Category: Current Events

Gerrymander for Me but Not for Thee

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I was watching a part of the PBS News Hour on YouTube.  Books and Capon were talking about gerrymandering.  Well actually Capon was away.  So, they found some big fat hen from the New York Times to squawk in his place.  Well, the upshot was that gerrymandering would lead to the “end of our democracy.”  Now to be fair Books said that the result of California following what Texas did was equally corrosive to democracy but he blamed Texas for getting the ball rolling.  And he wasn’t sad because the Virginia Supreme court shot down their gerrymander.  So, I guess you could say he was trying to be even-handed with his criticism.  I guess.

But the hypocrisy that both of these lefties commit is ignoring the fact that there are six states in the Northeast that are slightly more than 40% Republican voting and they have exactly zero Republican Congressional House Representatives between them all.  There are 15,430,000 people living in New England.  40% of that is more than six million people who are only represented by Democrats in the House of Representatives.  So, pretending that Donald Trump is responsible for gerrymandering the opposition out of existence is a joke.  The New Englanders have been perfecting this scam for decades.  What seems to be upsetting them is that between this initiative by Trump and the Supreme Court’s overturning of the racial gerrymandering decisions from the last century there is a real danger that Democrats might have a hard time keeping control of the House of Representatives even in midterm elections when Republican Presidents are in the White House.  And if that is the case there would be serious repercussions in the governance of this country.  And with the Democrat leadership announcing that they will eliminate the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court if they get back in power, it should be clear to the Republicans that there must be great fear on the Left about the chance that redistricting will shut them out of governance in the future.  So, packing the Supreme Court and giving citizenship to millions of illegals are their answers to the problem.

Well, we truly live in interesting times.  The war in Iran is threatening to make the midterms a blue wave but at the same time the gerrymandering in the South and elsewhere could counteract this.  And honestly, I don’t think there is any way to avoid these election oscillations back and forth but I do find it hilarious that the Democrats like to virtue signal their moral superiority when it comes to gerrymandering.  All it does for me is confirm just how dishonest they all are.  And it just makes me certain that there is no reason to think that we have any common ground with the Left.  They can justify any of their crimes by claiming they are the victims of fascism of one kind or another and by the end of their narrative we end up as the criminals who must be stopped “by any means necessary.”  Imagine that!

Lessons Have Been Learned

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Indiana’s Republican establishment legislators voted against a redistricting plan (seven of them).  Well Donald Trump backed primary candidates against them.  Read what happened.

President Donald Trump exacted revenge on Indiana Republican legislators who foiled his redistricting push last year in the state, backing challengers who unseated five incumbents in Tuesday’s primaries, NBC News projects.  One other GOP state senator who faced a Trump-endorsed opponent was locked in a tight race, while another survived.  The double-digit defeats of the five incumbents, some of whom are veterans of the Indiana Legislature, underscore the influence Trump continues to wield over the Republican Party, even as his approval rating among Americans broadly sags amid rising gas prices and the Iran war.

Regardless of mid-term elections and all the various Democrat howlings going on, this one instance shows that something fundamental has changed.  Fake conservatives are being exposed and targeted for replacement all over the red states and beyond.  And make no mistake, Trump legitimized this.  He was the one highlighting who was fake.  He called them out.  And now there are the beginnings of accountability.  Just as with Cornyn in Texas, fake conservatives are being challenged in Indiana and they will be targeted elsewhere.

Now this won’t be a clean sweep anywhere.  Even red states have pockets of progressivism, mostly around the cities like Austin in Texas and Salt Lake City in Utah.  There will always be exceptions.  But it’s encouraging to see leadership in Washington that calls out the fakes.

And with just a little luck, the recent Supreme Court ruling that condemns race-based gerrymandering will net enough seats in 2026 to hold onto the House of Representatives.  But if the Dems get the House back in 2026, we’ll survive it and more.  Trump is a powerhouse of annoying policies that will keep Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer screaming and crying for the next two and a half years.  And that is a long time.

And with just a little luck we can hope for a Republican president in 2028 and good things going forward.  And even if the worst occurs and the Dems control Congress and the White House, I feel that we have learned enough about what is going on to protect ourselves from the fallout.  We no longer have to pretend that we have anything in common with the Left and we will run our lives based on what will allow us to preserve the things that are important to us.  There won’t be any nonsense about meeting anyone in the middle.  Because there no longer is a middle.  There’s us and there’s them.  The things they say amongst themselves is poisonous and evil and shows you their true intentions and they have nothing to do with coexistence.  They intend to destroy us and all we can do is protect ourselves by every available means.

