Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 28SEP2025 – Trim It Back

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Sometimes the thing best for a social organism is hardest on the individual.
Our government is vastly bloated with bureaucratic leeches, and other parasites. These unelected bureaucrats are not working to serve the American people, but preserve their sinecures and privilege.
Shutting down the government again at this time will hopefully demonstrate the true authors of the shutdown. It seems that every time the government gets shut down Republicans get blamed, even when the president holds line item authority.
Congress has the requirement to present a budget, but we have been working under a series of continuing resolutions. The last time the federal budget was passed as a total is 1996. This should be criminal as the continuing funding resolutions are focused spending.
Shut it down, and rather than than leave the rotted branches, trim it back.

Rose City Antifa is about to Get Visitors

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So, Donald Trump is sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon.  Okay, what can we expect?  Well, Portland is the epicenter of Antifa fanaticism.  It is the land of fruits and nuts, dialed up to eleven.  There will be so many short, fat women dressed in black that you will think you’re at the 6:30 am Mass in a 1950s Italian parish in Brooklyn.  And there will also be a goodly contingent of “trans-women,” meaning hulking men dressed as women and boiling over with cross-hormonal rage.

So how will this play out?  No one really knows at the moment.  I’ve heard that Antifa has called for reinforcements from other cities; Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.  Allegedly, they want to make this a full-scale war with the feds.  I’m not sure I believe that.  It seems kind of risky for an army of freaks and weirdos with umbrellas and bricks as their weapons to array themselves against trained soldiers.  I’ve always assumed that Antifa only goes on the offense when they are protected by a local friendly government that can protect them from losses by shielding them from prosecution.  So even if some of their members are arrested, they are immediately released and no charges are ever filed against them.  If the National Guard is called in and interference is deemed a federal offense then Portland can’t protect those arrested from felony prosecution.

Of course, this is assuming the DOJ is taking off the gloves and arrests anyone who breaks the law.  That would be a break with the past.  For the most part these National Guard operations haven’t netted hundreds of arrests other than the illegal aliens that form the reason for the protests.  So, I would be pleasantly surprised to hear about a roundup of the Antifa army in Portland.  In fact, I’d be thrilled.  Because that is exactly what needs to happen.  If Antifa is foolish enough to send in an army of crazies to battle the National Guard, then arresting and possibly shooting some of these people would have a salutary effect on the protests across the country.  If some core of the leadership of the Portland gang were prosecuted and handed ten-year sentences, I think it would stop Antifa in its tracks.  The very craziest wouldn’t be deterred but the army of morbidly obese, blue-haired, septum-ring wearing, women would be.  They can’t afford to go to prison for ten years.  Their cats would starve to death.  They’re in it for the cheap thrills.  They’re not martyr material.

I wonder how long it will take to know which way this will go?  I heard confrontations between ICE and Antifa are not expected to start over the weekend.  So maybe Monday or Tuesday will be D-Day.  My fondest hope will be that Trump himself will go to his Truth Social page and brag about the scalps he collected in Portland.  I’m all for that.  I’d love to see the names and photos of these people reported along with the crimes they were arrested for.  Alright, I’m starting to get ahead of myself.  To be continued.

Let the Daylight In

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Supposedly October 1st is the deadline for the latest government shutdown scare.  The Democrats have said that unless Biden’s Obamacare boondoggles are extended and PBS gets funded, they won’t vote for an extension of the present budget.

Now the talking heads on the Left are split fifty/fifty on whether this is a good idea or a terrible one.  The conundrum is that if they allow the government to shut down, they will take a good chunk of the blame in the eyes of the public.  In addition, Trump has indicated that unlike in shutdowns past, he doesn’t intend to furlough federal employees.  He’s going to fire huge numbers in order to reduce the size of the federal government.  And the great majority of these employees are Democrats.  So, the feeling on the Left is that whatever blame Trump gets will not make up for the blame the Democrats themselves will get for abandoning their most loyal voters (federal bureaucrats) to the fate of unemployment and eventual starvation.  After all these aren’t rocket scientists.  Most of these people aren’t qualified to cross the street even with a traffic light.  If the government lets them go, it’s not even a sure thing they’ll make it home successfully.  Like lemmings they may all follow some confused creature into the Potomac where we can only assume they’ll all be washed out to sea.

