Category: Trump

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 07FEB2025 – In the Moment

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The optimist in me understands that Trump’s superpower is that the Left, Media, and others constantly underestimate the man’s intelligence and act as if he is a barely functioning special ed student. This impression is amplified by the sycophant news outlets that produce slanted coverage of practically everything the man does; from his policies to even what the man decides to eat for dinner.

Those of us who follow politics closely can recall from memory the litany of dishonest accounts of the man. Remember “Very fine people” and “Injecting Bleach” are still told as gospel. This doesn’t even begin to include the rumors and tall tales reported as truth.

FWIW, my take on the Gaza announcement is an orchestrated strategy with a plan that hasn’t been fully revealed yet. No, we aren’t going to see American boots on the ground in Gaza. (I pray we don’t) But there is something in the works behind the scenes that should play out in the coming months. I know, I know, it sounds a little too much like “Trust the Plan” thinking.

However, I have been blown away with what the incoming administration has done so far, especially after today when they threw down the gauntlet over the DOGE kid getting doxxed and attacked from the Left. Trump, JD, and Elon coming out and telling, well, the world really, that these cancelling tactics aren’t going to work was exactly what I voted for. Many of us on the Right are done with the past, watching scalps offered to the Leftist altar of morality with no chance of absolution or grace for the offenders.

“I refuse to cut one blade of grass for my enemies delight.”

The Left has long had their radicals and vanguard of folks within the Progressive coalition. Do they routinely perform purification rituals to placate and appease the Right? No.

Have a great weekend OCF

Sorry We’re Broke

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We live in interesting times.  And I mean that both ways.  Based on the fact that Donald Trump is performing surgery on Washington DC with a pry bar and a Sawzall there are lots of interesting facts coming out about the inner workings of the Deep State.  Apparently, most of the 30+ trillion-dollar national debt is based on various agencies including USAID using the Treasury as a credit card with no limit.  So yes, very interesting.  But then there’s the Chinese proverb that uses “interesting” times as a euphemism for disaster.  Well, we’ve got that too.  Our country is overrun with illegal aliens.  Almost all of the major cities are hotbeds of crime and poverty.  Nothing works the way it’s supposed to anymore and Joy Reid is still showing her face on television.

So, yes, there are still problems as far as the eye can see.  But it is impossible to deny that there is a change coming over our country and maybe our world.  The veil has been ripped away and it’s plain to see that people are tired of being lied to and bullied by “our betters.”  And suddenly the truth is busting out all over the place.  Even establishment hacks like Marco Rubio are talking about things that they would have been afraid to mention just a couple of years ago.  Democrats are shrieking about “our democracy” and racism but no one cares anymore.  The sacred cows are being investigated and they’re being found wanting.  Maybe fifty years ago when we had at least a budget process that was followed every year we could afford to pay for a few million dollars of subscriptions to Politico and the New York Times.  Sorry, we’re broke.  Cancel our subscriptions.  Maybe when the Soviet Union was pretending to be a world power, we could afford hundreds of billions of dollars to fund proxy wars in Ukraine or Afghanistan.  Sorry we’re broke.  Let Russia have Ukraine.  They’re the only ones who can even pronounce the names on each other’s maps.  Let them sort out their differences.  Maybe when there was blatant racial discrimination happening sixty years ago affirmative action might have been tolerated.  Sorry we’re broke.  We need everybody pulling their own weight again.  Do your best.

And all this candor is an amazing elixir.  It’s good for everything that ails you.  Giving things their true names and facing facts is the beginning of fixing all of the problems that have been created by “our betters.”  The sad thing is we can’t make them pay for all this ruin.  We’re still the ones who’ll have to do the hard work of digging ourselves out of this hole.  But the sooner we get started, the sooner we can put all of the madness behind us.  And without the DEI lies in school and everywhere else the young people will start understanding what’s real and what’s propaganda.  No more teachers telling them they’re a different “gender.”  Or girls being told they can be fire fighters or Navy Seals.  No more quota hires and no more affirmative action.  And best of all we may be seeing the end of the “girl boss,” both in the office and in superhero movies.  I can’t decide which I’m happier to see go.

