Tag: 2025

We’re All Rooting for You

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The snow is falling pretty fast here in Dunwich.  It’s starting to cover the ice over the swamp and pretty soon it will force the lycanthropes back into their caves along the bases of the hills.  And that will quiet the howling that kept me up last week.  It’s always annoying when the moon is full.  Between the howling and the scratching at the door and the screaming of the stranded motorists who get eaten alive while walking down the road for help it’s a real pain.  I mean come on, have some consideration for other people.  Either be eaten alive in stoic silence or bring a revolver loaded with silver bullets.  It’s not that complicated.  Read the town ordinances.  Your survivors are going to be fined for the after-hours noise violation so use your head.

Trump says he is going to un-classify and reveal the remaining records from the Kennedy (JFK and RFK) and King assassinations.  Now that’s pretty great.  People have been teasing these things for scores of years.  Of course, I’m not assuming that the records are the truth.  Probably they don’t say anything definitive about anything.  But the veil of secrecy has been used like some magic spell to keep us wondering what the people in the know don’t want us to know since we were kids.  At this point I doubt we’ll ever know what actually happened but at least they can stop acting like we’re peons who can’t be trusted with the higher mysteries of the cult.  But right now, I am excited to hope maybe there are names like Castro or Khruschev or the CIA or the Mob.  That would be like a Tom Clancey novel instead of that nit-wit Oswald.

It’s funny.  A month ago, if you asked me whether I thought I’d be excited about Trump’s inauguration I’d’ve said absolutely not.  But I’m surprised to say that’s not the case.  I am looking forward to it and excited about the prospect of someone on my side taking over and beginning the daunting task of chopping away at the roots of the monster that ate the United States.  I just read today that this year Argentina had its first budget surplus in fourteen years.  Wouldn’t it be a miracle if Trump could make that happen in 2026?

And maybe tomorrow he’ll hand out pardons to the J6 prisoners.  That would breathe life into the base and bring tears to the eyes of Garland and his stooges.  And while he’s at it he should use an executive order to provide recompense and apologies to anyone the US government punished for not getting a COVID shot.  Now that’s overdue.

But before anything else, give Kash Patel the keys to the J Edgar Hoover Building and have him begin the process of emptying the offices of all the creeps and thugs that the FBI employed over the last twenty-five years to spy on and persecute American citizens.  And he should quickly cancel all their passwords and clearance ratings so that they can never again cause us harm.  And while he’s at it put a blanket hold on FISA warrant requests and stop spying on Americans altogether.  That would really start the new administration on a patriotic foot.  That would really be a change for the better.

And if he really wants to release records that need de-classifying let him de-classify the records of the operations that targeted Americans; including the Russia collusion hoax.  Name names and appoint special counsels.  Put those guys in jail.  If need be, have the trials far away from Washington.  Maybe a small town in Florida or Texas.  They’re Americans too, I think.  They can provide the jury of twelve men and true, I believe.

Well, I’m letting myself run away with things but as I said I’m more excited about all this than I thought I’d be.  Good luck Donald Trump.  We’re all rooting for you.

Even If You Are from Queens

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At long last the abysmal presidency of zombie Joe Biden is finally about to end.  His re-animated corpse has been submerged in a large bottle of formaldehyde and all the pardons have been printed out and prepared for publication.  And now that they’re making up constitutional amendments out of whole cloth maybe we’ll find out that cats have been given citizenship just so the blue-haired crazy women will have another victory to embrace.

But the imminent departure of Biden has me considering the Trump phenomenon.  Even David Brooks had to grudgingly admit that “Trump is the most consequential politician since Reagan.”  And he means that negatively in that the American people have chosen Trump for the things that Brooks thinks are faults.  Well, what can you expect from David Brooks?

And you know, for most people the idea of Trump being part of our political world only began with 2016.  But I remember when Trump was trying to involve himself in politics as a young man in New York City.  It was back in the mid-eighties and New York was, as usual, broke and the skating rink in Central Park had completely disintegrated through neglect and there was no money in the budget to fix it.  Ed Koch was mayor and he was trying to spin some plan for Albany to pay for it but they wouldn’t bite.  Now this was about the time the city was going into another decline.  Violence was starting to resurface after a lull in the early eighties.  I think that maybe Trump was thinking of running for mayor or something.  Well, he volunteered to rebuild the rink and pay for it himself.  And he did, under budget and on schedule.  But New York City had not yet hit bottom.  It wasn’t ready for a Republican.  That would happen after New York’s first black mayor, David Dinkins unleashed anarchy on the streets of New York.  And that proved to be Rudy Giuliani’s time to fix the city.  But he had a lawman’s background as a prosecutor.  And he knew that the police would be the key to saving New York City.  So, Donald Trump retreated to his business and his entertainment projects.

