You Won’t Have Tim Walz to Kick Around Anymore

Tim Walz, that hero of the George Floyd Riots (I mean protests), the only politician stupid enough to make Kamala Harris look like the smart half of the ticket, is not running for re-election.  Well, well, well.  How the knuckleheaded hath fallen.  Okay, now things will get interesting.  The ongoing investigations into Somali scams that ate up billions of dollars should be very interested in exactly what Tim knew and when he knew it.  Who knows, maybe Tim might have to defend himself in court against charges that he was complicit in the large-scale fraud that occurred in the state he ran as governor.  Or maybe he wasn’t part of the fraud.  Maybe he really is as stupid as he says he is.  If that’s the case then it’s the voters of Minnesota who are at fault.  They elected and re-elected this guy.  After all he was the one at ground zero when the George Floyd riots were getting started and he did nothing to stop them.  In fact, he enabled them in every way he could.  When some National Guard troops could have put a stop to the looting and arson, he let it happen and even justified it as “peaceful protests.”

And during the COVID fraud he went along with the school and work shutdowns and the mask mandates and all the other nonsense that crippled this country and deprived kids of their education.  Yes, at every turn Tim’s been a rolling disaster of a nincompoop.  Whether it was putting tampon dispensers in the boy’s bathrooms in the high schools or resigning his military position right before the Iraq War, Tim has been at the forefront of unmanly behavior wherever he was.

And yet the interesting thing is that Kamala Harris selected him, not only because he was almost as stupid as she was but because they thought he would appeal to white male voters.  As a white man I find this incredibly insulting.  They must think we really are idiots.  What normal man thinks Tim Walz represents him?  Even a cursory glance at his history or his statements would clearly show him to be a radical progressive with a clear hatred of traditional values and white men.  He is the antithesis of J. D. Vance and this was openly apparent in the vice-presidential debate during which Vance made Walz look like a low-grade moron (which he is).

So just a little over a year after Tim Walz helped Donald Trump become president of the United States again, Tim will be helping Trump show the country just what dishonest and incompetent politicians the Democrats are.  California, Minnesota, New York and Illinois are all floundering in debt and dysfunction.  Tim will be a symbol of how the leaders of that party are personally responsible for the fraud and waste that went on during the Biden presidency.  Walz may be lucky that he’s leaving now.  Even his incompetency may soon be eclipsed by the spectacle of Mayor Mamdani turning the largest city in the nation into a third-world hellhole.  But even so Tim Walz has earned himself a spot on the Wall of Shame.  Adios Knucklehead.  We hardly knew ye.

05JAN2026 This ‘N’ That

Sunday January 4th is the end of my vacation.  So, I’ll be busy with a bunch of stuff; work, book launch and various chores and repairs.  So today I’m luxuriating in a trifecta of “Christmas Carol” viewings and so I’ll be steeped in “peace on Earth, goodwill toward men” right before I go back to despising the citizens of Dunwich on a face-to-face basis.  Honestly, the bureaucratic nightmare that is unfolding has me questioning my current status and I may decide to walk away from all this nonsense but we’ll have to see.  Ethically I’ll have to give notice and let them find someone as stupid as me to volunteer to suffer through all this.  And I’d have to train my replacement so relief would still be delayed by weeks.  But it is fun to contemplate escape.  Even this short venting has lifted my spirits.  Okay, enough for now.

The world stage is becoming increasingly troubled but for now I’ll restrict myself to Venezuela.  Now this crisis is actually the most manageable.  Essentially letting the US military eject the Cubans, guard the oil fields and end the drug shipments to the United States might all be within the abilities of the Trump administration.

Theoretically the oil infrastructure that was nationalized by Maduro’s predecessor could be returned to the western oil companies and very reasonable arrangements could provide enormous money for Venezuela’s people and also flood the American market with cheap oil and gas.  This would have the effect of lowering American transportation and energy costs and thereby lowering the cost of living here.  Now actually making this happen without major problems is a different question.  But I think Trump sees this as an opportunity to attack the cost-of-living problem head on.  If nothing else you have to admire his guts.  I’ll take a wait and see attitude (since I don’t have any choice anyway).

And finally, it’s only seventeen days until the publication on Amazon of my magnum opus, “The Sniper” I’m hoping everyone who has friends that might be interested in a right-wing, alternate history, techno-thriller will let them know about this great event.  In the run-up to the launch, I will become increasingly annoying with my constant shilling and repetitive praise of this product of my literary labor.  I apologize in advance to everyone but I must do my best to drum up business.  So, if hyperbole makes you break out in hives be warned this will be ground zero for such stuff.

