Category: Trump

A Better Grip

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

In the aftermath of Christmas I’m lazing around the house eating leftover desserts and reading whatever news and commentary appears on-line.  All things considered that’s a pretty relaxing way to end off Christmas week.  There were a few dominant buckets of news and opinion.  There were the, “What’s the first thing Trump will do?” and, “How can we stop Trump from doing anything?” and, “What will be Joe Biden’s legacy?”  Well, that last one will be easy to answer.  A VHS copy of “Weekend at Bernie’s” for the Biden Library.

But one of the more interesting things I listened to was Al Franken talking to some journalist about why Trump won or more exactly, why Harris lost.  So, this investigative reporter tried to explain to Franken that people voted against Harris because they didn’t like how their values were demeaned by the Democrats.

Now this idea had to rattle around in Franken’s head for a good long time.  His guest reminded him several times about Hillary calling people deplorables and even Obama lecturing working class people about clinging to God and guns.  And, of course, the idea of criticizing Obama disoriented Al Franken, “Are we allowed to say that?”  Eventually Franken even began to see how Latino men and even black men might eventually get tired of voting for a party that disrespects men and then actually vote for the white guy.  Of course, all this crazy talk had to be toned down and they both started genuflecting to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and howling and shrieking Trump’s name because he’s evilll!

But it’s interesting.  They were devilishly close to uttering the statement that the Democrats have become the party of rich white people and Trump is the man of the people, even people who aren’t white.  Now that’s funny.  Al Franken was cast out during one of the #metoo pogroms because back when he was a comedian for Saturday Night Live, he committed some practical jokes against women that were sexual in nature.  If I remember correctly, the jokes were at about the maturity level expected of sixth graders.  For this he was cast out of the United States Senate.  This makes him one of the most severely punished Democrats falling afoul of cancel culture.  I wonder how this makes him feel about the whole left-wing culture project?  Losing a senate seat must really, really sting.  But I guess he still gets his money from the Left and money talks.

Well, anyway, it is interesting to see how even leftists can recognize obvious facts even if they defy all the tenets of their faith.  They may not be able to admit the consequences of those facts if they’re particularly blasphemous but they can tentatively poke at the facts with a stick and point out how they remind them of this or that thing that would make sense if it wasn’t so frighteningly close to admitting that Kamala Harris is an idiot and the Biden Administration was a dumpster fire.

So, you see, the Democrats have been working their way through the seven stages of mourning.  They may not be all the way to acceptance but they’re darn close.  What will come next is the search for a savior.  The most amusing name I heard floated was … Kamala Harris!  Of course we couldn’t get that lucky.  Even the crazy cat ladies of the Democrat establishment and their loyal eunuchs wouldn’t allow their political correctness to permit Kamala anywhere near the 2028 election.  Josh Shapiro or Gavin Newsom or even Bozo the Clown could get on the primary ballot but Kamala has chewed through (supposedly) $2.5 billion.  From what I’ve heard, the donors are kinda mad.  There are probably as many hit squads trying to get her as are after Trump.

So today was a relaxing day and although I am a little embarrassed to have bothered with the goofy stuff I read, it was a way to catch up with where the world is currently floating.  And it made me think.  Right about now Trump must be saying to himself, “Less than a month to go.  I better get a better grip on this tiger’s tail because I’m about to get a hell of a ride.  And so are we all.

Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal.  Deal or No Deal?

photog Current Events, Humor, Trump , ,

When I was a kid one of my best friends was crazy.  He was wired so that whenever the opportunity arose, he was ready and willing to poke a beehive (metaphorically).  He possessed a razor-sharp wit that had only one track; hilariously cruel mockery.  He could mimic and belittle anyone or anything.  The problem was he never selected his targets based on the blowback he could expect.  And so there were very serious consequences; beatings, expulsions from schools and youth organizations and vendettas of various sorts.

I think Donald Trump has a similar knack.  Going all the way back to the days of “Little Marco” Rubio and “low energy” Jeb, Trump has demonstrated that making his opponents look ridiculous is completely in his wheelhouse.  Does this explain his recent statements about annexing or buying Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone?

I guess we’ll have to try and sort these things out.