So, yeah, we live in interesting times.  Trump and his band of marauders keep raising their sights and looking at bigger and bigger game.  It’s all very exciting.  Things that a year ago seemed impossible suddenly look doable.  Could a balanced budget be on the agenda for next year?  Maybe.  All the illegal aliens deported by 2026?  Sure.  Joy Reid on the unemployment line by Fourth of July?  Well, wishes can come true.

But Gaza?

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So, I turn around for a minute and the next thing I know Trump is annexing the Gaza Strip.  What’s next?  Will he be fighting the Pygmies of Central Africa and laying claim to the long-lost ivory of the legendary elephant burial ground?  I’m starting to get dizzy.  Now I’m all for shutting down USAID and offering golden parachutes to the whole damn CIA.  I doubt anyone in that agency ever produced intelligence that was worth the paper it was written on.

But this Gaza thing sounds crazy.  What the hell do we want with Gaza?  First of all, it’s full of Gazans who are crazy even by Palestinian standards.  If this is some kind of a bluff, I’m damned if I can see how it helps anyone.  Sending our troops there is tantamount to opening up another forever war when we’re finally rid of the ones we were stuck with.

Well, for the time being I’ll make believe that this isn’t actually happening.  I’m not ready to abandon all hope for a better world and that’s what adopting Gaza would mean.  Stay tuned.

Getting back to happier thoughts, I hear Trump is going after PBS and NPR.  They’re being investigated because they allow sponsors to air little puff pieces that tout their sponsorship.  These acknowledgements are being scrutinized to see if they come too close to being commercials which are banned under the PBS charter.  Well, that seems like quibbling.  I wouldn’t cut off their funding over that.  I’d axe them for employing Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks.  Two more pathetic “journalists” have never assaulted the airwaves with tripe less worthy of being called opinion.  And after NPR drove out Uri Berliner for telling the truth about the left-wing echo chamber that exists at the organization, Trump should shut the place down once and for all because of discrimination against intelligence.  He would be doing a favor to all of humanity.  The smarmy, unctuous, hushed tones of the boobs employed there are an obvious symptom of a hothouse environment where products of Ivy League colleges exchange congratulations for “uncovering” examples of normal people ignoring whatever pathology NPR is trying to normalize and getting on with their lives without having to apologize for doing so.

As much as I applaud the acumen that has targeted USAID as among the first departments to be dissected by Trump’s cabinet, I really want to see funding ended for NPR and PBS.  They always claim that they only receive a pittance from the federal government.  Fine then, they won’t miss it when it’s gone.  Just cut it off.

And finally, I’m very excited to see what happens to the Department of Education.  I can think of a dozen changes that would reverse the influence of that agency from negative to positive.  The first thing would be cutting off all funding to any public school that in any way advocated for abnormal sexuality.  Banning the whole LGBTQ mess should be the first order of business.  Afte that the government should stop funding for colleges that use affirmative action instead of merit-based criteria for admissions.  And finally, the federal government should buy into school choice via vouchers for parents who want a legitimate choice to the public school system.

It looks like Gabbard, Kennedy and Patel will get through this week or next.  That should allow Trump to solidify the actions he’s already taking in those departments.  There really does seem to be action almost everywhere in the government.  I hear DOGE is doing an in-depth review of the Ukraine War funding to find out exactly how many billions of dollars were stolen.  That will be a sad but important report.  Alright, that’s enough for now.

But Gaza?

Fear and Pain.  Good.

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So, I was an hour late for work clearing the stupid snow this morning.  Well, because of the snow and because I’m overly optimistic when it comes to estimating snow removal time.  Or maybe I’m too lazy to get up that early.  But it all got done and the world didn’t end and so I can move along with my day and week.