Alright, that’s enough of that.  On a local weather note it has been snowing either a little or a lot every couple of days for the last couple of weeks.  Now I’m pretty used to this but lately it’s been getting mixed up with freezing rain and ice.  That’s a lot less fun.  So, I’ve been spending a lot more time on driveway surface preparation.  Because of this I haven’t had as much time for thinking up stuff for my posts.  So, I hope after this weekend things will be better for the next couple of weeks.  Thank you for your patience.

Be Careful, Donald

Well, Trump is definitely disrupting things.  The question is can he keep the whole machine from shaking itself apart.  Venezuela doesn’t bother me.  That’s not even a real country.  It’s a mafia neighborhood with a money-printing machine in the basement.

Iran on the other hand is a much bigger and more dangerous neighborhood.  Their economy is in tatters and the middle-class is so starved that they dared to face off in the streets against the thugs that Khamenei employs to silence all protestors, with a crow bar.  Trump threw in a threat against the mullahs if they start murdering the protestors in the street.  And that is his place as leader of the “free world” I guess.  But is it just an idle threat?  And will these protests really go anywhere?

The last time protests accomplished anything in Iran was 1979 when the Islamists overthrew the Shah of Iran and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini out of exile to begin the Islamic Republic.  And that kicked off the Islamic Revolution by holding Americans hostage for over a year.  Is it possible that enough Iranians are angry enough to risk torture and death to kick the mullahs out of power and turn Iran back into a modern country?  I guess it’s possible but why now?

I read that inflation in Iran is currently at 43%.  That is definitely getting close to some kind of breaking point.  But standing up to men with machine guns and torture cells takes a lot of guts.  I’m far from convinced that anything will come of the Iranian protests.  Now maybe it will soften up the regime into cutting a deal with the West.  Maybe they’ll agree to end their funding of terrorist groups and in that way begin to have economic sanctions lifted against their oil exports other commercial enterprises.

Now, all of this going on at the same time that Ukraine and Russia are battling to the death may not be a coincidence.  Both Venezuela and Iran are Russian allies and trading partners.  These situations may be an attempt to destabilize the Russian economy.  Sanctions against Russia have been skirted in part by using oil tankers that trade outside of the western countries and this is the same strategy that Iran and Venezuela have used.  Perhaps Trump is ratcheting up the pressure on all of these “shadow fleets” to destabilize the economies of all three of these countries.

And maybe it will work.  Iran is badly hurting and Russia is beginning to suffer from the combination of sanctions and war fatigue.  And Venezuela was a sitting duck for US military and covert attacks.  Maybe Trump will get a trifecta of victories.  He might even get his Nobel Peace Prize.

But I’ll have to say it’s an exceedingly dangerous game he’s playing.  There must be dozens of Iranian sleeper cells that snuck in during Biden’s open border policy.  What if the mullahs grow desperate and decide to spread some chaos in the land of the “Great Satan” before they lose control of their own country?  I get so tired of these places on the map that are nothing but misery for their own people and anyone that gets involved with them.  Donald, be careful.

New Years Day 2026

Here we are on the first day of a year that is bound to be a roller coaster ride.  The world is poised between plunging into chaos or shaking off the poisonous effects of the woke nightmare we’ve been subjected to since 2008.  Which one wins is anyone’s guess.  But just having the Bad Orange Man there in the White House is proof to me that all hope hasn’t disappeared.  All of his words and deeds rankle the enemies of normalcy whenever he speaks or acts.  He’s a constant source of rage for all of the people I despise so much.  And hopefully this year he’ll up the voltage even higher and burn out all their circuitry in splendid fashion.

As I said, there’s no guarantee that he’ll win.  There are an enormous number of horrible people in this country.  And they’ll stop at nothing to restore the Obama/Biden team in Washington.  And this team is composed of both Democrats and Republicans.  They’re creatures of the Deep State that profit obscenely from the constant siphoning off of the country’s lifeblood into NGOs and other fronts that profit the Left and attack normal people wherever and whenever they can.  But they have been hurt and hurt badly by the DOGE initiatives and Trump’s executive orders and even that law that the House got passed that ended the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by extension cut off the funding for PBS and NPR.  And this proves that fighting these entities is possible.  And if it’s possible we need to give Trump all the help he can get to win the fight.

