Category: Trump

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

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In a very real sense, the world that anyone of us who’s over fifty grew up in no longer exists except as a memory and a reference point by which to reckon the current acceleration of change.  Things like newspapers, television advertising, most brick-and-mortar stores and even paper money effectively don’t exist anymore.  The whole of life in the most prosperous nation on the planet has been upended in such a way that it has disrupted every facet of life.  Young people aren’t getting well-paying jobs in the numbers needed to sustain institutions like marriage, parenthood and homeownership.

The truth is the tech revolution threatens to destroy the way of life in this country by eliminating the need for a good chunk of the jobs formerly filled by the American middle-class.  This is a crisis that is orders of magnitude greater than when the industrial revolution introduced mechanical power to replace horses, typewriters replaced scribes and oil displaced wood and coal as fuels.  There are millions of people who grew up in middle-class families who live in their parents’ basements, and can’t make enough money to move out, and have no prospects of having families of their own.  Think about that.

Donald Trump wants to make America great again.  The only way that can happen is to figure out how to provide gainful employment for the majority of Americans.  This country only became powerful because the majority of its citizens existed above the poverty line.  If that ceases to be the case we will see a revolution here.

Trump’s solution is to reshore manufacturing jobs that had been sent to Asia.  There are a lot of questions associated with that idea.  How quickly can it be done?  How many jobs will there be.  How well will they pay?  Of course I don’t claim to have all the answers.  In fact, no one does.  But I have the sense that he’s on the right track.  Manufacturing has been an enormous engine for bringing places like China, Vietnam and India out of the depths of poverty and into at least the “second world.”  All that is really necessary is for U.S. industrial policy to include sufficient positive and negative incentives for American companies (and German and Japanese and Taiwanese and Korean) to move their manufacturing operations back here.

In a real sense this is an inflection point for this country.  We won’t stay where we currently are.  The old economy and those who worked in it are going away.  Either we replace what’s here with a restored industrial landscape or we allow the future to be stolen from our children and grandchildren and watch America turn into a feudal state with haves and have-nots sharply separated into a small aristocracy and a large but shrinking underclass of underemployed surplus human beings.

I’m betting Trump can do it.  He’s broken the hold on things that the Deep State previously had and he’s getting things done.  If he can avoid being assassinated in the next three and a half years, he has the potential to save this wonderful place.

Why the Delay?

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Congress passed the 2025 Rescission Bill last Friday.  And that was on the final day allowed under the special rules for a rescission bill.  What isn’t as well publicized is that President Trump has not yet signed the bill into law

The Apocalypse of Legacy Media

“All government funding for PBS and NPR, including their local affiliates, has been eliminated by recent Congressional votes. Trump has not yet signed the rescissions package into law, but it has been sent to his desk for signature after final passage by Congress. This will lead to a significant reduction in local programming; however, it is believed that national programming will survive due to other revenue streams.”

Now I find this very annoying.  I’ve been waiting on this sign-off for the better part of four days.  Maybe Trump plans a special signing ceremony and some kind of celebratory gesture; possibly slaughtering an ostrich made up to look like Big Bird and then roasting it on a spit over a coal fired stove.

Well, let’s hope this delay is over soon.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 18JUL2025 – Reason 2,412; Make Coke Great Again

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Reason 2,412: Coke is bringing cane sugar back to Coca Cola!

Not to hijack your thread, but this is HUGE!
https://nypost.com/2025/07/16/us-news/trump-says-coca-cola-agrees-to-use-real-cane-sugar-in-us-drinks-its-just-better/
Monsanto hardest hit.

The taste difference between high fructose corn syrup and cane sugar is significant.
Here in Texas, I can buy “Mexican Coke”. It comes in a glass bottle and has cane sugar.
I buy it as a treat, not as my regular beverage because it is expensive (Glass costs a lot to ship) and inconvenient. (Glass breaks.)
But a cane sugar Coke in a can! Man, I’m lovin’ it!

We’re Fresh Out of “Give a Damn.”

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In the last three weeks there have been two opinion pieces in the New York Times that, to me, acknowledge that the Left’s narrative is starting to become untenable.

The first is called, “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.” is from a fifty-something divorced career woman bemoaning that men no longer are interested in bringing her out to expensive restaurants.  She goes through this whole long description of a scene in one of these restaurants where all the patrons are women either in groups or alone and men aren’t present at all.  We hear all about how men used to value escorting “high-status” women out into society to signal their own high status as the possessor of such a trophy.  She finishes up with an embarrassing plea for all the good men to come back and be of service to her.