But thirty years later he decided that if someone as talentless as Barack Obama could be president for eight years then he could easily figure out the ropes himself and get something done for America.  And he did.  But why?

I think I understand a little bit what motivates him.  He’s a twentieth century New York City American.  I also am one.  Of course he came from money.  But not old money.  His ancestors and mine came to the United States at about the same time.  He and I lived in New York City at the same time.  Of course, I came from the more interesting borough of Brooklyn and he came from Queens which as far as I’m concerned is more like part of Long Island but whatever, we both were part of twentieth century New York City which was the heart of twentieth century America.  And we both watched it degraded from the capitol of the world to a dirty, poor, crime-ridden refugee camp.  So, I think I know what he means when he talks about making America great again.  He’s talking about restoring the people and the ethos that catapulted the United States to the status it had in 1945.

He wants to make a deal with the descendants of the people who fought World War II.  If they’ll vote for him, he’ll save their grandchildren from the globalists who want to replace them with the third world.  It’s really a pretty simple concept.  Now I don’t know if he simply feels kinship with these people or if he sees an opportunity to capitalize on an underutilized resource (us).  Either way it’s the best deal we’ll ever get.  And at the same time, it’s a kick in the teeth for the Left and for the Bushes and Romneys.  Win, win.

So, thank you Donald Trump.  As an old neighbor of yours I salute you for lending a hand.  Even if you are from Queens.

Eeny Meeny Chilly Beany, the Spirits are About to Speak

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[It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.  –  L. Sprague de Camp]

Only a great fool would claim to know in advance how 2025 will end.  Everything from nuclear Armageddon to the return of the Prince of Peace is definitely on the table.  My radius of likely outcomes is slightly narrower (at least on the upside).  I could easily imagine things going very wrong between the United States and Russia or China or Iran in the foreseeable future.  And by wrong I don’t necessarily mean a full nuclear exchange with either of the first two of those nations.  There is plenty of room for low level violence and sabotage that could cause our lives to be much worse.  For instance, an aircraft carrier is becoming an increasingly vulnerable target to any number of new threats.  If a carrier were badly damaged or even sunk it might not lead to a nuclear exchange but it would cause a cascade of actions that will threaten war.

But let’s put war aside for a moment.  At least global war.  Let’s look at what will be going on in North America.  Trump intends to close the borders.  And that will both include Mexico and Canada.  This will change the way things are done in several aspects of life.  It will impact migration (obviously) but it will also impact industry.  A lot of stuff is built in Mexico and Canada.  The transportation of these products will be impacted.  And illegal importation (drugs, sex slaves) will also be impacted.  The Mexican and other gangs that control these illicit trades will have to be confronted head on in what will amount to a war on the southern border.  This alone could be the toughest thing Donald Trump will be faced with during his presidency.  He may have to live in a bunker due to the military capability of these gangs.  It’s a cinch their snipers are a lot more accurate than the ones the CIA found during the 2024 election.  Anyway, if he’s serious he’ll have his hands full with this action.

As for the economy, well, I think by default things will get somewhat better.  Just seeing the Greens pushed out of the White House will encourage the petroleum industry to improve the energy situation in the United States.  Who knows, maybe gasoline will fall below two dollars again.  And if that happens it will have a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy as transportation costs fall and with it the price of most commodities.  Now I wouldn’t exaggerate the extent of this.  Prices don’t usually fall except during a recession.  But if they stop going up it will begin to stanch the economic bleeding of the middle class.

Beyond that Trump can do a lot to encourage corporate on-shoring of manufacturing.  Tariffs can be of two varieties.  You can raise tariffs on the products of foreign companies or you can put tariffs on products that are manufactured outside of this country regardless of the nationality of the company that owns the factory.  This will encourage companies (foreign or domestic) to manufacture here the products they want to sell here.  Personally, if a Toyota car is built in Georgetown, Kentucky I consider it more American than a GM car built in Mexico or Canada.  So, will any of this happen?  Possibly not in 2025.

And finally, will he drain the swamp in 2025?  Well, not completely but he does want to put Kash Patel in charge of the FBI.  I read that they had him under investigation.  I don’t know much more about him than what I’ve read but wouldn’t it be amusing if it turns out he’s a vindictive bastard who took his own targeting personally and wanted a lot of payback.  I think there could be a lot of very amusing things going on in Washington this year.  And from my point of view that’s worth something in and of itself.

