty years later he decided that if someone as talentless as Barack Obama could be president for eight years then he could easily figure out the ropes himself and get something done for America.  And he did.  But why?

I think I understand a little bit what motivates him.  He’s a twentieth century New York City American.  I also am one.  Of course he came from money.  But not old money.  His ancestors and mine came to the United States at about the same time.  He and I lived in New York City at the same time.  Of course, I came from the more interesting borough of Brooklyn and he came from Queens which as far as I’m concerned is more like part of Long Island but whatever, we both were part of twentieth century New York City which was the heart of twentieth century America.  And we both watched it degraded from the capitol of the world to a dirty, poor, crime-ridden refugee camp.  So, I think I know what he means when he talks about making America great again.  He’s talking about restoring the people and the ethos that catapulted the United States to the status it had in 1945.

He wants to make a deal with the descendants of the people who fought World War II.  If they’ll vote for him, he’ll save their grandchildren from the globalists who want to replace them with the third world.  It’s really a pretty simple concept.  Now I don’t know if he simply feels kinship with these people or if he sees an opportunity to capitalize on an underutilized resource (us).  Either way it’s the best deal we’ll ever get.  And at the same time, it’s a kick in the teeth for the Left and for the Bushes and Romneys.  Win, win.

So, thank you Donald Trump.  As an old neighbor of yours I salute you for lending a hand.  Even if you are from Queens.

Controlled Burn

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I was thinking about the second Trump administration as you know.  I asked folks what they thought would happen and they gave some feedback (thank you).  And folks have some confidence from what I can tell, that Trump will probably get some stuff done.  Maybe he’ll purge the FBI and Justice Department of the die-hard Democrat partisans.  And maybe he’ll reform some of the policies and rules at some of the other agencies like the IRS, ATF, EPA and the DOD.  Good.

But what happens going forward?  Is it possible to “fix” a giant bureaucracy permanently?  I think we all have to agree you can’t.  The closest to that that can be achieved is specifying a procedure to prune the bureaucracy on a regular schedule.

One idea I read of that makes a lot of sense is to separate the bureaucracy into two buckets.  In one bucket is stuff that is permanently necessary like the Post Office (?) and the military.  For these things that have easily defined scope, normal control methods can be used to keep their size in check.  For everything else, their charters from Congress include sunset provisions such that if they need to be extended the Congress has to explain exactly why and exactly how much money they will need to continue.  And then Congress will have to approve this reauthorization and the president will have to sign it.

I think there may be a state that handles their bureaucracy this way.  I think it’s a brilliant idea.  I mean, who really believes that 80% of the workers and the rules being made are necessary?  Even necessary agencies like the Defense Department are oceans of waste and corruption.

And for that reason, I see the value in having people from the private sector looking at the “books” and recommending cuts and changes to this empire of waste.  I know it’s probably mostly a pipe dream but I get a little giddy thinking about what could be done if an honest auditor looked at the government from an efficiency perspective and took a chainsaw to the federal government.  How many billions of dollars could be eliminated in salaries and contractors’ fees?  It staggers the imagination.  Look at the damage that California’s local environmental protection agency just caused because of their ridiculous regulations banning controlled burning.  Because of their insane laws some of the richest and most beautiful neighborhoods in Los Angeles were torched to the ground at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate.  Imagine the gains if the federal EPA were evaluated regularly and pared down to only the functions that need to exist.  Land owners and communities would regain millions of hours a year that go into the endless paperwork needed to propitiate the stupid acolytes of the idiot goddess Gaia.

So, it seems clear to me that trimming the federal bureaucracy is a permanent part of every administration’s workload.   And this should be one of the selling points that Republicans use to justify hiring them every four years.  And the way to sell this is to publish the fact that they reduce the federal budget and the debt every four years.  Just like a CEO has to publish the annual report to declare how much the company made in profits or losses the president of the United States should have to give a shareholders meeting to all of us telling us whether he shrank or grew the budget and the debt.

Trump is a businessman of sorts.  His is not a public corporation so mostly he’s responsible to himself but he knows the realities of a balance sheet and how awful the United States’ balance sheet currently looks.  What he needs to do is teach the voters that they are small shareholders in a runaway corporation that is hemorrhaging money into the ground and the president is the CEO who has to justify his leadership every four years.

I’m really hoping that buying Greenland isn’t his first order of business.  I hope a controlled burn of about 80% of the FBI (and the rest of the dead wood) is.

