China Joe announced that we’ll be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine – this, apparently, is what the Kraut’s demanded before they would agree to send Leopard tanks. Ukraine is getting a hodge-podge of military equipment which they have no training or maintenance facilities for. This will get interesting.
Russia, meanwhile, continues to push forward in certain areas, likely to prep for an offensive after the Spring rains. We’ll see how this comes out – but I suspect, long term, that Russia will have some Abrams tanks to sell on the international arms market. The bottom line, absent a collapse of Russian will to win, is that Russia has vastly superior numbers over Ukraine and the outcome is only a matter of time.
New York City erected a Medusa-looking statue on their courthouse – in honor of RBG and abortion, so at least kinda appropriate. Very ugly, though. But that is the point of modern art: to be ugly. To be something you hate but can’t get rid of.
Also in New York City – for ages they had de-facto segregation in their schools. This was to allow New York’s rich progressives to have high quality public schools while proclaiming their allegiance to diversity without, you know, the diversity. There merely skimmed the cream of the crop of minority students to put into class with the kids of rich, white Progressives. Former Mayor DeBlasio, true to his Leninism, put an end to that – rather than have test scores determine who got into the swanky, Manhattan public schools, they created a supposedly scientific algorithm which would decide…naturally, it really just managed to shove into these schools kids who were in no way prepared for high education achievement. There is a bit of poetic justice here in that rich, white liberals lost their little education plantation…but the bad news is that now all of New York’s public schools suck. This is considered fine by the upper end of the Ruling Class because they send their kids to private schools and, hey, who wants to take the time and effort to improve all schools? Better to just score some DEI brownie points by wrecking the few remaining good schools.
Surrounded by armed guards, California Governor Newsom proclaimed in the streets that “weapons of war” have no place there. Make no mistake about it: Newsom will be hard for the GOP to beat. He’s good looking, sounds good on TV and, of course, the MSM will cover up his crimes and puff him up as the Second Coming. But he can be beat – his State is a complete disaster outside a few, rich coastal enclaves. The way to handle him in debate is to simply get truthful about him: “Governor, you hate the people of California. You want them to suffer. You talk about ‘weapons of war’ but what you really are trying to do is make honest citizens into criminals while you deliberately and maliciously allow real criminals to run amok.” Words like that – 100% true – will put that arrogant ass into a defensive mode and he won’t know how to deal with it as he’s never had a hostile question asked of him.
What do to about rising egg prices and people suddenly dying? Claim that the eggs are causing sudden death. I’m serious: it is what they are trying to assert. This after they tried to assert that all the sudden deaths are due to climate change.
So, we had a hideous inflation report…and then the 1/6 nimrods subpoenaed Trump. This allowed the MSM to universally drop the Bad For Democrat Narrative and pick up the…well, what they think is the Bad For Trump Narrative. They are so utterly predictable.
Naturally, the Resist (!) Left went into onanistic overdrive on the news – fantasizing about Trump refusing it and the DOJ frog-marching him out of Mar a Lago…because none of them know how things work. Trump will, of course, throw up legal objections (all legitimate as the committee has no real authority to do what they think they’re doing) and then the election will happen and on January 3rd a Republican majority will dispense with it. And it is highly doubtful that even as nasty a partisan as Garland will try to set a precedent which would allow Trump or DeSantis to arrest Biden on January 21st, 2025.
The 1/6 Committee isn’t really about the mid-terms any longer. They had hoped that their friendly MSM Narrative would make people so hate Trump that it would help them at the polls…but the reality is the story that was buried today: inflation. It is rising very fast and while various entities are still trying to hide the effects, they can only do that for a little while. Once November 8th is past they’ll give it up and let inflation run its course – with the hope (for them) that it will abate and the resultant intensified recession will end long enough in front of 2024 to give the Democrats a shot.