The second one is called, “Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?” and is by a woke loser who up until recently gave his brother-in-law the cold shoulder because he didn’t want a COVID vaccine.  His disdain was palpable in his writing and the only reason he relented is because he wanted to take up surfing and his brother-in-law is an excellent surfer and was generous enough not to reciprocate his callous political snobbery.  But the lefty snob makes the whole thing sound as if it’s his enlightened attitude that suddenly allowed him to lower himself to feigning friendship with his wife’s brother.  And all the shots he takes at his brother-in-law.  He’s only a lowly electrician while the writer is an Ivy League graduate and obviously part of the elite few.  He ends by sagely noting that by sharing this surfing hobby he is opening up a space where he can interact with even someone as benighted as this ignorant tradesman, who also happens to be part of his family.

So, what do these two articles tell me about the current state of the Left.  What it seems to signal to me is that the cancel culture they constructed to keep normal people out of their little echo chamber has worked a little too well.  They’ve excluded all the normal people and they’re trapped inside with just the psychopaths that really believe the stuff they’ve been gaslighting the world with.

The women watched one season too many of “Sex and the City” and convinced themselves that they would always be in demand and men would be beating down the doors to squire them around Gotham City for the chance to have geriatric sex with them.  So now instead of being a doting grandmother and spending her golden years with husband and family, she’s a lonely, frustrated single women hoping for some chump to show up and pick up the tab one last time before she checks out of the Hotel California.  They kicked all the men out of their club because they didn’t need them.  They could play girl boss and not need a man to be happy.  That is until they stopped showing up.

The guy with the surfer electrician for a brother-in-law was the typical COVID cancel-culturist.  He says, “Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?  I wasn’t the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, “It’s time to start shunning the ‘vaccine hesitant.’” An L.A. Times piece went further, arguing that to create “teachable moments,” it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers’ deaths.”  Pretty close to that female pediatrician who mocked the Texas flood victims because they voted for Trump.

But now this Ivy League genius wants to add some human interest to his boring life and finds out that this rube related to his wife is accomplished at the thing that he wants to do.  And on a dime, he switches on his “live and let live” mode and now we’re all just one big happy family!  Funny how that happens after they lose a big election.  Real funny.

So, the New York Times is hinting that maybe we should “all just get along.”  It’s a funny thing about that.  It’s almost like I don’t care anymore what they want.  They tortured us for four years and called us everything under the sun.  They did everything they could to force us to kowtow to COVID and trans-madness and there is no inflation and “Biden is sharp as a whip” and every other crazy thing they could think of.  And now it’s, “let’s let bygones be bygones.”  Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna happen.  We’re fresh out of “give a damn.”

Reaction or Revolution

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All my life I have had to listen to the analogy of a pendulum to describe how our politics behaves.  The theory goes each generation and each decade has its zeitgeist and after the culture swings to the Left, in the next decade or generation it comes back to the Right.

From experience I’d say there are several problems with this theory.  The biggest one is that no matter how much the population wanted a rightward correction the Uni-party has blocked it pretty effectively for the last forty-five years or so.  So even if there is some kind of periodic swing in popular political and cultural attitudes it’s never been allowed to influence real life.  Instead, what we have seen is a ratchet effect where at worst nothing happens during conservative periods and during periods of liberal ascendancy things lurch horribly leftward.

And so, we find ourselves after almost half a century of forced radicalism living in a toxic environment where every part of society is ruled by laws and institutions that directly and indirectly damage our society.  Our children are taught lies and left ignorant of useful knowledge.  The relations between the sexes have been poisoned and families crippled.  Relations between races have been sown with hatred and misinformation and our cities have become dangerous and mismanaged morasses of impoverished, lazy and drug-addled misfits.  And one party pushes these policies strenuously to make these conditions universal and the other party allows them to succeed through sheer greed and stupidity.

And finally, finally in the last nine years one politician has admitted that all this is going on and has offered to help fix this.  And he has been blocked by every power of both political parties and the permanent bureaucracy by any means available (up to and including assassination).