Let’s start with Canada.  For starters, geographically speaking Canada is the second largest country on planet Earth.  With a population of about 40,000,000 it’s only slightly more populous than California and it is mostly quite cold.  But it obviously has plenty of natural resources and potential.  But it is kind of a real country so how exactly does it become part of the United States?  Well, obviously it doesn’t.  Right now, the Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party are the extremely unpopular majority party with him as prime minster.  After the various COVID debacles and the following downturn in the economy, the Conservatives are expected to win the 2025 elections and send Trudeau packing.  Now I have to assume that any Canadian politician who gave a positive response to this suggestion by Trump would be voted out of office during the next election.  Who knows, maybe the Canadian parliament might vote to impeach him immediately just to punish such a thing.  But I don’t think there’s a chance in the world of Canada agreeing to join the United States unless the Gates of Hell opened up in Ottawa and it was the only way to prevent their annihilation.  So why would Trump say such a thing.  Of course, because he was taunting Trudeau.  And in this case what could be the consequences to him?  None.  Canada has no leverage over the United States and serves as the impotent straight man to any jibes that Trump cares to make.  So, let’s just say this one is just rhetoric.  It’s just like my boyhood friend exhibiting a penitent for cruel mockery.

Then how about Greenland?  Now this is a totally different animal.  It is the largest island in the world but only about 50,000 people live there, mostly Inuit.  Apparently, Denmark; the current owner of the island doesn’t know what to do with it.  They have white guilt over colonizing it a thousand years ago and want to give it back to the Inuit.  So, Trump talking about buying it is actually a doable thing.  Currently most of it is covered by glaciers.  But if the ice continues to melt the way it is going someday this could be a very valuable piece of real estate.  Also, the probable quantities of natural resources (including fresh water) are almost incalculable.  So, let’s call this one more than just rhetoric.  Let’s attribute it to Trump’s love of a good deal at a good price.  I think he’s serious about this one.

Now, what about the Panama Canal Zone?  I think we can call this saber rattling against the Chinese.  Chinese commercial interests in Panama may be related to very large increases in the cost of using the canal for shipping.  Saying we should take it back may be Trump’s way of threatening the Chinese with a fight they can’t win if they take advantage of American companies using the canal.  Does that mean he wouldn’t actually take back the canal by force?  Well, nothing is impossible but I would rate it as extremely unlikely.  Blockading it, on the other hand, might be something he would do.  So, let’s call this one a special case where the rhetoric has some basis in reality.

And finally, what other bargains remain out there for Donald Trump to annex?  Mexico?  Australia?  Japan?  Well, who can say?  Mexico would actually make some sense.  Not as a state but as a protectorate.  We could crush the drug gangs and rebuild Mexico as a client state with our own puppet government installed to allow for its people to live decent lives.  But honestly it would be more work than it would be worth to us.  Better to build a wall four hundred feet tall and a hundred feet deep with laser-armed drones guarding it.

And the rest of the world?  Look we have enough problems with our own people.  Mr. Trump, I know you like a deal but how about just reclaiming our own country.  Is it a deal?

Which Place Will Trump Add to the United States?

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Getting in the Spirit

photog Camera Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Photography Reviews, Trump ,
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Some snow falling today surprised me into remembering how close Christmas is.  Of course, I dasn’t say such a thing aloud in Camera Girl’s presence or she would toss an oven mitt or a ladle at me for my oblivious attitude as she soldiers on in her pre-Christmas baking and cooking marathon.  She is calculating cooking and storage times down to the nanosecond as enormous quantities of baked goods, meat, pasta, cheese and vegetables are processed in the run up to the big event.  My party line is that I am available to help in any capacity she sees fit.  This merely elicits rueful head-shaking and eye-rolling.  Well, that’s my story.  And anyway, I serve many useful functions.  I am the snow removal department and I also serve as chauffeur if the roads seem too tricky for her.  And I have a thousand and one other jobs.  For instance, I’m in charge of the yearly Christmas card design and procurement.  Well, of course.  I’m a photographer.  But such things are easily forgotten by someone who can point to a table groaning under the weight of a feast.  Well, we also serve who wait and eat.  But who’s keeping score anyway?

I have all of next week off and I’m looking forward to the get togethers.  But I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation in Washington.  It’s almost unbelievable how feckless and dishonest the Biden administration intends to be right up to the final day of their reign of terror.  Biden’s pardoning of hideously evil people would be shameful if Biden and his cronies had any shame.  I have to assume that there was a price list posted somewhere for the scum of the earth to figure out whether they could afford to be freed by Hunter and Jill and whoever else wrote out the pardons for Joe to scribble his signature on.  And the Republicans don’t disappoint with their nitwitted attempts to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.  Only the dishonesty and corruption of the Democrats allows the GOP to seem better by comparison.  But it really is a sad sideshow to behold.