So, I’ll start the year with a realistic but positive outlook.  Trump won’t win every fight.  He might even lose one or two houses of Congress in the mid-terms.  But that’s nothing new.  It’s almost expected.  But what he has shown is that he can get a hell of a lot done with the right team and the will to make things happen.

Normally people write New Year’s Resolutions.  Instead, I’ll make a list of things I hope happen in 2026.

  • Tim Walz resigns from the governorship of Minnesota.
  • Mayor Mamdani crashes and burns in his first year as Mayor of New York City. By that I mean that he has to renege on all his campaign promises (free busses, frozen rents, city-run grocery stores) and comes begging to Albany and Washington to keep him from being run out of town on a rail.
  • ICE deports several times more illegals in 2026 than in 2025. They’ve been ramping up and I think they’re figuring out the pain points for illegals.
  • The Ukraine War will end. Will Trump get a Nobel Peace Prize.  Nah!
  • Maduro will flee Venezuela for Cuba. The drug traffickers will shift over to Mexico and American oil companies will return to restore their oil industry to some semblance of efficiency.
  • The guy who shot Charlie Kirk will be found guilty and sentenced to death.

Okay, that’s enough.  Happy New Year.

The Age of the Machine and the Vested Interest

JM – The world is on the verge of new and great changes, Mr. Scrooge.  Some of them, of necessity, will be violent. Do you agree?

ES – Oh, l think the world is becoming a very hard and cruel place, Mr. Marley.  One must steel oneself to survive it.  Not be crushed under with the weak and the infirm.

JM – l think we have many things in common, Mr. Scrooge.

ES – l hope so, Mr. Marley.

Even in the 1820s the Industrial Revolution was dislocating people from their familiar environment.  A blacksmith now had to compete with a factory that could mass produce metal artifacts.  And textile mills were replacing hand-made garments to an astonishing degree.  These changes caused huge dislocations in the business world and also for craftsmen who previously could depend on their skills to earn a good living.

And now two hundred years later the breadth and scale of the tech revolution threatens to completely remake the commercial landscape again.  Globalization threatens the very existence of industries in the First World as manufacturing and even service industries are completely transferred to developing nations in Asia.

So, what does the future portend?  Well, we are reaching a point where rapacious capitalism has begun to undermine the existence of the middle class in both America and Europe.  What remains to be seen is whether national governments will step in to protect their citizens from impoverishment.  I think we’ve seen the beginning of this in the United States where Trump represents middle- and working-class interests with a sort of populism that questions the rights of the corporations to off-shore their manufacturing activities and now even their other employment opportunities.  It’s possible Trump will be successful in forcing the return of jobs for Americans.

But even if he is, the world will continue to change and evolve in response to the capabilities that advanced automation has provided and will continue to innovate at.  One of the challenges that everyone will need to recognize is that we’re all facing enormous competition that previously didn’t exist and an entrepreneurial instinct will have to be developed to allow people to compete with the lowest common denominator reality around us.  We’ll all have to get a lot smarter about how we find business opportunities and retain them.

Maybe a part of this change will be a strategy to capture local business.  After all those cheap knock-offs from China are often shipped by slow boat to keep their cost down.  If that means weeks of delay, a local metal shop could capture business by being able to provide same day delivery for some mission critical parts for a manufacturing business.

And even if AI allows foreign companies to compete in information sectors of the economy it is still the case that AI is far from fool-proof and still requires human oversight to clean up the inaccurate and inept mistakes that seem built into the machines.  And in those oversight positions foreign unfamiliarity with American culture could represent the disadvantage that allows local businesses to excel.

So, this is all a long-winded way of saying Americans are going to have to use all means at their disposal to survive the changes going on.  Government can certainly be part of the solution but we also have to recognize that we no longer have a guarantee of affluence.  We’re going to need to work harder and with our heads.

03DEC2025 – This ’N’ That

Finally, a breathing space!  I don’t have to do anything for almost a week.  I spend my time working on getting my book ready for publishing and watching Christmas movies.  I confess that I overindulged on turkey and the fixin’s around Thanksgiving and am still recovering from caloric excess.  But after some vigorous exercise today I’m back in shape for what lies ahead.  And that looks like snow and ice removal!  Dunwich is up to its old tricks.  Instead of three inches of snow we’ve gotten a day of rain which probably will turn into a half inch of ice tonight.  Oh, the pain, the pain.  Luckily neither Camera Girl nor I are compelled to leave the Compound tomorrow so I can slowly work on the driveways.  I wish I had more tube sand but even a hundred pounds or so of it should be enough to prevent the whole thing from resembling an ice-skating rink.

