I didn’t watch the debate. Life’s too short. But this clip was hilarious.
Tag: 2024 elections
Dah Duh, Dah Dah Dah Daaah, Duh
2016 was the Star Wars election where a plucky band of rebels blew up the Hillary Death Star and sent Barack Obama careening into oblivion, or was it Jeb Bush? 2020 was the Empire Strikes Back Election. The rotting corpse of Emperor Bidentine was installed on the throne and the rebels were battered and scattered. Now here we are for Return of the Trumpi. To torture this metaphor a little further I’m not sure if Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are annoying enough to be Princess Leia and Yoda. But at least I’m sure that Chris Christie is Jabba the Hut.
Alright, enough of that.
As a reviled civic nationalist, I have been fighting a rear-guard action against the string of successful predictions of the dissident right for something like twenty years. They’ve been right about the Bushes and right about the Republicans in general and now we’ll find out if they’re right about the finality of, “We’re not going to vote our way out of this.” What we have in front of us is the acid test. Joe Biden has created the perfect storm to force the populace to vote for the Republicans. If he manages to win the 2024 election then nothing remains to dispute the truth of, “We’re not going to vote our way out of this.”
Granted, I’m already pretty sure it’s true. But I’ve been tempted back into the game by just how awful a mess Biden has made of the country. It’s becoming harder and harder to see the America as it was just a few short years ago. There’s not even the pretense that this isn’t the trajectory they mean to for us to be on. It’s just homeless encampments, unchecked urban violence and rust belt poverty as far as the eye can see.
It’s hard for me to see how anyone who isn’t either a welfare recipient or a true believer could look at what is happening to America and not say, “enough.” So that’s why I still have any lingering doubts about the finality of the Left’s victory. I desperately want to believe that even leftists who strive for all the progressive platitudes but live in the real world wouldn’t be horrified by the collapse of the beautiful world they once lived in and want someone to fix the zombie apocalypse that has unfolded before our eyes. Even if that someone is Donald Trump, the very devil himself.
So, here we go again. Another countdown to the “most important election in our lives,” another round of pathetic headlines by the New York Times and the Washington Post assuring us that Joe Biden, notwithstanding the fact that he can’t count past three, is the greatest president since Harriet Tubman and possibly a living saint. And that his only begotten son Hunter is completely above suspicion and, by the way, possibly a good choice for president in 2028. Oh, the pain.
Well, the only thing left for me to do is figure out who will be the Ewoks. Maybe we are. At this point I feel pathetic enough to fit the part.
JEB Haley Rides Again
I have to wonder how many more elections will the Republican establishment; both politicians and rich donors, attempt to foist the hopeless anti-populist candidates that they always put forward. It was one thing back in 2000 when we bought into George W Bush. Sure, he was the son of a former president and the governor of Texas. And he claimed he was a born-again Christian. How could we go wrong? But then we got Iraq and compassionate conservatism with all that entailed.
And then we got John McCain and Mitt Romney. That one-two punch was enough to awaken even the most complacent conservative to the reality of the Uni-Party. These were hopeless losers who would rather let the Democrats have all the social justice victories they dreamed of as long as their favorite military equipment manufacturer received enough contracts to keep the checks rolling into their election funds.
But finally, we got to 2016 and the spectacle of JEB! Bush telling Donald Trump that illegal aliens crashing our border was an act of love that we must honor by providing them with citizenship. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Donald Trump buried Jeb Bush in 2016 and with him he buried the chances of lame, rollover and play dead, establishment Republicans getting a free pass to be our mostly unsuccessful presidential candidates.
However, hope springs eternal in the hearts and wallets of the Koch Brothers and other super-wealthy Republican backers and in the idiot sons of the Mayflower descendants. But now they’ve discovered a new ploy; diversity idiots. And so was born the horror that is Nikki Haley. She sounds like Jeb Bush but she’s noticeably manlier. And because of this stiffer spine she’s even more forceful in her embrace of increasing immigration and fighting wars in whatever third world countries have yet to be invaded. She likes the Ukraine and Gaza wars. A lot. And given a little time I’m sure she could warm up to a Belarussian adventure and maybe one day Kazakhstan. She truly is a wonder to behold.
So, my question is, will there ever be a point when the donors to the Republican party will stop providing hundreds of millions of dollars to Potemkin conservative candidates in the hope of covering both bets in the presidential elections? Many people would say no, that the necessity of forcing an establishment candidate on Republican voters is critical. After all, they’ve been doing this since Gerald Ford in 1976 and it’s worked for the most part. Election after election we convinced ourselves that whatever empty suit they hauled up on the stage was better than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Why should things change now?
