Category: Politics

Government, Politics

Will There Be A Debate?

There’s some 3D chess going on over at the DNC right now that I can’t stop thinking about. I was genuinely surprised when the Biden campaign agreed to debate the bad orange man. The first debate, hosted by CNN, will be on June 27. The entire planet sees that Biden is not the same person he was four years ago. The man has rapidly advancing dementia and at this point struggles to read a teleprompter. He can barely form a coherent sentence and his handlers prevent him from answering any press questions. When he does interact with the press he has a pre-printed card with his answers to the carefully screened questions. I do not believe Biden is capable of standing up for an hour and speaking extemporaneously in response to debate questions – even if he has the questions in advance. The mans mental faculties are simply too far gone at this point to handle this sort of challenge. So the million dollar question… why would the DNC risk putting him on the stage? It makes no sense.

One possibility is that they want him to fail spectacularly and use that as the excuse to give his delegates to Gavin Newsom at the convention. Or, maybe the thought is that his stage performance will be so alarming, they’ll invoke the 25th amendment to make Kamala the first female president. If she was already the sitting president that would at least give her a chance at being reelected.

Maybe they never intended to actually debate? It could be that there was always a planned reason to reject the debate. Could Trump being found guilty yesterday be the reason? Biden can claim that he has no interest in debating a convicted felon and will therefore skip the debate.

Who knows – maybe all these trips to the beach in Delaware have actually been debate prep and Biden will come out and surprise us all. Maybe.

These are certainly strange times. I predicted long ago that Biden will not be the nominee. I still think that’s the case… but I’ll admit that I’m puzzled at what’s going on. I was sure Biden would have dropped out by now to give Gavin or Kamala plenty of time to campaign. I guess in reality people don’t actually pay attention until the last few months so changing candidates at the convention in August may not be that big of a deal.

It’s just hard to imagine that the DNC would risk the presidency by keeping Biden as the candidate. Unless all along the plan was to assume that at least one of the many Trump trials would either imprison him or so severely cripple his campaign he wouldn’t have a chance. Biden is reelected and steps down shortly after so Kamala can take the helm. The Obama regime can have their first woman president and another useful stooge to do their bidding.

This game of thrones is getting interesting for sure. No matter which way it turns out, I think things are going to get spicy for the country. Good for the oligarchs, not so good for the regular people.

Keep your head on a swivel my friends.

Government, Politics

What Comes Next?

I’ll admit, I’m a little worried at the current state of world affairs. My unease was made worse by a book I just finished. It’s called “Nuclear War: A Scenario” by investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen. I highly recommend it. It describes step by step exactly what happens in a nuclear exchange, from how the nuclear football works, to what the blast damage looks like. The TLDR is… your best bet is to be at ground zero and have it all over instantly. Anything else is just prolonged suffering. Nobody wins.

My bigger takeaway from the book is how fragile the entire system is. It’s truly frightening how little of a misjudgment it would take to kick the whole thing off. If we (or Russia or China) detect what we think is a nuclear warhead being launched, the president has six minutes to decide what to do. SIX MINUTES. And when you look at the shuffling dementia patient who currently holds the keys… I’m not filled with confidence at the decision making ability.

Now fast forward to today. Iran launched a massive strike against Israel. Fortunately all except seven of the missiles and drones were shot down. But now we face the million dollar question – now what?

Was this just stupid chest thumping by Iran so they can reclaim their manhood after their general was liquified by an Israeli missile in retaliation for Oct 7? It sort of looks like that since what they launched was old, slow, and we’ve known it was coming for a week now. If that was the case, shouldn’t both sides simply retreat back to their corners and maintain the status quo? Is it worth kicking off a full scale regional war that has the potential of escalating to something much worse?

But what if it was something else? What if it was a probe to judge the response? The US/UK/Israel basically just showed Iran (and anyone else watching) exactly what our response times are, how we respond, where each defensive launch point is, and how effective the anti-missile defense is. How many more iron dome and arrow missiles do we and Israel have remaining? Seems like a worthwhile exercise to go through if you don’t fear any real retaliation.