And we will.  We’re getting better at running our own states and excluding them from our communities and their policies from our lives.  There will be setbacks but we’ve learned a lot and we will move forward.  This I believe.

Peak Woke

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We seemed to have passed through what can be described as “maximum wokeness.”  Sometime after 2020 all of the stupidest delusions about race and sex reached their apex.  Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, LGBTQ madness like trans-everything and radical feminism like #metoo were all reaching a high tide.  Insanity was piled on insanity and all the stupidest beliefs ran amok.  People were fired and jailed and even killed during cancellations, purges and outright rioting.

But since 2025 many of these beliefs have been shown to be absurd or even dangerous and fewer and fewer people will admit to believing in these things.  Sure, in places like California, New York and Minnesota the lunatics are too numerous and too crazy to come to their senses but in many other jurisdictions the folly of what had been going on finally woke up enough people to the madness that things have been reversed to a large extent.  And with Trump in the White House and a conservative Supreme Court many of the worst excesses are being swept away.  Even old liberal attacks on constitutional practices, like racial gerrymandering of political districts are being overruled and eliminated.

With all that said serious damage has been done to a couple of generations of young men in this country who have been deprived of the career opportunities that were instead reserved for women and foreigners.  And this damage cannot be easily repaired.  If a man doesn’t have a stable, well-paid job how is he supposed to attract a wife and afford to raise a family?  And if he can’t do that then his line ends with him.  Multiply this by the millions and you’re looking at the cancelling out of America.

Currently you hear about young men avoiding college and professional schools and instead heading into the construction and other trades like welding and mechanics.  And this may be the only alternative to allow a generation of young men to earn a living.  Now, this may be necessary but it seems like a step backward for all the families who scrimped and saved to help their kids to become doctors and lawyers and engineers.  Now their grandchildren are back in the blue-collar world that they came from.  But then again maybe it makes more sense to take the jobs that do exist and strive to start your own business and not be beholden to corporations that despise you.

Now, I’ve got grandchildren in college and even one graduating soon.  And they are going to have to navigate these same obstacles.  And it’s very difficult to know what to tell them.  But I know what’s most important.  I need to do whatever I can to support them and encourage them to strive to succeed in whatever they find available to them to earn a living and raise a family.  Because, in all honesty, those are the only things that count in this world.  All the other nonsense about status and prestige is just that; nonsense.  The people you interact with are the essence of what we call human life.  And as long as they can live a happy life with them, they are rich.

Fear and Loathing in Dunwich

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Every week I spend several hours with someone whose politics are almost diametrically opposed to mine.  And I mean that literally.  Left, right.  Up, down.  You name it.  And interestingly we get along fine.  Now, we never talk politics, never.  Because we know that all we could possibly do is disagree.  So, we stick to business and to things that are universally human.  We love our families and we want our town to win the soccer games against the neighboring towns.  Nothing more controversial than that.

But even when all we are talking about is work, other things creep in.  And even when we are avoiding “current events” it’s hard not to let anxiety about the state of things surface.  Neither of us want to say much because we’re both avoiding putting a spin on what is fueling this anxiety.  But I think there was an “unspoken agreement” that we both feel that things are very, very not good.  And then she said something kind of odd, “Do you think that we’re reaching the end of one or both of the major parties?”  I tried to finish off this almost non-conversation by saying, “Well, maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.  Maybe every generation is like this and it’s not as bad as we think and things will just muddle along as they are now.”  And that was the end of the talk.  We moved onto Dunwich trivia.

But this got me thinking.  I think I see signs that things are very not good in the Blue States.  When the true believers start to wonder if things can go on the way they’re going without a change of party there is something very, very wrong.  I don’t want to blow this out of proportion or start putting money on some collapse theory.  But I get the definite feeling that all is far from well within the Democrat Party.  If I were to guess I think the socialists and the populists on the Left are eroding the “center” of the Democrat party to such an extent that a lot of the old guard don’t recognize what their party has become and are very worried by this change.

Maybe a good example is what is happening in the Democrat Senate race in Maine.  Governor Janet Mills was the establishment favorite to be the Democrat candidate to run against the Republican incumbent Susan Collins.  Graham Platner who is an oyster farmer, a Marine veteran and Harbor Master of the town of Sullivan is the Bernie Sanders candidate.  Mills attacked him based on his comments on Reddit about rape and violence and because he has a tattoo on his chest that resembles a nazi symbol (a Totenkopf).  But just last week she dropped out of the race and Platner is now the leading Democrat candidate.  Platner is a socialist and a populist and typifies the new Democrat direction.  Now someone like Platner would frighten a lot of old Democrats, especially the women.  The violent rhetoric, the adoption of a pro-Gaza, anti-Semitic stance, the pro-gun talk are frightening and confusing to a lot of these Democrats.  So, I think the question I heard was an honest one and means there is a lot of fear about what is going on in their party.

