Category: Trump

Donald Trump’s Tariff Typhoon Hits Wall Street.  Mayhem Ensues

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That Donald Trump, he’s got folks more stirred up than a hornet’s nest.  I read that the Dow was off by 8% on the week.  Now that’s a lot.  I think back on Black Monday in the ‘80s it ended down about that amount.  And that riled up folks too.  Of course, I’m guessing most of these angry investors aren’t going to sell off their holdings.  For them equity is the only game in town.  Shorting the market could get some of them hurt.

I’ve got to say, Trump isn’t doing things by halves.  And I think he’s going in the right direction.  Things won’t change until all of the globalist policies are upended.  And upending those policies will produce havoc in the short term.  And that’s what we’re seeing.  One thing’s for sure I wouldn’t be thinking about buying any high end imported cars or other luxury items.  They’re gonna get expensive.  And there’s gonna be a lot of angry folks who sell those things who will be making a lot less money until things re-sort themselves around changes in the tariff situation.

Well, it should be interesting to see if Trump can get this done.  There’s nothing certain about his hold on power.  The Republicans in Congress are as disloyal a bunch as any imaginable and if they think Trump is in trouble they’ll turn on him in a heartbeat.  And I’m sure he knows that.  For myself personally, I’m enjoying all the drama unfolding on the social platforms.  The folks on X have been spinning around like lunatics declaring the end of the world.  And that can be very entertaining.  I got into a number of spirited discussions with folks who told me we’re living in the best of all possible worlds and wanting Americans to have manufacturing jobs was stupid, nostalgic, racist (of course) and just plain evil.  And that really was fun.  One guy told me that the present world is so much better than the old bad world of the 1950s because now people live twelve years longer.  I was trying to understand how putting tariffs on foreign goods would reduce my life expectancy by twelve years.  When I questioned whether quality of life was as important as quantity he said, “You answer my question first and then we will deal with your non sequitur.”  Well, I noted his use of the royal plural and he stomped off.  So, there is definitely an entertainment component to Donald Trump’s trade policy.

I’ve read that a number of countries are now negotiating for a deal and I assume that’s what Trump intends.  He wants these advanced countries to reduce their tariffs against American products.  But countries with very low labor costs like China and Vietnam I suspect they’ll get stuck with tariffs levied against their goods.  And what that will do is force American manufacturers to on-shore some of their operations to prevent the loss of American business.  That’s what supposedly Apple intends to do.  What I don’t know is how quickly something like that can be done.  Factories don’t spring up like vegetables.  It takes years to build infrastructure so I don’t know how much on-shoring can be done in 2025.

We will see how it plays out.  Anyway, I’m rooting for him.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 04APR2025 – Is Americans

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What makes America great is Americans, not some global economic think tank idea about “Cosmopolitanism.”

We’re not a group of backwoods rubes crouching in fear of the outside world. What we are, and should always be, are people who care more about the well-being of each other and not the stock portfolio of a multinational corporation that will pull the rug at the first chance of increasing profit shares. This nation’s initials are USA not GDP. The overly misused phrase of collectivism when describing Marxist-style ideologies has woefully made it a dirty word for those of us on the Right-wing to employ. It needs to be reclaimed and utilized often. It is the proper attitude to have for our fellow Americans’ living conditions. We are all in the same boat, whether some are in first-class cabins or third-class.

Are protectionist tariff policies the silver bullet solution that will restore American labor and wage loss woes? Will the Rust Belt be revitalized with a glut of new manufacturing jobs by next year? Of course not. But it’s a start. Prepare for pain and embrace the understanding that it is needed and long overdue. The medicine that cures does not always go down easily. To go down fighting is better than to simply accept the current state of affairs.

Legacy media reporting tries to lead one to believe that tariffs will be the only strategy Trump will use. That is folly and only propaganda for the low-information citizen as they like to call most of us. Stronger tariffs are only one piece of the equation that (might) correct the dismal path we are on.

Things are very wrong with how the game is set up. Many of us know this. The promised results of NAFTA, free trade (Ha!) and WTO platitudes were a siren song that mainly enriched a select few. Brave voices spoke out on this such as Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. They were right.