So those are just some hints at what might be going on.  Let’s hope it’s more swamp draining and less Armageddon but whatever else it’s going to be very busy and very exciting.

Getting in the Spirit

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Some snow falling today surprised me into remembering how close Christmas is.  Of course, I dasn’t say such a thing aloud in Camera Girl’s presence or she would toss an oven mitt or a ladle at me for my oblivious attitude as she soldiers on in her pre-Christmas baking and cooking marathon.  She is calculating cooking and storage times down to the nanosecond as enormous quantities of baked goods, meat, pasta, cheese and vegetables are processed in the run up to the big event.  My party line is that I am available to help in any capacity she sees fit.  This merely elicits rueful head-shaking and eye-rolling.  Well, that’s my story.  And anyway, I serve many useful functions.  I am the snow removal department and I also serve as chauffeur if the roads seem too tricky for her.  And I have a thousand and one other jobs.  For instance, I’m in charge of the yearly Christmas card design and procurement.  Well, of course.  I’m a photographer.  But such things are easily forgotten by someone who can point to a table groaning under the weight of a feast.  Well, we also serve who wait and eat.  But who’s keeping score anyway?

I have all of next week off and I’m looking forward to the get togethers.  But I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation in Washington.  It’s almost unbelievable how feckless and dishonest the Biden administration intends to be right up to the final day of their reign of terror.  Biden’s pardoning of hideously evil people would be shameful if Biden and his cronies had any shame.  I have to assume that there was a price list posted somewhere for the scum of the earth to figure out whether they could afford to be freed by Hunter and Jill and whoever else wrote out the pardons for Joe to scribble his signature on.  And the Republicans don’t disappoint with their nitwitted attempts to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.  Only the dishonesty and corruption of the Democrats allows the GOP to seem better by comparison.  But it really is a sad sideshow to behold.

The clowns and the cretins, the monsters and the madmen; the whole cast of this insane drama that is playing out on the deck of a sailing ship headed straight for an iceberg.  And at this point Donald Trump is the captain and he and his crew are locked in a cutlass fight with the usual pirates and so no one is steering the ship.  Well, it should give us a reason to pop popcorn in 2025.

But this is all beside the point.  We have Christmas to celebrate and the relief from knowing that somehow, we dodged the bullet of a Kamala Harris presidency.  And, sure, so many things will go wrong in 2025.  Trump will waffle, Democrats will lie and cheat, bureaucrats will obfuscate and interfere and Republicans will prove themselves inept and obtuse.  In other words, standard operating procedure.  But things will be better than they’ve been the last four years.  God willing, the wars will start to die down.  Energy prices will come back to Earth and that will tend to drive down the prices of everything else.  And the biggest bonus, we may never see any of the Bidens for the rest of our lives.  That alone is worth a hallelujah.

One Foot in Front of the Other

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Camera Girl is fiendishly clever.  She cooks for hours in her kitchen of death.  And she sets a table with millions of calories of food on it in front of me.  The result is obvious.  She’s trying to commit murder by cocoanut custard pie.  It’s ice cream assisted suicide.  Well, it’s almost midnight and I can still breath so she’s failed again.  I live, but barely.  But Christmas is on the horizon.   Oh, the humanity!  But let’s move on.  Thanksgiving was a great success.  Mass quantities were ingested and turned into warm feelings and tightened waist bands.  Mission accomplished.

So, we will enjoy the long weekend and then get on with the business at hand.  We wake up, eat breakfast and try to accomplish the things we’ve decided need doing.  In the immortal words of the Duke of Despair, “And when the morning light comes streaming in, we get up and do it again, amen.  Say it again.  Amen.”

And that’s no different from how it was yesterday or a month ago.  The only time when this reality was upended was when the powers that be imposed the COVID lockdowns on us.  That was an existential threat to our livelihoods and even our lives.  The disruption that rolled out at us was a disaster of such monumental proportions that the reverberations caused the results of the 2020 elections and four years later it doomed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

And now the powers that be may be thinking they need to up the ante.  I think they want to get the Russians to start WW III.  It seems inconceivable that they would do such a thing.  But maybe they would.  Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland only have fifty-two days until Donald Trump fires them.  They can do an awful lot of damage before then.  And apparently, they intend to do it.

Well, we’ll all have a ringside seat for this Dr. Strangelove reboot.  The next seven weeks will be filled with drama and unintentional comedy; pathos and bathos.  But we’ll just have to be patient and let it all play out.  I intend to move forward with my priorities and deal with Armageddon on a day-by-day basis.  Living in a town that exists in a Lovecraftian quagmire of unspeakable eldritch horror I’m more or less acclimated to soul-crushing despair.  I won’t caterwaul about a few nukes lobbed into my neighborhood.  These things have to be taken in stride.  My only hope is that divine retribution will be visited on Blinken and Nuland first.  And if possible, maybe the hosts of MSNBC too.  But I digress.