But I don’t think that’s the case. I listen to the media talking heads talking about how exciting Nikki Haley is and what a breath of fresh air she brings to the Republican race. And it sounds so absurd that I think, “Nah, only the hopeless morons would fall for that.” And based on her numbers it all seems about right. At best she’s polling high single digits. Basically, she’s got the anti-Trumpers and the truly mentally challenged (although there is a large overlap in the Venn diagram of those two subsets). To me it seems that the establishment Republican candidates have been exposed once and for all.
What seems like the next step is the formal acknowledgement by the donors that they will either have to come to terms with the direction of the Republican party or go over to the Democrats. I guess they could start their own party but I think they’re too lazy for that.
Now alternatively, if the powers that be in the party rig the 2024 primaries so that Donald Trump doesn’t end up as the candidate, that will change things significantly. I think it will end the Republican party as a legitimate political home for the conservative half of the country. And I would guess that a new party would begin to form to replace it. Because it would be a pretty absurd situation where something like 30% of the electorate just stayed home during the election of the United States president.
But anyway, I will say I am a little disappointed that Donald Trump won’t be participating in the Republican debates. I would love to see Trump get to knock JEB! off just one more time.
Guest Contributor – War Pig – 18NOV2023 – Thumbs Down on 2024
With California and New York both sealing conviction records, even for felonies, I doubt we can really turn the corner by peaceful means. How long before blue states seal pedophile and sexual predators’ records? So child care facilities, nursing homes and schools will have no way to detect paedos/predators and prevent them from working with vulnerable populations. Banks will wind up hiring thieves. This happened to me. My bank hired a juvenile thief with 20 arrests and 3 convictions and who’s records were expunged. He stole my and several others’ debit card data and account access and ordered merchandise sent to various she’ll addresses where his group picked it up. Thankfully I check my accounts daily, noticed the false purchases, and got the ball rolling. His bunch got ten years apiece.
But with Blue state politicians working as hard as they can to release a wave of criminals and illegal immigrants, I mean, Democrat voters, it will take a 1930s style depression to start waking up leftist voters, most of whom are women.
So banning another Great Depression, world war, or armed rebellion I don’t see a path forward.
The Ghost of America Yet to Come – Part 2
Yesterday in the first part of this exercise I extrapolated where all the awful policies and consequences of Democrat rule would lead. It was pretty much the train wreck scenario for our progressive trajectory. Is there any other path forward? I’m not sure.
It would be highly unrealistic to imagine a version of the future where traditional values are easily restored to the country. That would be ignoring reality because the majority of young people living in this country are leftists. They believe in the woke orthodoxies and align with the agenda that the Democrats espouse.
But it is true that the Biden administration has made a hash of the economy. Many of the young resent the lack of opportunities in this economy. And the horrific crime surging around the cities has even begun to frighten urban leftists. Especially since several of them have become high profile victims of random violence. So, let’s see if we can spin a version of the future that doesn’t make me want to emigrate.
Here are the circumstances that would have to align to permit us to avoid the future I outlined in Part 1 of this thought experiment:
- Joe Biden will have to get his wish and remain the 2024 candidate despite his extreme unpopularity and obvious incompetence.
- Donald Trump will have to defy all odds and not get thrown off the ballot by the two major parties.
- Joe Biden’s America has to descend three more turns down into the maelstrom its’s currently circling. Maybe the price of food, fuel and housing will continue to spike and interest rates will make home ownership impossible for most people. Maybe the mass layoffs at the banks and other corporations will start to cut into the Democrat support. And maybe Joe’s transparent lies will just finally aggravate even the stupidest voters.
- And finally, it will require that the Republicans will actually try to restrain voter fraud in the swing states like Georgia and Arizona.
If all these things happen it would be possible for a Republican Congress and President to be installed in 2025. And if all the promises and plans were put into effect, we could start to get the country back. The idea of replacing the bulk of the Justice Department sounds like a dream but I’ve heard scenarios that might be workable. And other worthwhile changes could be made if we could manage to have decent congressional leaders while a Republican president was in the White House. Putting an end to the “green agenda” would drastically lower the cost of gasoline and heating oil. It would also lower the cost for almost everything else. Urban crime wouldn’t disappear overnight but the feds could crack down on DA’s that weren’t prosecuting criminals. Many things could be turned around once the Democrats were out of the White House.
And now the splash of cold water to wake us up after that pipe dream. What do I think are the odds that all those things will happen and we escape the Part 1 fate? One in five? One in ten? Hard to say. But one thing’s for sure. If it doesn’t happen in 2024 it’s hard to imagine it will ever happen. Stagflation finished off Jimmy Carter in 1980. What we have going on right now is worse on every level and includes so many kinds of dysfunction that if it could be ignored during an election year then we would have to be dealing with an entirely different America from the one I grew up in.