It is time for something different and if it takes burning my 401K to the ground so that my kids do not have to be serfs to the worship of an almighty GDP Excel spreadsheet God of Globohomo, then I say burn it to the ground.

Let Me See What’s Going on 31MAR2025

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Well, first of all, Europe has gone all in on lawfare to prevent their own people from electing candidates on the Right.  I guess I can paraphrase this as. “If you can’t beat them at the ballot box just round them up and jail them.”

“Monday’s court sentence declares Le Pen ineligible to stand for president in 2027 and gave her a four-year prison sentence – half of it suspended – for embezzlement of European parliament funds.

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the League party Matteo Salvini called the court’s ruling a “declaration of war by Brussels”.

“A bad film that we are also seeing in other countries like Romania,” wrote Salvini on social media.

“We don’t let ourselves be intimidated, we don’t stop: full speed ahead my friend!”

Romania’s electoral bureau in early March rejected the candidacy of far-right politician Calin Georgescu for the re-run of presidential elections in May.

The fierce EU and NATO critic shot to prominence last November, when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting before the constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion.

Georgescu, who denies any links to Moscow, has slammed the vote annulment as a “formalised coup d’état” and the subsequent banning as “a direct blow to the heart of democracy.”

So that’s interesting.  It’s kind of what they tried against Trump only their people are so cowed that it’s successful.  I guess the question I’ll ask is are their people such slaves that they’ll put up with that forever?  I guess we’ll find out.

The other big “international” development is that the New York Times admitted that the United States military has boots on the ground in Ukraine.  And in fact, the CIA is coordinating missile attacks on the Russian homeland.

Ultimately, the U.S. military and C.I.A. were allowed to help with strikes into Russia.

The hardest red line was the Russian border. But in spring 2024, to protect the northern city of Kharkiv against a Russian assault, the administration authorized the creation of an “ops box” — a zone of Russian territory within which U.S. officers in Wiesbaden could provide the Ukrainians with precise coordinates. The box’s first iteration extended across a wide swath of Ukraine’s northern border. The box was expanded after North Korea sent troops to help fight the Ukrainians’ incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. The U.S. military was later allowed to enable missile strikes in an area of southern Russia where the Russians staged forces and equipment for their offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. But the C.I.A. could request “variances,” carve-outs to support strikes for specific objectives. Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in Toropets, 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border. On Sept. 18, 2024, a swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Later, the C.I.A. was allowed to enable Ukrainian drone strikes in southern Russia to try to slow advances in eastern Ukraine.

So, we’ve been playing chicken with the Russians for several years in Ukraine.  Is this still going on?  Why?  Have we officially lost any personnel to the war officially?  Unofficially?  Is there any reason why we should?

From what I can see of Europe’s approach to “democracy” I don’t see any meaningful difference between Russia, Ukraine, France or Romania.  None of them are really democracies in any real sense.  So why are we choosing winners and losers there?  They’re supposed to be grown-ups.  Why can’t they sort out their own messes?  Why should American money and blood be involved in any way?

From what I can see we have no more place telling the Russians or the English how to run their lives than we do the Afghans or the Chinese.  They’re not us.  We’re not them.  If they don’t shoot at us, they can do whatever they damn please.  They can even say mean things about us.  Now as far as buying whatever crap they make in their country, as long as we have the same tariffs on them as they have on us, have at it.  The crap we get from China is no better or worse than the crap we get from Mexico or Canada.  It’s all still crap.  If they want to make their crap here and pay Americans to make it, well, that’s another story.  Now we’ve got something to talk about.  If Toyota builds a plant in Tennessee, then God bless Toyota.  They’re my kind of foreigners.  We can do business and we can even be friends!

I hope Donald Trump understands that blowing people up to “make the world safe for democracy” is just a globalist bumper sticker.  Minding our own business to make America safe for Americans is a policy that can help make America great again.

Just my two cents today.

Andrew Klavan, You Magnificent Bastard, You Were Right!

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About four years ago I was watching a podcast by Andrew Klavan.  And this was at the height of bad things happening.  I guess I was as negative as I’d ever been.  I can’t remember the exact topic of this video but at a point in the exposition he addressed all the ground the Right had lost over the years to the Left and he seemed to know what I was thinking and said something like, “All of this stuff can be reversed.”