The clowns and the cretins, the monsters and the madmen; the whole cast of this insane drama that is playing out on the deck of a sailing ship headed straight for an iceberg.  And at this point Donald Trump is the captain and he and his crew are locked in a cutlass fight with the usual pirates and so no one is steering the ship.  Well, it should give us a reason to pop popcorn in 2025.

But this is all beside the point.  We have Christmas to celebrate and the relief from knowing that somehow, we dodged the bullet of a Kamala Harris presidency.  And, sure, so many things will go wrong in 2025.  Trump will waffle, Democrats will lie and cheat, bureaucrats will obfuscate and interfere and Republicans will prove themselves inept and obtuse.  In other words, standard operating procedure.  But things will be better than they’ve been the last four years.  God willing, the wars will start to die down.  Energy prices will come back to Earth and that will tend to drive down the prices of everything else.  And the biggest bonus, we may never see any of the Bidens for the rest of our lives.  That alone is worth a hallelujah.

Top Men Working on It – Part 2

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Well, I enjoyed yesterday’s outing so much I thought I’d have another go at solving the world’s problems on Uncle Sam’s dime.  Here are some more projects to keep me off the streets and make the world a better place:

  • Stamp Out the Metric System. – That’s right. I want to outlaw it and insist that the freezing point of water is 32 degrees and the boiling point is 212 degrees.  And I’m talking Fahrenheit.  I want halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and thirty seconds of an inch as the way we measure lumber.  I want everyone to know that a pint’s a pound the world around.  I want horsepower, tons of cooling, foot-pounds, cubic yards, pounds per square inch and inches of mercury everywhere you look.  I want the speed of light to be 186,000 miles per second.  I want pounds and ounces and BTU’s and I don’t want any kilometers or kilograms or ergs or any of that European or Canadian jazz, thank you very much!  And I will back up my hatred with the force of Trumpian law.  Anyone found using a metric tape measure, scale, thermometer, pedometer or any other metric device will be subject to public dunking followed by banishment to Bogeyland.  And no one will be immune.  If I find out that Elon Musk is using metric tools and hardware on his cars, they will be forced off the roads.  And if his rockets are instrumented using metric units, the Air and Space forces will be authorized to shoot them out of the sky.  This may sound harsh but order must be maintained.  Some of you may claim that decimal units simplify and make calculations easier.  I say, calculations are supposed to be difficult.  So, suck it up!
  • Defund PBS and NPR and Subject the Personnel to the Inquisition – My hatred for these institutions knows no bounds.  Every time I heard some bow tie wearing doofus on NPR whispering softly about some pathetic cause he wanted me to espouse I had to change the channel.  Now it’s time for payback.  And closing down their operations and returning that money to the American people is a wonderful accomplishment.  But shutting them down is not enough.  I propose that a sort of Artificial Torquemada (AT) be programmed to subject these awful people to whatever punishments will make them suffer the most.  First off, their diet will be Big Macs and fries, morning, noon and night.  Secondly, a public address system will play a loop of Donald Trump’s greatest hits from his campaign rallies, played twenty-four hours of the day.  Each inmate will be provided with a mockup of the Sunday New York Times newspaper featuring a facsimile of the Times crossword puzzle but unfortunately, none of the possible answers will fit the spaces.  The gulag will have mandatory television viewing of reruns of Hee-Haw, The Dukes of Hazzard, Benny Hill, Home Improvement and Baywatch.  The prison library will consist of the collected works of Mickey Spillane.  And finally, every month there will be a special session where the inmates will be strapped into chairs and forced to watch a ten-hour compilation of the 2016 and 2024 election coverage including the rants and crying jags caused by the epic failures of the Clinton and Harris campaigns.  None of the inmates will be available for parole until under surveillance of a lie detector they can state honestly that “The 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump through voter fraud.”

Okay so that’s enough for now.

Top Men Working on It

photog Current Events, Humor, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Trump , ,

My recent thought experiment to determine whether the geometry of our universe is Euclidean or not has inspired me to get involved in the upcoming Trump Administration.  Just as Trump has farmed out budget cutting to DOGE, I would like to volunteer (well not for free though) my services to perform research that is woefully needed by the United States government.  I haven’t come up with a snappy acronym for my team but I’m working on it.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the projects I’d like to tackle for Uncle Sam.