Let’s be real. The goal is to drive the Jews into the sea. Always has been, always will. The players may change, but the desire to eradicate Israel never ends. There is no amount of appeasement that is going to fix this. October 7th was a stark reminder. The moment Israel lets its guard down, even for a moment, the invading hoards will swarm intent on massacre. You know it, and I know it. If Iran thinks it can get away with an even bigger strike with minimal consequences, they’ll do it and you know it to be true. So what do we do?

My gut says it’s time to have a joint US/UK/Israel strike against Iran to completely devastate their infrastructure and economy. Ensure their nuclear weapon development programs are destroyed. Make sure they have zero economic power. It’s not like they’re going to hate us any more than they already do. While we’re at it, let’s wrest control back of the Red Sea shipping lanes. Oh, and how about we put some pressure on our “allies” like Qatar to stop harboring Hamas leadership? Help Israel finish cleaning out Hamas and start building bigger and better walls around Gaza and the West Bank. While we’re at it, southern Lebanon and Hezbollah should probably get a taste of real retribution. No more firing rockets into civilian homes with impunity.

Sometimes, a good ass kicking is the only way to stop a bully.

All fine and dandy, except… I’m not sure we can put that genie back in the bottle once it’s out. And color me skeptical, but I have zero faith in our “leaders” to make good decisions. Would Russia step in? Would China take this opportunity to take Taiwan? Do we really want to be mired in another forever war in the Middle East? What a mess.

It’s clear that our “experts”, both past and present, pretty much don’t know doodly-squat. Their ability to predict outcomes and consequences leave much to be desired. Like I said in the beginning, it wouldn’t take much for things to go horribly wrong. After all, WWI was started after some archduke was assassinated. The wrong missile flys over the wrong airspace and… boom. The end.

It’s a sobering thought. It’s a very scary time. Do we encourage everyone to step back, or do we go thump some heads before things get worse? Glad I’m not making the decisions. I just wish I had more faith in those who are.

Elections have consequences.

Government, Politics

The Adults Are Back In Charge

The level of incompetence found in this administration is breathtaking. Or it’s calculated evil. I can’t decide which. Before you start shouting about the Illuminati partnering with the WEF to create a new global world order… it’s not. This is a case of snotty, condescending, east coast elites who all went to the best Ivy League schools and are sure they’re the smartest kids in the class. Suddenly they find themselves in power and discover that the cockamamie ideas they bantered about in their dorm rooms when they were making fun of Dan Quayle spelling potato, aren’t working in real life. But just like Disney, rather than admit they were wrong, they decide to double down. And that scares the hell out of me.

Yesterday Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed that Ukraine will join NATO. National security advisor Jake Sullivan said the same thing last July. So not only are we doing everything humanly possible to prolong the war in Ukraine, we’ve decided that our foreign policy objective is to cross the red line that Putin specifically declared as a path to war. Why?

Why do we continue to push a war that Ukraine has no chance of winning? None. Zero. If you disagree, please explain how Ukraine is going to defeat the entire Russian army – and not just defeat them, but destroy them to the point that Russia will pull back to the original border and Putin will simply apologize and promise to never do it again. Do you really, honestly, think that’s going to happen? Of course not and you know it. So what exactly then is our objective?

At some point, Putin will tire of the stalemate and choose to take decisive action. And then what do we do? This brinksmanship is beyond frightening because of how fast it could escalate to something really bad. Meanwhile, we’re going to vote to send Ukraine another 60 billion dollars (that we don’t have) next week. And, as confirmed by representative Massie, not a single congressperson nor the state department even has the slightest idea how many Ukrainians have been killed in this war. It’s disgusting.

The disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. The unintended consequences of the open border. Loss of the strategic petroleum reserve. Near total depletion of our military ammunition stockpiles. Nord Stream. China spy balloons. The fragile beginnings of Middle East peace are gone. Iran. Threatening Israel while Hamas still holds US hostages. Red Sea shipping shut down by the Houthis. The hits just keep on coming.