And at the time my mind rejected that statement.  So many things had been normalized by the Left and generations had grown up thinking of these things as the status quo that I just couldn’t see how it could be turned around.  Part of the reason was I knew that the Republican establishment had already adopted all of these changes into their worldview.  They’d even accepted giving citizenship to unlimited illegal aliens just so the Democrats wouldn’t call them mean names.  At that point the only half way measure I could think of to avoid the end of freedom in America was to move to a red state like Florida and hope that the governor would resist all of the communism for as long as it was possible.  I even contemplated moving to Hungary and learning to speak Magyar.  There at least they aren’t ashamed of being of European heritage.

Fast forward four years and we see that Trump has smashed all kinds of barriers.  He isn’t shy about saying that something that’s wrong or crazy is wrong or crazy.  What he’s doing to DEI and affirmative action in general is completely revolutionary from the perspective of the last sixty five years of progressive change.  He’s trashing everything that’s happened since the Johnson administration.  And he’s not asking permission.  He’s just doing it.  Sure the corrupt judges are fighting him tooth and nail but he’s doing it anyway.  Even if he fails at some things he’s pushing in all directions at once and he’s got the bastards on the run.

So, four years later and I finally learn that Andrew Klavan was kinda right.  Now, it took a trump to unleash the power of the executive branch under a strong, determined president but it does show you that hopelessness is in a sense weakness.  Trump is succeeding because he had the sense to see that the people running the show were doing the things they were doing despite what the majority of Americans wanted.  It was an illusion that we were outnumbered and that the Democrats were about to become the permanent majority.  Half of their “coalition” can’t stand their messaging.  All that was needed was someone talking sense and making a case for sanity and prosperity.  Even minority voters are starting to tire of the “all white people are racist” trope.  They’re more interested in someone restarting the economy and producing well-paying jobs where they live.

So all these years later, I just want to say, Andrew Klavan, you were right.  Crazy doesn’t have to be forever and we can begin winning the culture war if we have leaders who actually want to win.  And there’s a special bonus that comes along with this.  I get to enjoy the schadenfreude as RINO bums like Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell get kicked to the curb.  What a beautiful world.

Andrew Klavan, you magnificent bastard, you were right!

Fun Times to Witness Firsthand

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The United States started out as a group of small settlements along the Atlantic coast of North America.  Within 150 years these seedlings had spread to become the basis of the most powerful, most productive nation ever to exist.  By 1900 it had become a continental power that had harnessed great scientific and technological innovations to become a world power.  By 2000 it was the global hegemon, with no other nation even daring to pretend parity with the United States of America.

Twenty-five years later this country is much diminished.  And almost none of the change has to do with military might or technological capability.  We still have wonder weapons and a nuclear arsenal.  We have the most advanced information technology systems including the latest innovations in artificial intelligence and data acquisition.

What we have lost is our identity.  The Left has been on a campaign to destroy the myth of America for the last seventy years and I think they’ve been almost wholly successful.  Because it is this myth that provided us with the power that allowed us to perform all the miracles we have seen over the last century and more of our civilizational highpoint.  I’ll arbitrarily assign 1900 as the zenith of American civilization.  This convenient date, more or less, starts the “American Century” and the first decade was Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency.  I would say this was when American morale was at its highest point.  We were respected and envied around the world and our self-regard was very high.  And at the same time, we were still a very self-reliant place.  People were expected to support themselves and government had no place in micro-managing our lives and finances.  From our point of view there was no government safety net and poverty was only one economic panic away.  But Americans depended on themselves to survive.

And this was doable.  America truly was the land of opportunity.  Everywhere you looked there were great ventures building bridges, railroads, telephone systems, electrical infrastructure; all the systems needed for a modern civilization.  There was work to do for anyone willing to do it.  And we considered ourselves a moral people.  We had police and courts that made sure that everyone lived according to the laws that each state enforced.  And every man could be judged by a jury of his peers.  It wasn’t perfect but it seemed like a reasonably fair system.  And we had representative government.  We got to vote for our presidents and congressional representatives.  Well, not women.  We were still sane back then and kept them in the home.  That madness was still twenty years in the future.  Funny how that innovation seems to track with the end of American greatness.  Oh well.