Phoning it In on Friday Morning

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Thursday was just such a busy day that I didn’t get anything done on the site until late at night.  I had to process some photos and set them up.  And so late at night how can I think of a topic no less speak intelligently on it?  My mind is a spent force.  So, I’ve just watched Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight.”  This was Welles’ cut and paste job from the two Henry IV plays to showcase Falstaff and his time with Prince Hal.

And it’s a brilliant idea that should be remade again.  But who could be Falstaff now?  Who’s funny enough?  Who’s fat enough.  Who can act Shakespeare?  No one.

But no reason to be gloomy.  These things will turn around.  All the nonsense that has been pushed on the kids for the last thirty years will not last.  All of it is rot that won’t last.  All those who truly believe it are self-selecting themselves for extinction and they will leave room for those who don’t.  There are plenty who make believe that they believe for self-preservation.  But when the winds change, as they already are changing, they’ll move on to where their advantage lies.

I was watching the movie “Fury” today with one of my friends.  I had never seen it.  Brad Pitt is an American tanker in WWII.  He and his men including a raw recruit are deep into German territory in 1945 and everywhere they turn they’re hip-deep in death.  The action and personal actions of the soldiers are as gritty as can be.  I won’t give away the plot but suffice it to say that the tank crew was beyond hardened.  They were approaching psychotic.  But they had a camaraderie that was stirring.  My friend told me that the movie’s ending was based on a true story although instead of an American tank in WWII it was based on a British tank in WWI.  Well, it is a rousing battle scene.

You know, YouTube is an interesting concept.  They must know I’m writing a novel because I keep finding videos on fiction-writing in my feed.  And one of them was by Vonnegut.  And I watched it and it reminded of when I met the guy by accident at the carousel in Central Park.  And it’s funny, I wasn’t a fan of his writing but he came across very friendly and normal.  And it got me thinking which other celebrities are regular people when you meet them off the cuff.  I once spoke to a car service driver who brought people in and out of the Northeast casinos.  He said Jerry Seinfeld was an arrogant jerk.  Well, I won’t say that shocked me.  The one guy I’d really like to meet completely candidly is Donald Trump.  He’s a complete enigma.  How much of the Trump we see is real and how much is make believe?  And is he crazy?  Well, I’ll never find out so I’ll just have to keep making stuff up.

I hope to catch up on the website chores tomorrow so I’m not working from behind.  I guess Dunwich is a busy mythical place where even humans find themselves trapped in warped space-time.  But this will have to do for tonight.  Good night and good morning.

OCF 2025 Inaugural Polls

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So, I’ve been talking for a few months about Trump’s new term.  But it occurred to me that it would be interesting (to me) to find out what other folks think.  I’ve decided on two questions to poll.

  1. What do you most want to see happen?
  2. What do you expect to happen

 

What do you most want to see happen?

View Results

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What do you expect to happen

View Results

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You can pick multiple choices and use the comments for whatever I’ve left out.  Have at it.

Cold Fusion, Again

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https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.07245v2

Cold nuclear fusion is real!  But it’s also extremely lame.  Apparently when deuterium gas is put in contact with solid palladium metal the gas can find its way into the crystalline metal structure and fill voids in the lattice of palladium atoms and the structure of the metal lattice can somehow shield the deuterium nucleii from each other’s positive charges in order to fuse into a helium atom (²H + ²H → ⁴He).

Unfortunately, the rate of fusion is so low that it’s barely detectable.  And if energetic means such as lasers are used to enhance the rate then the energy balance is extremely poor with much more energy put in to speed up the reaction than is produced by the fusion reaction.  As a practical energy source this would be described by the technical term “lousy.”

But all is not yet lost.  The authors of the paper speculate if three separate accelerating processes are employed simultaneously there is the potential to produce the forty orders of magnitude improvement needed to make cold fusion a useful energy source.

Forty orders of magnitude.   Hmm.  That’s a lot of orders of magnitude you know.  That’s 1040.  That’s a really, really big number.  If I had 1040 pennies I’m pretty sure it would form a black hole of pennies.  It’s a lot.

So somehow they think they can increase the fusion rate that much?  Hmm.

So I really like the idea of cold fusion.  The fact that you can take palladium and heavy hydrogen at ambient temperatures and somehow get a nuclear reaction that produces really clean energy is extremely appealing to me.  It sounds like what E. E. “Doc” Smith used as his source of energy for interstellar flight in the “Skylark” series of space operas.  It’s amazingly exciting.  But  1040 anything is a lot.  So I’ve decided not to hold my breath or invest heavily in the technology or rip the oil burner out of my basement just yet.

