All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Is anyone close to where the flooding hit or knows a lot about the area? I’m trying to get a sense whether this flooding was predictable or completely anomalous. The pictures make it look as if the rise in level of the river was unprecedented. Was it an area that floods like this frequently or was this a 500 year event?
Thanks.
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.
Fortune favours the brave.
Pliny the Elder
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.
There are times when loss should be preferr’d to gain
Plautus
On June 3, 1942, the day before the Battle of Midway, Japanese power in the Pacific was at it’s absolute zenith. By the end of June 4, the Japanese had lost 4 major aircraft carriers and they never recovered. The sinkings of the 4 carriers was done by Douglas SBD of the type shown in the picture.
Need a method of picking a subject and isolating it. You can do that with depth of field, lighting or post processing methods.
Picking a subject and isolating it.
Isolating the subject. This is post processing using Photoshop. Sorta like cheating.
BTW: This Dauntless dive bomber is the last existing aircraft to have actually taken part in the Battle of Midway.
Isolating a subject. This museum, the US Naval Air Museum onboard NAS Pensacola, is so crowded as to make it extremely hard to come up with an effective photo due to all the visual competition.
All week long I’ve been seeing polls on patriotism. Apparently, the Millennials and Gen Z aren’t patriotic. Okay. But why would they be? Patriotism implies pride in a nation. But we aren’t a nation. We’re at least two nations, probably more. Maybe these younger people are proud of people like them whom they feel are good people who believe in the right things. And in fact, for many of them the right thing is globalism. So, the “nation” they believe in isn’t a nation at all. It’s the borderless “family of humanity.” Instead of pride in the history and people of this “nation” they are deeply disturbed by the Europeans who settled and built America. All they see is theft from the indigenous people and the enslavement of the Africans.
So where does that leave the rest of us? Well obviously, we have no solidarity with people who despise us. They aren’t our countrymen because they feel no allegiance to this nation. Their allegiance is to a future in which the memory of this country’s birth and rise are eliminated and anyone who shows up here is just as much an American as people whose families built it. What we have is the story of America as a legacy for us and our children, at least the children who aren’t in the globalist camp. We need to pass along the legacy and the understanding of what a remarkable accomplishment the European settlers achieved. They took a wilderness and turned it into a magnificent patchwork of farmlands and cities and industrial might and communities of strong intelligent people who invented amazing things that had never been seen before in the history of the world. And made their home the envy of the old world.
Right now, patriotism isn’t something that most people associate with 21st century America. Maybe it will be necessary for a separation between those who love this country and those who are ashamed of its history. Maybe we must split into two separate nations before there can be a patriotic rebirth in the United States. If that happens, I think it would more quickly solve our problems. It doesn’t appear as if any other ending will provide a solution to the division that has grown up within our ranks. We no longer believe in the same things. We no longer are the same people. We are moving in two opposite directions. It would only make sense for us to live in separate countries.
Maybe the current battles over deportation of illegal immigrants will inspire California to decide on secession. It would require a constitutional amendment and possibly more. But if they were willing, I think the rest of the country would go along gladly. Who knows? Maybe the rest of the west coast and the Northeast would join with them. And Canada could act as a northern link between the coasts and maybe a few other states like Illinois and Minnesota could join them. It could really work. They’d be rid of us and we’d be much happier without them. And then both new entities would be free to come up with their own version of patriotism. And boy would they differ.