It was revealed by the Saudis that Pudding Brain attempted to pressure them into keeping production high in front of the mid-terms. Think about that – with many decades of proven reserves in the ground (and 200 years worth altogether) Team Biden still won’t even consider increasing American production and instead opted to try a sordid deal with the Saudis. And merely to save their political bacon. These people really do hate the United States and her people – they just want power and the wealth it brings to them.
Fetterman is clearly suffering some bad effects from his stroke a little while back and the Dem/MSM Narrative on it switched from “there’s nothing wrong” to “you’re an abelist bigot if you mention it”. I feel a little sad for the man – I’m pretty sure it is just his people (and his consultants making bank no matter how the election goes) keeping him at it. My father had a stroke and I know how difficult it is for a person to bounce back from them, if they ever fully can. Dad never quite got back and had a speech impediment for the rest of his life – looks like Fetterman will, too. This doesn’t mean that Fetterman can’t have a long and productive life, but the bottom line is that the recovery time from a stroke is not the time to be running for Senate. It is cruel to keep him at it. It may end up killing him – and the Democrats don’t care: they figure that Shapiro has a 70/30 shot at getting re-elected and will be able to name Fetterman’s replacement (personally, I think its about a 52/48 shot – I still hold that polls are massively underestimating the coming GOP turnout while at the same time massively overestimating the likely Democrat turnout).
Meanwhile, Democrats have rung the alarm bell in…Oregon. I guess there’s just so much Antifa a place can take and then they’ll even (((shudder))) give the GOP a shot: we’re looking pretty good for the governorship and even have an outside shot at a legislative majority. Meanwhile, over in Washington Patty Murray appears to be in some trouble – I’ll still rate that “lean Democrat” because they have so much power (and ability to cheat) in Seattle…but, clearly, Democrats are in some trouble. What we saw in 2021 was a pretty nearly uniform swing in VA and NJ of ten points from the Democrats to the GOP…if that holds true in 2022, a huge GOP year is coming…but there’s is a chance that the swing will be even larger. Meanwhile, Ron Jonson looks like a lock in the WI Senate rate while Kemp appears similarly situated in the Georgia governorship (don’t even talk about FL – Governor and Senate races will be called at poll closing in the Panhandle). What I can’t see is a huge divergence between PA and WI…they tend to flow together being States with a lot of demographic similarities. We’re about to clean up in WI but fail in PA? Could happen – but PA is trending Red much more rapidly than WI (voter registration changes in favor of the GOP mark out PA as the next FL). We’ll see what happens – but I’m expecting some pretty big wins in PA. Michigan? Officially, everyone says that Whitmer has it in a lock…and it would take a pretty big GOP wave to get the GOP over the top there. But we might have that.
Fox News ran a report about a family with a transgender child and this caused some controversy – but what struck me as most important was Andrew Sullivan stating that, as Conservatives, it is our job to accept this reality and work it into the system. But, that is just absurd – it is also, though, how these social issue debates work. An assertion is made and we are required to accept the underlying assumptions without question. Love is love, right? But, it can’t work that way – and now that it involves children, we must not allow it to work that way.
The reality is that no child knows they are trans – they can’t. They lack the relevant knowledge to even conceptualize it. Children never have anything in their heads outside of what adults put into them. There is no latent knowledge – what we know was imparted to us. Outside of the rare genius, it is only as we get to adulthood – and really, not until we’re in our 30’s – that we develop the capacity to really think on our own…to take the knowledge imparted to us and reconfigure it via our own reason. Certainly, a child under the age of 12 simply has no capacity to determine if they aren’t their biological gender. The story Fox broadcast asserted that the child before speech was already informing the parents of trans status…this is patently ridiculous. The parents made a conscious choice for their child and then imposed it. To the objection that no parent would do such a thing I respond: are you stupid? Have you not seen what parents will do to gain vicarious fame through their children? Insane and evil people will do all sorts of things – and that they might appear to be nice people on the surface doesn’t alter their insanity or their evil…psychopaths are great at pretending to be other than themselves.