So, let’s gather up our sense of humor and our much-maligned sense of reality and put the election behind us and push the inauguration into the future and just put one foot in front of the other until Donald Trump like a modern-day Moses leads us out of the desert and into the promised land where milk and honey flows endlessly and Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are fitted with strait jackets and locked in rubber rooms, forever and ever amen.  Pass the pumpkin pie.

Next Stop, 2025

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Where are we headed?  And by we, I mean the non-leftists in this country.  I’m not saying “conservatives” because according to many people on the Right, there is no such thing as conservative.  And I don’t need to fight that war of words.  It doesn’t matter what label we end up with.  I can define myself by what I’m not.  I’m not a progressive.  I think the traditional definitions of things are sufficient to describe the world.  I think the traditional institutions like marriage, family and nation are valid and sufficient for people to live their lives in a meaningful way.

I also like the “rights” that were spelled out in the United States Constitution two-hundred-some-odd-years ago.  I like the idea of having freedom of speech, religion, self-defense, and to live my life as I choose as long as I don’t try to tell you how to live.  And to associate with people that agree with me on how to live.  All that seems very desirable to me.  And it seems quite believable that it can be maintained as it was in the early years of the republic.

This month by some incalculable miracle Donald Trump won re-election.  It’s as improbable to me as that Space-X booster that was falling out of the sky and then in one graceful arc lands in the cradle like an egg that a cook places in an egg cup.  It’s inconceivable.  But it happened and I guess there is an equally unlikely chance that Trump succeeds in doing all the things he’s said he will do.  Basically, he’s sworn to fix the country and make it great again.  And by great I think he means free and prosperous.

Well, I guess after his Houdini act, I should give him the benefit of the doubt and let him try to fix America.  If he does then the answer to my original question, “Where are we headed?” is easy.  We’re going back to the heaven on Earth that was this country a hundred years ago.  Now I’m sure the folks on the far-right will remind me that we’re not the same people we were back then, what with demographic change and women voting and all that jazz.  And they’re right.  We are different.  Whatever changes in culture and demographics have wrought won’t be erased.  Even the descendants of Old America have changed.  Their ancestors were religious people.  Their descendants are for the most part atheists or at least agnostics.  So, we have to acknowledge that.

My answer is that different people can play the same game and even though there will be differences in style and skill level if they play by the same rules, then basically it’s still the same game.  So, from my way of looking at things we’re most likely to get back mostly the same kind of country if we make everyone play by the original rules.  This I believe is known as civic nationalism.

Well, that’s a lot of ifs.  Trump is battling the most powerful accumulation of power since the Romans conquered the Mediterranean after knocking off the Carthaginians.  The Deep State and the vested interests that are their clients are the people Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.  He warned us about them sixty-five years ago and they’ve only become more powerful over time.  They now also operate the surveillance state that knows everything we write, say or maybe even think.  They essentially control Silicon Valley because they are their paymasters.  They are not going to just roll over and play dead.

All this means there is a range of outcomes next year that runs the gamut from complete Trump failure to complete victory.  Of course, the most likely outcome is something in the middle where neither side totally wins or totally loses.  But Trump has earned the privilege of us watching and waiting to see what he can manage.  I don’t expect perfection.  I do expect him to make my life better and mercilessly torture his enemies and make their lives a living hell.  I think he owes that to himself and to me.

I want him to restore all of our rights under the Constitution including freedom of association.  And I want him to eliminate affirmative action from all aspects of American life.  If he does all that, he will be a success in my book.

I want to see a long line of FBI executives with cardboard boxes in their hands walking out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building with really sad faces.  I want NPR defunded.  I want the Education Department closed.  I want men in dresses drummed out of the military in great bunches.  I want everyone whose name is associated with Ukraine in the State Department unemployed.  I want all the prosecutors at the Department of Justice who spent their last four years prosecuting J6 fired.  I want the military budget for weapons systems halved and the VA fully funded.  I want Fauci prosecuted and all his co-conspirators rounded up.  I want a true analysis of the “safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines.  I want Trump to declare martial law at the borders and refuse to let anyone in without a valid visa.  And if the visa cases become backlogged the candidates will wait outside the country for their turn.  And I want him to deport a million aliens a month.  And I want him to make the wall solid and equipped with drones that catch people climbing it and throw them back onto the outside.

And that’s the start of what I want.  I guess this is my Christmas list, Santa Trump.  Do the best you can.