And most importantly, we hadn’t gotten involved in a European War at all up to that point.  Sure we slapped their hands if they interfered in the Western Hemisphere; Monroe Doctrine and all that.  But we were smart enough not to stick our noses into European quagmires.  We left that to the British.

But now?  Well, we’re mired in conflicts all over the Middle East and even Ukraine.  We rattle our sabers at China, Russia and Iran constantly.  We meddle in the elections of half the planet, spending clandestine money to rig elections and decide what cultural values we will permit “democracies” to have.

And we’ve allowed the education of our children to undermine the belief in the fairness and morality of American laws and institutions that have stood us in good stead for over two hundred years.  These educators and politicians have labeled our society racist, sexist, bigoted and immoral.  And worse still, a whole generation has been brainwashed into believing it’s true.

They’ve also empowered the leading corporations to outsource almost all the manufacturing jobs that formerly supported a thriving middle class to foreign shores where labor prices are impossibly low.  This has single-handedly dropped the United States into the second tier of nations economically.  And it has devastated the morale of the whole country.  And now the Left has tried to finish off the middle class by flooding the country with tens of millions of third-world refugees to compete for the few jobs that are left at the lowest wage imaginable.

So where do we go from here?  If we looked for examples we have Rome.  A great and proud people expanded under the leadership of wise rulers but then allowed foreign wars to turn their Republic into an Empire.  And that Empire turned its back on the small farmers who had been the backbone of the Republic and turned to slave labor to enrich the senatorial class and changed the army into a profession with  no pretense of an end to the forever wars.

That looks very much like what we are seeing planned by the Left, only on a global scale.  Now Trump is trying to reverse the picture.  He is taking steps to deal with each of the problems; wars, outsourced manufacturing, global corporations, hordes of illegal immigrants and culture war.  And we’re even seeing some small progress from his efforts.

But can he turn it around?  When the Gracchi Brothers or Julius Caesar took the side of the plebians in Rome they were assassinated and the Empire rolled on.  So we’ve never seen this trend from Republic to Empire reversed.  Of course I’d like it to be so.  The ends of Republics aren’t fun times to witness firsthand.

Cleaning Out the Augean Stables

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When John Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963, I was six years old.  I think I was in kindergarten at the time.  I remember the day because the nuns were all crying.  So, there hasn’t been a day in my life that I can remember that I wasn’t aware of Kennedy’s assassination.  And after the initial shock wore off my family members, it receded into my mind until his brother was assassinated a few years later.  At that point, talk about conspiracies finally became loud enough and I was old enough to have it impinge on my thoughts.

But I wasn’t receptive to these ideas.  I just believed what the official version stated.  Lone gunmen were responsible and that was all there was to it.

I was watching a podcast that had a JFK conspiracy advocate on.  After the initial obvious question (“Is there a smoking gun in the new document dump?”) was answered with a, “Whoa, whoa!  I’m on page 3 of 60,000,” the expert explained that what he’s looking for isn’t a smoking gun but rather a pattern of facts that steers the explanation toward one of the likelier causes.

And here, there is a lot of information that tells us more about what was going on between JFK and his intelligence agencies.  And none of it makes the CIA look less guilty.  The CIA had been following Oswald around for the four years before the assassination and they knew exactly where he lived and worked and how close he would be to Kennedy that day.  And there has never been a doubt that Jack Ruby was a mob-controlled stooge who did what he was told.  And there is no doubt that the CIA had connections to the mob and that the mob hated the Kennedys.  And JFK had been talking to some of the top staff in his administration about busting up the CIA for what happened in Cuba.  This “conspiracy theorist” doesn’t come right out and say that the CIA had Kennedy killed.  But that’s what he’s pointing to.

Somehow that still shocks me.  Now, looking at what happened to Trump last year in Pennsylvania should make it seem obvious that the Deep State is completely ruthless and unconcerned with consequences.  But as intellectually simple as that situation is to see, it’s still horrifying to me.  Sure, I’ve known for decades now that our government isn’t the white hat good guys that I thought they were when I was younger.  Iraq taught me that politicians of both parties use Americans as pawns whenever it’s convenient.  We have psychopaths running many of our agencies.  Just look at the FBI and the Justice Department.  Guilt and innocence are the least important aspects of people they target for “justice.”