We must draw the line: and not just on surgery and drugs. No child under the age of 12 – which is what we used to call the age of reason – can be allowed to live in other than their biological gender and any person suggesting they should do otherwise needs to be jailed. There is zero chance that any person telling a 10 year old they’re trans is doing it for the benefit of the child.
The attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh has been successfully suppressed by the MSM – they had to as it was something which shot the Narrative to pieces. The MSM is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the DNC – and we do have to response to this. We can’t allow a purportedly neutral entity to act without restraint when their real goal is to advance Democrats to power. Freedom of the press shall not be abridged…but lying partisanship can’t just be allowed to go on without a response. Legal means must be found to at least force the MSM to acknowledge in a very public way that what the report is mere DNC propaganda.
The Democrats put their January 6th hearings on prime time and nobody watched. Because nobody cares. Because everyone outside dyed-in-the-wool Democrats know the whole thing is just a hatched job.
Biden is cratering in the polls – and as Varad Mehta (whom you should follow on Twitter), points out there is a huge difference between improving from 42 to 47 and improving from 37 to 42…getting to 47 would be helpful, getting to 42 doesn’t really matter. Pudding Brain is getting into the 30’s so even if things turn around for him over the next four months, it won’t really matter. I don’t think the Democrats really understand the catastrophe heading their way – and fudging the inflation number to 8.6% when its really above 15% won’t help. We can see the prices. I went out and bought some soda, water and a few items at the store today and it cost me $75. This wasn’t my weekly grocery shopping trip…I wasn’t buying steak and lobster. I just bought a few items…thing which would have put me back $40 a year ago. Gasoline is now $5 a gallon nationally and no sign the price will ease before $6. When people start paying $100 to gas up, it’ll cross a psychological line which will be just awful for the Democrats.
As of a little while ago as I write, Oz clings to about a 1,200 vote lead in the PA GOP primary – nobody really knows how it will come out. I get the sense that Oz might pull it off, but McCormick could certainly get the win. Either is acceptable to me and would be immediately favored to win in November – the Democrats having nominate a leftist lunatic who thinks Catholic teaching is “gross”. That won’t play well in Western PA where the Democrats have to come back from the politically dead if they want to win Statewide.
GOP turnout in these primaries is so far vastly better than Democrat – and in North Carolina, very much so. A lot of punditry doesn’t like to read too much into that, but one thing we learn every election cycle is that political pundits don’t know the first thing about politics…they got some hobby-horse theory about how it works and they cherry pick data which confirms their bias. And when they get it wrong, they either ignore it completely, or explain it away. To me, people taking the time to go vote – especially in a primary – is a key indicator of how things are going. The other thing is voter registration patterns, which are also favorable to the GOP just about everywhere.
Musk announced that he intends to vote GOP – because Democrats are insane. And that, right there, pretty much nutshells 2022: Democrats are about to get a scorching rebuke not because of a sudden love for the GOP, but because they, the Democrats, have become so bad that they simply have to go. The political pundit class is, as I said before, clueless. At best you’re starting to see some of them hedge a bit and say the GOP may have a good year but even that with caveats about how if this, that and the other thing happens, the Democrats could do well. But, they all know. They have to know. It is the first mid-term of a President’s party: almost always that party does badly. The House is already gone for the Democrats. It was gone the minute 2020 was called for Biden. Especially since the Democrat majority was so thin. There was, early on, a better shot for the Democrats to hold on in the Senate. Democrats only had 14 seats to defend while the GOP has 21 and most of the Democrat seats are in States Biden carried. But that was before Biden took office.
A guy Tweeted out earlier that if gasoline was $2.50 a gallon, Biden would probably be doing ok. Even if not terribly popular, at least not toxic and we’d be looking at a normal midterm rather than a wave election. There is some truth to that – Biden has screwed up lots of things, but gas prices are something you can’t get around. People see it every time they fill up their tank. They might have let Afghanistan slip out of mind. The invasion at the border might pass to the side. But you can’t forget what you paid when you gas up. Nor can you forget food shortages and price hikes. It rather sticks with you. Here’s the kicker: all Biden had to do to keep gas at $2.50 is nothing. If he had just left Trump energy policies in place, then we’d still be energy independent. And this might have also protected us against recession…because the supply disruptions which are contributing to high oil prices would have benefited the United States…we would have been pumping record amounts of oil.