I’m not sure I can come up with anything that looks like foreign police success for this administration. It’s pretty bad when your track record is literally zero after almost four years. At this point, I think you could randomly pick people out of the phone book and they’d do a better job. This administration, and the “deep state” for that matter, has become the living embodiment of the Peter Principle – “people in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence”. We’re living with a governmental bureaucracy ushered in by the Obama administration. Flotillas of idealistic “hope and change” Ivy League college kids who went straight from school to the Washington machine without any real world experience. Now years later, they’ve risen to the top and are leading us to disaster. At this point I think I’d prefer the evil Klaus Schwab Illuminati scenario – at least it’s explainable.

As Obama famously said, “elections have consequences”. He was more right than he could have imagined. We need to take the sharp objects away from the “adults in charge” soon, before things go really bad.

Government, Politics

I’ll Take Chaos For $200, Alex

I don’t know what the next couple of years will look like exactly, but I am sure of one thing. It’s going to be a bit… spicy. When the Deep State and DNC managed to secure the win during the last presidential election I was disappointed. Yes, I voted for the bad orange man over the dementia patient in the basement. What’s funny is that although I preferred team elephant, I honestly didn’t think it would make that much difference. It’s a uni-party after all. I figured a bit more spending on climate change, maybe a tax hike here and there. Bad, but not the end of the world. Never in a million years would I have thought things would go downhill so fast. We’re now a bit more than half a year away from the next election purchasing event and it feels like this one is going to be a doozy.

We are going to see some serious chaos no matter what the outcome is. At the moment the bad orange man looks to be the RNC nominee. That’s not a guarantee however – he has some serious fundraising and legal issues to overcome between now and then. If he’s taken out by some Trumped up charge (see what I did there?), expect the MAGA crowd to lose their mind. Nothing healthy for the country will come out of that.

Over on team donkey, the basement dwelling dementia patient now has full blow Alzheimer’s. It’s weekend at Bernies every day. I’m sure team Obama thought they’d be able to keep him propped up for another four years, but that looks unlikely now. So now the DNC needs to figure out how to replace him and not piss off the woke progressive crowd when they bypass Kamala. That ain’t gunna be pretty.

On November 6th, when the dust settles and the lawyers and consultants have all been paid off, we’ll see who was able to purchase the most votes. Regardless of who wins, 2025 is going to be challenging. If Trump wins, whoooo boy hold on to your hat. Trump was a walking, talking chaos factory his first term. The left hates him with the power of a thousand suns. Lest you not forget, there were riots in the streets when he won the first time. Women in pussy hats marched and Madonna talked about blowing up the White House. How do you think it’s going to go this time? You think the left was apoplectic when Trump asked why more people from “shithole countries” should be allowed into the U.S… just wait until he starts talking about mass deportations.

And if the left wins, MAGA going to be big time mad. I’m not sure they’ll take it very well this time ’round. The DNC will control the House, Senate, and the executive office. With slick Gavin Newsom as president (or better yet, Michelle), you’re going to see team Obama’s strategy for destroying America on steroids. I predict job one will be to pull a Jeffery Epstein on Elon and X in the name of preserving our democracy. The Bureau of Misinformation will be out in full force, ready to shut down the bank accounts of any of you silly rednecks who post unflattering comments about the regime.

And if all that wasn’t adventure enough, the experts and adults in the room have managed to foster a level of global instability that’s downright frightening. The odds of a world wide shooting war seem to go up daily. For reasons known only to the Military Industrial Complex, we seem hellbent on provoking a nuclear exchange with Russia. China is sitting by, licking its chops as it waits to see what stupidity we can demonstrate. Meanwhile, the Middle East is poised for even more instability (if that’s even possible). Fun times!

I’m not sure we’re in a position to step back from all this even if we wanted to. I’m not sure a presidential candidate exists that could mollify both the left and the right, while simultaneously being able to fight back against the Deep State and the war mongers. We find ourselves in a pickle. A sticky wicket. A circular firing squad of our own making.

It feels like the crisis portion of the Fourth Turning is going to come to a head next year one way or another.

So what to do about it? I’m inclined to say nothing. Get some popcorn, sit back, and wait for the fireworks. At this point the mechanisms are in motion and the train has left the station. Shit is going down one way or another. The Deep State. The Military Industrial Complex. The Enterprise. Whatever you want to call it, they’re in the drivers seat. You and I are just along for the ride.

