Tag: Current Events

Bring on the Razzle-Dazzle

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So last night Trump gave the speech and revealed that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are on the voter rolls and the Chi-Coms were in charge of the data link for automated voting machines for millions of votes.  And that’s great.

But when does someone go to prison for it?

If it’s just a matter of saying it, what does that do?  I mean, I already know all this.  And the Democrats who ran all this stuff certainly know about it.  But if it’s just talk what does that do?  I guess he was trying to put pressure on the Republican Senate Leader to pass the Save America Act.  Okay, good!  But will it work?  Will Thune play ball?

Maybe I’ve just become a curmudgeon.  I don’t seem to have the enthusiasm I used to have for the Trump shuffle.  Sure, all of the razzle-dazzle probably gets some points with the general public and maybe it upsets the Left when their chicanery is showcased on the six o’clock news.  But I’m hoping for something a little more substantial.  For instance, I heard that the feds have something on Gavin Newsom’s wife’s business that’s making a lot of money off of the State of California.  Well, why not arrest the Newsoms and indict them for mopery and dopery?  Now that would be worthwhile and fun at the same time.  And in the same vein, what about the fraud going on in Minnesota?  Shouldn’t the FBI have Tim Walz about ready for indictment too?

Well, anyway, you can see where I’m going with all this.  This is Trump’s second term and he’s already fired all the hacks that were slowing him down in his first term and has his own people in place so I guess I expected him to get some revenge for the various railroading prosecutions they put him through over the last few years.

But maybe Trump knows best.  His 2024 election win must be in the top ten political miracles of the last hundred years.  So, I’m not going to jump on the “Trump is doomed” bandwagon.  It seems to me that he has already achieved an enormous amount just by opening the eyes of millions of conservative voters to the sad truth about the Republican establishment and its lack of interest in actually conserving anything.  Maybe he won’t have the chance to “make America great again” before 2029 but he at least started the fight and gave a lot of people hope for the future.  So, when he gives us the razzle-dazzle, I roll my eyes up and walk away from the tv.  But I’ll leave the gloom and doom to the pundits getting paid for it.

So, if the Democrats take the House and even the Senate, Trump will still be able to do his work by executive order and existing law.  Will he transform the United States into a conservative wonderland?  Absolutely not.  Will he be a positive force for good?  Absolutely.  Bring on the razzle-dazzle.

Waiting for Equilibrium

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All of the parts of our culture have become a mishmash of old and new components that really don’t align and add to the sense that our whole world is completely out of balance and headed for a crackup.  Well, all that is true but I get the impression that this is just how the world feels to everyone as they get older.  In fact, it was probably even more extreme a hundred years ago when people from really old cultures came in contact with American progressivism in the 1920s.  And the tension between the old comfortable conventions and the chaotic modernism of the on-line existence is what will force the exact shape of what comes afterward.  After all, there are things going on now that cannot possibly go on in their current shape.  They are just too maladapted to last for more than a few years.  And these excesses will spawn reactions that will modify and even optimize some of the new customs and patterns that the next generations will adopt.

So, no matter what the world looks like in the coming generation, I won’t like it because it’s not my world.  But it will fit the people living in it.  And I will have had whatever input I could provide by my limited feedback to my contacts in the younger generation and by providing an echo of what the world was like in my time.

Aside from whatever small influence I will have on the new culture what I will contribute to is the historical record of my time.  The sum total of all the historical records of the second half of the twentieth century will be an enormous treasure trove for those who look back on that time period.  It will be recognized that that era spawned the single most impactful technological event of the last thousand years, the digital revolution.  And because of this enormous change the customs and practices of this generation will be studied to see what effect this innovation had on the older culture that pre-dated it.  Because these changes are unprecedented.  And I believe the negative effects of this revolution will be dire.

And at some point, corrective actions will need to be initiated to mitigate the harmful consequences on humanity.  Some technological and commercial products may have to be banned in order to minimize the dysfunctional outcomes that these practices create in the same way that we prohibit the use of certain very dangerous drugs that create addiction in humans.  And conversely, new products and services may be mandated to provide humans with patterns and behaviors that are known to improve individual and group mental health and benefit society as a whole.