But the Democrats weather god had to be appeased, and here we are.
Saw a clip of a Clark County (NV) school district meeting where a parent, shocked at a dirty assignment her 15 year old was given in school, decided to read the assignment to the school board…which promptly cut off her mic, saying they couldn’t allow someone to use dirty words in a public hearing. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem with public schools. The good news is that at last GOPers are taking an interest in such things – and are starting to win school board seats. The importance of this can’t be emphasized enough. While having the White House and Congress is very important, controlling the school boards, sheriff’s office and District Attorney is vastly more important…it is such offices which translate policy proposals into action. They are where the rubber meets the road. Control them, then even when the Left controls the national apparatus, we can effectively block their actions.
Never heard of monkey pox before, but it is being reported…and I think all of us can smell the bull**** a mile away here. Especially as the Democrats are trying to re-stoke Covid fears just in time for Fall. As noted before, I have had Covid. It sucks very badly. Certainly a person with underlying conditions should take care. But, I’m a 57 year old smoker and I’m getting through it just fine. I’ve still got a bit of the cough, but mostly it is all gone. Worst cold I ever had by a long stretch. But, nothing to be terrified about.
Man does a DNA test on himself, finds out he’s got a huge family he never knew about. It is a cool story.
8.5% inflation, but you know it is a lot higher than that – they’ve clearly fudged the numbers. My guess is that it is closer to 20%: prices are just out of control. The Fed says inflation may have peaked in March…but, that’s just a lie and the Fed knows it. As long as we’re pouring money out while also not producing at home, inflation will continue to rise. Might have a few ups and downs going forward, but the only way to stop this is to choke off the money supply – in other words, we have to go into a recession to stop inflation. And we only get out of the resultant recession by increasing domestic production on all levels, but especially energy. Side note: Team Pudding Brain is absolutely opposed to increasing domestic energy production.
Oh, they’ll say they want to switch to green energy but that stuff doesn’t work. It isn’t easy to find news reports about it, but solar just sucks. Uncle Sam kicked in more than $700 million for the solar plant in Tonopah, NV (with his nephew the Nevada State government kicking in a bit more than $100 million more) and the damned thing never worked. It is now shut down (after emitting poison gas and frying untold numbers of birds) and in bankruptcy.
And I do get the appeal of solar energy – the sun does shine, after all! But not brightly everywhere all the time. At best, something like solar can be a supplement. And it seems to me that if we’re going to shell out taxpayer funds for it, they should go to put solar panels on residential roofs – especially in the desert southwest. But, that doesn’t really work, now does it? If the panels are on my roof, how does the power company profit from it? So, build the 100 acre blight on the desert and have the power sent to my home…if the thing works. One thing I’ll bet about that plant in Tonopah is that everyone who made money off it was connected to Harry Reid and his machine.
Meanwhile, supply shortages continue – and not just in energy. I read that there’s a shortage of baby formula. How does the United States ever have a food shortage? We’ve never had one except in a few areas of the South during the depths of the Civil War – and that wasn’t really a shortage of food but the inability of the crumbling Southern economy to transport the food to where it was needed. This is the land of plenty. We have something like 500,000 square miles of arable land in the United States – and that’s without bringing anything like all arable land under cultivation. And American farm land is good – it is, for the most part, very fertile and either naturally well watered or easily watered by irrigation. Its why we have been – until just recently – the bread basket of the world. And here we don’t even have enough food for infants!
And this looks to get worse. I’m sure you’ve seen your local store out of or low on very common items – but various disruptions, including the war in Ukraine, look to cause all sorts of production and transport problems as the year progresses.