  • Global Warming – Now, this is a no-brainer. Up until now research on this subject has been performed by commies.  And no matter what information they get they “analyze” it until they can work it into a hockey stick graph that warns that the end of the world is imminent.  What is needed is an objective, scientific approach.  And that’s me all over.  I will analyze the hell out of that data and something tells me that my result will be a call for more fossil fuel and nuclear energy to stave off the next ice age which is already rearing its ugly head.  Also, I’ll perform a mass and energy balance and a cost analysis around such technologies as wind generators and solar energy panels.  Something tells me that the cost of each kilowatt hour taken over the usable life of the equipment and including the replacement cost of the equipment (not neglecting the cost of environmental remediation for mining and processing of heavy metals and other toxic materials) will be an order of magnitude higher than either fossil fuels or fission reactors.  Is it too much to ask to have the “climate scientists” hauled into court for fraud?
  • The Definition of a Woman – In a country where this

Is called a woman, things are not going to go well.  What I propose to do is convene a panel of experts.  I will use the most credentialed individuals available.  I will include married men, wedding planners, hairdressers, script writers from the Hallmark Channel, employees at grocery and clothing stores and shoe salesmen.  In addition, I’ll recruit a fair cross-section of guys found habitually at strip joints from across this great land.  Between them all we will work long and hard to come up with a consensus definition and if necessary, a list of qualifying and disqualifying “conditions.”  I’m sure the team will have a contentious and spirited discussion about everything from terminology to visual aids but we’ll make sure that the exhibit shown above or anything like it is never mistaken for a woman again.

  • My team will devote a full year to trying to figure out exactly which mental conditions Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are suffering from. After making an exhaustive study we will try to translate their last four years of speeches into rational English sentences.  Where no meaning can be found we will overlay those sections of the transcripts with pictures of kittens and puppy dogs.

So that will be a start.  Eventually we’ll expand out and solve all the problems of the multiverse.  But I will charge time and a half on weekends.  After all I’m only human.

Ho, Ho, Ho

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I was trying to think what could be the most fortunate unexpected outcome from the Trump victory.  Well, we may have already seen some hints of what could be a larger reaction.  Comcast is laying off employees, reducing salaries and otherwise preparing MSNBC for its upcoming ejection from the corporation.  Rachel Maddow had her annual salary slashed by $5 million and there are several other senior staff who will either be let go or given a haircut.  And I have to imagine that Morning Schmoe’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago with Lycra Spandexy in tow had to be motivated by fear of the network deep-sixing them in the new environment of a dominant Trump presidency.  And think about it.  What are the chances that MSNBC (or whatever they’re going to call it) can survive on its own with its decimated viewership and falling advertising dollars?  Oh, think of the howling if it shuts its doors!

Rumblings at CNN’s parent company are also ominous and plenty of multimillion dollar salaries are most probably hanging in the balance as ratings have cratered and executives are at a loss as to how they can justify paying that much money to talking heads who are only talking to themselves.

And the same thing is going on at the network news front offices.  George Stephanopoulos just cost ABC (Disney) $16 million for calling Donald Trump a rapist.  I can’t imagine that’s endeared him to the bean counters who have to pay his huge salary.  And several other entities are currently wrestling with libel lawsuits from the incoming president.

So, with all this as the backdrop I had a wonderful holiday dream.  Imagine if during the New Year, or even in late December, all of these media conglomerates simultaneously dumped all of these partisan hacks on the unemployment line.  What a wonderful present it would be to the whole right-wing world.  Couldn’t you just see Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, George Stephanopoulos, Chris Hayes and Jake Tapper meeting in the waiting room of NPR headquarters as they all interview for some rinky-dink position on public television?  They’d be glaring at each other and checking their makeup in the mirror of their man-purses.

But why stop there?  How about all the newspapers and on-line publications?  I’m sure the Bulwark must be running a little low on billionaire funding right about now and I know the LA Times is looking to balance out their staff with more conservatives so since they’re not making any money over there it would make perfect sense to lighten the ship a bit.  And the same goes for the Washington Post, Vox, Slate, Politico and a host of others.  Thinking of all those Never-Trumpers in knife fights with the other flavors of commies in order to get a spot at the fryolator in Mickey Dee’s just does my heart good.

