Category: Trump

Easy Does It, Boys

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I was talking to an old friend a few days ago and the subject of war came up.  Now it wasn’t the Ukraine war or the Iran war but it was all war.  And I said I was worried that we might be in a situation where extreme escalation was a possibility.  And my rationale was that nuclear states are starting to get involved in larger conflicts like Ukraine and Iran and if these conflicts start to escalate, they very well might produce situations where the cost of losing is deemed too high by leadership and brinksmanship could drag us into the tactical nuclear scenarios.  And that could very easily spill over into doomsday situations.

Now, I was clear that I thought that Putin, Trump and Xi were all likely to want to keep a lid on any dangerous escalation but the current situations were very, very unstable and dangerous.  And because my mind works by analogies I immediately thought to try and compare this situation to World War I.  Well, it’s really nothing like 1914 except that a relatively minor incident might trigger a general conflagration.  I might compare our current position to that of the British back then and China to Germany and Russia to Austria, let’s say.  And these are just absurdly vague equivalencies but that’s how my gloomy mind works.  But despite the vagueness and the obviously different circumstances today, it occurs to me that things are a lot hotter than they’ve been for a very long time and the balance of power is become a lot less friendly to us.

Now, does this mean I’m digging a bomb shelter and prepping for the apocalypse.  No, I’m not.  But that might have a lot more to do with just how old and tired I am now.  Surviving a nuclear holocaust somewhere between New York City and Boston is an absurdity that I don’t even want to consider.  But at the same time, it feels like rethinking the cold war realities is more relevant than it’s been since the 1990s.

Of course, the other side of this coin is the fact that none of the nuclear powers wants to be seen as weak.  But with drone technology rendering most of the conventional battlefield hardware obsolete it’s very easy for superpowers to get drawn into frustrating and embarrassing regional conflicts that can easily lead to dangerous thinking about the advantages of being a nuclear power.  And regional conflicts seem to be growing in size and number.

Well, anyway, I’ve shared my thoughts or maybe I should say fears.  It’s been a long time since I worried about nuclear war.  And it’s not like anything can be done by the likes of me.  But it just adds another layer of stress to a world that’s already chock full of crises.  Well, I hope Trump and Vance and Rubio are keeping the lines of communication open to Putin and Xi.  Wouldn’t want a miscommunication to turn into the apocalypse.

Trump’s Last Two Years

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Regardless of how little or how much the Democrats gain in the midterm elections Donald Trump will not have a congress that can legislate what he wants done in the country going forward.  So, what’s a great disrupter to do?

I think Donald should declare a state of emergency and fix some stuff.  I think he should use this state of emergency to balance the budget.  Unilaterally.  Unashamedly.  I guess it would be a revolutionary move.  But it’s needed.  The country has been bled dry by the titanic waste of the federal budget and waiting anymore time would be dangerous.  Now it’s not possible to eliminate a seventy trillion-dollar debt overnight.  It will take decades to do that.  But it seems necessary to at least make a start.  It’s shocking to think that the last balanced budget was under, of all people, Bill Clinton.  Of course, the “War on Terror” put an end to that but for the last quarter century American politicians have pretended that printing money endlessly was their God-given right.  Well, it’s not.  And acting like it is has brought us to the brink of hyperinflation.  So, calling it a state of emergency is, in my opinion, completely accurate.

Now, this would be a very large undertaking.  Slicing the budget down to size without undermining the stability of the economy or causing undue pain to the taxpayers requires the wisdom of a Solomon.  DOGE had the right idea about eliminating boondoggles, leftist set asides and waste but it was just the tip of the iceberg.  There are over a hundred years of malfeasance and stupidity in that seventy trillion-dollar debt and it will be necessary to close down whole governmental departments and cancel thousands of projects that either we don’t need or we can’t afford.  So, there will be many, many oxen gored during this effort.