Well, that’s a lot of supposing.  But I think it’s a safe bet that we are currently living in the time when the most imbalanced on-line culture exists.  I think as the maximum disruption of pre-digital culture is reached the imbalance of the digital culture will begin to recede as equilibrium around the new structures occurs.  The only question is will it crash our civilization before that equilibrium is reached.

Just a Rant for Today

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Today was an insane day.  I was enmeshed in a bureaucratic maelstrom of political deadlines and ideological absurdity.  People were running around in circles getting signatures on petitions and trying to dot the i’s and cross the t’s needed to beat the clock.  And I got gypped out of my day off.  But as Camera Girl would say I was the “better person” (I think).

So, I didn’t have much time to look at the news.  What I saw was more of the same.  Scott Pelley was crying (literally) about Bari Weiss trying to make 60 Minutes slightly less leftist.  Graham Platner was winning the Democratic Maine Senatorial primary while reports of his sub-human antics continue to pour in from all directions.  Donald Trump was booed at an NBA playoff game at Madison Square Garden.  And apparently the California absentee ballot scam is still working effectively six years into the new era so that as long as unlimited time is allowed for fake ballots to be printed up no Republican will ever be elected (or even get past the jungle primary) ever again.  Check, check, check, check.  Yep, full speed forward and steady as she goes.

And based on my personal experience today and what passes for the news of the day, we have entered the after-time where we no longer worry about getting things back to normal.  There is no normal anymore.  We just roll with the punches and when we can’t keep our heads above water, we take a deep breath and hope to fight our way back to the surface before our lungs explode.  All in all, it’s pretty great.

Okay, end of acerbic rant.

Actually, the day ended pretty well.  I had a very nice dinner, watched a fun old movie (American Graffiti) and even sold a few books on Amazon (two paperbacks and a Kindle Unlimited).  But it is undeniable that we have passed into a new era where normalcy is no longer a universal concept in our society.  Strangeness is the new normal.  And we must accept that, to those around us, we are the abnormal ones.

And that’s okay.  In fact, I now embrace my status as an outsider with a definite stigma attached.  It’s a badge of honor and a qualification for a secret society that lurks in the dark corners of the daylight world made up of vapid adherents of the “normal” world of the stupid and the weak.  We can embrace and support the sensible and logical pursuits and actions that have always been there.  There is so much reality that can’t be avoided by the stupid that just using common sense will guide us to how we should navigate around the catastrophic errors of our age.  A good example has been the green energy revolution.  Those who have gone along with the band wagon are now saddled with electric cars they can’t afford to charge and heat pumps that cost too much to heat their homes.  By just doing the math you could have seen that coming.  And that is the template.  Look carefully at the propaganda and avoid the worst of the pitfalls.  And most importantly stay away from the cities where we’re told that crime is at an all time low (despite the daily body count in the news).

Okay, have a good day.

Building Ramps and Singing Spirituals

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So, where are we today?

Eric Swalwell, the Democrat congressman who was running for governor of California has dropped out of the race and resigned from Congress after allegations of date rape and sexual assault have been levelled against him by four separate women.  Ah, the Democrats the party of feminism.  Amazing how these things only happen when they want someone to drop out of a race and he refuses.  Up until now Swalwell was best known for his vehement attacks on Donald Trump and for an incident where during an interview on an MSNBC television show he farted so loudly that microphone picked it up magnificently.  Eric we hardly knew ye.  Farewell!

So, the peace talks between the Trump administration and the Iranians have broken down so Trump has said he will take over the Straits of Hormuz.  Now, how dangerous is this situation?  I can’t even imagine something not going terribly wrong.  So, Trump is going to try and break the Iranians by cutting off all their oil money by blocking the tankers heading for China.  This is a hardcore tactic.  I guess it could work.  I’m sure we’ll know pretty soon how this is going to end up.  Good luck Mr. Trump.  You will need it.

Trump is in a war of words with the Pope.  Well, this one’s easy.  I’ll back Trump.  The last couple of popes don’t seem to be infallible.  I’m not sure they were even Christians.  More like the kind of atheists they turn into bishops in some of the trendy denominations.  But I don’t think Trump should waste his time fighting with him.  It’s a waste of time.

