Trump Said He’s Going on Joe Rogan’s Podcast
Well, I guess this is a positive. Rogan has a viewership of men who should be Trump’s natural target audience. But every opportunity is also a risk. Tread carefully Mr. Trump. And stay away from the pot!
Tag: 2024 elections
Turning the Page
The countdown continues. As I write this there are twenty-four days until the election. From my point of view, I am desperate for this thing to be over. After November Fifth I hope never to see Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow or any other poisonous talking head for the rest of my natural life. My intent is to occupy my time with things that can have a positive impact on me and my local world.
Now it may be that from time to time I may have some reason to consider what the two national parties are doing as it impacts me. That’s only reasonable. But all of my efforts will be directed toward avoiding the policies of the federal and state governments that negatively impact my life. I don’t delude myself that I can completely negate these deleterious influences. But I intend to use whatever resources and logical analysis I can bring to bear to improve the way I and my friends and family live inside this place.
I look at this as a shift from a passive strategy to an active approach. Instead of stressing over an election that I have absolutely no control over and which may be completely rigged from the get go, I can concentrate on my own actions and how they will impact the things I identify as in some sense controllable. And that shift from passive to active I find very exciting. For way too many years I have been fixated on reliving the experience of Ronald Reagan capturing the imagination of the majority of Americans and trying to change the course America was on. Probably the closest we ever came to that was when George W. Bush was given a mandate in 2004 by the American people. And he squandered it. Well, time is growing short. I can’t wait for the country to return to a consensus. That may take decades or maybe never happen at all. For me direct action is the solution.
Of course, my actions will be small, limited in scope and based on my interests and talents. I intend to spend my time writing. I think I might be able to produce some entertaining stories. I want them to reach a sizable audience so I have a lot to learn about marketing and other aspects of book selling. Some of the things I’ve heard about how you have to write ten novels ahead of time so that you can release them, one a month, in order to trigger the Amazon algorithm that notices such things. That seems insane. You have to write a million words before finding out if your story will be seen by anyone. There’s got to be a better way than that. But anyway, that’s one of the things I have to find out about.
So, come on November Sixth. Get here already. Put an end to polls, debates, pundits, special reports, psychopathic snipers, CNN, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, Joe Biden’s presidency and every other scrap of this long stupid ordeal that has eaten up years of my life but hasn’t improved it one iota. Let me move on with my life.
Update:
War Pig commented:
I voted yesterday. Early voting in person at the board of elections. A strange process this time. After validating my identity via military ID card, I signed in and watched as a ballot was printed off for me. I don’t like that. I voted and left. Now I can see how easily electronic-counted ballots can be faked. It goes into a reader machine and I have no way of knowing if it is read correctly. I use ink to fill in the bubble beside the candidate. But when read does the machine record my actual vote or is it set up to record the wrong candidate one out of, say, fifty times?
Hmmmm. Since the Clintons are related by marriage to Soros and a relative of Soros owns the company that makes and supplies software for the majority of voting machines, it gives me furiously to wonder.
Photog responds:
Since the debacle of 2020 I plugged into the local electoral process where I lived. And what has changed surprised me. Even in New England there has been an upswell of monitoring of such things as voter registration lists and fraud. Will it make a difference? Hard to say but there has been some scrutiny.
10OCT2024 – Looking Around This Morning
I’ve got a busy day today but I figured I’d look around at the news and see what was happening before heading out into the world. and right now most of the news seems positive.
Hurricane Milton did some damage but for the most part it wasn’t the hell storm some had been warning. Thank God.
But it looks like the Democrats are being pretty open about the fact that the numbers coming out of private polls are not good so good for Vice President Word Salad.
Halperin is a Leftie but he has been hosting a large relatively bi-partisan zoom call and he has tried to allow both sides to talk about what they see is happening in the race without the one-sided echo chamber hiding the truth. He says the people in the know on both sides think it’s not going Kamala’s way. Hmmm. Sounds promising.
Fall Housekeeping
I was happy to hear that JD Vance had a very successful debate against Tim Walz. That is all to the good since Vance will be on the short list of real leaders for conservatives going forward. And by that term “conservative” I mean anyone who is against the Leftist project. I know that conservative has become a dirty word for the new right but honestly, I can’t keep up with the nomenclature so I’ll just use the old-fashioned meanings of words. So, for me a conservative is someone who believes in the things that have been true about human nature for untold thousands of years.