I noticed that the latest fake crisis is horror over cigarette boats filled with fentanyl being blasted out of the water.  I can conceive of no better targets for the US military than narcotraficantes heading for US coastal waters.  What clearer priority do we have than preventing these people from selling poison to our people?  Don’t they realize that Saint George of Floyd was killed by a fentanyl overdose?  Surely that must give them pause.  But Democrats are always looking to side with evil against us.  They can’t help it.

Well, enough about that.  Now, how about those kooky Somalis in Minnesota?  Good old Tim Walz was handing over hundreds of millions of dollars in fake aid to the Somalis and they were sending it to terrorists in Somalia.  Even his own state employees blew the whistle on him and even the New York Times is exposing the sordid details of his cover-up.  Trump said that Walz is severely retarded and I think it’s hard to deny it.  Of course, this doesn’t add to the reputation of Minnesotans for keeping this bozo in office.  Now, of course it isn’t everyone in the state but it’s a clear majority that seems okay with government fraud as long as it goes to a constituency that will vote reliably Democrat.  We’ll have to wait and see if Trump’s Justice Department can find a judge willing to honestly hold Democrat crooks accountable.  Lately it doesn’t seem to be the case.

And finally, early indications are that Hollywood is throwing in the towel on woke entertainment for children.  Disney and its peers have lost so much money on woke movies for children and young adults that they’ve sworn off woke lecturing for the foreseeable future.  For at least the next year or two they’re going to try and remember what “wholesome” means.  No more trans kids, girl bosses or obligatory race-swapping of traditional characters.

Well, anyway, that’s the plan.  But can they do it?  I tend to doubt it.  I’m not even sure they would know an exciting adventure story if it reached out and bit them on the butt.  But it’s hopeful that they’re even trying.  At the very least it means that a whole bunch of woke writers, directors and actors will be out of work for the next year or two.  And that’s a beautiful thing.

Donald, Maximum Effort

I hate to sound like the crazy old guy walking around with the sign that says, “THE END IS NEAR!!!

I hate to be that guy but I think maybe things are getting so much crazier that I’m not sure things aren’t going to crack up pretty soon.  The crazies seem to be coming out of the woodworks and they’re shooting up all kinds of people and places and things.  It’s got me thinking that the whole mess may boil over pretty soon.  Now, I don’t even know what that means or what it would look like.  After all, when the bad guys start shooting at the good guys the only thing the good guys can do is shoot back faster and better.  So that doesn’t allow for a normalization.  I guess what I’m thinking is that we’ll be going through a catastrophe; a meltdown.

When that Afghan fired on the National Guardsmen it made me think that we’re going to see some violent chaotic times.  I’m trying to think of an analogous historical example and the only thing I could think of was the gang warfare and general lawlessness associated with the Prohibition Era organized crime in places like Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s.  The difference is that in our era a major political party is more or less sponsoring the chaos.  At the federal, state and local levels Democrat politicians are advocating for and justifying violence against law enforcement.  Whether it’s Bernie Sanders or AOC or Mamdani; they’re calling for violence against ICE agents and National Guardsmen.  They couch it in terms like resistance but what they mean is violence.  The only thing I don’t know is whether the Trump administration is ready to fight fire with fire.  I hope they are.  Because if they back down from these people we will lose this country.

By the same token what would it look like to beat them?  I guess if the FBI did a serious job of identifying antifa on a comprehensive scale and managed to jail them the way the Biden administration jailed the January 11th protestors that would go a long way toward putting a stop to the resistance in places like Portland, San Francisco and Minneapolis.  If suddenly the radical core of these resistance movements were all sitting in jail cells for three or four years that would have a devastating effect on the radical Left.  In fact, I think it would kill it.

Well, I wish Trump every success in his war on the psychopathic Left.  After all, these are the same people who twice tried to put a bullet in him.  He knows they’re serious and he has a machine (the FBI) that was built for counter-terrorism.  All he has to do is force his lieutenants to rev that machine up.  I figure this summer is going to be “peak street crazy season.”  They’ll be burning stuff and rioting with the whole thing set to eleven.  This will be his chance to show us what he can do.  Donald, maximum effort.

Did Donald Trump End the Arab-Israeli War?

You know, the longer I live on this planet, the less I think I know about reality.  I can remember as a small child in grammar school hearing about the various Arab-Israeli conflicts.  And it was always assumed that only the wisest and most sober of men would ever be able to untie the Gordian knot that was that conflict.