But the shock tells me that probably the most important work Donald Trump can do before he retires to Mar a Lago in three and half years is to empty out the CIA and the FBI.  I think of these two agencies as threats a hundred times more dangerous to this country than China and Russia combined.  We have a very expensive and on balance, formidable military machine.  Even after eighty years, the nuclear deterrence of our arsenal is still potent.  I don’t think the benefits we gain from the intelligence and judgement of these intelligence agencies compensate us for the malice and deception that they seem to display as their defining characteristics.  They are a threat to the elected leaders of this country and they represent a potent force preventing the very information which our leaders need from reaching them.  Instead of facts they provide a narrative that is convenient for their interests but often is confusing and destructive.  I wish Donald Trump all the best luck in tackling these rogue agencies.  And I hope he breaks them permanently.

Well, that’s what I thought about today.

Soak in the Sunshine

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Meriam Webster defines, “bellwether” as:

  • one that takes the lead or initiative
  • leader
  • an indicator of trends

Later on, they explain etymologically and for historical perspective, that wether means sheep and the original meaning of bellwether is the sheep that wears a bell and is the leader of the flock.  But nowadays the last meaning dominates.  A bellwether is an indicator of trends.

And so today I have declared Camera Girl as an American economic bellwether.  Today she told me that eggs are now priced less than five dollars a dozen and officially back within her budget again.  And later she told me that gasoline had fallen below three dollars a gallon.

Not one to waste such a moment I informed her that she needs to credit Donald Trump for these improvements.  And with a minimum of eye-rolling she unironically credited the forty seventh President of the United States with this economic turn of events.  Thank you, Camera Girl.

Alright I’ve banged the drum and declared victory over inflation based an a pretty small sample of prices.  But you have to remember people who go grocery shopping look at the world precisely from that angle.  When a dozen eggs costs eight dollars the sticker shock is visceral.  When gas goes from two dollars to three seventy-five a gallon that’s an outrage to motorists.  Especially if you don’t happen to have a six-figure salary.

So, what’s my point?  Well, for the last couple of months I’ve been reading the Democrats talking points and the most consistent advice is for the Democrats and the media to flood the field with the fact that inflation is not decreasing but increasing.  Okay, that’s a pretty potent strategy since inflation is primarily what got Biden and Harris bounced out of the race for the White House.  Allowing inflation to go unchecked for even two years would be suicidal for the Republicans.

So it is with great satisfaction that I note that at least some of the most noticeable and irritating consumer prices have headed in the right direction.  Now I can’t say exactly why this is happening.  Is it Trumps policies already making an impact?  Is it just the beauty of karma kicking the Democrats in the teeth and then patting Donald Trump on the shoulder like an old friend?  Maybe.  But whatever it is the guys at the Wednesday zoom call were kind of giddy about some of it.

So, I don’t know how long this will continue.  But every week that it does seems to take its toll on the mental health of Chuck Schumer, Hakim Jeffries and AOC.  All three seem to be close to a paranoid nervous breakdown.  I saw a little bit of Schumer on a show (maybe the View) and he was gesticulating with his arms and rattling on in a high-pitched whine as if he might be working up to a seizure or a stroke.  This is definitely where we want the Democrats.  When their heads look like they might explode I don’t think we have to worry about them convincing the American people of much of anything at all.  Well, maybe they might convince viewers that they’re unhinged.  That they might do.

So, am I laying it on a little thick?  Yeah, probably.  But it’s not every day or even every year that our enemies look so flustered and tongue-tied.  It’s a moment worth savoring.

18MAR2025 – How the Week is Progressing

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What’s to say today?  I guess the most interesting news event is Musk’s Space-X stepped in and brought the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station home after Boeing stranded them there six months ago.

There’s something ironic in this situation.  Boeing has been in the news for the last year because of defective aircraft that many have associated with DEI based hiring practices.  And now Space-X; an Elon Musk company that prides itself on merit-based hiring, steps in and solves a frightening situation with a can-do approach to space flight.  It’s like watching the two approaches to hiring compared face to face before our eyes.