But regardless of what JD Vance did or didn’t accomplish last night, life goes on here in Dunwich. I have photos and quotes to select. I have posts to write. I have work of all sorts that must be done, both at home and at the office and I have Camera Girl, the dogs and all the other life forms that she keeps to deal with. I have now lugged several hundred pounds of potted plants up two stories to her plant windows. And this is a very important task because of the threat of frost. One year I played fast and loose with the early frost date and an eight-foot-tall ponytail palm bit the dust. I was greatly reviled for that faux pas.
We turned on the heat last week but for the last three or four days we’ve set the thermostats below the point where it will demand heat. It’s just too warm out to need it on. It was just one of those little cold snaps a week ago that demanded a shot of heat to rally us through. But soon enough we’ll need it. My guess is October 21st.
I enjoyed that fresh-eyes approach to viewing Dracula. These classic movies have become the equivalent of museum pieces and it makes sense to try and strip them of the baggage they’ve accumulated through overexposure in the popular culture. They deserve to be looked at from the perspective of art that was a product of its time. It’s like reading Shakespeare. You have to hear the famous monologues with fresh ears. You have to meet them halfway. I think I’ll do something heretical and instead of watching Frankenstein next, I’ll skip to the Mummy.
I’ve begun the re-framing of my American Archipelago “world.” I realized that I had not done enough outlining of the larger story ahead of time. I was in danger of painting myself into a corner and cutting off a lot of other stories that I will want to write later. After all I’m not the Marvel Comic Universe. I can’t invoke the multiverse to bring back the characters that I stupidly kill off. And I need a road map ahead of time so I don’t wander too far off into left field. I think what I’ll do is have my heroes threaten Washington into allowing a “free zone” to exist in a large chunk of the middle of the country where a border won’t be enforced but federal rule will not exist. My plan is to allow a gradual expansion of this zone until it becomes the majority of the land mass. I assume I’ll have the requisite number of crises and resolutions before the new state swallows the United States (and maybe Canada). Making this sound reasonable and figuring out how to make my Connors character a worthy prince (or CEO) is the trick. Of course I could just model him on me. Then he would be a veritable Pericles in all respects.
On the political front, if Harris is installed, the quadrillion dollar question is just how bad will the economy get? Will they keep printing money until hyperinflation kicks in? Will they let Americans starve to death because a loaf of bread costs a thousand dollars? Well, I guess we’ll find out. Barack Obama à Joe Biden à Kamala Harris à ? How much stupider can presidents get? Will Harris be followed by a potted plant? We’re going to learn so much. And I assume it will be incredibly painful. But that is truly the only way that stupid people learn anything. And apparently this country has a very large number of stupid people.
I’m trying to figure out if we can have Americans without an America. Can we celebrate things like the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving if we no longer have the America that birthed those holidays. After all, how can we have an Independence Day when we’re no longer a free people? And if we’re no longer free then what are we giving thanks for? That we’re still breathing? Well, I still like a July barbecue and I still like a turkey dinner so maybe I can keep the celebrations but change their significance. They can become the Summer and Winter Solstice celebrations (with a little fudging of the dates). Oh well.
So regardless of the Apocalypse I’m busy, busy, busy. But once the election is over, I intend to re-order my priorities to use my time more appropriately. Under a Harris administration I don’t see the need to provide daily updates on the disintegration of the American republic. I will probably concentrate on entertainment and public service messages about useful things for folks on our side of the political spectrum. So, send in the clowns.
ZMan Reviews Vance/Walz
Since I was too lazy to watch last night’s debate I settled for reading the ZMan’s review. It was funny and if accurate means Walz is a hopeless weirdo-loser. But we already knew that so hopefully America was paying attention.
The Last Gasp
A beautiful early autumn day. The sky is blue, the clouds are light and the air is crisp. The last few butterflies rest on the ground on top of dry leaves that are strewn everywhere. They lie in the sun until they have enough heat to fly.
But they merely bide their time until they exit this world very soon. A few dragonflies still make their sentry rounds along the perimeter searching for whatever flying insect life remains. 
I see honey bees on the golden rod and a few hover flies here and there. The wolfbane is ready to burst open any day.
The trees are shedding their leaves everywhere you look. Sometimes they stream down in showers and sometimes one by one. While I was taking a few photos, I felt them dropping on my head and shoulders.