And what is Team Pudding Brain up to? Blaming the inflation on Putin and getting set to green-light an absolute flood of illegal immigrants over the southern border. It is just insane.
As a result of all this, the Democrats are in trouble? How deep? They’re heading towards wipeout territory. One recent poll Joe in the 30’s on approval rating – and in the midterms, the party in power’s vote share usually mirrors the incumbent’s approval rating. Now, to be sure, some are convinced that the Democrats are serenely pushing ahead with the Progressive insanity because they’ve already rigged the mid-term vote for a Democrat win. But that isn’t possible in this circumstance. To rig a vote, you have to have total control not just of the count, but of resolving all disputes about the count. Democrats have this total control in the deep Blue cities, of course, but not much else – Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona have all done at least a bit to tighten up voting controls. They won’t, that is, get away with 2020 in those States again. Personally, I think Democrats are going Full Progressive for two reasons:
The people actually running things for Joe don’t care about the upcoming vote.
Those who do care figure might as well quadruple down and at least hold the enthusiasm of the big cities.
The guy who shot up the subway in NYC was on the FBI radar, has been arrested multiple times and posted insane, violent rants on You Tube. Too bad he wasn’t a middle class housewife who complained to the school board – might have been able to do something about this. I mean, the FBI only has so many people – think of all the strings attached to garage doors which would have gone uninvestigated if the FBI was spending time on the NYC shooter?
You read about the Great Terror during the French Revolution and from your safe, prosperous American home you wonder how people could act like that? I mean, you understand that there was injustice and even cruelty in the Ancien Régime, but you still look upon it in shock. And then you read a piece in Bloomberg opinion which has an upper class twit telling us to eat lentils and let the dog die to deal with inflation.
And then you understand.
Cruelty and injustice can be dealt with – it is having people treat you with contempt that gets the blood boiling and makes cheering as a noble’s head comes off something understandable.
And there is monumental contempt for us.
When the Hunter Biden story was actively suppressed by the MSM and the Tech Giants in 2020, do recall that 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter stating that the Hunter story was Russian disinformation. It was this letter which allowed Team Pudding Brain, the DNC and the MSM to justify spiking the story. People actually got banned from social media for bringing the story up! The MSM and Tech efforts were bad enough, but the crucial thing was the bald-faced lie by the intelligence officials…without that, the rest wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. But really grasp that: the organizations charged with protecting American national security produced 50 people to lie in print. When you add in the fact that the FBI knew all about this months before it broke and not a single person there blew the whistle you really see our problem: they are against us. They hate us. They hold us in contempt.
I pointed out on Twitter earlier that the same MSM and government agencies who assure us the 2020 vote was legit are the same people who lied about Hunter Biden.
And, yet, you still can’t get through to Never Trump on this. I’m not talking about those Never Trump who have morphed into Never Republican…I’m talking about those who remain Republican and are already largely lining up behind DeSantis for 2024: they remain impervious. One of the more famous said today that he’s backing DeSantis because he doesn’t have the character flaws of Trump. Which is a sort of reverse lie: what character flaws does Trump have? The only one’s we know about are those told to us by government and MSM sources which are proven liars. I mean, seriously: maybe Trump is an immoral man, but nobody can really know. He’s been so consistently lied about that no outsider can sift it and determine what might be true or false (though we can rely on it that Trump has never broken a law – if he had, even in the most trivial manner, he’d already have been tried for it). But, also, for all we know, he’s a moral man. Sure, he had his divorces and his playboy days when young…but young billionaires tend to do that sort of thing and in the year when we have drag queen story time, I’m going to place getting busy with a super model rather low on the moral outrage scale. And rely on this: were Trump still playing around on the side, we’d know about it…I’m sure the MSM has people watching him 24/7. So if he was a bit of a cad from 25-50, he’s not today.