Now you may think I’m out of line here.  Okay, maybe all of this won’t happen by New Year’s.  But all of the indications are that left-wing journalism is already going through an enormous contraction.  YouTube, TikTok and X are dominating the market for news and entertainment and after their horrendous performance handicapping the 2024 presidential election even the devotees of the lefty news sources feel like they’ve been had.  There is a real sense that they were lied to about the credibility of Kamala Harris’s chances of winning.  Even late into election night they made pathetic attempts at describing the race as “close.”  And as soon as the last glimmers of hope had been extinguished, the intrepid reporters immediately switched over to their flipside; “She ran a flawless campaign and lost because of racism and misogyny.”  Okay, everyone but the most hopeless losers could see that women and black men voting for Trump couldn’t be construed as misogyny and racism.  Saying it over and over just makes you sound nuts.

So, I’m pretty hopeful that over the next few months we’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of old friends from tv and print news.  And just like when we lost Fredo and Don Lemon it will bring back memories of exactly why we detest them so much.  Well, anyway that’s the present I want Santa to leave me under the tree.  Ho, ho, ho!

Let’s Pray for Their Success

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What to write about tonight?  Well, how about thinking about, “How did we get here?”

I know all about the deep dives where everything traces back to the Enlightenment and the loss of faith.  Or there’s the Abolitionists and the Civil War enshrining social justice in our government.  But I don’t want to go back that far.  I’ll settle for Woodrow Wilson and FDR as the source of the runaway bureaucracy that Washington DC has become.  Sure, in between, there were others but I think Wilson set the stage with the WW I expansion and FDR metastasized the problem with the New Deal and the WW II expansions.

Now, I’m not denying that by creating the Leviathan FDR assured the defeat of Hitler and Japan.  He did.  And by funding the Manhattan Project he created the American Empire and eventually destroyed the Soviet Union.  But at what cost?  As one of his successors (Eisenhower) warned, the melding of the US war machine with corporate interests fueled by almost limitless investment from the Federal Reserve has swallowed up our democracy.  And with it, has enveloped us in a police state that dictates to us in a way that is in line with what the Stasi did in East Germany and what China does with its people today.

The final nail in the coffin was 9/11/2001.  The reaction to that attack assured that the Patriot Act and the FISA Courts could treat American citizens like Stalin’s victims that we read about in the Gulag Archipelago.  You can be arrested, convicted, sentenced and buried in the gulag for annoying the bureaucrats or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure and the right to an open and fair trial are all stripped away with the wave of a magic wand when the FISA Court and the Patriot Act declare that national security is threatened.  And all kinds of other atrocities are possible when the intelligence agencies can convince banks, airlines and social media companies that you are a dangerous person because you don’t agree with the bureaucracy’s priorities.

And all of this is because a bunch of rag tag Islamic extremists hijacked four airliners.  Well, as I’ve confessed innumerable times, I was one of the fools who agreed to this nonsense back in 2001.  I allowed myself to be swayed by anger to allow George W Bush and his geniuses to put in place the very laws that would plague Americans ever since.  All of us who agreed with these measures put on our chains voluntarily.  More the fool me.

Well now it’s time to start undoing all of this.  And I mean all of it.  First to go must be the FISA Courts and the Patriot Act.  Ending the ability of the CIA and FBI to target American citizens and sweep away their constitutional rights is the primary goal.  That must go.

But after that, the military industrial complex must be examined and the practices that allow it to bribe elected officials and collude with contractors to bleed the American taxpayers must be changed.  Sure, we need up to date weapons to assure the security of this country.  But we’re not even getting that anymore.  We have bloated weapons programs that produce expensive but unimpressive results.  Our state-of-the-art Abrams tanks are being decimated on the battlefields of Ukraine by $500 drones.  Our next-up super-fighter jet is a vaporware project that is so poorly defined that despite a price tag rumored to be close to a trillion dollars we don’t know why we should build it, other than it will enrich the contractors beyond their wildest dreams.

Getting this done will be a battle royale.  Both Democrats and Republicans will defend the military industrial complex with every fiber of their beings.  People like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have amassed huge fortunes and incredible influence by serving the interests of the defense contractors in everything they do in the Congress.  It’s not too much to say that Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees in the Department of Defense will be risking their lives when they defy the vested interests there.  There is probably no limit to what they might do to prevent reform of the present situation.