Of course, that’s not that different from what is going on with the Republicans.  Populist candidates are primarying establishment hacks like John Cornyn in Texas.  So maybe this is all just part of the increasing polarization of the country.  But maybe saying “just” the polarization is minimizing just how dire the situation really is.

Let me end this by saying there is fear and confusion throughout our country and we’re going to have to let it all play out before we know just how bad the crack-up will be.

Of Pyramids and Pitchforks

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Like the Pharaoh Cheops I know the pain and exultation inherent in an enormous engineering project.  Yes, he built the Great Pyramid of Giza.  But I built the Great Pond of Camera Girl.  So, let’s just look at the stats:

 

Project Name Great Pyramid of Giza Great Pond of Camera Girl
Length of project 27 years (total) 27 hours (active time)
Scope 2.6 million 2.5-ton blocks 270 gallons of dirt
Volume of project 92 million cubic feet 36 cubic feet
Size of Crew 40,000 1
Total manhours 1,752,000,000 27
Significance of project Final resting place of pharaoh Husband making wife happy
Projected lifetime of structure millennia until roots from cherry tree puncture liner
Tools copper tools, ropes, levers, sledges shovel, pitchfork, rake, wrecking bar, wheelbarrow, 4″ level (plastic), good old American grit and determination

 

Based on scope I guess I’ll have to hand it to Cheops.  27 years is a pretty good effort.  Of course, if we count the fact that I’ve been throwing out the garbage and repairing stuff around the house for almost 50 years all of a sudden Cheops is coming up kind of short.  Isn’t he!

But I don’t want to overreach.  People have been travelling to Egypt for millennia to gawk at the pyramids and so far, Camera Girl is the only one who has praised my great engineering project.  And even though she has been quite generous with the superlatives I must admit that 92 million cubic feet of limestone blocks isn’t anything to sneeze at.  I mean I dropped one of the rocks I dug out on my foot and that damn thing hurt but a five-thousand-pound rock is a little bit more of a big deal if it ends up on your foot.  So, okay.  Cheops wins.  He’s big man on campus.

But let’s look at this from a different perspective.  What did Mrs. Cheops have to say about the whole thing?  Based on my research after watching “Land of the Pharaohs (1955)” she must have been buried alive with Cheops.

Now maybe she was down with this.  Who knows?  But my knowledge of Camera Girl leads me to believe that this would not be to her liking.  Now as a charter member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club you might think I would be an advocate for this kind of wife entombing.  But you’d be wrong.  By any objective measure she is very high in the ranks of women and hardly ever uses her feminine wiles and never takes advantage of the modern anti-male legal or social mechanisms to make my life miserable.  By my reckoning she is a good egg and fully worthy of this amazing civil engineering marvel.

Next, we’ll fill it with water and put in a bunch of water lilies and other plants and then buy some goldfish and sit around in the afternoon and watch these aquatic vertebrates do their thing.  And then one day the local Great Blue Heron will discover this little water hole and eat all of the fish in one meal.  But as Camera Girl always says, “Everybody’s gotta eat.”

Movies, Taxes and World-Building

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Well, what’s to say today?  I was talking to some family and we were discussing this and that and I said that I wanted to see “Project Hail Mary.”  And some knew about it and some had heard a little bit.  Well, I think I talked them into getting together and going to see it.  Now I plan to see it this week with Camera Girl.  She’s not the biggest sff fan by any stretch of the imagination.  When I brough her to see the original Star Wars film she was not particularly impressed.  And come to think of it, she’s never been impressed by any sci fi or fantasy movie (or book) I ever gave her.  Well, I take that back.  She read “The Hobbit” back in 1975 and liked it.  But that was it.  When I told her to read the “Lord of the Rings,” she laughed in my face.  So, she may not be the most willing audience for this movie.  But since one of the characters is a puppet I’m guessing there may be an appeal there to her love of animals.  So, I’m going to see the same movie in the theater twice?  I think this may be the first time I’ve ever done that.  Well, I’m sure it won’t kill me.