Luckily, the most important asset for an operation of this nature is a very skilled salesman; someone who can sell the idea based on the belief that the ones benefitting from all this waste is anyone else than the long-suffering American taxpayer.  There’s nothing a taxpayer likes more to hear than that all those “leeches” out there are about to be removed from the federal budget and forced to do honest work or starve.  So, Trump can sell this based on the idea that trimming the waste will drive inflation down to a very tolerable minimum and eventually taxes can also begin to drop.  Not immediately of course.  The accountants have to figure out how long it takes to reduce seventy trillion dollars to zero.

Now I’ve been told that not having a debt is actually bad for the country and the world.  Well, I kinda don’t believe it.  Sure, government bonds and bills are a very attractive way to spread the costs of expensive programs and systems over the course of several years but making believe that a balanced budget is a bad thing doesn’t add up for me.  It’s one thing to buy a dishwasher on time.  It’s an entirely different thing to be in hock to loan sharks for amounts you can never pay back.  Donald put the United States on a permanent diet.  It’s an emergency.

Bring on the Razzle-Dazzle

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So last night Trump gave the speech and revealed that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are on the voter rolls and the Chi-Coms were in charge of the data link for automated voting machines for millions of votes.  And that’s great.

But when does someone go to prison for it?

If it’s just a matter of saying it, what does that do?  I mean, I already know all this.  And the Democrats who ran all this stuff certainly know about it.  But if it’s just talk what does that do?  I guess he was trying to put pressure on the Republican Senate Leader to pass the Save America Act.  Okay, good!  But will it work?  Will Thune play ball?

Maybe I’ve just become a curmudgeon.  I don’t seem to have the enthusiasm I used to have for the Trump shuffle.  Sure, all of the razzle-dazzle probably gets some points with the general public and maybe it upsets the Left when their chicanery is showcased on the six o’clock news.  But I’m hoping for something a little more substantial.  For instance, I heard that the feds have something on Gavin Newsom’s wife’s business that’s making a lot of money off of the State of California.  Well, why not arrest the Newsoms and indict them for mopery and dopery?  Now that would be worthwhile and fun at the same time.  And in the same vein, what about the fraud going on in Minnesota?  Shouldn’t the FBI have Tim Walz about ready for indictment too?

Well, anyway, you can see where I’m going with all this.  This is Trump’s second term and he’s already fired all the hacks that were slowing him down in his first term and has his own people in place so I guess I expected him to get some revenge for the various railroading prosecutions they put him through over the last few years.

But maybe Trump knows best.  His 2024 election win must be in the top ten political miracles of the last hundred years.  So, I’m not going to jump on the “Trump is doomed” bandwagon.  It seems to me that he has already achieved an enormous amount just by opening the eyes of millions of conservative voters to the sad truth about the Republican establishment and its lack of interest in actually conserving anything.  Maybe he won’t have the chance to “make America great again” before 2029 but he at least started the fight and gave a lot of people hope for the future.  So, when he gives us the razzle-dazzle, I roll my eyes up and walk away from the tv.  But I’ll leave the gloom and doom to the pundits getting paid for it.

So, if the Democrats take the House and even the Senate, Trump will still be able to do his work by executive order and existing law.  Will he transform the United States into a conservative wonderland?  Absolutely not.  Will he be a positive force for good?  Absolutely.  Bring on the razzle-dazzle.

BNN is the Answer to the Current Epidemic of Despair

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The Baby News Network (BNN) is a comedy channel on YouTube that features as its centerpiece Baby Trump.  And as far as I can tell it is the solution to the plague of depression that has engulfed our times.  It’s just absurdity piled on absurdity but the smile it produces is certainly real.

I noticed this about Trump back during his first campaign.  His bluster and exaggeration are hilarious and actually endear him to the voters.  I mean, it’s obvious he’s talking trash and employing P. T. Barnum tactics in almost every circumstance imaginable.  But the fact that he is doing it against the people who hate us and, in our defense, makes it enjoyable.  And the fact that we don’t hold his trash talk against him drives his opponents crazy.  I once had a leftist get exasperated when she pointed out he was exaggerating some accomplishment and I started laughing about the story.  I told her that the exaggeration was what made it fun.  She just walked away shaking her head.