Personally, I’d like to see President Orange Man along with VP Vivek doing some serious battle against the forces of evil. Trump is kinda of hilarious and if we’re going to witness Ragnarök, we might as well have some humor.

Only one thing is guaranteed… it’s going to get spicy.

Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

Is It Omertà Or Something Else?

I know, I know, it’s a broken record. Millions of people a year streaming across our border. Tens of thousands a day. Politicians, governors, and mayors all shouting at each other and pointing fingers. Meanwhile, nothing changes. Texas finally got mad, put the national guard at a popular crossing spot and have prevented the border patrol from entering. Naturally the Biden admin and DHS have issued a cease and desist order and are threatening to take it to the DOJ. Among all the wailing and gnashing of teeth on both sides of the issue, what’s the one thing you never hear? Any criticism of Mexico.

Doesn’t that seem odd? An actual national emergency and crisis at the border and nobody seems to be mad or critical of the country where the problem originates. If Canada suddenly decided to start driving across the border to dump raw sewage and nuclear waste in our northern forests, I’m pretty sure someone would say something. I’d go so far as to say that we’d probably start threatening trade status if they didn’t knock it off. But a humanitarian and national security crisis on the southern border… crickets.

I get it – Mexico isn’t actually capable of stopping the influx. The government is too corrupt and the cartels are too powerful. But at least they could pretend they’re doing something. Put some troops on the borders. Throw out a few rows of razor wire. Place some warning signs. Something. Anything.

But they don’t even try. And we say nothing. Why is that? Why won’t a single politician, left or right, call out and/or threaten Mexico? The only politician I can think of to say something was Trump while campaigning. You remember – “I’m going to build that big, beautiful, wall and make Mexico pay for it”. The president of Mexico just laughed and said no. And Trump and congress did… nothing.

Well, that’s not true. Trump threatened sanctions against Mexican imports. He then suspended his threats and signed the new USMCA trade deal. Boy, we really showed them didn’t we?

What exactly is the hold Mexico has over us? Why are we afraid to say or do anything to the country that’s invading us by proxy? I don’t get it.

It’s almost like all the players in this drama know the real reasons behind this game, but won’t say.

Omerta.

Government, Politics

Does Iowa Even Matter?

I’m happy I don’t live in Iowa right now. I can’t imagine having 24×7 campaign crap going on for months. Non-stop door knockers, rallies, photo ops, and every commercial a political ad. No thanks. And the funny thing is… in the last twenty years, whomever Iowa chose as their candidate in the primary did not go on to become the actual GOP nominee. They chose Ted Cruz in ’16. Rick Santorum in ’12 and Mike Huckabee in ’08. Even the polling has been wrong. All polls indicated Trump would win the caucus nomination in ’16. So if Iowa is wrong every single time, why is such a big deal made of it?

I also live in a state that, for different reasons, does not matter in presidential elections. I suppose fortunately we barely exist politically, so we see a tiny fraction of the campaigning other states experience. We are a red state and will remain solidly so – at least for a while longer. The tide is turning and I can see us turning purple in the next ten years or so. Trump never bothered to visit in ’16 (actually I don’t think he’s ever been here). Ted Cruz visited and had a resounding primary win over Trump. Clearly it didn’t matter in the end.

So Iowa is wrong every time and the polling about Iowa is wrong every time. Meanwhile the press, as usual, has vehemently declared the ascendency and demise of every candidate in the running at some point. It’s all pretty silly.

Politics are in a weird place right now. Nothing seems normal.

Trump is the apparent favorite for the nomination, yet he doesn’t debate, answer questions, or interact with voters. He only holds mega rallies for fawning fans and spews one-liners for applause.

DeSantis was the favorite and then dropped off the press radar despite knocking on more doors and holding more events than any other candidate. Did he really fizzle with the population, or did only the press declare him dead?

Haley is the new media darling. She’s clearly the deep state choice. There’s even a big push for democrats to switch and vote for her in an apparent attempt to block Trump. She’s definitely Jeb! in high heels.

Vivek is hands down the most interesting candidate. The smartest, most articulate, and the only one with actual plans rather than campaign slogans. He also has zero chance. He is so dangerous to the establishment, there is no possibility they’d let him get anywhere near the nomination. They’d Bobby Kennedy him long before he got near the win.