Let’s pray for their success.  Nothing less than the freedom and prosperity of our children hangs in the balance over the next few years.

A Modest Moratorium

photog Current Events, OCF, Reclaiming the Family, Trump , , ,

So tonight, Camera Girl was unleashed on the baking supplies she’s been assembling for the last week or so.  Tomorrow our daughters and our granddaughter will be showing up at noon or so for the tradition grandma-cookie baking ritual.  Grandma cookies are Camera Girl’s mom’s recipe for what some people in the family call white cookies.  These are lethally addictive.  With a large mug of coffee (or milk for the kids) it’s almost impossible not to binge on every cookie that’s left in harm’s way.  It’s hard to believe that the ingredients are only things like flour, eggs, butter, sugar and vanilla extract.  There must be some cocaine or opium in them somewhere.

Well, anyway, tonight she baked alone.  She baked all the other cookies for the holiday.  She made oatmeal, chocolate chip, M&M and sugar cookies.  And then just to make sure I won’t survive the year she made a big pan of baklava.  Oh, man.  Even Zorba the Greek after dancing for a week straight wouldn’t be able to finish off the portion she made.  Between the butter, honey and walnuts I can see myself in the local emergency room receiving last rites as the intern on duty calls for the crash cart and the body bag.

Tomorrow I’ll be on a road trip to northern New England; to Vermont.  I’m riding shotgun just as company.  It should be fun.  Meanwhile the womenfolk will be bonding in the kitchen and indoctrinating Princess Sack of Potatoes in the mysteries of family tradition of the female variety.  All very sacred proceedings.  So, the holidays are progressing satisfactorily.

But it’s not as if all is normal.  After her latest shopping trip for the holiday supplies, Camera Girl was horrified at the increase in the prices of such staples as eggs, butter, flour and coffee.  I felt very sad for her so I tried to cheer her up by saying that after the holidays the prices would come back down based on supply and demand.  I think she could tell I was making it up but she forced a smile and we moved on.

Trump will have his hands full trying to fix the economy and deporting ten million illegals.  Just doing those things would be hard enough but he’ll have to do it in the face of not only a hostile Deep State but also the Congress.  The House has a razor thin Republican majority and the Senate is packed with RINOs who want to please their corporate paymasters and don’t give a damn about making America great.  Yes, he’ll have his hands full.

But despite all this resistance, I am surprisingly optimistic.  I was very pleasantly surprised by his victory.  And because of it, I no longer assume that the Left will have everything its own way.  Trump has seen a lot of the worst that the powers that be can do against him.  If he’s half as smart as I hope he is, he’s going to eliminate a very large number of his enemies from the ranks of many of the the agencies that he controls, basically the whole executive branch of government.  Unless he’s crazy he knows he has to eliminate large chunks of the management of the FBI and the Justice Department.  Once that’s done, I expect he’ll have an easier time dictating terms to the rest of the departments.  And in fact, after he has loyalists in charge of the FBI I wouldn’t be surprised if the various RINO senators suddenly become much more cooperative.  All of these people must have files that are kept for just such an eventuality.

Now maybe my optimism is foolish.  But the holiday is upon us and I think optimism is better for my digestion during this season of overeating.  January is the time for resolutions and facing facts.  So, unless a planet killing asteroid is discovered approaching Earth or I see the incoming ICBMs over Dunwich between now and Christmas I’m declaring a moratorium on gloom and doom.

I’m going to eat way too many cookies and much too much roast beast and spoil my grandkids and watch way too many old movies.  I think that’s a plan.

Bring Back Our Jobs

photog Camera Reviews, Country Music Reviews, Current Events, Music Reviews, Photography Reviews, Trump , , ,

In the 1990’s America began off-shoring almost our entire industrial footprint.  I saw some of that migration first hand.  China hired American engineering companies with the technology and experience to build petrochemical synthesis plants.  And they built them in pieces, shipped them to remote sites in China and then assembled and even started them up for the Chinese.  On their own it would have taken the Chinese generations to learn all the particular technologies and avoid all the hazards in running plants that produce all the myriads of organic materials that the US chemical engineering companies like Dupont pioneered in the early twentieth century.

And we did it on purpose.

