The Official Word from the Progressive TV Chattering Class is that Trump has gone too far and now people are getting angry as Trump’s support collapses. How’s that working out? Well, lets check in with one of the most accurate pollsters of 2024:
The “Trump is going too far” message is orchestrated on the Left – it isn’t really directed at Trump but at week-kneed Congressional GOPers and the center-right people who are still all “well, I never” about things. The Left knows that Trump isn’t really controllable in that he doesn’t have to seek another term…but there is leverage over the Congressional GOP. But here’s the thing on that – the GOP House majority is so narrow that everyone in the GOP expects it to be lost in 2026…and that means if you want to get anything done, better get it done now. Absent a complete economic meltdown over the next 12 months or so, the Senate is probably safe for the GOP. So, a Dem House majority isn’t all that much a threat. Plus the Congressional GOP knows that going against Trump now is probably political suicide. There might be some time in 2026 to take a vote against Trump to provide a little separation in a swing district, but now isn’t the time for it.
It looks like our prayers for Pope Francis should be more for a holy death rather than recovery right now. Still some hope he’ll emerge from the hospital but an 88 year old with his maladies doesn’t have a lot of time left. As I’ve said pretty much from the start, Francis is theologically rock-solid but in the areas of politics and economics he is Left. He’s been an interesting Pope and probably what was needed at the time as the Church had become a bit ossified. Naturally, however, the Left elements in the Church took advantage of a kindly nature and tried to push actual heresy. That is for the next Pope to clear up. Cardinal Sarah is probably out of the running on account of age so I’m at a bit of a loss of who to pray for on it. Some are talking up Cardinal Pizzaballa – the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem – and while the man has guts (he offered himself as a Hamas hostage in return for release of the captive Israelis) he also seems (in my view) far too soft on Hamas, itself. Cardinal Besungu of the Democratic Republic of Congo is considered a very conservative alternative…and as the Church in Congo is horribly oppressed (a short while ago Islamists there beheaded 70 Christians in a Protestant church), he’d probably be a little bit…militant in defending Christ’s flock. But, in the end, we’re all just going to have to wait and see how this goes.
The German elections went about as expected – the socialist SPD was trounced, the center-right CDU emerged on top…and AfD came in second, about doubling their support from the previous election. Between the CDU and AfD and some small fry, there is a solid, Conservative majority for the Bundestag…and what this means is, naturally, that the CDU will coalition with the just-defeated SPD to keep AfD out. This is the Ruling Class Uniparty writ very large. But I think the CDU is making a huge mistake here – the German people rejected the Left but weren’t quite ready to go AfD…but if the CDU sees its mandate as something other than curbing migration, then there will be another election pretty quickly and the AfD might wind up the largest party in the Bundestag (they are second largest now). One curiosity about it – if you look at the election returns by district, what you see is that almost universally the old “West Germany” voted CDU while old “East Germany” voted AfD – with the SPD winning a few urban cores. A guy I know on X pointed out that old Germany was actually best preserved in the east because, in reaction to Communist occupation, they desperately clung on to their national identity. Looks like he was right. Additional observation: exit polls show that German youth resoundingly rejected both CDU and SPD, the two major post-WWII German political parties…they opted for the Right-Populist AfD or the Left-Populist Linke. The German Ruling Class is on borrowed time.
Bongino as Deputy Director of the FBI is a clear sign that Trump, Bondi and Patel are not about to put up with internal sabotage.
Among many senior officers fired after Hegseth took over Defense was the Chief of Naval Operations – Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to hold the post. And the Left has gone ballistic…”she highly rated! She’s a warfighter!”. The ships are rusty. I’ve seen video after video of US naval warships entering or leaving port absolutely covered in rust. She’s a bad officer, period. So are all other senior officers in the Navy. Civilians don’t fully understand the need for “spit and polish”…its not don’t just to look good but to internalize into serving sailors that they are sailors. This is the USS Aaron Ward after suffering repeated kamikaze attacks off Okinawa:
That crew fought off most attacks and got this hunk of junk back into port for repairs – because they were sailors. Meanwhile, in our modern, diverse and equitable Navy, USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire in port, San Diego, and burned to uselessness…because nobody on the ship or even in that whole naval installation was a sailor. Hegseth can’t fire the senior officers fast enough.