Yesterday Trump ordered sanctions against Canada, Mexico and China.  Today Canada and Mexico came to terms by agreeing to Trump’s border security requirements and got a reprieve of a month on the tariffs to prove their good faith.  And Panama has agreed not to extend China’s management of the canal.

And today I listened to Marco Rubio declaring USAID a rogue agency that will now be brought to heel for ignoring orders to account for who it has been giving money to.

Could this be “Little Marco” sounding more like Donald Trump, or at least an ally of Donald Trump and America?  Has the world gone topsy-turvy?  Or is it just that no one has ever stood his ground against the bureaucrats, influence peddlers and sycophants that infest Washington and waste our money by the imperial ton.  Seeing the progress of Trump’s seemingly endless initiatives I can’t help but think that this is the first man to stand up to the bureaucracy.  Ever!  And it occurs to me that all those impossible things we heard about; defying the FBI and the CIA, and finding out what actually gets done with the defense budget, and reining in the EPA; all of these unattainable goals can be had for the cost of doing the hard work to find out what the bureaucrats actually do all day, and using presidential power to hold them accountable.

I was reading the ZMan’s post today comparing Trump to Isaac Asimov’s character the Mule in his classic science fiction series Foundation.  The Mule was an outlier because his mutant psychic talent was not predicted by Hari Seldon’s “psychohistory.”  And so, he blew up all of the best laid plans of the Foundation.  ZMan thinks that Trump is the destructor laying waste to the managerial state (aka the Deep State).  Well, I don’t disagree with that analogy.  But maybe he’ll be more than that.  Maybe he’ll be like the child who wasn’t afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes.  And imagine if that lesson gets learned by not only JD Vance but even Marco Rubio.  Now, of course, most of these Republican Senators and Congressmen are crooks and they want the payoffs from the defense and pharma lobbyists.  But even if it’s only a handful of honest men, Trump has let the American people in on the secret and anyone who wants to inherit his mantle will have to call out the corruption, waste and inefficiency of the bureaucracy and get us our money back from the crooks that infest Washington.

I’m starting to get hopeful that Trump is going to take a chainsaw to the budget.  And he has several incentives.  Reducing government excesses will lower the debt, rein in inflation and lower taxes.  But it will also starve his enemies of funds with which to attack him.  They won’t be able to hand out millions of dollars to left-wing crazies.  And the NGOs are where most of Trump’s enemies work when the Democrats are out of the White House.  Losing their cozy perches and lucrative salaries will frighten them out of their wits.  And that is exactly when they’ll be least likely to cause trouble.  They’ll be forced to scramble to find a new source of income and they’ll lose the microphones they typically have to organize trouble for conservatives.

I don’t want to sound like a Pollyana.  It’s not as if the Left no longer controls most of the institutions; the schools, the universities, the Media, Hollywood, the book publishers and most of Silicon Valley.  But Trump has show us that controlling the White House can be incredibly helpful in throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the Deep State.  And since the Deep State at this point is the Left, it’s causing our enemies fear and pain.

Good.

Now That’s Showmanship

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Ah, Groundhog Day.  When northern America as one embraces a Bill Murray movie and tries to figure out a way to survive until winter gives up.  After a remarkably mild 2023/2024 winter, cold weather has reasserted itself and I have embraced the reality that I don’t live in a rational climate.  The pattern is one day of freezing rain and the next night, zero degrees Fahrenheit.  This is an extremely unhelpful arrangement.  Almost any depth of snow can be removed.  0-4 inches is handled with a snow shovel.  2-22 inches yields, for the most part to a snowblower or plow.  After that it get trickier, but it can still be done.  And the resulting cleared surface is generally very usable for walking and driving your car on.

A quarter to a half inch of ice is a disaster.  If the ground was very cold when the rain fell and then the air temperature dropped quickly and even worse if the wind really picked up, you end up with a layer that is almost impossible to remove unless you put road salt on it.  Unfortunately, I use well water so I don’t salt my driveway.  That’s very unfortunate.  Instead, I take a garden rake or a roofer’s shovel and I abrade the surface of the ice and then I sand it and then scrape it again to lodge the sand in the surface.  This works but it is extremely labor intensive.  So, I hate rain in the winter.  And lately it has become a very frequent occurrence.