The other thing I’m doing next week is go see an accountant about how to pay my taxes on the royalties from my book.  I have an inordinate fear of the Infernal Revenue Service.  I think they’re a malevolent force causing pain and suffering for ordinary people at every turn.  So, I’m going to find out what the process is for this kind of capital gain.  I don’t think I have to pay quarterly but you never know so I’m not taking any chances.  Also, I think there is a way to write off expenses like advertising and marketing so if I can find out whether it’s worth it I may even break even on this whole experiment (maybe!!!).

A friend was asking me about the sequel to the “The Sniper.”  He had particular questions about the back story for some of the characters like Connors and Cutter.  I said I’d love to tell him some of the details of their back stories but I still haven’t made them up yet.  I think he was a little shocked that these important facts didn’t actually exist yet.  Maybe even betrayed for investing in a story that was sort of a Potemkin Village.  But I feel justified in pushing out the corners of my little universe as the spirit moves me.  Although I will admit I’ve decided to do some outlining of the world, at least from a 35,000-foot height.  I need to decide what stories will grow out of the eucatastrophe I set off in the first book.  I mean, you don’t sink the White House, Capitol and Pentagon into the Earth’s crust without taking advantage of the elbow room that provides for political and social upheaval on a grand scale.

Project Hail Mary Box Office Update: $616,588,738

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Well, it’s official, Project Hail Mary is a moneymaker for Amazon.  The info says it cost $200 million to produce.  Even if they spent another $100 million to advertise (which they wouldn’t have to because, of course, they’re Amazon!) that still puts them in the black.  And this is all in advance of what they’ll make streaming the movie on their own platform after the end of the theatrical run.

Box Office Data

Well, well, well.  So people will go to the movies if you give them something that isn’t woke slop.  If you give them entertaining story telling they’ll pay you money to watch it.  Shocking.  Wake up Disney.  Amazon is eating your lunch, you fools.

A Big Win by the Supreme Court

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The big news this week is the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.  A racially gerrymandered district in Louisiana was challenged on the basis that creating a black district for racial reasons was unconstitutional.  The Court agreed and found that district’s creation unconstitutional.

This ruling is quite important because it has the potential of eliminating something like twelve districts in the Deep South that in addition to being majority black are also exclusively Democrat in their choice of elected officials.  That is an enormous switch in the balance of power in the House of Representatives.  The question remains to be seen how quickly can these states redraw the districts.  If they can do this in time for the 2026 federal elections it would massively increase the Republicans’ chances of retaining a majority in the House.

In addition, going into the 2028 presidential election it would allow other states to adjust their districts strictly by partisan advantage and so the number of seats nationwide would be even larger.  Some estimates of as many as twenty-four Democrat controlled seats disappearing are out there.

The severity of this problem has the Democrats in an uproar and they have been talking about getting the government back in their hands as soon as possible and eliminating the filibuster rule to increase the number of seats in the Supreme Court to overturn this decision.  Now, that is going to have to wait at least until 2028 since Trump wouldn’t sign such a bill and overriding his veto would require many more senate seats than anyone imagines them to get in 2026.

In the short term this situation is something of a game changer.  This has the potential of eliminating a whole industry centered around finding racial inequity around every redistricting action across the country and forcing jurisdictions to prove they are not disenfranchising every racial and ethnic minority under the sun.

On a personal note, I find this decision incredibly encouraging.  The present Supreme Court despite Chief Justice Roberts’ social justice leanings has done amazing work in dismantling the unconstitutional decisions that have come down over the last half century.  Eliminating reverse discrimination and knocking out the Roe v. Wade decision are huge wins for conservatives and constitutionalists alike.  And, God willing, they’ll continue on in this vein and eliminate the Gay Marriage decision and several other overreaches that past courts have unjustly burdened this country with.

The next two things that I’m hoping for is the reversal of Oglethorpe (gay marriage) and the reestablishment of unfettered freedom of association for Americans.  As a charter member of the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, I’m hoping to see the day when a men’s club will not have to admit women just because girls’ feelings are hurt when men get to escape from them for a few hours of screech-free relaxation.  If the Bill of Rights still exists as part of the Constitution, then the First Amendment protects our rights to assemble and express our preferences by associating and not associating with people according to our commonalities and differences.  Let’s hope these gains continue.