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“theologically rock-solid”…except for a few minor glitches, like telling priests they should not withhold Communion from people who have or enable or advocate for abortions. Little stuff like that. Have an affair, or even just skip Mass, and you can’t take the sacraments till you confess and are forgiven. But participate in any way in the killing of babies? If it’s a Leftist sacrament it seems to override those of the Church, so no prob.
Let a person have to deal with the ending of a marriage because the other person refuses to honor his or her commitment, and then go on to a deep and abiding and honorable commitment to someone else, and the Church is adamant about refusing the sacraments to this person. But abortion? No big deal. Pay a little lip service to it being bad but then make a very big deal out of publicly honoring people who not only support abortion but whose political actions are directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands if not millions of babies, with private audiences and photo ops.
Nah…not at all impressed with the theological purity of this guy. His commitments to the teachings of his Church have been flaccid and susceptible to the winds of politics.
I was thinking in terms of when push came to shove, he did come down theologically sound.
But much confusion was generated by his tactic of going as far Left as he could. OTOH, the “trads” were getting (and still are) entirely too formalistic/legalistic about the whole salvation thing. Too concerned with dotting i’s and crossing t’s whereas Francis is right when he calls the Sacraments aid on the battlefield rather than a reward for perfection.
My prayer is the next Pope will be someone of more discipline in messaging…really taking the time to think over carefully before saying something. Most people don’t differentiate between ex-cathedra and just talking.
Spoiler alert: Shocking news!
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It was 1988 or 1989 when I read a report about an environmentalist conference where they quite openly stated that to “save the world” they were going to have to create a panic about the environment. That is, lie to get their point across. What nobody anticipated was how political victory for the Left would allow them to enter the institutions and simply pay them (and themselves) to produce “documentation” to back up the panic.
I started following (and researching) the global warming issue back in the late 90s. The percentage of the population that is really concerned about it has varied over the years, ( I don’t think it’s ever been a majority) but we’re now in the 5th decade since some alarmist first said, “we only have 10 years to save the planet.” I think the vast majority of Americans just roll their eyes at this point when someone makes any kind of alarmist statement about climate change. Bottom line: we should be good stewards of the planet, and seek out and develop the cleanest, most efficient sources of energy.
Now we’re seeing a bit of why they didn’t want DOGE to get access – apparently there’s a CIA/NSA/DIA set of chatrooms set up, I guess, to allow for easy interagency communication but, because Woke, a few were set up for LGBTQWhoTheHeckKnows and they became rooms to talk about your transition and…well…some pretty gritty sexual matters.
Think about that. Really roll it around from an intelligence standpoint…and then keep in mind that straight, white, Christian males have been pretty much excluded from the hiring-promotion process…so now the greatest possible security risks are in charge of the most secret information…
If China set this all up, what would they do differently?
I have often thought much the same thing: If I wanted to destabilize a society, and had decades to do it, how would I proceed? And sure enough, the most effective plan would be what we have been seeing the Left doing.
Well, it used to be that the deviants were the biggest security risks because they could be blackmailed into going along with various kinds and levels of betrayal. But when deviants pose for photos to be posted online of their deviations of choice, when they parade in their costumes and act out their fetishes in public and defend them in chat rooms on social media, there isn’t a lot of exposure most of them would feel the need to hide.
On that level – but a guy on X did point out that you could bet money that some of these people were grooming kids.
You have given me, and this blog, a lot of information about “global warming” including the oh-so-important question that makes Leftist heads explode: “So what IS the “right temperature” of the planet, anyway?”
Even if the Left could tell you what the ideal temperature of the planet is, their policies aren’t designed to achieve a specific temperature. Witness in over 40 years the temperature hasn’t gone down, and how many trillions have been spent to achieve that result?
And then there is the question of..where? Where do you take the temperature, so to speak, of the Earth? Because the “right” temperature in one place is a very wrong temp in another. Crops and even livestock, not to mention native foliage, all have different temperature and moisture needs. Some crops need hotter days changing to very cool nights, others can’t tolerate the chill at night in some climates.
And to me the biggest “tell” of the climate hysterics has been their refusal to admit the benefits of a warmer planet—-more food, fewer resources necessary to survive, etc.