So, I guess we have to see what Trump plans to do.  If he does plan to eliminate some enormous number of federal workers maybe this is a watershed moment for the country.  And who knows, maybe he also will ask the senate to take the nuclear option and eliminate the filibuster all together.  And if they do eliminate it, maybe they’ll go the whole way and then just enact a real honest-to-goodness budget like they used to before Obama gave up on federal budgets.

So, there is the shiny happy version of things.  What’s the other choice?  Well, firing millions of people, even useless stupid people will have economic consequences.  Bureaucrats have dependents.  Mostly they’re cats but there must be some children too.  And if all of a sudden there are millions of kids falling into poverty, this will have some consequences.  If they’re dire enough maybe it will anger Americans who hate to see poor people suffering.  Maybe this will lead to the Republicans getting pounded in the 2026 midterms.  And that would lead to divided government for the last two years of Trump’s term.

Well, you know, I think my gut tells me that the correct strategy is for Trump to “go big.”  Emptying out Washington DC is a once in a century situation.  Doing it now hurts the Left almost exclusively.  If all these people find themselves unemployed it will have a huge impact on elections.  These are the Democrats’ most loyal voters.  But if they lose those government jobs something tells me they’ll be too busy struggling to survive to bother voting at all.  In fact, firing huge numbers of bureaucrats will change the whole ecosystem around Washington.  Who knows, it might turn Virginia red again when all the carpetbaggers have to go home to mom and dad’s basement in California, Massachusetts and New York.

So go ahead DJT, start up that chainsaw.  Let the daylight in.

They Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore

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Today I watched the old movie “Gunga Din” for like the trillionth time.  And it has all the same silly things going on every time I see it.  The gags are telegraphed, the sentiment is slapped on with a cement trowel, the improbabilities are piled to the sky.  You name it.

But watching the three leads; Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. go through their paces as Kipling’s three sergeants is a never-ending treat that I can watch several times a year probably until they finally bury me.  It’s a joy to behold.

And the picture works as both a comedy and an adventure story.  And the supporting cast (including an elephant named Annie) provide plenty of support and opportunity for our heroes to search for treasure, destroy British Army discipline, romance the girl or save the day.  And you know, I think I like the fact that even when it was being made, the British Raj was already a sore point for the social justice types but this movie plays up the “white man’s burden” aspect of the story even more than needed to match the historical era.

Sam Jaffe’s Gunga Din really is a minor role right up until the critical juncture in the story where he saves the day.  But he does give the regimental bhisti his due.  And the actors portraying the army officers and the officious Bertie Higginbotham, all acquit themselves with the expected amount of British bluster.

So, what makes this movie fun?  Despite the well-acted lead characters, I think the success of this movie is thanks to the unflagging action, both comic and adventure.  The heroes are constantly fighting savage tribesmen, jumping off cliffs into rivers, breaking out of jail by means of elephant powered building demolition and fighting their way through a saloon full of Scottish highlanders.  They only slow down when poisoning Bertie Higginbotham at an engagement party.  Armies of strangling Thuggees are no match for these soldiers three as they roll out their “three musketeers / all for one and one for all” routine to frustrate the Thug Guru’s master plan to defeat the British and restore India to the greatness it had known before Alexander the Great had slapped it around in the fourth century BC.

So, I have to state which of the three sergeants is my personal favorite.  Now Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s Sgt. Ballantine is never in the running.  He’s the romantic lead and thereby much abused by his fiancée’s humiliating attentions.  And despite the excellent work done by Cary Grant as the ebullient Sgt. Archibald Cutter I have to give the win to Victor McLaglen’s Sgt. MacChesney.  Just on the strength of the facial expressions that he manages when the Colonel confronts him with the prospect of Bertie Higginbotham replacing Ballantine, I’d have to give him the prize.  But there are just so many great scenes where he steals the show.  Even pleading with an elephant using “baby talk” to get it to take medicine always cracks me up.  And it really is McLaglen with his hand in the elephant’s mouth.

So why can’t they make movies like this anymore?  I don’t think it’s the actors.  There are plenty of those who could perform these parts.  It’s the writers and directors.  Either they can’t or won’t give us good stories.  Maybe the producers just won’t allow them.  But whatever it is, that’s where we are.  And I can live with that.  I have my DVD and it’ll last for longer than I will.

“Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.”

Rudyard Kipling