And Biden… I don’t even know what to say about him. He campaigned in ’20 on Zoom from his basement. At this point they’re simply trying to keep him from falling off stairs or getting lost. I’m honestly shocked he’s still running. I was sure they’d have him drop out by now.

So conventional wisdom and polling says that Trump will be the eventual GOP nominee. Will that hold up? I think it’s a coin toss at this point. Reading the tea leaves, what the Enterprise/deep state is trying to engineer is a Haley v Biden or Newsom match up. They win no matter what in that scenario.

Anyhoo, Iowa will be the talk of the town – for about 72 more hours, before once again sliding into obscurity. Last day before ’24 voting officially starts… cards on the table, what’s your prediction as to how this all plays out on November 5th?

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
– Abraham Lincoln

Government, Politics

Can The Door Be Closed?

The United States no longer has a border. Among the many gifts the Biden (shadow Obama) administration has given us, is a complete free for all at the southern lines on a map. I don’t care what party you identify with, you cannot deny it’s a disaster. The “adults in the room” are handling it even worse than the Afghanistan withdrawal, if that’s even possible. The truly incompetent part is that by denying they want an open border, they’re making everything worse. At least if they came out in the open and declared an end to border enforcement, they could put policies in place to manage the influx of “new citizens”. The current strategy is pitting states against sanctuary cities and the federal government. No one wins in that scenario. So the big question is, assuming we wanted to, could we even close the border at this point?

Let’s say a chest thumping Republican is elected this go-round and actually pursues shutting down the border. Would it be successful?

Sending 100,000 troops to the border would be the easy part. That of course would trigger daily lawsuits from crazed liberals crying and moaning about the lack of humanity. Talking heads on CNN would put their stern faces on and lecture us about the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, baring federal troops from participating in civil law enforcement. We could get past that however – the troops can build barriers, dig moats, provide surveillance support, and transport services, etc… Border Patrol can lead the actual detainment activities.

So it wouldn’t be hard to shut down the border. It’s the butterfly effect that would be hard to manage. Hundreds of thousands of people a month are streaming through South America into Mexico at the moment. We shut the border and Mexico now has a humanitarian crisis they have no way of dealing with. What will the public do when they see MSNBC gleefully televising squalid Mexican refugee camps of a million people within six months or a year? The UN would condemn the US so fast your head would spin. You think AOC’s fake crying at the border was performative art, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Of course we could put pressure on Mexico to enforce their own southern border and try and stop the influx. Forget for a moment that Mexico is controlled by the cartel, much of Latin America is still the Wild Wild West except with jungles. They have no ability to stop the influx even if they wanted to.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that Mexico is the United States second largest import trade partner. Mexico is now the new China for manufacturing cheap goods. If Mexico decides to retaliate against US border mandates by limiting importation of parts and tools… good luck with finding a new car, medical devices, or a whole array of consumer products. Are we willing to endure a trade war over border policies?

And then there’s the biggest elephant in the room – what do we do with the tens of millions of illegal aliens already here? That whole last and final amnesty thing certainly didn’t work out like Reagan hoped. Assuming we implemented some sort of deportation policy, what if the rest of the world doesn’t accept them back?

It’s a bit of a sticky wicket we find ourselves in. There are no good answers. We can give up and just open the floodgates and hope for the best. We can go all John Wayne and try and restore some order, but then spend the next decade fighting the wailing and teeth gnashing of the progressive left and media. We really managed to screw ourselves, haven’t we?

While it’s probably a lost cause, I think we should still try. Being the awful xenophobic, white nationalist (code-word Nazi), isolationist that I am – I’d like to see my country not become Europe. I’d like to hold on to the quaint idea that I can be a proud of my country and the American exceptionalism that built the modern post WWII economy. I’d like to think that I live in a country in which allowing a monthly influx of hundreds of thousands of fighting-age males to stream across the border from every place on the planet, would be viewed as a bad thing.

Alas, I don’t think it’s realistic. The political machine (the enterprise), the progressive left and the media are too powerful. And, they have a weapon that cannot be defeated. It’s a word. All these evil thoughts I have? it’s because…

I’m clearly a racist.