And more expensive – a LOT more expensive. I mentioned back in late January that I had run out of firewood. The small wood stove I have doesn’t heat my house, although I guess it could if we lost the electrical grid for an extended period of time. It just wouldn’t keep it very warm, but probably warm enough to survive. I keep my house at 70 in the winter and 75 in the summer, and I speculated that it probably costs twice as much to heat it to 70 as it does to cool it to 75. Turns out that guesstimate was pretty close, actually a little on the conservative side. My average electrical usage last summer was 1,032 KWH per month from April to October. My electrical usage from January 25 (the day I ran out of firewood) to February 25 was 2,133 KWH. And about a third of that period had significantly above normal temperatures. So, as I said in that previous post, warmer is better than colder.
The same dynamic held true for the whole winter of 21/22 (October to April) which was the last winter when I didn’t use my stove. My average electrical usage was 2,285 KWH
I highly recommend subscribing to https://amuseonx.substack.com
These are some of the most interesting and informative newsletters I have read.
Most recently: emphasis mine
The American taxpayer should be furious. Outraged. Incensed. While they work hard to feed their families, government intelligence officers—NSA, CIA, DIA—sit in taxpayer-funded offices swapping graphic tales of genital mutilation, fetishistic roleplay, and polyamorous sexual escapades, all under the guise of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” The revelations from Christopher Rufo and Hannah Grossman’s bombshell reporting confirm what we long suspected: the administrative state has become an ungovernable playground for ideological zealots more interested in broadcasting their sexual fixations than safeguarding America’s national security.
This is not hyperbole. The leaked chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink system—the very platform meant for classified discussions on national threats—reveal a cesspool of radical gender ideology, personal sexual confessions, and outright degeneracy.
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These are not the words of serious professionals dedicated to protecting America; these are the ravings of disturbed individuals who, in any competent organization, would be fired on the spot.
But therein lies the problem—these people feel untouchable. They are untouchable. They know they can engage in this insanity, day in and day out, with no consequences. Because the modern federal bureaucracy, rotted through with DEI-driven ideological enforcement, no longer exists to serve the nation. It exists to serve itself. It is a taxpayer-funded sinecure where personal gratification trumps mission readiness, and where accountability is an alien concept.
Jeff Childers describes it in a little more detail:
The amuse article had some gross detail, too.
I have a feeling that these are most of the people who freaked out when told to file a report on what they did last week, citing the “security” issues of revealing their work. Someone with a real security issue would either ask for a dispensation from his or her superior, citing a real reason, or just say something like “secret stuff I can’t talk about” and everyone would understand.
Pretty much – and, of course, you can classify your doc and even encrypt it.
Bottom line is that probably half our federal workers can’t list actual accomplishments.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s on the conservative side.
A retired navy buddy emailed me the other day about the firing of a number of Pentagon officials, generals, and admirals (including the Chief of Naval Operations) and asked my reaction. In our discussion the name of retired General Mark Milley came up. I thought Cluster and Mark would get a laugh from my response.
The old saw: “armchair generals study strategy; real generals study logistics”. The whole thing about being a general – unless you luck out and are a Caesar/Napoleon/MacArthur genius – is moving people and material from one place to another. Again and again in the ETO during WWII Allied military success was stymied just because all through the war until communications totally broke down, the German generals were better at moving men and material around – faster, smarter at it…and sometimes just small battle groups but they’d show up exactly where needed and so a whole Allied army’s advance was stymied. You’d think the US military organism would have laid that to heart.
Getting us out of Afghanistan was the correct strategic choice – there was no further good we could do there. And getting our people and material out was just a matter of logistics…planning this many transports for that amount of time and then the final bug out. I looks like nobody in senior leadership was even aware of the need for logistic planning. That they all just thought it would somehow happen when the button was pushed. And so it was chaos and death and humiliation. And Milley should be shot out a cannon.
And I didn’t even mention Milley’s dialogue with China behind Trump’s back.
And just to put into perspective the amount of weapons and military equipment that Milley gave to our enemy, only 21 countries on the planet have annual GDP higher than $85 billion.
BTW, if I gave an $85 Saturday Night Special to a known terrorist, I’d be in prison. Just sayin’.
Contempt and Consequence: The Case for Court-Martialing Insubordinate Flag Officers