So, there’s the happy version. Let me know what odds you’d give for this version in the comments. Ho, ho, ho.
The Ghost of America Yet to Come – Part 1
In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens introduced a plot device of having his protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge “educated” by three spirits; the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. Each of these entities showed Scrooge the reality of these time periods in his life and how his descent into brutal miserliness and heartlessness had negatively impacted both himself and those around him spiritually and physically. And since over time the damage done by and to Scrooge was cumulative the future was of course the bleakest picture and promised the complete destruction of Scrooge’s immortal soul.
Well, A Christmas Carol has nothing to do with the future of America except inasmuch as both concern a once promising entity straying from the path of reason and virtue and slowly degenerating into an evil shadow of its former self. But hey, it’s 9pm and I have to go with what comes to the surface. So, let’s give this a rattle.
How about we look at what will happen if we continue on the path we’re currently on. Well then, let’s start with the 2024 election. Let’s assume that either because the current voting population prefers the Democrats or because voter fraud is used effectively by them, Joe Biden or someone else from the Evil Party is elected to the presidency.
That will effectively seal the end of the Constitutional rule of law at the federal level. Undoubtedly, by 2028 the administrative state will dismantle all of the Bill of Rights as they apply to federal rule.
We will see the increased use of kangaroo courts and juries to punish Republican voters and congressional representatives whenever they get in the way. And I would not be surprised if by then they pack the Supreme Court to curtail things like Freedom of Speech and Religion and the Right to Bear Arms. All these things are already being put forward as part of the Democrat agenda.
I’m also assuming they will continue to expand the “green agenda” and fossil fuel for home heating and transportation will be increasingly difficult to afford or even obtain. This will effectively limit the amount of freedom of movement that the average American will have. Instead of jumping in your car and taking the family a couple of states over for a camping trip or sightseeing holiday, everything will be mediated through mass transit. Travel by bus or train will become common. If the crackdown on fossil fuels has moved far enough along airplanes may no longer be a common means of transportation except for the truly wealthy.
By 2028 the effect of uncontrolled immigration will have had a truly profound effect on the American landscape. All large cities will resemble the third world with homeless encampments and shanty towns making them chaotic, crime ridden and subject to outbreaks of various dangerous communicable diseases. Policing of these jurisdictions will be under the authority of federal law enforcement and no local law enforcement will be allowed to prosecute non-citizens without permission.
Digital currency will replace paper. Which will probably be a necessity since inflation would make carrying paper money difficult. And speaking of inflation, it will be brutal. Price controls will be introduced but the quality of products will become problematic and a great premium will be placed on things that actually work and commodities like food products that aren’t greatly adulterated.
Foreign relations will not be too good. I foresee a sort of 1984-like relationship between several large antagonistic alliance systems. Between wars, guerilla wars and insurgencies peace will be a scarce commodity. And military service will be mandatory.
Population growth, other than immigration will disappear. The share of native-born Americans will decrease rapidly due to the very high cost of living and anti-family propaganda. American culture will become increasingly debased and what passes for mass entertainment will be geared toward morons.
The government will apply greater and greater resources to propaganda and pharmaceuticals that encourage euthanasia for anyone who isn’t happy. And short-term incentives will be used to encourage this process, like a sumptuous last meal.
So, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come I have a very bleak vision for us of the future. Now granted this is a worst-case scenario but I don’t think I extrapolated very much at all. All these things are already happening. I’ve just brought them to their inevitable conclusions.
So sorry for the downer. Tomorrow, I give an alternative that is based on a less drastic but still possible future. Ho, ho, ho.
Late Night photog
photog – Welcome back to the show. During the commercial break Senator Spekanaty had to leave to catch his flight back to DC. But our next guest will be sure to please. Of course, after his tour de force performance at the fourth Republican 2024 presidential primary debate he needs no introduction. Give a big welcome to Great Old One, Cthulhu.
Off to the side of photog’s desk a large video screen lights up and shows the six-hundred-foot-tall squid-headed dragon seated on his throne inside his lair. At his side is a hundred-foot-high glass bowl containing about forty live humans cowering at the bottom. While speaking to the late night tv show host the eldritch god would occasionally reach into the bowl and pop one of the people in his mouth, much as one of us would eat a peanut from a bowl while speaking on the phone.