Dr Oz is still rolling along in the Pennsylvania Senate race. I get the doubts about him – he’s from Oprah Universe, something I hold in utter contempt. Over the years, as part of the price of being part of that universe, he staked out positions which are pretty much anathema to anyone on the right, especially on issues like “red flag” laws for gun ownership. But, I also don’t automatically condemn him for that. Lets face it: we’ve all had an education the past 7 years. Perhaps Oz has looked around and figured a few things out? He’s presenting himself as the Trumpist candidate. So far, Trump hasn’t endorsed him – but the rumor from Trump World is that Melania, who apparently is a good friend of Oz, is pushing for him. We’ll see how it comes out – to me, the most important thing is getting the (R) to victory. Is Oz that guy? Don’t know. But I can’t see how he’d be worse than Toomey…who took our Tea Party movement to get into office and then became a colorless GOPe Establishment guy once in, going as far down as to vote to convict Trump in the second trial (and that vote sunk his career in the GOP).
The war with the Ukraine continues to drag on – and Putin, so far, shows no sign of quitting. Ukraine still stands firm and there are even reports of local Ukrainian counter-attacks. OTOH, a recent video of Zelensky in Kiev looked a little photo-shopped. Like they had him in front of a green screen that they projected Kiev on to. I still hold it isn’t our fight – but it does affect the world. In one case, over food supply. The Ukraine is one of the world’s bread baskets. The Ukrainian farmers should be starting to plant their crops right about now. If they aren’t – and it looks like they’re not – then the world is going to have some serious problems in the Fall.
In other news on that front, China and India are working deals with Putin – China and India do need Russian oil and other raw materials, after all. From a geo-political standpoint, our obsession with Putin is taking us out of the global equation while a should-be ally (India) and our definite rival (India) are cutting deals which undermine America’s overall position. My view: we should have declared absolute neutrality in the Russo-Ukrainian war, holding ourselves willing to host peace talks and providing humanitarian aid to both sides.
Pudding Brain is set to surrender entirely to Iran on nuclear weapons and is now trying to curry favor or Venezuela. These guys will do anything other than pump American oil. Remember: their belief is that they must end oil to Save The Planet…and they are going to stick with that. OTOH, they are heading for a shellacking in November and so want gas prices down. Their solution is to buy the dirtiest oil in the world from two of the worst regimes in the world.
Yes, they are insane.
That’s the latest ISW map of Ukraine: the Russians have been forging ahead, but only in little bites, it would seem. The Russians, themselves, have a map showing much more Ukrainian territory under their control. I go with this as even if it is wrong, it is wrong out of caution. But you can see the Russians are clearly going for the territory east of the Dnieper River. Whether this is all Putin wants or just the prep for taking the rest remains to be seen.
Pro-Ukraine forces on social media get very mad at you if you point out that Ukraine is trying to start WWIII. I don’t think the Ukrainians want WWIII…but they are clearly willing to risk it. They pretty much have to: without outside intervention there is no way they can physically keep the Russians out: they simply don’t have sufficient weight of material for that. My bet is that they hope a bit of NATO vs Russia brinksmanship will bring Putin to the table as he won’t want a larger war. This may be correct. This may also end up in WWIII. There’s no shame in Ukraine trying this – the life of their nation is at stake. But everyone better understand what’s happening and not get all starry-eyed about Ukraine to the point where all common sense is lost.
At the University of North Texas the students (well, the idiot, Commie students) shouted down a speaker. Remember: this is Texas. Ever more Red Texas. But, its like that all over, isn’t it? No matter how Red the State, the Commies still control education and media at the bare minimum. And this is because the feckless GOP simply let it happen. Didn’t want to fight. Not the hill to die on! Well, turns out it was: and now we’re starting to see pushback against it. This is good, but it is also showing that many State GOPers are RINOs as bad as any Congressional GOPer.