But Donald Trump will do it?  Look, I love Trump.  He’s some sort of bizarre cross between P T Barnum and Pericles by way of Madison Avenue.  He’s the first American politician since Andrew Jackson to side with the regular people.  He towers over his enemies like a colossus.  But how in the name of everything reasonable can he end an intractable war between peoples who hate each other so viscerally that death is preferable to compromise?  And yet, if the news is to be believed, Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first step of the Trump Peace Plan; return of all the hostages alive and dead and Israeli stepping back to some first line of withdrawal.

But how many different ways can this process fail?  The list is infinite.  Even with complete good faith on both sides I can imagine endless scenarios that could upend this effort.  And when in the history of the mid-east has there ever been good faith on both sides?  Never.

Now in Trump’s favor, this negotiation includes many Arab and Moslem countries acting as surrogates to prod Hamas toward ending the war.  There is a desire on the part of almost all of the middle eastern countries to end the ceaseless cycle of attacks and counterattacks that makes this whole region of the world hell on Earth.  Could this finally be the day when sanity and the will of the vast majority of people there manage to smother the fire of violence under their collective bodies and end this disgusting abomination of death and hatred?

I’ll have to confess, I just can’t come around to believing it.  It would require these people who have done horrific things to each other for more than half a century to somehow find a miraculous solution to their problem.  It’s as if both sides are forced to navigate through a minefield that both sides have mined but neither side still has reliable maps of.  At any moment disaster can strike and any disadvantage on either side can inspire the other side to press for a kill shot.

The whole thing sickens and disgusts me to the point where I just want to forget it exists and move forward without ever thinking of it again.  But the last time I did that, planes started flying through buildings in New York.

So here we go again.  Good luck Donald Trump.  I guess if anyone can pull off the deal of the millennium it would be him.  But I almost think he’ll have more success with Ukraine than Gaza.  Sure, they’re almost as crazy there but as bad as it is I don’t think the level of hatred between the Russians and Ukrainians can ever come close to the savagery of what happened two years ago.  Maybe a little prayer would help.

Or Maybe It’s All a Mirage

There is an interesting phenomenon going on with political party affiliation shifts.  And it’s happening in both red and blue states.  There is a noticeable shift happening toward the Republican party and away from the Democrats.  Now, in most of the blue states this isn’t a game changer.  Here in New England, it will have negligible impact.  If a sixty/forty state becomes a fifty-five/forty-five state there’s no noticeable change in policy.  But there are a few swing states where a trend like this could be more than just a tweak.  And even some pretty blue states are flirting with electing Republican governors (e.g., New Jersey).

I’m on record as saying blue states electing republican governors is just a relief valve to prevent the state from blowing up its budget due to Democrat fiscal insanity.  Massachusetts has to do that all the time.  Anytime they’ve had a Democrat as governor for more than eight years they have to elect a Republican just to get out of bankruptcy.  And the definition of a Massachusetts Republican is just a progressive who can add and subtract numbers.  There are no noticeable conservative actions by him just slightly cheaper progressive policies.

But in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and even Nevada the shift of even two or three percentage points can be enough to change state legislatures and even add a senator or two to the red side.  And a lot of these voters switching parties are younger.  I’ve seen that where I live and believe me, I’m buried deep in enemy territory here.  So, if it’s happening here then it’s definitely happening in the swing states the same way only more so.

Now, I’m not so idealistic to think that there won’t be any elections where the Democrats make gains, maybe even big gains.  But what we’re seeing is people waking up to the inherent differences between the parties.  Biden and his regime allowed law and order to collapse in the cities and blue states.  That wasn’t something that could be ignored.  If Mamdani wins in November in New York City that will throw a spotlight on just what happens when an honest to goodness communist tries running the largest city in the United States.  I think his administration may turn out to be the most valuable advertising the Republicans could ask for going into the midterms.  If Mamdani goes with the policies he’s been espousing it should frighten the hell out of anyone living in a blue state or city.  It’s a possibility that we are looking at the perfect political storm happening just when it could do the most good.  Could Mandani turn New York City red the way Dinkins did back in the 1990s and got Rudy Giulianin elected twice?  I think it’s unlikely but not impossible.  But I do think he can provide a cautionary tale for the rest of the country and maybe help Donald Trump hold onto his Republican Congress.

Or maybe it’s all a mirage.  Time will tell.