Alright, enough whining.

So, what’s new?  Well, tariffs.  Trump has tariffs for Canada, Mexico, China and I assume a lot of other places.  And I hear he’s suspending all aid to South Africa while an investigation of anti-white land seizures and other worse actions is performed.  Wow.  Trump is going full steam ahead.  Every day I ask myself, “What’s left to do?  Nothing.”  But then he does three more things.  One of the things I’m very happy about is that Trump is cutting off the money supply to the NGO’s.  These organizations are funded by the US government but work directly against the interests and sometimes against the very laws of this country.  Here we are spending billions of dollars to eject illegal aliens while charities are spending billions of tax-payer dollars to feed, house and hide these very same illegal aliens.  Cutting off their funds is the most effective and fastest method of combatting the problem.  I’ll give him credit; Trump is proving to be a force to be reckoned with.  I don’t want to get my hopes up too high but it seems to me that there is a very good chance that he’s going to “fundamentally change the United States,” but for the better.  Sort of an anti-Obama.

Kennedy, Gabbard and Patel are up for votes in the Senate this week.  If I were to guess I’d say all three will need Vance as the tie-breaking vote.  And that’s actually me being optimistic.  There are some truly terrible Republicans in the Senate.  McConnel voted against Hegseth because he gets money from defense contractors and they’re worried Hegseth and Trump will end the gravy train.  I think it’s possible he’ll vote to confirm Patel because he doesn’t get paid by any lobby associated with the FBI.  Now there are plenty of Senators that get paid by the pharma lobby.  This might cause Kenedy to be rejected.

Update: Hat Tip to Tom D for the data

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top-medical-indust-receip

 

 

As for Gabbard, I think she’ll get through but I think Vance will break the tie.  So, I guess I’m cautiously optimistic.  Hopefully that’s more accurate than Democrats being nauseously optimistic on Kamala’s election prospects.

We’re getting 2-4 inches of snow tonight (they say).  I’ll be up very early to clear that before going to work tomorrow.  This will be a hectic week with some travel toward the end.  But I’ll be dutifully following the news coming from the Trump White House (the Greatest Show on Earth).  I keep waiting to hear that he’s declassified the Area 51 files and that he’s going to give a tour of the flying saucer and the pickled bodies of the space aliens.  Now that’s showmanship.

Back When Darren Stevens Was Still on Madison Avenue

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Even the commercials were better back in the old days when we were allowed to be happy.  The guys writing the commercials could write clever lyrics and even add a spritely tune for good measure.  Now?  Not so much.

Maybe President Trump can make MAGA also mean “Make Ads Great Again.”

 

 

Ten Days of Trump

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It’s good to be home again.  Also today I picked up my photography computer from the local cyber-surgeons.  There was considerable sticker shock (yikes) for the new motherboard and processor and some adjustment for the new hardware (adapters, cables and such nonsense) but I’m back in business with my photos again.  I haven’t really tested out it’s capabilities but the tech guy told me the new processor will be ridiculously faster than my old system.  I can’t wait to try importing a thousand raw files and see how quickly it “renders” them.  But enough geeking out.

I had my usual Wednesday virtual coffee break with the boys from the old firm.  I have to say the giddiness is getting a bit ridiculous.  Can unbridled enthusiasm be considered a form of backwards Trump Derangement Syndrome?  There’s just too much laughing and optimism.  It seems unnatural.  Someone was claiming that Trump was talking of eliminating the Income Tax altogether.  Now that just sounds nuts.  But the angle was to switch over to a consumption tax.  I have to confess that would suit me fine.  But is everything going to be revolutionized?  What’s next?  Will all the currency be made over with pictures of The Donald?  Will Trump’s signature hairstyle be added to George Washington on Mt. Rushmore to update the monument?  Will the end of the Pledge of Allegiance be modified to “one nation under God with liberty and justice and so much winning for all?”  Have Trump’s words from the 2016 election come true? Is it too much winning?