The good thing about cold fusion research is that you don’t need billions or even hundreds of millions of dollars to work on it.  You don’t need magnetic containment to avoid your nuclear plasma from eating through the metal walls of your reactor.  And you don’t need giga-watt lasers to blast a pellet of boron hydride or anything else that would break the budget of any second world nation.  It can all be done in a lab with all the stuff found in MIT or even Brooklyn College for that matter.  So I’m all for research into this avenue of science.  After all twenty years ago cold fusion was declared a hoax and that turned out to be wrong.  Who knows what else they’ll find.  Maybe if you use alloys of several of the platinum group elements the geometry of the spaces in the lattice will make the process run at some phenomenally faster rate.  Maybe not 1040 times faster but something reasonable and that would be enough to throw the whole thing into the range of practical applications.  But to reiterate I won’t be holding my breath.

But it is something cool to think about.  Or even write into an sf story!  But instead of palladium I’m going to make it tantalum.  It’s just cooler.

ArthurinCali Has an Article on Realpolitik and Trump

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ArthurinCali has a very interesting interesting discussion about how Trump looks at the ways and means of running the American Empire.

“From time to time, the mask slips and the broader public catches a glimpse into the inner machinations of the Global American Hegemon. This can be a striking blow to the ideals and platitudes usually presented as representation of the Liberal international order.”

 

Is That So Much to Ask?

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Recently I posted, “Cut and Paste Anglo-America.”  The post was linked by my favorite news aggregation site, “Whatfinger” and got a lot of visibility with folks who aren’t usually on the site.  One was a Canadian named Linn who wasn’t thrilled with my tongue in cheek idea of rearranging the two English speaking North American countries into a blue country and a red country.  Here’s what he had to say:

“I think it is offensive to assume Canadians would be blithely willing to give up their history and identity to become a part of the United States. It is ironic that President Trump ran on a patriotic campaign of Make America Great Again, but other Americans think that Canadians do not have the same patriotic feelings about their country even though the government had been usurped by the foul socialist left. Hopefully, Pierre Poilievre will make great strides in Making Canada Great Again.”

When I read his comment, my first thought was, “I’m glad not all Canadians hate Trump.”  Linn sounded like a Canadian patriot who wanted to get back his country from the Leftists.  Bravo!

And it made me think of how long ago it was when I thought we could win back the country just by electing Republicans.  How long ago I felt that the majority of Americans thought like me.  I guess it was in 2004; more than twenty years ago.  Wow, it seems even longer.  And I thought of all the disappointments and waking up to just how useless and dishonest the Republican establishment actually was.  Until Trump showed up it was Bushes, McCain and Romney all the way down.  So now even when we win, I find myself pessimistic.  After all the globalists control the whole apparatus of the modern world and do untold damage day in and day out.

But Linn’s comment got me thinking, there are good conservative people in most of the Western world.  Look at the right-wing parties growing larger in Canada, England, France, Germany, Holland and Italy.  Even Sweden and Denmark are beginning to come around.  And look how the Right has already taken control in Austria and Hungary.  And I’m sure there are conservative parties growing in every country in Europe.

Maybe it isn’t too late.  Maybe things will come to a head while Trump is in office.  Maybe we’ll see actual progress not just lip service to fixing the things that are broken.  What would make a big difference would be if Trump’s deportation effort worked well and became a template for the Europeans to follow.  Imagine if the French or the Italians were inspired to follow his lead and sent all the freeloaders packing.  Now that would be a miraculous sight.

I guess what I’m thinking is that maybe Trump is a leader for our side not only in America but around the world.  Maybe his example will rally people to the parties that want to take back their countries from the invaders.  His stubborn determination to get the job done is kind of a big deal and if he succeeds here other countries might follow his lead.  Everyone is always saying that America is the leader of the “free” world.  Well, why does free have to be code for leftist?  After all the leftists don’t want freedom anymore, except the freedom to define their sexuality in increasingly twisted and dysfunctional ways.  We want freedom of speech, thought, action and association.  We want freedom from being invaded by people who don’t like us or the way we live.  We want our country back.  Is that so much to ask?

How Will We Know?

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So, we’ve had a lot of fun.  Since November 5th most people on our side have had a real holiday from grief.  We got to enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas buoyed by the knowledge that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been relegated to the ash heap of history.  What a wonderful phrase that is.  What an image.  There’s this enormous pile of cinders and burnt garbage and jumbled among these things are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris laying there covered with debris and looking extremely sad and confused.  So evocative of a better world!

But it’s best not to forget that this victory is just the beginning of a very long and difficult struggle to wrest control of the federal government from the horde of awful bureaucrats that make everything about our government expensive, inefficient and destructive.  It will be up to Trump’s cabinet to force a monkey wrench into the gears of government and wreck it.  And the question remains; will they do it?