A beautiful day, a golden day that very soon will be just a memory as October marches toward Halloween and the days shorten toward winter. And these are a reminder that it’s time to finish all the yard chores before the cold weather sets in. All the furniture, hoses, tools, and gardening equipment need to be gathered and stored away. Fences needed to be strengthened, holes filled and damage repaired all along the length of the buildings.
Luckily for me Camera Girl has provided a list of all my chores! Lucky me.
But this has been a good year for setting things right. Major repairs were successfully completed in time for winter and just a few finishing strokes are needed to return everything to normal. The next forty days will be very busy with annoying responsibilities that will be … very annoying. But once that is over, I will be in a much better place schedule wise and every otherwise. And coincidentally we will all be past the milestone of Election Day. All of the excitement and uncertainty will be over once and for all. I can stop thinking about all this political claptrap once and for all. This election is a complete acid test. If a Kamala Harris can be installed in the White House under the circumstances that have prevailed for the last four years, then there is absolutely no reason to think that my point of view has any relation to who is made president.
At that point I will order my life according to the laws of cause and effect as they are demonstrated not by what is said but by what is done. I will take it as my responsibility to protect my family as best I can from the predatory elements that have been unleashed by the people in charge and teach them to read the signs in order to do the same for their families. I will look for like minded people to gather with and enjoy the good things that this world provides. And I will look for any leaders who might appear who show they can handle themselves and provide a refuge for those who aren’t deluded by the toxic nonsense that the regime teaches to the weak minded and the gullible.
So here we are. October will come and go quickly. And after that unpleasantness in early November the holidays will be upon us. I’m looking forward to gathering with friends and family and go over all the milestones that have happened this year. And plan for next year’s. I’m looking forward to eating too much of the rich food that Camera Girl is famous for. And spending hours shooting the breeze with family that I don’t see often enough. And we’ll perform all the typical rituals and congratulate each other for surviving another year.
Yes, it was a beautiful day and a good day to get things done.
Theater of the Absurd
If ten years ago you had told me that the most interesting television presidential interview would be Greg Gutfeld and Donald Trump, I would have said, “Greg who?” followed by, “You mean the guy from The Apprentice?”
But Gutfeld provides Trump with one of the only television spaces where he’s not fending off attacks from so-called journalists. Now I don’t count the Hannity type infomercial. It’s too phony for anyone to take seriously. And surprisingly, Trump doesn’t seem at ease when he sits down with Tucker Carlson for whatever reason.
With Gutfeld and his panel of goofballs Trump seems jovial and loose which is when he’s at his best. And Gutfeld has a decent sized audience for cable tv. I’ve been watching Gutfeld on and off since his “Red Eye” days. He’s basically a libertarian but he doesn’t attack the Right much anymore so he’s relatively benign. Good to see Trump getting a platform.
A Jaded Mandarin
People are always trying to compare the present era to other historical epochs. Thucydidean Athens or Caesarian Rome or pre-revolutionary France. All these analogies are clever or foolish depending on the author. And all of them are of necessity partial in their similarity. What’s the expression, “History never repeats itself but merely rhymes.”?
And that is true. This era is like no other because the assembly of characters is unique. What I notice about the cast of this drama is that most of them are a poor lot. Don’t look for a Pericles or a Julius Caesar or even an Augustus. We’ve got the Clintons, the Bushes and the Obamas. And when even these mediocrities walk away, we get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Now I don’t mean to exhort Trump’s virtues as if he’s some messiah. His feet of clay are legendary. But he isn’t a politician. He’s more of a supporting cast member dragged on stage because the headliners all forgot their lines and ran off stage in terror of the audience pelting them with tomatoes and oranges.
There’s something distressing about the people who run things from behind the scenes handing over the kabuki theater to really obvious fifth raters like Biden and Harris. I can’t make up my mind whether they just don’t think it’s necessary to keep up the pretense of a republic anymore or that some bizarre sequence of circumstances has thrust these two truly unimpressive hacks into the limelight. I’m not sure which of these two reasons is true and I’m not even sure which is a worse reason.
But for whichever reason, here we are. And it is a spectacularly awful moment in our history. For more than twenty years I have been steadily more and more dismayed by the path our leaders have been dragging us down. Every presidential term has plumbed new depths until at this point it appears we may be well beyond the point of no return. And so possibly the only thing left to do about our present situation is laugh.
