Ten Days of Trump

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It’s good to be home again.  Also today I picked up my photography computer from the local cyber-surgeons.  There was considerable sticker shock (yikes) for the new motherboard and processor and some adjustment for the new hardware (adapters, cables and such nonsense) but I’m back in business with my photos again.  I haven’t really tested out it’s capabilities but the tech guy told me the new processor will be ridiculously faster than my old system.  I can’t wait to try importing a thousand raw files and see how quickly it “renders” them.  But enough geeking out.

I had my usual Wednesday virtual coffee break with the boys from the old firm.  I have to say the giddiness is getting a bit ridiculous.  Can unbridled enthusiasm be considered a form of backwards Trump Derangement Syndrome?  There’s just too much laughing and optimism.  It seems unnatural.  Someone was claiming that Trump was talking of eliminating the Income Tax altogether.  Now that just sounds nuts.  But the angle was to switch over to a consumption tax.  I have to confess that would suit me fine.  But is everything going to be revolutionized?  What’s next?  Will all the currency be made over with pictures of The Donald?  Will Trump’s signature hairstyle be added to George Washington on Mt. Rushmore to update the monument?  Will the end of the Pledge of Allegiance be modified to “one nation under God with liberty and justice and so much winning for all?”  Have Trump’s words from the 2016 election come true? Is it too much winning?

Well … no.  I’ll put up with more winning.

There are still more things we need fixed.  First of all, Kash Patel still hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate.  That means there are hundreds of Stasi agents still working for the FBI.  Once he’s had a chance to clean house, I’ll have a better idea how much more winning is needed.  In fact, you know what I want to see?  I want Trump to issue executive orders categorically forbidding Patriot Act or FISA Court actions against American citizens during his administration.  Let’s have at least four years without our constitutional rights to due process being violated by tinpot Thought Police.

You see, that’s what happens when Trump starts issuing executive orders by the metric ton.  We start assuming he can do anything.  And then we become impatient if he hasn’t read our minds and already done the stuff we just thought of.  Why hasn’t there been a special prosecutor empowered to go after Joy Reid for being an eyesore on television.  Surely having her on cable tv is a form of cruel and unusual punishment for all of us.  And what about the “ladies” of the View.  Surely someone can turn the show into some kind of dunk tank / lie detector suspense show where Joy Behar or Whoopie Goldberg or one of the other crones is hooked up to a lie detector and asked a question about Donald Trump or some other conservative she hates and if she lies about something, like whether he’s been convicted or rape, she falls into a water tank filled with sharks or piranha fish and has to swim for her life to a distant ladder.  I bet the ratings would be through the roof.  So that’s kind of where I am right now.  For the most part I’m happy with Trump 2.0.  But a few little tweaks couldn’t hurt.

Well, that’s enough ranting for now.  I’ll be waiting to see how Patel, Kennedy and Gabbard do in the Senate next week.  If all three get through, Trump will have most of his core team in place and he can really get started with draining the swamp and taming the Leviathan.

So far so good.

It Just Seems Too Easy

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Regardless of whether you watch left-leaning or right-leaning news outlets you can’t miss the fact that Trump is bulldozing the Washington establishment into the ground and increasing his popularity from day to day.  And both sides (when they’re being honest) agree that they’ve never seen anything like this transition.  Trump is getting his people confirmed by the Senate and he’s removing people from the federal bureaucracy that he sees as impediments; prosecutors, inspectors general, generals, you name it.  He’s even going after birthright citizenship.  His deportation initiative is going full speed ahead and has found allies in some blue cities.  Nothing seems off the table.  He’s a juggernaut.  So why does this make me think there’s a George Floyd or a COVID pandemic about to be unleashed on us?

I guess I’m surprised at how smoothly it’s all going.  Could the Left have been so completely flummoxed by Trump’s victory and his organization that they can’t fight back at all?  I have read that a network of antifa and LGBTQ freaks are communicating on TikTok about attacking ICE agents doing their jobs.  I’ve also read that they’re discussing assassinating Trump.  And if I’ve heard these things then obviously everyone on the Left knows about it already.  This jibes with what’s already going on.  Apparently the two assassins who killed the Border agent in Vermont were transgender freaks of one sort or the other.  So, there is some stuff going on.  But all of this seems pretty tame compared to what I imagine the Left could put out on the street if they unleashed all of the psychopaths they command.  So that is what I’m wondering about.  Is this the calm before the storm?

Now maybe it’s the case that without the FBI and Justice Department running interference for them, that antifa and the other leftist goons aren’t a very effective force.  I’m assuming the FBI is right now in panic mode wondering when their jobs are going to be pulled out from under them.  That might be the simple answer.  Or maybe it takes time to plan and organize a color revolution in 2025.  Maybe they’re looking to publicize a mistake made by ICE agents during a deportation arrest.  Possibly a child hurt or killed during some firefight with gang members or drug traffickers.  Or maybe they’re looking for a valid US citizen accidentally mistaken for an illegal alien.  Possibly that’s what they’re looking for to spark a firestorm against Trump’s administration.

Of course, it’s also possible that the popularity of Trump’s agenda will protect him from even some problems and mistakes that inevitably will happen in something as massive and difficult as finding and deporting tens of millions of people hiding in the general population.  The scope of such an endeavor is sobering to consider.  It will consume enormous resources in dollars and man-hours.  It will not happen quickly or easily.  But so far people are increasingly supportive of this project as it becomes a reality.  Especially as we see him going after gangs and cartels that are wreaking havoc in cities across the country.

So maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe it’s just winning all the way down.  But for some reason it seems too easy.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 28JAN2025 – You Can’t Go Home

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war pig

You really can’t go home again. The memories remain but the scene has changed.

Virginia Beach in the late 60s and early 70s was fun. A boardwalk, a pally where they had rollerskating one night and a dance another night. On the boardwalk were carnival games. I was banned from the rifle arcade shoot for winning too many prizes. South of town along the coast were beaches and especially dunes. We’d go down at night, dig a pit in the sand, gather driftwood and cook hot dogs and brats over the fire, followed by roasting marshmallows and some made s’mores. We drank beer and wine and watched the lights of the ships out on Chesapeake Bay. We’d skinny dip in the surf and make love among the dunes. A few were in committed relationships but most were lovers of convenience. The gals chose their partners for the night. Sort of like Kid Rock’s song “All Summer Long”. There was one girl who favored me but after she went back to college I never saw her again.

Now the dunes are replaced by cookie cutter condos. There had to be a law passed to mandate public access to the beach and now there are bar steel armored tunnels every so many buildings to allow the public to use the beach. Where there once was the boardwalk, arcade and pally, are hotels so tall that you have to look between them to see the beach from the strip.

The memories are still alive in my mind, but the X, Y, and Z are gone. Just the T remains.

Tom’s World – 28JAN2025 – The Ravages of Time

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

The place where I grew up, at least from age 5, doesn’t exist any more. The name, Sandy Springs, exists as does the geographical location, north Atlanta metro, both exist. But the reality is long gone, torn down and the replacement torn down and the replacement of the replacement—- You get the idea.

Nothing, absolutely nothing physical from my childhood survives. Dust and dead. The neighborhood BBQ parties where everyone’s Dad was a WWII vet. The neighborhood gone, the street gone. Highrise buildings where the woods with the abandoned POW camp were. An 8 lane road where the old rock quarry was where we used to shoot snakes in the lake at the bottom.

I’m the only one left and I’m not going to be around that much longer either.

And the replacements are far from what I imagined as I read my Sci-Fi. Nobody then wrote anything sufficiently dystopian to include this reality.