Now some people say Trump and his efforts are doomed to failure because eventually the Democrats will regain power and do whatever it takes to permanently block any further shift to the Right.  These people are of the opinion that violent revolution is the only way to break free of the Left.  These people go under various names.  The Dissident Right seems to be the latest iteration for their designation as a group.  They’re typically reticent to go into specifics when it comes to how the revolution will proceed.  Maybe because they have no idea either.  But from what I can glean they assume that at a certain point some braver souls will manage to draw a line in the sand and force a final break between some area of the country and the central government.  Now recently there has been some talk about the opposite situation.  Because of Trump’s deportation efforts the Left Coast (California, Oregon and Washington) have talked about seceding from the United States.  Of course that would be the best outcome.  I feel that the rest of the country would agree to this split and losing that much leftist population would leave the remaining states lopsidedly conservative and permanently governed by the Right.

Of course, the other portion of the Right (civic nationalists and the rest) hope that something short of secession could be achieved that would still solve all the dysfunction mentioned above.  They feel that the naturally center/right nature of the majority of the American people could over time correct much of this mismanagement and correct our laws and institutions.

So those are the two futures that are currently imagined for our side.  The third future is the Left’s current trajectory, leftist disaster.

I’ve lived for the last sixty plus years watching this battle unfold.  In 2012 I became convinced that the whole thing was hopeless.  Since 2016 I’ve seen reason to hope.  If one man has been able to upend the whole Washington racket, I could believe that a coalition of people who want to fix this could succeed.

Now I didn’t say will succeed, but might.  Currently I’m hoping to hang on long enough to see it happen in real time.  Stay tuned.

A Trumpian Refinancing

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The angry voices on the Left have been shrieking non-stop since the passing of Trump’s spending bill.  They’re complaining about many things.  Some real and some imaginary.  Among the imaginary things are claims that the bill will lead to millions of deaths.  Apparently, Alligator Alcatraz and other anti-illegal immigration programs will cause death and destruction to be rained on the heads of all kinds of good people.  I listened to a video where an unhinged middle-aged woman ranted for about ten minutes in a deranged strangling snarl full of obscenities and bile about how Alligator Alcatraz was a Nazi death camp.  Now granted, there was a certain entertainment value to her act.  But that wore off after about a minute and a half.  So, the fake complaints about the bill are somewhat tedious.

One of the real complaints is that this bill will add three trillion dollars to the debt over ten years.  Now this is a true statement.  This bill will not reduce the deficit.  Our country is spending much more money than it takes in from taxes.  This growing debt is a very serious threat to our future.  But Trump like every other politician knows that even balancing the budget (never mind paying down the debt) would throw the economy into a recession.  So, he plays the same game as all the rest of them.  He stimulates the economy by increasing the debt.  And he’s right.  If the economy stalls the Republicans will be voted out in the House and Senate and the Democrats will regain power.

So, is our problem insoluble?  It seems so.

The only way I can see to fix the problem is to reduce government expenditures drastically and then pay down the debt over the course of decades.  But how can the Republicans remain in power for decades?  They can’t.  I guess we could default on the debt but that would bankrupt not only countless American citizens but would also plunge the global finance system into worse than chaos.  It might even cause a world war.

So, what we are left with is the current status quo.  The debt will continue to grow until it becomes so unmanageable that hyperinflation solves the problem for us.  The dollar will become worthless and nobody will want to buy bonds from us.  Problem solved.  Of course, that will also spell doom for whichever party is in power when that happens.

I wonder what Donald Trump thinks is the solution.  Maybe he’s got an idea about making a deal.  He’s a man who used “too big to fail” any number of times to renegotiate debt on his shaky business investments; casinos and hotels.  What if Trump tells China and Europe and anyone else holding our debt that unless they renegotiate the interest rates we will simply default on the whole damn thing?  What could they say, no?  I bet they would take the attitude that half a loaf is better than nothing.  Combined with a balanced budget amendment could be a permanent solution to our debt problem.  Maybe this is his big beautiful plan.  After all America is the ultimate example of too big to fail.  Maybe all we need is the art of the deal.

All Things Considered, Considered

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Donald Trump has changed America.  Mr. Trump didn’t shift the Overton Window.  He put a brick through it.  His take on what’s wrong with America isn’t shocking anymore because his view has become the mainstream opinion.

So, all of that is true.  But has he changed America?  Well, yes.  On this and that he’s made changes and they are changes for the better.  His immigration policy and the results he’s getting on deportation are important.  His birthright citizenship fight is historic and if it succeeds it will change the dynamics of immigration into this country.