Maybe mockery is all that’s left to do. After all, exposing the stupidity and evil of our supposed leaders may even accomplish some small good. Maybe it could even tip the balance by waking up even the terminally dense to just how imbecilic someone like Kamala Harris truly is. And, if nothing else, laughter is good for the soul. Watching those compilations of Biden stumbling and bumbling around trying to walk off stage or failing to remember words like government or health care were hilarious and without a doubt cheered me up. And listening to Kamala expound on yellow school buses or the relationship of Russia and Ukraine on the map of Eurasia did my heart good.
But humor aside, I do think about what it means that Biden and Harris are now the caliber of leader that the dominant party of this empire finds acceptable. It’s got to say something about how this country works. We don’t elect political leaders. We hire actors to read us the news from the regime. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that we now have actors who translate the news from the actors we “elect.” We have the Haitian Betty Boop come out and explain what Joe Biden meant when he mumbled incoherently about Russia or Gaza or ice cream. We won’t get the truth but we’ll get today’s version of the narrative.
And so, looking at what we have devolved into I wouldn’t compare us to Athens or Rome. I wouldn’t even compare us to Stalin’s USSR. We’re more like one of the decadent Chinese bureaucratic dynasties right before the barbarians overran it. We’re the Middle Kingdom that has always been and will always be. It will go on regardless of ineptitude, graft and stupidity. It will survive due to the titanic size and inertia of the whole interlocking structure. Even the Mongol hordes were subsumed into its colossal bulk. Maybe in a century a revolution will sweep the Earth and topple it to the ground but a century seems like the minimum time needed.
In the meantime, I hope for some miracle where Trump gets in and like some latter-day Heracles he beheads and cauterizes the polycephalic Hydra of the Deep State and returns sanity to our poor abused republic. Otherwise, I better learn to bow.
Well, They’ve Had Their Second Shot At Trump
This second guy, Ryan Wesley Routh, has been trying to recruit mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. Now what do you think is the chance that Mr. Routh doesn’t work for the CIA?
https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/us-news/would-be-trump-assassin-idd-as-ryan-routh-58-of-hawaii-sources/
It’s remarkable that we’re talking about multiple assassination attempts on the Republican candidate for president. But, no big deal. Probably a misunderstanding. Maybe his meds were off.
Imagine if it were Harris. The cities would be in flames. Well, will they go for the trifecta? Probably.
My Last Presidential Debate
I wasn’t going to watch the debate because tomorrow is going to be an early trip and a long day so I can’t stay up late but then I said, “Ah, the hell with it. I’ll watch the sideshow.”
Well, she wasn’t Biden. She could string together sentences. And of course, the questions from ABC were almost all slanted against Trump and for Harris. But basically, it was a free for all with both of them hammering away at each other. Parts of it were somewhat entertaining but I wouldn’t call it very decisive.
I like the fact that Trump basically stuck to using a very large part of his time hammering her on the border and the economy. Those are the bread-and-butter topics that people really care about and I liked his closing statement where he made the main point; that all the things that Harris says she’s going to do could have been done at any time in the last three years. But they weren’t done.
So, does this debate help Trump or Harris more? I guess it marginally helps Harris because she didn’t stand there like an idiot in the way her boss did a couple of months ago. She’ll get a bounce because she’s proven she’s not brain dead and because the press will claim she was brilliant. But really this election is a referendum on the economy and the Border.
Neither of those issues work in Kamala Harris’s favor and talking about them isn’t good for her case. Now it’s entirely possible that America will vote for Harris. And it is possible that even if they vote for Trump that the powers that be will print off a million ballots in Philadelphia and Detroit. So maybe this whole exercise was pointless anyway. But it did give us a chance to see Trump and Harris side by side. I’ll have to say I do enjoy his show. He is unique. He’s crazy as a loon but he’s a hell of a lot more fun than anything else going on in this country. He’s got energy and he’s got flair.
Well, that’s my take. Was it worth it? Nah. I should’ve written about something fun. Basically, I can’t wait for this election to be over. It’s like some kind of boring speech you have to sit through while waiting for a game to start. What happens after November will be a new world. All the make-believe will be over and we can start thinking about the here and now. Maybe my focus will be on hoarding things that won’t be available in the future. Or maybe it’s time to start working on my do-it-yourself skills for when I won’t be able to afford the costs of craftsmen and the like. Or maybe I’ll concentrate on fiction writing and leave the punditry to Tucker Carlson and his buddies.
But whatever else I’ll be doing; I think I’ve watched my last presidential debate. I mean, what’s the point? If these same people are put back in the White House after four years of this then I’m in the wrong country.