A Quaint Dunwich Custom

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In Dunwich the end of April is both an important time of the year agriculturally but also a time of great stress.  It is at this time that the great skunk cabbage harvest occurs.  Dunwich keeps ten thousand acres in skunk cabbage cultivation.  And depending on the phase of the moon sometime between the middle of April and the middle of May all of it must be harvested and processed for First Selectman Cthulhu’s Vernal Feast.  All of the cabbage is sent through an homogenizer and then mixed 1:1 with liquified cow manure and then pumped through a high-pressure hose directly into the First Selectman’s maw.  At one hundred gallons a minute this takes about six hours to transfer.

After that there is an eight-hour fermentation stage within the First Selectman’s alimentary canal after which this process produces a gaseous effluvium that exits at a very high flow rate at about a thousand standard cubic feet a second under considerable pressure.  Now this gas not only smells disgusting but it is as poisonous as phosgene so it must be mixed with air and immediately sent through a combustion nozzle.  The outlet gas still smells unbelievably bad but it is thus rendered non-lethal.

The combustion goes on for ten hours during which time the First Selectman likes to read an improving book or watch classic movies as entertainment.  It takes a crew of two hundred of the stoutest Dunwich men to complete the full process.  And it is an exhausting and psychologically scarring ordeal to say the least.  During this time most of the inhabitants of Dunwich vacate the town for about a week until the odor abates to a significant degree.

Over the years there have been attempts at Board of Selectmen Meetings to change the town bylaws to eliminate the “feast.”  Usually, the first Selectman eats whoever adds the motion to the agenda and the motion fails unanimously.  Usually this is some newcomer to town who doesn’t understand the nuance of having a Great Old One as a town official.

But there are some “advantages” to this process.  Rodents flee the town for at least two months after the ceremony and flies are so confused by the smell that they forget to eat and just weaken and die.  So, things are pretty vermin-free around town until autumn.  So, we’ve got that going for us.

There was a funny incident last year when a state environmental officer showed up and demanded that the skunk cabbage harvest be stopped because it was a native plant that was protected against commercial harvest.  He barged into the First Selectman’s office and threatened him with arrest.  Cthulhu seemed impressed with the officer’s courage and asked if he’d like to see the skunk cabbage field.  They walked over to the farm and then he planted the officer head first into the ground and applied a couple of gentle pats of his right hand to firmly smooth out his resting place.  And that was that.  Have a happy skunk cabbage feast everybody!

 

Farmer Cthulhu in His Fields

Industrial Strength Crazy

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So, another leftist tried to shoot Trump.  Well, we can stop making believe that the Democrats aren’t murderous sociopaths.  Of course, they all make the same perfunctory “Political violence is totally unacceptable” statement in front of the cameras but what they mean is, “Better luck next time.”

Well, things are going to get uglier from here on in.  So, this clarifies what the whole “No Kings” thing is about.  You see Caesar was assassinated because he was toying with the idea of wearing a crown and the Romans had fought a war against the Etruscans to put an end to the monarchy.  So, Trump is Caesar and that makes it logical that an assassin will step forward to “free” this country from its dictator.

To my mind this confirms the theory that the Left has weaponized their radical fringe.  In addition to the three Trump shooters there is recently the Charlie Kirk assassin and the various transgender school shooters that have plagued us in the last few years.  This will be a very dangerous time for people on the Right and strategies to deal with this environment should be planned.

I think one of the better actions would be to continue eliminating as much federal money from reaching NGOs and other avenues that allow abnormal people to exist at the fringes of society.  Also, the crackdown on Antifa and Antifa-adjacent organizations is absolutely essential.  These organizations are where the most dangerous ideologues are concentrated and provided with support and direction for their malice.

I think the Justice Department should publicize the fact that left-wing radicals are the most dangerous criminals currently operating in the United States and that a concentrated effort will be made to identify the leaders of this movement and hunt down the foot soldiers that have been radicalized based on their social media statements.  That will rile them up and should be a good way to get a few of them to pop their heads up out of the sand.

But as I said, cutting off their funding is key.  This latest psycho was from California.  And California is hemorrhaging money at a phenomenal rate.  The Silicon Valley tech bros are scattering to Texas and Tennessee as fast as they can and the next governor may turn out to be a Republican just because the budget has become unworkable and they need a villain to take the blame when the state union pension plans have to be raided.  So, if the federal funds are effectively shut off the crazies will have no one to pay for their cross-gender hormones and intersectional studies tuition payments.

But there may not be a cure for what’s going on.  The Left has a lot of lunatics and if they try very hard, they will kill some of their enemies.  The question seems to be will American voters punish the Left for allowing its crazies to become assassins.  That is the real question that will be answered in the mid-terms.  If I were Trump, I’d play this thing out in the public square and tar the whole Democrat party with the psycho label.