CTHULHU – Thank you photog. You’re much too kind. I merely provided a much-needed clarification on how to ensure civility and avoid confusion during these political debates. If a pathological liar like Christie is allowed to continuously muddy the waters with misinformation about the possibility of reforming the federal government, why, people are liable to lose faith in the basic goodness of public servants. In good faith I couldn’t allow that to continue. Also, I was feeling a might peckish and he looked juicy and delicious.
photog – But weren’t you afraid that devouring the former governor of New Jersey would strike the wrong note when you were trying to represent Donald Trump to the audience of that debate?
CTHULHU – Why photog I don’t see how that could be. For weeks everyone has been complaining about how candidates like Christie and Pence were wasting space on the stage that the front-runners should be using to explain their platforms to the Republican voters. Pence had the decency to bow out. Since Christie refused, I merely gave him an assist.
photog – So you feel no remorse?
CTHULHU – Remorse? No. Maybe a slight gall bladder attack. Chris really packs a punch when it comes to the triglycerides. Woof! But look, we’ve got to get our message out. Lots of people have lost faith after the events of 2020. We’ve got to show we’re serious about reforming the federal government and clearly working within the bureaucracy’s rulebook is only going to result in the same failures we saw before. Clearly bold and innovative methods are necessary.
photog – And eating up thousands of employees of the administrative state is that method?
CTHULHU – Hey look. I’ve been restructuring dysfunctional organizations for a couple of billion years now both within this space-time continuum and without. And I’ve never seen anything that gets the job done faster and better than chowing down on the dead wood that are standing in the way of progress. And in fact, think of how this method also works to decrease the deficit and debt situation. Every civil servant I eat is one less parasite drawing a salary and eventually a pension from the US Treasury. It’s clearly a win-win.
photog – But couldn’t you just fire them?
CTHULHU – How cute! You think that Washington works that way. Trust me, you’ll be dead and buried before any FBI, IRS or State Department hack gets fired by the next Republican administration. No, it’s eat them or nothing. There’s no third way.
photog – Well, I guess you know what’s best. But can you tell the audience of any other innovations that the Trump administration is planning to unveil before the election?
CTHULHU – Certainly photog. After paring down the bureaucracy by 80 or 90%, I intend to make it my priority to reform the tech industries. To that end I will be spending several weeks visiting the headquarters of Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and various other social media companies. I think I should meet face to face with Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and their peers. I have a few “suggestions” that I want to bat around with them. I have this theory that if I show up looking in the 50th story window of their C-Suite offices that good things are bound to happen. Now granted, I’m fairly sure that these fellows will end up lodged in my alimentary canal. But we all need a dream. And my dream is that one day these people will take a hint and do what I want them to do and avoid being eaten. Sure, it won’t happen tomorrow or even ten years from tomorrow but eventually if I eat enough of these people Darwinian selection will lead to a better class of tech giants. And that is my dream.
photog – Well, all I can say is may your dream come true.
CTHULHU – Sure, sure. But hopefully not anytime soon. With the skyrocketing price of meat in Biden’s America I have to eat as many dead-enders as I possibly can. A Great Old One’s gotta eat.
Anyway, photog, I’ve got to cut this short. I’m due in Brooklyn for a rally by the Pro-Hamas coalition of ethical hipsters. I figure between the craft beers and the hummus dip I can eat a swath through them and really clean up most of Park Slope. I hate hipsters. I love eating them but I detest their annoying illogic.
photog – Well thanks Cthulhu for your time. And come back any time.
The image of the Great Old One folded his front claws together in a sign of humble farewell and the screen went dark.
photog – I guess that’s all the time we have left. I’d like to thank our sponsor Soylent Green for their patronage and add my personal tribute to their delicious line of energy products. Remember, “When you want to feel keen, remember to eat green!” Good night, everybody.
Revenge Term
I was reading an article in the Guardian (I know, I know) called “A revenge term: what would another four years of Trump look like?” It contained such lines as,
- “I think it would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, said on the ABC talk show The View this week. “And I don’t say that lightly.”
- “Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “It would be a disaster for America. He’s already made it very clear that his second term is going to be a revenge term. He’s going to use the power of government to persecute and prosecute his enemies and to cement his own power, or at least the power of his allies and cronies.”
It really was a great read. All the talk of revenge and firing the Deep State was wonderfully exciting. And it was just funny that they can’t see that revenge is exactly what the Justice Department has been engaged in for the last three years.
But then I knew I had to get back to the real world. Well, sort of. After another meaningless Republican debate, Senator Tim Scott has ended his campaign. That makes sense, I guess. I don’t think he ever got higher than 4%. The amusing part of the primary is how excited the establishment types at Fox News get about Nikki Haley, “She’s surging in the polls.” What, from 3% to 6%? And they talk about how well she’d run against Joe Biden. They’ve got to be kidding. If Nikki Haley is the Republican candidate none of Trump’s 60% will even bother to show up to vote. Haley may be a Republican. In fact, she’s a Jeb Bush Republican. But conservative she is not. And to be fair America already had a chance to vote for that kind of Republican in 2008 and 2012 with John McCain and Mitt Romney. But eight years of George W Bush back at the turn of the century showed us why RINOs aren’t a good idea.