I guess the other big story is that lousy judge trying to block the deportation of Central American gang-bangers by the Trump administration.  Afterward Trump said he should be impeached.  And so Chief Justice Roberts opens his big mouth and says that precedent doesn’t call for impeachment on a difference of opinion on a judge’s ruling.

As if that were what is going on.  These slimy leftist judges will stall and block everything the Trump administration wants to get done for the American people.  We will see this for the next four years.  If Roberts wants to be at all useful, he should expedite all requests by Trump’s administration to have these phony judges’ decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court and allow Trump to fix all these problems.  Of course, impeachment will never solve the problem.  We would need a supermajority in the Congress.  What we need is the Supreme Court to provide constitutional review of these awful decisions.

Today I finally got a handle on the impasse I’ve been wrestling with in finishing my book.  What I need is a good crisis/resolution to reach the endpoint.  So here is a situation where you know where you want to end up but there needs to be a struggle to make it feel satisfying.  But I don’t need another physical battle.  I need a popular revolt.  And I think I’ve figured out an angle.  I think I’ll withdraw the consent of the governed.  I’ll have a national guard unit revolt and then let it cascade across a state and then across the country.  Now I have to figure out the dramatic details.  I’ll have the national guard unit refuse to hand over my protagonist then when the Army wants to send in regulars, I’ll have the governors of the four states where Connors people are located close ranks with all of their national guard troops to deny the arrest.  And then I’ll let it swell from there.  That seems pretty good.  After that I’ll let the newly appointed president convene a Constitutional Convention to begin cleaning up the mess that the Deep State has caused.  And that will give me a nice breakpoint to allow my protagonist to be pardoned by the president.  And more than pardoned, exonerated.  And then I can allow him to ride off into the sunset which is something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

So that’s what I was doing today.  Thursday will be a long day when I’ll be working on stuff I hate.  But that’s life.  I have one of the grandsons coming over Saturday.  That should be fun.  Apparently, he’s voted for spaghetti and meatballs and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  So, I’d better do some extra time on the rowing machine this week.  But maybe I’ll burn some of that off with a baseball catch.  I hope my shoulder is still functional after a winter of chopping ice.  I wonder what movie he wants to watch?  I hope it’s “The Return of the King.”  I haven’t seen that one in a while.  I think the “Ride of the Rohirrim” is about due.

Well, that should be enough for now.

Give It Your Best Shot

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I heard that Trump wants to eliminate federal income tax for anyone earning less than $150,000.  Now isn’t that remarkable.  I can’t pretend that I know how that would impact the federal budget and debt but I’m pretty sure it will make him, at least in the short run, the most popular president in the last two hundred years.

I think this will raise several questions.  Will this force state income taxes to triple?  How will this impact the income taxes of people earning $150,000 to $300,000?  Will my social security and healthcare benefits be paid to me in monopoly money?

But all kidding aside, I know that Trump is considering many radical changes to the tax code.  A while ago I heard he was thinking about replacing income taxes with a federal sales tax increase.  Is this part of the same plan?  Between these ideas and the tariff stuff and the DOGE initiative to cut back the size and cost of the federal government we seem to be looking at a re-invention of government.  Or maybe it would be fair to call it a recalibration.  We all know the cost of government is out of whack and that we can’t possibly sustain the service on the debt indefinitely.  As it is now it’s something like $600 billion.  That’s insane.  What it means is that what Trump is doing isn’t revolutionary madness to the body politic.  He’s applying a tourniquet before the patient bleeds out.

But there’s no guarantee all of this will succeed.  The American voters are fickle and they have no patience.  Unless Trump gets most of his program in place in the next year, the mid-terms will be upon him and he will lose the ability to get legislation through Congress.  So, he’s threading a needle.

But these are exciting times.  People have awakened from a decades-long-dream to find their government is a malignant force that threatens their lives and livelihood.  And their only hope is a crazy man like Donald Trump.  Well, at least it’s not boring.  It’s more like a three-ring circus.  We’ve got wars and tariffs in the first ring.  We’ve got DOGE and the Swamp in the second ring.  And in the third ring we have crime and the illegal aliens.  And Trump is the circus master in the top hat, tails, boots and whip trying to keep the whole circus moving at top speed like an infernal calliope-carousel steam engine.  And hoping that the whole thing doesn’t fly apart in all directions.