Well, we’ve reached the warm weather here this week.  Today and tomorrow will both break the eighty-degree mark and I’ve turned off the house’s heating system for the summer.  Of course, if the weather gods go berserk and send us one last Polar Express that will have to be reckoned with but we think we’ve paid enough for oil this year.  And today I saw a good-sized butterfly fluttering around in the air.  And since the forsythia and the daffodils are both exploding in yellow bloom, I guess it makes sense for some insect to be pollinating them.  And finally, the raspberry leaves have burst from the ground all over the patch where I cut down the canes in March.  From what I can see this will be an even better sized crop than last year’s excellent results.  I’d say that the 10-10-10 fertilizer worked exactly as recommended.

We’re still waiting for Camera Girl’s pond liner to arrive from Home Depot.  It’s two days late and somehow “delayed” less than thirty miles away.  What can I say, Home Depot is not Amazon, that’s for sure.  When it arrives, I’ll bring out the shovel, pick, giant pry bar and wheel barrow.  I’m hoping there’s no ledge where she wants it to sit.  But knowing what I do about this property there will be a few monster-sized boulders below the surface.  Well, I’m sure there’s at least a few drops of ancient Egyptian blood in my Mediterranean ancestry so I’ll bone up on ramp building and practice singing spirituals.  Happy Wednesday!

Martyrs of Various Sorts

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So, what to talk about tonight?  Well, the crazies are out in force throughout the blue states.  I read they’ve set up a “no-go” zone in Minneapolis.  I imagine that won’t go so well.  When ICE shows up to arrest the illegal aliens among them, there is sure to be violence and probably deaths.  Similar stuff is happening in all the other crazy places like Portland and Philadelphia.  I heard about the two illegal aliens that got shot going up against ICE.  So, I guess this is the status quo from now on.  I give Trump and his people all my sympathy for having to do a really awful job.  And I’m very glad that they haven’t given up.

As far as the Iranian and Venezuelan and the Greenlandian fronts, what can I say?  Venezuela is easy.  They’ll do as they’re told.  Iran is going to be interesting.  It’s obvious that the Israelis have infiltrated the country and have in the last couple of days begun assassinating IRGC commanders, even using drones in the process.  If that is the case then I assume they’ll start lending support to the rebellion.  I guess they’ll provide them with guns and intel about troop movements and whatever other aid they can muster.  But how this ends up is anyone’s guess.  The Islamic Republic has been a nexus for evil and death since I was a very young man.  I would dearly love for this to be their last gasp.  And I wouldn’t even care if the Ayatollah was packed off to Moscow or anywhere else they’d have him.  Just having Iran as a normal country would be an amazing improvement for the whole world.  Hezbollah, Hamas and all the other crazies would be deprived of a base and a source of funding.  And all the countries around Iran could finally relax and try to fix their own problems instead of battling the religious maniacs that the ayatollahs kept unleashing throughout the Middle East.

As for Greenland, who cares?  Does it really matter one way or another?  For pity’s sake it’s just a big chunk of ice in the middle of the Arctic.  If Trump wants to haggle with the Danes, let him.  No harm, no foul.

I finally saw the video from the point of view of the ICE agent who shot the female driver.  Her crazy “wife” was taunting the ICE agents and it looks like the driver just sped into the agent.  I wouldn’t fault the shooter at all.  A car is a deadly weapon when you drive it at someone and a cop knows that someone who tries to run him over is basically asking to be shot.  I’m sad for her kids especially ending up in the custody of the crazy lesbian who married their mother but Minneapolis and places like it are full of martyrs to the cause of Leftism.  They need useful idiots to do stupid things like what she did.  The question today is how many more like her are there willing to get shot.  We’ll know soon.

Tom’s World – 04DEC2025 – The End of “Our Democracy”

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TomD

Here’s a column by Christopher Chantrill, whom I’ve been following religiously for several years. He has several uncommon, shall we say, takes on the political landscape.