But they’ll keep pushing her as if it’s some kind of brilliant idea, “She’s a woman! She’s non-white! She loves abortion! We’ll get the woman and black vote, right?” Ah, if only she were a lesbian, then they’d have the trifecta. Well, half a loaf, right?
But I think the Republican debate thing is just about played out. Ramaswamy is doing the Trump act, and give him his due, a lot of what he says is true but let’s face it. He’s not going to be Trump’s VP. I did hear that talk that Tucker Carlson would make a good VP pick. And maybe he would. Not that I think he’d accept. I think he’s smart enough to know that his life would become much less fun if he became Vice President. But in terms of who would be preferable I think that would be Ron DeSantis and from what I can tell Trump can’t stand him. Hopefully this time Trump picks someone more courageous that that empty suit Pence.
Well, I won’t belabor the current situation in the 2024 race. This is a check-in. We’ve got a whole year for Joe Biden to fall below 25% in the polls. No need to rush it now. We can savor it later. “Revenge term,” I like the sound of it.
Something Will Have to Give
The New York Times, a former newspaper, published the results of a series of polls that they held in the six most hotly contested “swing” states, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Trump won five out of six. The only one Biden picked up was Wisconsin which was within the 4% margin of error for the poll. Of the five Trump won, all but one (Pennsylvania) was outside of the margin of error.
| State | Trump | Biden | ||
| % | % | |||
| Nevada | 52 | 41 | ||
| Georgia | 49 | 43 | ||
| Arizona | 49 | 44 | ||
| Michigan | 48 | 43 | ||
| Pennsylvania | 48 | 44 | ||
| Wisconsin | 44 | 47 |
So, what does this mean? Well, if I were to guess, I think it means that independents in these states think Biden is doing a lousy job running the country. And since the independents are the least ideological voters, their opinion is probably the most objective. Two thirds of independents are saying they’d rather vote for the guy who is being indicted in four different criminal proceedings in four different jurisdictions around the country. They’d prefer a man who has been demonized by every news outlet, the FBI and the Justice Department. And impeached twice by the House of Representatives. Essentially what they’re saying is, they want to vote for this guy precisely because all of these people say they shouldn’t.
Now imagine if these poll numbers remain where they are or increase right up to Election Day 2024. And then suppose that we have a rerun of 2020 where the people go to bed on election night with Donald Trump up by insurmountable leads in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan but the polls get shut down without a completed tally and then after a few days or weeks of “finding” absentee ballots Joe Biden miraculously pulls ahead by a few thousand votes.
Well, I think that would be the end of people believing in the electoral system in this country. After all, the label “banana republic” has already gotten fairly wide currency after the partisan prosecutions that the Justice Department has been indulging in for the last four years. I’m guessing that comparisons of our electoral system to Sadaam Hussein’s will become quite common after that.
But the important question is, what practical difference will people’s perception of voter fraud make? I mean, the fraud will still allow Democrats to control the White House and maybe the Congress. And that will eventually allow the Supreme Court to be packed with progressives. Will it matter if no one believes in the elections?
I think it will. It won’t immediately topple the government. The United States still possess formidable resources and many of its institutions are somewhat functional. But history has shown that a republic that loses the trust of its citizens in the fairness of its institutions eventually radicalizes the common people and leads to recourse to a revolutionary alternative.
Rome succumbed to revolt once the republican government became corrupt and tyrannical. And it’s not necessary to go back two thousand years ago to see what happens to a tyrannical government, even a powerful one once the people have lost faith in its legitimacy. We only have to look at the Soviet Union. When people discover that elections are fake their relationship to the state is no longer one of ownership. It becomes purely transactional. And so, if the government that presides over these fake elections also fails to provide prosperity, then the only thing that can keep it in power is brute force. Slaves don’t work any harder than they have to. In the Soviet Union there was a saying, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Well, we’re headed there. Inflation means that people are working two jobs and still aren’t able to save up to buy a house. But they see illegal aliens given free housing and welfare. I don’t think Americans are ready to live that way.
Something will have to give.
Hey, Trump Can’t Be Ahead! We Were Promised!
So the Dems are worried about that poll showing Trump way ahead in the swing states. I wonder if they’ve added in the factor for voter fraud. I mean write-in ballots.