This plus the Latino shift to the GOP is what terrifies the Ruling Class – and that includes the GOP part of the Ruling Class. Turns out, Latino voters are in favor of border security. This seems bizarre to Progressives, but that’s because Progressives are stupid. No sane person wants an unending flow of unvetted people coming in. And, sure, Pedro down there in south Texas doesn’t want cousin Julio deported…but he also wants good schools, well paid jobs and low crime…and he knows he can’t get that if the border isn’t secure. What do they fear? A GOP with increasingly strong working class support across racial lines starts enacting laws that working class people want: no more CRT, at least late-term abortion bans, no more teaching 3rd graders about transgender issues, secure borders, Made in America…the stuff of Establishment nightmares.
Gas here at my local Vegas gas station went from $4.09 a gallon on Monday to $4.69 a gallon today. And it was something like $3.79 a gallon about two weeks ago. This is an economic killer – we’re getting into a risk of hyperinflation. Still a low risk, but what is normally a 0.01% risk in the USA is now about a 10% risk. These prices (and the massive spikes in wheat and corn prices) are going to ripple through the economy over the next six months and I do expect a very sharp recession out of it.
Team Pudding Brain and the MSM are blaming Putin for this.
First off: always listen to this on New Years Day.
That done: what the heck is it doing being 2022? One of my granddaughters turns 10 later this month…I do remember my 10th birthday very vividly. That was 1974. I was fascinated by the whole thing of being 10 years old. And I remember figuring things out – that I’d be 20 in 1984. That I would turn 36 in 2000. 2022? How the heck did that happen?
Now I get to figure out things like if I live as long as my Dad my expiration date comes in 2047. Of course, make it as long as Grandpa then I’ll be around 2052. As long as my Grand-aunt Alice, 2063. But, slice it any way you like, there’s more time behind than in front. This doesn’t disturb me. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. 57 years is already a long time: we’re just tacking on at this point. Will have to point out to the granddaughter that if she shakes my hand then she’s one handshake away from 1896, when my grandfather was born – that might be an interesting point for her to make with her grandchildren 40 or 50 years from now.
The country is a complete mess – the only thing that keeps China from attacking is the remaining uncertainty of whether or not we’d use nuclear weapons if our backs go to the wall. As of this moment, I doubt we could raise a military force sufficient to win against any 1st or 2nd rate power. We’re too divided and our military leadership is perfectly useless. I don’t know what they teach at the service academies these days, but it certainly isn’t whatever is needed to win a war. And any war fighting capacity which is imparted is shoved out by the time they rise to the top where the only concerns are pleasing their political masters and feathering their retirement nest. And the core military power of our nation – the lower and middle class people outside the deep blue areas: do they want to fight for America as it is right now? Do you want one of your family members to fight under these generals and admirals, with China Joe as CinC? It always astonished me how various parts of France, left and right, didn’t want to stand up and fight against Hitler – but these days I perhaps understand a little better. They should, of course, have fought: but at the time, it seemed to many of them that fighting for France merely perpetuated a corrupt and useless Ruling Class.
Earlier today I paid about $180.00 for $100.00 in groceries: I don’t know exactly what they use to judge inflation but I suspect that the numbers, like all government numbers these days, aren’t giving us the rock solid truth. It wouldn’t be in Team Pudding Brain’s interest to show inflation as high as I figure it must be…prices are getting out of control. Bad news: there are indications that we’ve only seen the start of the inflationary surge. Remember, these things take a little while to work into the system. From what I’ve read, for instance, the price of fertilizer is vastly higher…which means the farmers are going to have to charge more for, say, corn. That will make it more expensive to get your Doritos, but also more expensive for everything that uses corn…and its a lot of things. On and on it will go, pushing one thing after another. I hope inflation moderates: for me and for everyone, but I worry that it won’t, at least not any time soon. There is too much money out there right now and goods and services are getting harder and harder to procure.
Meanwhile, they’re moving what must be hundreds of thousands of illegals all over the country – sure, they are hoping that changing demographics will help them (but, will it? Polls show Latino voters aren’t keen on pronoun wars) but, still, what is the real point here? It could just be that they’re stupid…they just believe they can’t stop people from crossing and now they have to move them somewhere. They might do a vaccine mandate for air travel, but no vaccine mandate for crossing illegally. We’re in the Twilight Zone of a dead Ruling Class still holding the levers of power.