A Commoner Manifesto Pushing Back Against the Revolution of the commoners Christopher Chantrill Dec 03, 2025

“Our situation is not whether to have a republic or democracy. Our situation is what to do after the failure of the educated-class project of the last 150-200 years. Obviously, the educated class wants to hang on.”

…

“Problem for any ruling class is that, at the end of the dynasty, the rulers are not sending their best: Biden, Harris, Walz: see what I mean? And so, even though they have sat majestically on the throne for decades and won world wars and saved workers and blacks and women and gays from a fate worse than death, when it comes to the crunch, they don’t have the ability and the skills and the cojones to realize that they have screwed up, that their regime is incompetent and corrupt, and that dynasties don’t last forever.”

03DEC2025 – This ’N’ That

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Finally, a breathing space!  I don’t have to do anything for almost a week.  I spend my time working on getting my book ready for publishing and watching Christmas movies.  I confess that I overindulged on turkey and the fixin’s around Thanksgiving and am still recovering from caloric excess.  But after some vigorous exercise today I’m back in shape for what lies ahead.  And that looks like snow and ice removal!  Dunwich is up to its old tricks.  Instead of three inches of snow we’ve gotten a day of rain which probably will turn into a half inch of ice tonight.  Oh, the pain, the pain.  Luckily neither Camera Girl nor I are compelled to leave the Compound tomorrow so I can slowly work on the driveways.  I wish I had more tube sand but even a hundred pounds or so of it should be enough to prevent the whole thing from resembling an ice-skating rink.

I noticed that the latest fake crisis is horror over cigarette boats filled with fentanyl being blasted out of the water.  I can conceive of no better targets for the US military than narcotraficantes heading for US coastal waters.  What clearer priority do we have than preventing these people from selling poison to our people?  Don’t they realize that Saint George of Floyd was killed by a fentanyl overdose?  Surely that must give them pause.  But Democrats are always looking to side with evil against us.  They can’t help it.

Well, enough about that.  Now, how about those kooky Somalis in Minnesota?  Good old Tim Walz was handing over hundreds of millions of dollars in fake aid to the Somalis and they were sending it to terrorists in Somalia.  Even his own state employees blew the whistle on him and even the New York Times is exposing the sordid details of his cover-up.  Trump said that Walz is severely retarded and I think it’s hard to deny it.  Of course, this doesn’t add to the reputation of Minnesotans for keeping this bozo in office.  Now, of course it isn’t everyone in the state but it’s a clear majority that seems okay with government fraud as long as it goes to a constituency that will vote reliably Democrat.  We’ll have to wait and see if Trump’s Justice Department can find a judge willing to honestly hold Democrat crooks accountable.  Lately it doesn’t seem to be the case.

And finally, early indications are that Hollywood is throwing in the towel on woke entertainment for children.  Disney and its peers have lost so much money on woke movies for children and young adults that they’ve sworn off woke lecturing for the foreseeable future.  For at least the next year or two they’re going to try and remember what “wholesome” means.  No more trans kids, girl bosses or obligatory race-swapping of traditional characters.

Well, anyway, that’s the plan.  But can they do it?  I tend to doubt it.  I’m not even sure they would know an exciting adventure story if it reached out and bit them on the butt.  But it’s hopeful that they’re even trying.  At the very least it means that a whole bunch of woke writers, directors and actors will be out of work for the next year or two.  And that’s a beautiful thing.

Back to the Horror

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For a truly lazy man nothing is worse than hyperactivity.  And so, my current frenetic schedule has rendered me borderline despondent.  But the mail must get through!  No, wait.  The show must go on.  So, let’s do this thing.

Let’s start with the government shutdown.  I think the Democrats are crumbling in real time, before our eyes.  Most of the people impacted by programs that are about to run out of money, (e.g., Snap) vote for Democrats.  So, they’re going to be hurting really soon and that is going to be bad for Democrats running for office.  I read an article that said Schumer is already dealing with a bunch of Democrat Senators who are frightened that they’re going to be blamed for poor people going hungry.  My guess is things will come to a head in about a week.  Well, good.  Anything that makes Chuck Schumer look bad is by definition a wonderful thing.  So, yay!