And this kind of humor always appealed to me.  In fact, back during his first term I used to do some Trump humor.  But the funny thing is the reality is usually funnier than the stuff I’d make up.  So, I watch some of the BNN whenever I see something that strikes my funny bone.  Of course, it doesn’t solve any of the real problems we have fighting against the Left day in and day out.  But laughter is valuable.  Enjoying something witty is helpful.  So, I’m linking these videos to help lift the mood of the people who come here to find something interesting and hopeful.

I hope someone enjoys at least one of these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antifa in the News, Finally

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So last night I wrote about the crazies who are practicing to be the next Lee Harvey Oswald.

In a related vein, Antifa has been in the news a few times lately.  The first major headline a few months ago was that a group of Antifa who attacked ICE in Texas were successfully prosecuted and sentenced to serious prison time.

Then this week up in Minnesota about a dozen more were arrested for both obstruction of law enforcement but also threats of violence against officers.

So, what we’re seeing is the Trump administration’s decision to brand Antifa a domestic terrorism organization and prosecute its members as co-conspirators is bearing fruit.  If one member has a gun or a knife but the rest of the gang funnel victims his way, he’ll get the lion’s share of the sentence, but they all get to enjoy a part of the jail term.  Nice!

But the latest fun news item came from James O’Keefe.  You remember that intrepid undercover reporter from his hilarious expose on Anthony Wiener and his wiener.  But also, for the work he did exposing ACORN as an NGO scam.  But in his most interesting new work his organization managed to crack into a New Jersey Antifa group called NJ BURN.  They got access to the Signal chat group used by this Antifa cell and managed to identify a large number of the Antifa members.  They were a mix of the usual students and dirtbags but also professors, computer scientists and even politicians.

Well, that’s got to feel like a kick in the head for these guys.  When law enforcement and the general public know that you’ve been supporting Antifa and a whole year of your communications including information on tactics and resources have been exposed, that can’t be helpful for a terrorist organization.  And it’s also kind of embarrassing to get outsmarted by a tiny media company that doesn’t have the resources or scope of the FBI or the Justice Department.

Anyway, my takeaway is that these guys are going to start feeling a lot more heat than they used to and the less radical members with actual lives may decide that going to prison for a few years is more of a commitment than a computer programmer cares to invest into social justice.  But the real breakthrough has been identifying the NGOs that have been supporting the “activists” who wander from city to city acting as the shock troops for these operations.  These organizations pay the rent, food bills, gas, transportation, legal fees and medical costs for the protestors and probably various supplies that they use in their riots.

I hope that in the near future we’ll hear of additional prosecutions and eventually this should put a real damper on the anti-ICE movement and if done correctly might eventually depopulate Portland, Oregon.  But seriously, I once again have to give Trump high marks for working his Justice Department through the maze of left-wing allies that have protected Antifa up till now and prevented these disgusting people from being locked away where they belong, in prison.

The Crazies are Reaching a Boil

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So, the Left has stirred up their unstable radical base and they’re now bouncing off all the walls of their mad houses and will soon be overflowing onto the streets in full force.  Here’s the early information on the nuts in Ohio, California, Missouri and Nebraska who were planning some kind of drone/bomb/sniper attack on the White House during that recent UFC fight there.

As far as I can tell they didn’t have any drones or explosives, just guns and bullets, but there are still more than a dozen other co-conspirators out there and maybe one of them was connected to a source for these more potent weapons.  But even if this plot was more ambitious than their skills and resources warranted, it’s clear that the Left, including the Democrat party and leadership is doing everything in their power to demonize Trump and his administration and nothing to moderate the terms of “resistance.”  They’ve been throwing around the terms fascist, criminal and dictator for years and now they’ve told their constituents that Trump’s policies are destroying the US democracy and must be stopped at any cost.  And the crazies are listening.  And now they’re starting to react at a higher and higher rate.

Well, the FBI and the Secret Service better bring their a-game from now on.  But what the Republicans should be doing is making commercials for the midterm elections emphasizing that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are whipping up violence against the president and that electing more Democrats to Congress will make this even worse.