Game over, it’s the argument that cannot be defeated. Politicians, CEO’s, and public figures quiver at the mere thought someone might throw this word at them. It’s the thing that will send people to frantically bend the knee to social media in desperate attempts to keep their followers from abandoning them, when accused of that horrible word. Racist is the new Nazi.

We went from being lectured about having strong moral fiber and “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”, to careers being ruined and grown men crying tears of soy when faced with Tik Tok influencers whispering that you might be a racist.

Yep, the more I think about it – I don’t think we’re going to make it. We’re never going to close that door.

P.S. for all you who were dropped on your heads as babies, or liberals (which may be the same thing), I’m talking about ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ONLY. Legal immigration should be encouraged. And no, the current fake asylum tactic is not the same thing. See, fear of that word has me pre-emptively quantifying what I mean for fear that someone will accuse me of hating all immigrants. Sigh…

Government, Politics

It’s Chaos, Baby!

In case you missed it, which would be difficult to do, the state of Colorado removed the bad orange man from their ballot. The CO state Supreme Court ruled that due to insurrection, mean tweets, something or other, he is ineligible because of the 14th amendment. Odds are that the federal Supreme Court will overturn it, but you never know. It doesn’t really matter, because the actual point is chaos. Now, I’m going to say some things that the Trump diehards don’t want to hear. Buckle up, buttercup.

So let’s imagine for a second that Trump has managed to somehow beat or delay the 92 felony counts pending against him. And he’s prevailed in his, now, three Supreme Court filings and whatever future lawsuits will be filed between now and GOP convention. Assume the current polling is actually accurate and he manages to secure the GOP nomination. Now what?

Are you really going to delude yourself into thinking that the bulk of the Haley/DeSantis voters will happily turn out and vote for him in the general election? The never-Trump wing of the Republican Party is substantial. The big money machine of the enterprise is not going to support Trump (they want Haley). So in an era in which we know the GOP needs to eclipse 80+ million votes to beat the DNC candidate… in an environment in which the GOP has done NOTHING to combat the mail-in/absentee/Zuckerbucks issues that plagued the last election – you’re going to tell me that an absolute crushing avalanche of republican voters in swing states are going to turn out on Election Day and vote Trump in? Hmmm, ok.

I guess it might happen. I’ve been wrong before. Let’s say the bad orange man actually does manage to win. What next? Trump is a walking ego-driven chaos factory. You thought the deep state/media machine conspired against him at every turn last go ’round? You ain’t seen nothing yet baby. He will be steamrolled and blocked at every possible turn. In all likelihood the GOP will have lost both the house and senate, so he’s not going to get anything done there.

All the things he’s currently saying he’ll get done during his ego stroking rallies today… he didn’t get them done last time. What makes you think he’d get them done this time when the deep state opposition will be 100x greater than it was his last term?

One of his greatest failings last time was poor personnel choices. The end result was that virtually all major players in the Trump White House either turned against him and/or are now mired in legal actions brought by the DOJ. What sane, competent person would agree to serve Trump this time – knowing that most likely they’ll be facing millions of dollars in legal fees before the term is over?

Trump absolutely gets credit for not screwing up an already accelerating economy and unemployment rate (yes, really). But at the same time he didn’t build the wall and didn’t make Mexico pay for anything (despite controlling the house and senate), he gave us Fauci, Birx, the untested vaccine, mandatory jabs, lockdowns, he didn’t clean out the FBI or the DOJ, and added $7.8 Trillion to the national debt. Oh, and a lot of mean tweets.

Outside of the Trump rallies, people remember these things. They remember the chaos. I don’t think the average GOP voter wants another four years of the bad orange man sucking all the oxygen out of the room 24×7, for little effect. But I could be wrong.

All that aside, here’s the key issue. I suspect the deep state/DNC is salivating at the idea of Trump losing either the GOP nomination or the presidency due to court actions (as opposed to simply losing early in the primaries to another candidate). Why? Because the Right will lose their collective minds. If Trump is blocked from wining the GOP nomination I think we’ll see actual violence. Trump is the symptom of a bigger problem. The Right feels that they’re losing the country. The far left, woke, open borders, DEI policies are crushing what’s left of the American identity. Trump being quashed by the machine is going to send some folks over the edge – even the never-Trumpers would be angry (relieved, but still furious at the injustice).