I will say I am guardedly hopeful.  Just seeing how much can be done when an energetic and fearless approach is taken, provides encouragement that I can’t remember feeling since Ronald Reagan told us in 1981 that the Carter malaise was over and it was morning in America again.  So maybe it will fail and the whole thing will fall apart and the bad guys will be back in power afterward.

But what have I got to lose by rooting for Team Trump?  Can I be any more blacklisted than I already have been?  Will it matter if they tax me any higher if the money is already becoming worthless?  Can they possibly know any more of my words, deeds or thoughts than they already do?

No!  I have nothing to lose by betting on Trump.  Go for it, Donald.  Give it your best shot.

Kursk and General Thoughts on Ukraine

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Kursk and General Thoughts on Ukraine

The story I heard was that the Russians used a natural gas pipeline to move hundreds of troops several miles behind the Ukrainian lines and the panic this caused in several locations within the Ukrainian Kursk front has disrupted the situation and according to some reports is leading to a rout.

It will take a day or two before reports can be confirmed.  But this may be the beginning of an overall shift in the battlefield situation.  Up until now the words, meatgrinder, attrition and horrendously slow seemed to be the best way to describe the war.  Russia has been making steady but glacially slow progress in capturing the four provinces they’ve declared their own.

The exception was Ukraine’s lightning strike into Russia’s Kursk region that seemed to catch Moscow off balance before stalling out.  Zelensky had hoped that Kursk could be used as a bargaining chip in eventual negotiations with Russia.  But this new situation may be Russia’s determination to put an end to the Kursk front.

If Ukraine retreats from Kursk, I think it might signal a broader collapse of Ukrainian military resolve.  But as I said above it’s too soon to know if some of these reports are Russian bravado over their pipeline strategy.

But even regardless of the impact of this attack it almost surely seems the Russians have the wherewithal to eventually wear down the Ukrainian army into submission.  These are two stubborn enemies and the attrition is mutually destructive.  All Russia has as advantage, is size.  As I’ve said Russia will lose two million men and Ukraine will lose one million and Russia will win.

That’s victory?

From my point of view, Trump will not arbitrate this negotiation.  At best he is forcing the Ukrainians to the bargaining table by refusing continued military aid.

But he has no special insight into the psychology of these two closely related peoples.  This is very, very close to a civil war.  And considering how many Russians live in Ukraine it’s even more personal than that.  The only ones who might be able to negotiate an early end to this war are Vladimir Putin and whoever the Ukrainians pick as their leader.  Is that Zelensky?  I doubt it, but it’s possible.  The reason I doubt it is that Zelensky has rejected much better Russian deals in the past and vowed that he would force Russia out of all Ukrainian lands including Crimea.  I think he would fear for his own safety if he came back with a worse deal that cedes the lands Russia demands.  But whoever it is I believe that the sooner they start talking the better, for Ukraine.  Every day that passes more Russians die and more Ukrainian land passes into Russian control.  Eventually Russia will win on the battle field everything it currently wants through negotiation.  However, as the Russian casualties continue to mount so will their demands.  Eventually it might come to include all Ukraine.

And not all the blame goes to Russia and Ukraine.  Joe Biden and Boris Johnson convinced Zelensky that the Turkish peace talks weren’t as good as what they would get with the help of western weapons and intelligence aid.  This terrible advice was a siren song that seduced the Ukrainians into thinking we knew what we were talking about.  That was a crime.  Because we were stupid or maybe we didn’t care and just wanted to see Russia damaged even if it meant killing every last Ukrainian.  Because we knew or should have known that the Russians weren’t going to let Ukrainians mistreat the Russians living in Ukraine.  They’ve been living there for hundreds of years.  It’s as if California somehow became part of Mexico again and then the Mexicans started to abuse the Americans living there.  Who thinks that the United States would just stand by while our countrymen were abused and killed.  We would do just exactly what the Russians are doing right now.

So that’s my thought.  Ukrainians and Russians know the psychology of their relationship better than anyone else.  The sooner those two sides sit down at the negotiating table the sooner the killing can stop.  Hopefully for good.  Because it’s not as if they’re going to somehow move farther apart.  They better learn how to be neighbors of some sort.