And even though this is an effective strategy it’s also not a lie.  It’s absolutely true that the Left is intentionally agitating these emotionally and mentally unbalanced people in ways that they know will spark this kind of violence.  This needs to be called out and stressed in a way that will alert the voters to the choice they have.  If they don’t want Leftist killers roaming the streets defying law enforcement and assassinating government leaders and conservative spokesmen then they’re going to have to vote in Republicans.  That’s right.  We have to make the case that the stupid party is the lesser of two evils.  And once again that is not a lie.  We can’t tell the voters that the Republicans are good leaders.  We have to tell them that the Democrats are advocating armed rebellion and anarchy.  That should be enough to make the case for electing those Republican idiots.

So how many attempted Trump assassinations have there been five or six?  Well, let’s hope that the Justice Department is competent enough to protect the White House and the rest of the Trump Administration for the next two and half years.  That should give Trump the time to try and straighten out as much of this screwed up federal government as anyone can rightfully expect at this point in our history.  If he lives to get some good things done that might convince America to elect Vance and finally getting a third Republican term might be enough to really break the deadlock and clear away some of the rot.  Maybe.

Forty-Seven Years of Insanity and Counting

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Well, Trump says the Iranian war is over.  Hmmm.  How does that work?  Does Iran stop attacking its neighbors and does that mean Israel and Hezbollah are ready to stop trading missiles too?  I saw gasoline below $4/gallon today.  Is that because of these headlines today or is that just the latest price bouncing off of lower demand?

Of course, I’d love for this to be the end of this war.  It would give the Republicans a big boost in November and would almost certainly deny Democrats the Senate.  But it just doesn’t seem likely to me that Tehran will just back off and play nice.  It’s just not in their DNA.  But of course, I’ll give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt and wait and see if he’s pulled off a coup with this announcement.

I’ve always wondered just how dysfunctional the Iranian nation is.  Back in the 1980s they fought a war with Iraq in which a million young Iranians died during “human wave” attacks against a mechanized Iraqi army.  The stupidity of something like this can’t be overstated.  But now the next generation of Iranians seem to be completely directionless.  They despise the mullahs and hate their religious extremism and mismanagement of the economy but they have been brutalized by the Basij Resistance Force to such an extent that they’ve withdrawn back into their homes and have failed to organize any resistance of their own.

Think about this country, since 1979 their whole people have been led by lunatics whose whole plan is to restore a theocratic government that fell apart almost a thousand years ago because it has never had a reliable way of choosing new leaders and because its tenets are not conducive to a thriving society.  But at the same time, the strongest faction in the country is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  The actual power in Iran is in their hands and they are in control of both the armed forces and the Basij Resistance Force that they use to control the general population and crush dissent.  And they’ve become so strongly ensconced that really the only way to pry power from them would be to send in an enormous army and defeat them on the ground.  And everyone knows we’re not going to do that.

So, what we have is a perpetual stalemate.  Iran spends its oil money on building bunkers in their mountains and filling them with missiles and drones.  And they use these weapons to supply Hezbollah and Hamas with the means to kill Israelis.  I guess the day could finally come where Iranians just get so fed up with their miserable lives that they rise up and murder the Basij agents with their bare hands.  Or the Israelis just get so good at technological warfare that they manage to infiltrate all of Iran’s bunkers and blow them all up at the same time and follow it up with exploding cell phones that kill the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in one fell swoop.

But until one or the other of these two fantasies come true Iran will exist to nauseate the world of normal people that just want a sanity to prevail.

SODT

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Therapist – So let’s welcome our new friend Scott Pelley and start by going around the circle and introduce ourselves.

Acosta – Hi I’m Jim and I’ve hated Trump for about ten years.

Pelley – Hi Jim

Moran – Hi I’m Terry and I hate all haters!

Pelley – Hi Terry.

Lemon – I’m Don and I’ve hated Trump since I was a kid and saw what kinds of atrocious ties he wore.

Pelley – Hi Don.

Reid – I’m Joy and I’ve hated Trump from the womb.

Pelley – Hi Joy.

Cuomo – Hi I’m Chris and I don’t hate anyone.  I’m just looking for a new gig.  Scott, what’s available at CBS.