And THAT is what the deep state is waiting for. Any excuse to come down like a ton of bricks with enhanced security, monitoring, and control. Federal misinformation departments, a supercharged DOJ and FBI, unending FISA warrantless searches… they’ll have their rational. We can’t have an angry right-wing marching in the streets. Leaked DHS memos already show they consider nationalist/white supremacist domestic terror to be one of the top security concerns. J6 and arrests for posting memes will seem like child’s play. Speak out against anything in the government approved lexicon and you’re toast. And President Newsom, with Democratic control of the house and senate, will happily usher in this new era of the Orwellian/American empire.

Or maybe not. Maybe the DNC is stupid enough to keep Biden as the candidate. Maybe Haley will win and our only issue will be war with the greater Middle East and Russia.

Either way, 2024 is going to be interesting times.

Welcome to the Jungle, Guns ‘N Roses

Welcome to the jungle it gets worse here everyday
You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see, you’ll take it eventually
You can have anything you want but you better not take it from me

In the jungle, welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your kn-kn-knees, knees
I’m gonna watch you bleed

Government, Politics

Do They Even Listen?

Public service. Representatives of the people. Elected officials. Doing the work of the American People.

How many times have you heard these pithy phrases in the last ten years? Whatever the number is, it’s a lot. Our elected politicians LOVE to campaign and talk about being champions for the people, to represent the good folks who sent them to government to be your voice. To fight the good fight. Maybe it’s just me, and call me crazy, but I’m getting the feeling that they don’t really care what you think.

When you’re out and about talking to regular people, they have concerns. Mundane worries about things like the cost of living, health care costs, taxes, and paying for their kids education. If you’re one of those far right, ultra MAGA extremists, you might even be worried about the border invasion or foreign wars. None of these things seem to be anything local or federal government cares about. Don’t get me wrong, they pay lip service to them in campaign speeches and on X/twitter. But in terms of actual legislation or executive orders… crickets.

It feels like an episode of that TV show Pawn Stars. CITIZEN: “I’m really worried about the cost of groceries and the flood of migrants crossing the border”. POLITICIAN: “Best I can do is spend cargo planes of cash for improved Amtrak service. Oh, and we’ll throw in another ten billion for Ukraine”.

Is it that they honestly don’t understand what the citizens want, or do they know and don’t care? Don’t answer that, it was rhetorical.

I know I tend to be on the skeptical side, but I’m getting the feeling that my elected officials don’t really care what the people think. Perhaps the mechanisms of government are simply too complex for us regular people to grasp. Maybe we’re just petulant children who need to be quiet while the adults talk. It just seems that nobody cares what we, the people, want.

We need to keep an eye on Argentina and its new president, Javier Milei. He followed through with his campaign promise and cut the number of ministries in half on day one. He killed the Ministry of Culture, along with the ministries of Health, Labor, Social Development, and Education. Will he be able to wrest some sort of financial stability and improvement, or will he be swallowed by the government blob, unwilling to ceed power to this madman? It will be interesting to watch.

If we had an actual politician here willing to do the same, would it work? Could the right personality actually start cutting back on the deep state and make a difference? Or is the government enterprise simply too powerful?

Let’s look at our options:

  • Biden (Obama) – the meat puppet is a pudding brained Alzheimer’s patient. He’s no longer an effective tool of the Obama machine and irrelevant.
  • Newsom – He’s the very definition of the deep state.
  • Haley – The female Jeb Bush/McCain, eager to be the next deep state representative.
  • Christy – The buffet is calling.
  • Trump – He had all three branches of government and… the deep state steamrolled him. It would be different this time, how?
  • DeSantis – Has the right governing instincts and executive skills, but lacks the charisma to fire up the people. Has run a piss-poor campaign which doesn’t bode well.
  • Ramaswamy – The most interesting of the bunch. Has the charisma. Has the right ideas. He’s a contrarian. The establishment won’t let him anywhere near the nomination.