I get the impression that Kash Patel really means to do just that.  And the fact that he was a prosecutor leads me to believe that he might have a good idea how to accomplish his goal of disemboweling the FBI.  I think of his tenure as the test case.  How long will it take for him to get going on the job?  And how long will it take before someone like me can tell that it’s working?  I’m guessing I’ll be able to tell if he’s having the desired effect if the New York Times and NPR are screaming that he’s destroying the FBI.

Maybe a bigger fish to fry is the purview of the Secretary of Defense.  Assuming Pete Hegseth is approved by the Senate he’s going to have an enormous job clearing out all the woke generals and other officers that Biden and Obama plunked down in the military.  But almost as important will be his implementation of Trump’s plan to end the Ukraine war.  I assume it’s going to be necessary for Hegseth to micromanage the defense department personnel to prevent them from continuing to supply the Ukrainians with endless weapons and money to keep the killing going until the last Ukrainian is dead.  He’s going to have to replace the existing supply chain personnel with people loyal to himself.  That’s going to take some doing.  There’s an enormous amount of money that gets distributed from the billions that go to Ukraine.  Shutting off that spigot is going to anger hordes of people and it might even trigger violence.  Hegseth will have his hands full.  I guess I’ll know that Hegseth is succeeding if the number of Ukrainians being killed falls drastically.  Probably the best indicator will be peace negotiations breaking out between Ukraine and Russia.

And finally Trump himself has a big part to play.  He has to get involved in the negotiations on the budget.  What I’m secretly craving is to hear that he’s managed to slip into the budget the elimination of the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  If this could be eliminated it would put an enormous hole in the funding for PBS and NPR.  The elimination of those two toxic waste sites would in one fell swoop elevate the public discourse in this country immensely.  Think of it.  I might never see Jonathan Capehart’s homely face ever again.  For that alone I would consider Donald Trump’s second term in the White House a thunderous success.

Viva California

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Everybody is agog at the LA fires.  It’s hard to believe that that level of incompetence and plain irresponsibility can exist in a metropolis the size of Los Angeles.  But that’s what we have to realize.  There is no back-up plan for this ongoing catastrophe.  The two largest fires are still only 10 to 15% contained and have already burned 13,000 buildings.    That means that there are already property losses in the tens of billions of dollars, and considering the high cost of houses in these areas, possibly much more.

But when the mayor or the governor are asked what is being done to save the properties surrounding the burned-out areas, they make it sound like this is an act of God that they have no responsibility for or power to fight.  In all those videos of large forest fires we see planes filled with water dropping it on the fire.  Well, what’s stopping California from requesting Washington to send aircraft of this kind?  If the answer is that California doesn’t have any large bodies of water nearby then I’d remind them of that big blue thing called the Pacific Ocean somewhere West of LA.  Sure, salt water is bad for the plants and everything else but I’m guessing that 2,000 °C fire is more than slightly worse.

But that is the reality.  Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom are just going to try and hand wave their way through this and somehow try to blame Donald Trump and tell the victims that he has to foot the bill and make it all right.  Well, I feel very badly for the victims of these fires.  But they voted for these people because they agreed with the things the Democrats said they want to do.  What happened is the end result of all those policies.  What happened is the result of electing people who are incompetent.  None of this is a surprise for the normally intelligent people who have been warning California about the direction they have been going for decades.

Well, there are thousands and thousands of angry, scared victims.  And some of those people are Hollywood icons.  And they are about to be dragged through the horror of trying to get a bureaucracy to treat them like suffering human beings.  They are in for a world of pain.  And all the people whose houses are spared this latest fire season aren’t going to forget how close they were to losing everything.  Who knows?  Maybe they’ll recall Bass and Newsom.  That at least would be a start.  Would it solve the problem.  Nope.  To do anything permanent the whole voting population of California would have to recall all of their state representatives and elect Republicans.  And there are too many school teachers and prison guards who owe allegiance to the Democrat party for their lucrative positions.

So, nothing much will happen.  But one of these days, the big one is going to hit Los Angeles.  Something like a 7.5 on the Richter Scale.  And the Angelenos are going to discover what having fake police, fire and emergency departments mean when there are thousands of people dead and injured.  And something tells me that will be the one that wakes up even the most woke of the woke.  When your family is buried under tons of debris and Assistant Fire Chief Kristine Larson tells you that they are out of luck because her lesbian POC firefighters can’t move heavy stones, well, that’s probably going to be the point when violence becomes the solution.  But then again maybe I’m wrong.  It’s been said many times that you can fix stupid.  Viva California.