Pelley – Scoundrel!

Therapist – So who has had a breakthrough this week?

Lemon – Me, me, pick me!

Therapist – Okay Don what would you like to share?

Lemon – Well, it came to me last night that in just two years this whole nightmare will end and the world will go back to the way it was in 2015 and I’ll be rich, famous and sassy again.

Therapist – Why do you think that?

Lemon – Well, obviously Donald Trump will be out of office and the Democrats will be in charge again and they will reverse all of Trump’s damage and restore all of us to the glamour and wealth that we enjoyed under Barack Obama.

Therapist – Does anyone else believe that?

(Everyone’s hands go up immediately)

Therapist – (rubbing his face with both hands) I see we still have a lot of work to do here.  As much as you feel that Donald Trump is the root of all your problems you must realize that this is a very different world from 2016.  Things have moved on.  Your industry has changed.  The internet has disrupted journalism permanently.

Reid – That’s a lie!  MS-NBC will be begging to get me back.  I’ll have a ten million dollar annual and I’ll have a bigger office than Maddow that closet racist!

Cuomo – Don’t you mean MS NOW?  And why would they want you back after what you’ve been saying about them?

Reid – Shut your face Chris, you always were a closet racist.  All of you are closet racists, even you Lemon!

Lemon – Girlfriend, have you gone crazy?  We can’t start attacking each other.  That’s what Trump wants.

Reid – Oh shut up.  I’m sick and tired of blogging on my sub-stack.  Nobody reads the damn things and so far, this month I’ve made eleven dollars and forty-two cents in subscriptions.  (breaks down crying) I want my old life back.   WAAAAAAAAAH!

Therapist – Please Joy, don’t slip into that mode of thought.  We mustn’t dwell on the past.  We must embrace the future and new opportunities.

Pelley – He’s right Joy.  We all have a bright future.  We don’t need MS-NBC or CBS.  We’re smart and we’re strong.  We have skills and are only waiting for the right opportunity to put them to work.  Listen, all of you, I’ve decided that it’s time to start something big.  Why, with all the talent that’s gathered right here we could set the journalism world on fire.  Why, Jim and Terry could be our Washington correspondents.  Don and Chris could handle the entertainment desk and Joy you handle the social justice watch while I can be the executive producer.

Cuomo – What kind of venture capital can you put together?  Can you cover a two year burn through?

Pelley – I was hoping we could all cover our own expenses until it got up and running.

(Everyone including the therapist start laughing maniacally and cross over into tears.)

Therapist – Scott, thanks for that moment of levity.  It’s really important to keep a sense of humor during depression.

Pelley – But I wasn’t kidding!

Therapist – Well then, you’re not ready for this group yet.  SODT stands for “Survivors of Donald Trump” and by definition, you can’t be completely delusional and say things like that.  Why don’t you try hanging out with Kamala until the crazy wears off.  Close the door on the way out, will you?

What Would an Honest 60 Minutes Look Like?

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You know all this Scott Pelley comedy got me thinking.  What if 60 Minutes became a real honest to goodness investigative reporting show?  You know, like it’s claimed to be.  Watching the legacy media reporting on Pelley was hilarious because they all used exactly the same wording to describe just how venerable 60 Minutes is; “the gold standard of journalism,” “unbiased and non-partisan,” “acclaimed by both political parties.”  Of course, if anyone objective was within hearing of these claims, the eye-rolling was epic.

But imagine it for a moment.  What if 60 Minutes did an expose about Somalians in Minnesota running daycare scams to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars?  Or suppose they did an undercover investigation to find out which NGOs provide money, equipment and legal aid to Antifa?  Then they would really be doing something useful.  Even I would watch things like that.  Or could you imagine a detailed investigation into Gavin Newsom’s spending on high-speed rail and other boondoggles.  Or how about someone doing an audit on the “massaging” of the data used for the global warming studies?