So basically… we’re screwed. Nothing will change. The deep state, the enterprise, has grown so large and powerful I don’t think it’s possible to change. It’s like a black hole, slowly sucking all light and energy from the room, growing bigger every day. Eventually, like a massive star that triggers runaway nuclear fusion, it will go supernova and collapse.

Hopefully, like the decline of stars and the Roman Empire, that collapse will take some time. Regardless of who captures the throne, it feels like the next four years is an inflection point for the American experiment.

Will the people continue to go along to get along… or will they begin to turn on their masters?

Politics

Attack Of The Lizard People

Unless you’re a weird political junkie like me, it’s doubtful you watched last nights DeSantis/Newsom debate. I’ll save you the hassle of finding a replay of it and give you the TLDR; Newsom won. Not in the traditional sense. DeSantis won on facts and substance. He probably won the likability factor too… not because he’s especially charismatic, but because Newsom is so smarmy and loathsome. Newsom won because he gave a masterclass on how to lie, deflect, and give a non-answer to everything.

Why is this important? On paper Newsom has nothing he can run on. California is a dumpster fire. San Francisco (he was the former mayor) is a dumpster fire surrounded by human poop. And Newsom is doubling down on everything that destroyed California. Normally this would be a recipe for election disaster. But last night Newsom showed that he can duck, dodge, and weave his way through every negative fact thrown at him and come out smelling like a rose. If you knew nothing about the current state of California you’d think it was a bastion of freedom, safety, and a low cost of living after listening to the governor.

The man lied, twisted facts, deflected, and turned everything into an attack on his opponent like nothing I’ve seen before. It was impressive. And his liberal base will eat it up.

Make no mistake, this was nothing more than a probing action against an enemy to look for weakness. Newsom needed to see if he could deflect the reality of the dystopian state of California. He needed to see how DeSantis would react to abortion, LGBTQ+ hate, book banning, and environmental questions. Mission accomplished.

Remember, Newsoms audience isn’t the right. It’s the left. It’s the legions of lefties who suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome. It’s minorities. It’s the vapid, empty headed college students. It’s Antifa. It’s BLM. These folks are the majority of every major population center in the country. And they all think Trump and DeSantis are fascist, book burning, Hitlers who will destroy the country and return us to the horrible 1950’s (Newsom even brought this up in the debate).

How good is Newsom? Even the residents of California who see the crime, skyrocketing prices, taxes, drugs, and human feces every day, voted not to recall him by an absolutely massive margin. He managed to create some weird Stockholm syndrome and convince the citizens of that state that they really weren’t seeing what they thought were seeing on a daily basis. Now, imagine what he’ll be able to do with the liberal base and wine sipping soccer moms in the rest of the country.

You will see a campaign of 24×7 shouting from the rooftops: women’s reproductive rights; hate and discrimination; paying your fair share; common sense gun safety. And the left will eat it up because nothing scares them more than a Trump-like figure returning to the Whitehouse. You thought it was impressive that Biden got 81 million votes? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

So to recap:

Biden will drop out and Newsom will be the candidate. (I admit, I thought for sure it would have already happened)

It’s doubtful Trump will be the candidate. The man has 92 felony counts pending against him. Regardless of what you think of the validity of those charges, he’s not beating all of them. Will the Republican Party re-nominate an egotistic, 78 year old convicted felon? Maybe, but remember half the Right are die-hard never Trumpers. Plus, Trump is a one man voter turnout machine for the left. The left hates him with the power of a thousand suns. No, DeSantis will be the nominee.

So a damaged DeSantis plagued by scores of butt-hurt Trump fans who won’t support him, against the slick car salesman Newsom? Say hello to President Newsom. The lizard-man wins hands down.

I think the only chance the right has in ’24, and I mean the ONLY chance, is if Biden actually does run. This is why the Republican house doesn’t want to actually impeach him. Investigate, investigate, investigate, and damage him as much as possible. Keep the base angry and frustrated to spark turnout. A frail, cognitively damaged Biden with legitimate corruption allegations around his neck, MIGHT be beatable.

I just don’t see the Democratic Party wanting to take that chance.

Either way, buckle up buttercup. This isn’t going to be pretty.

“Hard times create strong men; strong men create good times; good times create weak men; and weak men create hard times.” <– P.S you are here