But how will I gauge whether Donald Trump’s second term is a success or failure?  For me success is permanently defunding PBS and NPR.  That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.  That is the litmus test.  I want David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart laid off by PBS due to lack of funding.  I want to see them on YouTube or Patreon making silly noises whenever someone pledges ten dollars for a super chat or whatever it’s called.  I want Big Bird and Elmo forced to go back to being waiters in the NYC theater district and I want that woman who runs NPR and testified before Congress that there was no bias on her watch, fired and forced to start an Only Fans channel.  Let’s face it.  As long as all of us are still paying for these people to insult and slander us on the public airwaves, we are not winning anything.  We’re just losing less.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t need NPR or PBS to cease to exist.  I absolutely want leftists to have their own echo chambers.  This is a free country (theoretically) and if they want to buy tote bags and overpriced wine from their favorite fake journalists at “All Things Considered” or the “PBS New Hour” then let them go ahead and knock themselves out.  By all means do so.  But let them pay for the damn thing themselves.  They’re always saying how public funding is only like 15% of their total funding.  If that’s the case then they won’t miss our money at all.

But everyone knows that’s not the case.  If they suddenly had to get along without the federal government they would be broke.  Brooks and Capehart wouldn’t be able to afford their bow ties and spats.  And there wouldn’t be any money to fund their hard-hitting exposes on the health benefits of attending drag queen story hour in the Tenderloin.

So that’s it.  Trump can announce that he’s winning so much that people are getting tired of winning but as long as NPR still has journalism hacks in hushed tones declaring the body count from the break up of USAID then I won’t declare him the winner.  He’s just losing slightly less hard.

But I haven’t given up hope.  There’s still a window of opportunity for the bill that defunds these stations to be passed in the Senate.  Sometime in August that bill will expire and our last best chance to kill Sesame Street and fake news will end.  So come on Donald from one kid from the Outer Boroughs to another put your shoulder behind this thing and make us both winners.

I Feel Like a Phoenix Rising Over Arizona

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The suffering is over.  The waiting is over.  The only thing I have left to do this week is get the oil changed on my car.  I can read, write, watch movies, sit in a hammock in the shade (well, if I had a hammock), write poetry (not good poetry), plot the overthrow of the Dunwich town government, laugh in the face of death, learn to play the piano; you name it!

Great Caesar’s ghost!  I’m exhausted just reading that list.

So, emerging from my forced isolation I see that nothing of note has happened in the last five days.  The endless jousting between the press and the Trump administration continues and Trump slowly accumulates small victories from the courts and larger ones from the Supreme Court.  Good!  I’ve declared victory (for the most part) and allow the world to slowly become Trumpified while I get on with my agenda.

I finished my re-read of the last third of my book and came to a few conclusions:

  • I like the writing. I like the way it reads.
  • I like the story line. It moves forward.
  • There is something missing to allow the story to end satisfyingly for all the threads of the book.
  • So, the good news of the first two points makes it worthwhile for me to tackle the bad news of the last point.

As I earlier stated it was weird to read the book after a good long time and read it as if I wasn’t the writer.  Of course, I knew the plot but the writing seemed fresh to me, like I was reading it for the first time.  Now, I did make some edits and even made some small changes to the wording during this read.  But I’m good with what’s already done.  So, I’ll kick around a few ideas to see which one makes the ending most satisfying.  Good.

The summer has gotten amazingly hot and humid.  And this has drawn the grandchildren to want to swim in the pool.  And this year the water is perfect.  Perfectly clear.  No algae.  Good pH.  No leaks.  There are a few small cracks in the liner above the water line.  So, I bought a patching kit and I will attempt to fix them myself.  If I botch it, I’ll call in the professionals and they’ll overcharge me but make the problem go away.  But it’s good to see this expensive hole in the ground get used by someone who can enjoy jumping in and swimming around.  I think in the fourteen years I’ve live here I’ve gone in once.  Oh well.

So, let’s see where Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is in a few days and where the various wars are in a few weeks.  But I’m ready to enjoy the seasonal weather and do some cooking out with friends and relatives and enjoy the only true summer month in the otherwise blighted New England calendar.  Because remember, July is the only month in which measurable snow has not fallen in southern New England.  That makes it sacred.  Enjoy.

Reverse Engineering an Ending

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I’ve been trying to figure out how to end my book. Today I’ve been reading the last third of the book to see if I can force an exit strategy into the story. The good news is I’m enjoying the narrative. It’s almost as if someone else wrote it. So that’s good. The bad news it’s taking a while to figure out a satisfying ending that leaves all the major characters with a satisfying “landing.”
But I’m glad I’ve re-engaged with the writing on a more robust schedule. I think the story is well written so it gives me motivation to get the darned thing out there. Onward and upward.

So, has Trump really ended the Iran/Israeli War? Well, here’s hoping.