Well … no.  I’ll put up with more winning.

There are still more things we need fixed.  First of all, Kash Patel still hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate.  That means there are hundreds of Stasi agents still working for the FBI.  Once he’s had a chance to clean house, I’ll have a better idea how much more winning is needed.  In fact, you know what I want to see?  I want Trump to issue executive orders categorically forbidding Patriot Act or FISA Court actions against American citizens during his administration.  Let’s have at least four years without our constitutional rights to due process being violated by tinpot Thought Police.

You see, that’s what happens when Trump starts issuing executive orders by the metric ton.  We start assuming he can do anything.  And then we become impatient if he hasn’t read our minds and already done the stuff we just thought of.  Why hasn’t there been a special prosecutor empowered to go after Joy Reid for being an eyesore on television.  Surely having her on cable tv is a form of cruel and unusual punishment for all of us.  And what about the “ladies” of the View.  Surely someone can turn the show into some kind of dunk tank / lie detector suspense show where Joy Behar or Whoopie Goldberg or one of the other crones is hooked up to a lie detector and asked a question about Donald Trump or some other conservative she hates and if she lies about something, like whether he’s been convicted or rape, she falls into a water tank filled with sharks or piranha fish and has to swim for her life to a distant ladder.  I bet the ratings would be through the roof.  So that’s kind of where I am right now.  For the most part I’m happy with Trump 2.0.  But a few little tweaks couldn’t hurt.

Well, that’s enough ranting for now.  I’ll be waiting to see how Patel, Kennedy and Gabbard do in the Senate next week.  If all three get through, Trump will have most of his core team in place and he can really get started with draining the swamp and taming the Leviathan.

So far so good.

It Just Seems Too Easy

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Regardless of whether you watch left-leaning or right-leaning news outlets you can’t miss the fact that Trump is bulldozing the Washington establishment into the ground and increasing his popularity from day to day.  And both sides (when they’re being honest) agree that they’ve never seen anything like this transition.  Trump is getting his people confirmed by the Senate and he’s removing people from the federal bureaucracy that he sees as impediments; prosecutors, inspectors general, generals, you name it.  He’s even going after birthright citizenship.  His deportation initiative is going full speed ahead and has found allies in some blue cities.  Nothing seems off the table.  He’s a juggernaut.  So why does this make me think there’s a George Floyd or a COVID pandemic about to be unleashed on us?

I guess I’m surprised at how smoothly it’s all going.  Could the Left have been so completely flummoxed by Trump’s victory and his organization that they can’t fight back at all?  I have read that a network of antifa and LGBTQ freaks are communicating on TikTok about attacking ICE agents doing their jobs.  I’ve also read that they’re discussing assassinating Trump.  And if I’ve heard these things then obviously everyone on the Left knows about it already.  This jibes with what’s already going on.  Apparently the two assassins who killed the Border agent in Vermont were transgender freaks of one sort or the other.  So, there is some stuff going on.  But all of this seems pretty tame compared to what I imagine the Left could put out on the street if they unleashed all of the psychopaths they command.  So that is what I’m wondering about.  Is this the calm before the storm?

Now maybe it’s the case that without the FBI and Justice Department running interference for them, that antifa and the other leftist goons aren’t a very effective force.  I’m assuming the FBI is right now in panic mode wondering when their jobs are going to be pulled out from under them.  That might be the simple answer.  Or maybe it takes time to plan and organize a color revolution in 2025.  Maybe they’re looking to publicize a mistake made by ICE agents during a deportation arrest.  Possibly a child hurt or killed during some firefight with gang members or drug traffickers.  Or maybe they’re looking for a valid US citizen accidentally mistaken for an illegal alien.  Possibly that’s what they’re looking for to spark a firestorm against Trump’s administration.