Now multiply that by the number of other products that we used to make in America and you have an inkling of the betrayal that Wall Street has wreaked on us.  And the result is the wreckage that we call the Rust Belt.  But it’s not just the Midwest.  Every area of the country has been hollowed out.  Even the most cutting-edge manufacturing, the most valuable computer chips are made in Taiwan.  And it’s even worse than that.  Even our food is now imported from Asia and South America.  That is how much American businesses hate us.  So, if I want to sum the whole thing up, the boardrooms of American business eliminated the American middle class to globalize their operations and minimize their labor costs.

And reversing this project is what I think is the highest priority of anyone who loves this country and the people who call themselves Americans.  It really doesn’t matter to me if the people who work to fix this call themselves Republicans or Democrats.  Populist might be the closest thing to a label for the project.  Obviously, anyone who is getting most of his income from Wall Street lobbyists and insider trading tips is not on this team.  It’s not Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi or the Bushes.  Maybe it’s Donald Trump.  He sounds like he understands some of what’s going on.  He talks about tariffs and that’s part of what needs to be looked at.  But where I see the tariffs helping is putting them on American companies who try to sell cars and other products made in Mexico and Cananda and elsewhere as if they were “Made in America.”

We’re missing about a hundred million good manufacturing jobs in this country.  That’s about what it would take to restore the middle class in this country.  Of course that will do a lot of damage to China, India, Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America.  Well, that’s too bad.  Charity begins at home.

On-shoring American manufacturing will take decades.  Of course it will.  It took forty years to off-shore it.  But every step the government takes to worsen the economics of off-shore manufacturing will work to improve the job prospects for our grandchildren.  And now is the time for legislation.  The Republicans have (slim) majorities in both houses of Congress and a sympathetic president.  All that is needed is for Trump to co-opt a few Democrat votes.  Who knows, he might even get someone like Bernie Sanders to sign on for some of the votes.

But the important thing is to prevent this country from turning into a feudal system with the super-rich lording it over a peasant class hanging on by the skin of their teeth.  There is still a chance to turn this around.  Come on Mr. Trump, to make America great again, you have to resurrect the middle class.  Bring back our jobs.

A Million Miles Away

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In the last week or so there have been a number of reports about large drones flying over New Jersey and New York City.  When reporters have asked the Department of Defense and the FBI about this they were that the drones are unidentified.  But at the same time there was no sense of urgency by these agencies to calm the civilian population by assuring them that an investigation is in effect.  It was more or less a shrug of the shoulders and the comment that local law enforcement would handle these mysterious craft.

A congressman from New Jersey posited that there was a rumor that the drones were Iranian and that they were associated with a “mothership” based off the east coast in the Atlantic.  The Pentagon spokesman denied this and said there was no indication that the drones were foreign or controlled by adversaries of the United States.  But at the same time there was no indication how this could be known if the drones were unidentified.

So, then what is going on?

Well, of course I can’t prove anything.  But it occurs to me that Iran makes a lot of military drones and Russia uses an enormous number of military drones in the Ukraine war.  And both those countries are looking to make trouble for the United States because of military actions we have currently going on in their neighborhoods, in other words Syria and Ukraine.

Maybe they’re sending a message that they can retaliate for the attacks going on in their world.  Or maybe they’re scouting around to find the easiest or the most valuable targets to hit.  Well, isn’t that something!

And, of course, all of this is in response to US initiatives that were activated after the Democrats lost the November election.  After November 5th the United States gave Ukraine permission to use long range missiles in the Russian homeland.  And of course the toppling of the Assad regime by American proxies just occurred in the last week.  So, the State Department and the Department of Defense unleash chaos around the world and the blowback from it will hit home about the time President Trump is inaugurated.  Isn’t that something!

For me this just reinforces what kind of psychopaths we have running our foreign policy.  Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland play their color revolution games with foreign countries and the blowback will be felt by innocent Americans and especially by our military that shouldn’t be put in harm’s way for egregious adventures that only alienate the rest of the world and benefit no one except the military contractors that feed off of the arms buildup that follows after these obscene plans are put in action.

Well, there’s basically nothing that can be done until that undead creature is finally packed into his mummy case and carted away from the White House.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and the other shoe doesn’t drop before January 20th and Donald Trump can inform our adversaries that sanity has reasserted itself over US foreign policy and that all ticking time bombs will be deactivated and we can start from a simple position of mutual hatred but without the added factor of sociopaths with delusions of grandeur running foreign policy for the world’s deadliest weapons stockpile.

Well, anyway, I’ve got my fingers crossed and I’m usually a pretty lucky guy.  It’s less than 40 days but why does it seem like a million miles away?