Well, anyway, I don’t actually expect this level of honesty from legacy media but even if all they do is take a more balanced approach to interviewing political figures it would be a revelation.  Now the question remains whether a more even-handed approach to reporting would increase the market share for CBS.  Well, in my opinion, yes!  I used to watch 60 Minutes back in the ancient days before all of journalism became a leftist monolith.  Let’s say 1985 as a time when some vestigial fairness could still be found in the media.  If Bari Weiss succeeds in convincing the Right that she is willing to give respect to both sides of the country I think she can increase the audience by more than just a few percentage points.  And just as importantly if other networks see something like that it will make an impression.

Okay, that’s enough happy-happy talk.  We haven’t seen anything substantive yet.  Maybe all of this is just a way for Sky Dance to eliminate a lot of high-priced employees from their payroll.  I’m sure Scott Pelley was making eight figures and since they fired him for cause they don’t have to pay off his contract (as long as his lawyers don’t win in court).  But potentially this could be another case of the economics of angering fifty percent of the country leading to the collapse of another corporate dinosaur.  Just as Hollywood can’t both fight off new entertainment technology and also alienate more than half its audience, we may be seeing the breaking point for this crooked industry.  And isn’t it just poetic justice that it’s happening under the Trump administration.  Tonight, I saw a clip where a reporter asked Trump about Pelley and he said, “I think Scott Pelley’s got his own problems, he’s terrible. Look, Scott Pelley’s a stiff and he’s afraid, and he’s part of this, you know, gang of crooked, stupid people that don’t care about our country.”  Well, I think that sums things up admirably.  Hopefully from here it will get even funnier.

Antifa and the Hidden Hand

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So, I saw this article:

Bessent says IRS and FBI investigation into antifa has made ‘substantial progress’

“What to know

  • Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed progress in the IRS-FBI antifa investigation.
  • New IRS guidance will hold grant-making organizations responsible for violent recipients.
  • Antifa is labeled a militant anarchist organization by the Trump administration.
  • The executive order cites antifa’s violent activities and attempts to overthrow the government.

The memo and the antifa executive order targeted the tax-exempt status of foundations funding civil society groups. The memo instructed the IRS commissioner to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”

So, the gist of this investigation is identifying NGOs that are providing funds and other aid to antifa and use it as a reason to strip them of their tax-exempt status and then prosecute them for the aid they’re providing antifa in its illegal activities.

It sounds like a good strategy.  Of course, the various antifa legal fronts will challenge all this in every commie-sympathizing jurisdiction (NY, CA, D.C., OR, etc.) but the Supreme Court has been very supportive of the administration’s attempts to go after rogue elements of the Left so there’s a good chance all this will move forward.

Based on the assassination attempts against Trump, Charlie Kirk and that healthcare CEO, these antifa psychos are extremely dangerous and need to be defunded, rounded up and put away for a very long time.

On an unrelated and much more positive development my Kindle Unlimited page views have continued to increase:

Tonight, has been the highest page count to date (407 pages) and that curve looks pretty encouraging (so far).  I won’t try to make too much soup with such a little bit of meat but we authors have to take our solace where we find it.  Now, I’d prefer that it was 407 million pages but we all have to start somewhere.

Now based on my years of experience extrapolating curves based on limited data it’s obvious to me that the next data point will be 800 pages followed shortly by 1,600 pages and by obvious curve fitting this will turn into an asymptote by June 7th at which point the number of pages will reach infinity and Amazon will have to proclaim me the new James Patterson.  Of course I shouldn’t say this quite yet.  You never know.  I could be wrong.  It might take all the way until June 15th for all of this to reach its crescendo.  So, I’ll just bide my time and maintain a humble façade.  I’ll practice my gracious acceptance speech, “Oh no, I’m not worthy!  I’m not worthy!  I’d like to thank all the little people.  If I’ve seen farther, it’s not because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants but rather, because I am a super-giant.  And I want to cast aspersions on those who tried to hold back my reputation.  All those who claimed I wasn’t greater than their favorites; all those fanboys of Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Tolkien or whomever!  Bah!  Tired hacks and amateurs.  Their memories will be swept away like chaff from the wheat in the glorious sunshine of my new day.”

Or something like that.