Of course, it’s also possible that the popularity of Trump’s agenda will protect him from even some problems and mistakes that inevitably will happen in something as massive and difficult as finding and deporting tens of millions of people hiding in the general population.  The scope of such an endeavor is sobering to consider.  It will consume enormous resources in dollars and man-hours.  It will not happen quickly or easily.  But so far people are increasingly supportive of this project as it becomes a reality.  Especially as we see him going after gangs and cartels that are wreaking havoc in cities across the country.

So maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe it’s just winning all the way down.  But for some reason it seems too easy.

Times that Try Men’s Souls

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One step forward two steps back.  Ah, the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune.  Last week the mainframe that I keep my photos and editing software on died a terrible death.  I had hoped at first that maybe the power supply had given out.  I sent it off to the local computer geeks with this dream of a call back the next day about how a wire had come loose or a fuse had blown and all was well.  Yeah.  Not so much.

I received the dreaded news that, “The motherboard is fried and all you can reuse is the case, drives and the fans.”

The horror.

Well, at least my photos didn’t go up the chimney so that’s good.  But this has put a kink in my photo-editing schedule.  For the last week I’ve been scouring my camera memory card for stuff to post and I’m reaching the bottom of the barrel.  I’ll need some more stuff really soon.  Plus, I can’t use my favorite editing software or the big monitors I usually use.  Well maybe I can, but I’d have to fiddle around with the wires and I’m too lazy to do it as a one-off.  But I must be stoic.  As the bard reminds us, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;  They kill us for their sport.”

Or something like that.

But not everything was bad this week.  I decided on a path forward for my story.  If you remember in the last installment, I had my good guys strike back at the vicious President of the United States who had hurled a 10-megaton nuke into their underground retreat.  As a counter attack they undermined the White House, the US Capitol, the Pentagon and a few other key federal buildings and sent them hurtling hundreds of feet into the underground abyss.  This effectively decapitated the United States federal government.  Specifically, the president, vice president, the congress and the cabinet secretaries are all dead.

What I’ve decided to do is arrange for the only honest man in the FBI to be selected to succeed the president.  And this is the guy who I’ve been using to track down my protagonist and his sponsors.

So, the antagonist I have who has been hunting for the sniper is selected for succession to the presidency.  In part he is selected for the knowledge he’s gained hunting the sniper and the organization supporting him.  But because the head of the FBI had been assassinated earlier, he was also the acting head of the bureau.  Of course, that isn’t technically in the line of succession for the presidency but with all the legitimate successors dead, the military and the supreme court put their heads together and after doing an inventory of who was left and who was willing, they chose my guy.

Now this is an outrageous scenario.  And so, it’s really a lot of fun to poke around with.  And because it’s so outlandish I can do more or less whatever seems like fun with it.  I have the poor schnook summoned to a military base and he’s thinking that he’s about to be blamed for the catastrophic failure of the manhunt for the sniper and instead he’s being asked if he will accept the presidency.  That’s a pretty great scene.  I think I’m going to have him ask if he can work remote from home.  That would be a nice touch.  I think that’s what I would ask for.

So anyway, the story is moving forward.  So that’s good.

Camera Girl laid down the law today and had me put the weatherstripping around the basement door.  She found where I had hidden the supplies and brought them out to me.  So, I grumbled and dragged myself over to the door and did it.  And you know, it really made a big difference.  But I really did a lousy job installing it and I’m planning to redo it and add a sweep to the bottom of the door.  Funny how these home improvement projects can grow on you.

And looking around at the Trump juggernaut I see he’s making headway in all directions.  He’s travelling to North Carolina and Los Angeles to get involved with the hurricane and fire victims.  And tonight, JD Vance was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.  Collins, Murkowski and good old Mitch McConnell were the holdouts that made Vance’s vote necessary.  Well, that’s why we needed the other Senate pickups last November.  But things are looking up everywhere in Trump world.

So that’s my post, a little this and little that.