Next, the Mamdani ascension to Gracie Mansion looks poised to happen in two weeks.  And both Democrat and Republican establishment figures are petrified that this guy is going to reduce New York City to a Mid-Atlantic version of Mexico City.  Basically, a bankrupt madhouse run by gangs and beyond the control of the police.  And I think they’re right.  I read that a large number of the NYPD are going to retire if he wins.  I don’t think you need anything more than that to tell you where the city will be next summer.  Bedlam.

On a personal note, I received a detailed proposal for the marketing of my book, “The Sniper.”  Currently I haven’t had a chance to even look at it yet.  I’m bogged down in Dunwich civic life to such an extent that I lose track of the day of the week.  But as soon as I can I intend to study it intensively and make up my mind on whether I think I should pursue a commercial plan to market it.  By the way, if any more of you folks have finished reading it, please pass along your criticisms to help me weigh the value of going forward with a structured commercial release of the book.  Well, to be continued.

I’ve been following Trump’s press releases and moves on the Ukraine War.  He was talking as if he would provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.  But when Zelensky showed up in Washington to receive them it didn’t happen.  Some outlets are saying he told Zelensky he no longer believes Ukraine can win and they should negotiate seriously with Russia to find a ceasefire and a peace plan.  I have to confess I’m not sure whether Trump has a plan or is just trying to keep both countries at arms’ length.  Russia has made some significant (albeit glacially slow) gains on the battle field.  The cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk are teetering on the edge of complete capture and several others (Kostyantynivka, Myrnohrad and Lyman) are not far behind.  Pretty soon the Russians will accomplish through arms what they are telling Ukraine they demand for a peace settlement.  What happens then is anybody’s guess.  The NATO countries are stating they are getting ready to send their troops into Ukraine.  But I have a hard time believing that England, Germany and France will get their people to agree to this.  Well, maybe Trump can broker a deal that’s not too disastrous for Ukraine.  We’ll see.

Well that enough for now.  Back to the horror.

Tom’s World – 14JUN2025 – How Many Humans, Redux

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TomD

 

Obviously, you could plot a graph with the x axis being total human population and the y axis being some amalgam of average human well being. I’m pretty sure it won’t graph as an exponential function, that’s impossible. It would be a bell shaped curve with maximum human happiness occurring at some level and declining in both direction, more population or less.

The population peak, I suspect, will occur at the point of maximum available resources, including energy per capita. And I also suspect that increasing resource availability largely pulls population as opposed to population increase pushing resources.

Total available energy per capita may well be the bottleneck. But there will come a point at which the total resources of a large but closed system cannot continue to increase to match.

There are probably other limits. A future with the average population density on earth being that of Hong Kong, no matter resource availability, would explode.

Maybe we could start hollowing out large asteroids, spin them, and make little worlds. That’s a common SF scenario. Or a Dyson sphere, one of those of radius of the earth’s orbit would give 1.21 x 10^17th square miles of living space.

How About a Sanity Check?

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The Saga of Donald Trump and his effect on the Uniparty is the most important story of the last fifty years.  His ability to stage a political comeback in the face of ferocious assaults by every component of the Deep State and the Left is almost beyond imagining.

And I must confess it has in the last few months led to, for me, a case of unbridled enthusiasm.  I begin to believe that he’s cracked the code and has figured out a way to grind down the Left and their minions in the government, institutions and business.

Now I’m not blind to how fiercely the Left is fighting back.  Not a day goes by that a leftist judge doesn’t declare some part of Trump’s agenda unconstitutional.  And that is going to mean that he won’t have things all his own way.  But I also notice that a certain percentage of these judicial decrees are getting overruled by SCOTUS.  So, on balance, it seems that Trump is making a dent in these bastards.  And I imagine what could be racked up in four years.  And this has led as I say to runaway optimism.

But luckily for me. I have you folks to use as a sounding board.  You all can rein me in if I’m unrealistically hopeful.  So, I’d like to get a sanity check.  Read through the choices and see which one seems closest to reality.  And if none of them describe your opinion leave a comment that does.  And leave a comment even if the choice is close.  I’d love to hear what people think.

What Will Donald Trump Achieve?

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