One thing I am fairly confident about is that they don’t know how hated they are. The Ruling Class, I mean. And not just by us: plenty of far left people despise them as well. Promises were made, after all. Stupid promises, in our view, but still promises – go Resist the Bad Orange Man and when he’s out you’ll get a cancellation of student debt and free college…and a host of other things as well. They aren’t delivering. Team Pudding Brain let a contract out for an $84 million facility to make Covid tests…which won’t start operating until 2024. Hunter is making bank selling his “art”. Nancy Pelosi just bought a retirement home in Florida…while in her San Francisco hard core liberals are starting to buy guns as police protection fails utterly (and not just because of “defund the police” – even the police they have are, apparently, turning a blind eye to crime. Why wouldn’t they? If they arrest someone and if it can be even willfully misconstrued as bad by the cops, their lives are ruined. Better to just drive by and pretend you didn’t see it). Everything is falling apart -but we see that they are doing well and are ignoring the Covid restrictions (AOC was caught in Miami this past week while her New York endured another round of Covid lockdowns).
What will come of this hatred remains to be seen – but we might get a very strong taste of it just 11 months from now. Polls are, as usual, nearly useless, but they are bad for Democrats. But for me, just looking at how things are, if I were Chair of the RNC I’d make sure I had GOP candidates even in D+10 districts. Literally anything is possible.
Meanwhile, I write – Kings and Queen will be out very shortly. That is Book V. But Heirs (Book VI) and Empress (Book VII) are 90% done. I’m about 1/3 done with The Crimson Blade (Book VIII) and I’ve already made a start on the still untitled Book IX. Meanwhile, still working on Aleste and the Icecrystal Dragons and putting ideas together for Survival (an end-of-the-world novel, which may turn out to have zombies in it) and Last Strand, the working title for a thriller about a Chinese plot against America. I write because I enjoy it. Because I believe the stories are good. And because when I’m in those worlds, I’m not watching the enslavement of the world and the destruction of the United States.
I hope you have your escape from today! If you don’t, get one – we’re in for a rocky ride. I think, with God’s grace, will come out the other side ok, but we are living in the Chinese curse of interesting times. Things are going to get stranger and perhaps far more dangerous – but with that faith in God, we’ll get through it all.
I’d like to say I don’t know where the time went – but, I do: still writing! Kings and Queen (Book V) will be out soon so I was doing some last touches on that…but, honestly, I’m already deep into Book IX. Not only that, but my granddaughter said my stories needed a dragon, so I took Celeste’s daughter Aleste and with assist from the granddaughter, I’m writing Aleste and the Icecrystal Dragons. So, hey guys! How ya been?
Anyways – so, Smollett is guilty, as we all knew he was as soon as the story broke. I’m sure if someone did some digging they could find something that almost amounts to an actual hate crime by a GOPer, but even then, not really. The trouble the Left has here is that we’re not racists. I pointed out on Twitter that if Smollett had actually gone to MAGA country he would have learned that we’re very nice people who don’t give a darn what you do as long as you don’t adversely affect housing prices. Keep your act together and we’re cool.
There’s a poll out for youngsters about their willingness to be friends with people who have different political views and for Democrat kiddies, they are overwhelmingly against being friends with Republicans. Part of this, I’m sure, is peer pressure: they don’t want to be known as someone who is friends with Republicans because all the cool kids don’t have any Republican friends. But it is also of the nature of the Left: hate is what motivates them. It is why they do what they do.
Some people are pointing out how horrible the crime is in Democrat cities and are asking when the DA’s in those towns will finally say, “enough”. I tell them: don’t hold your breath. It is the Left’s opinion that the prosperity and safety of middle class America is a false front on an intrinsically evil society. The Left is letting the criminals out to prey because they believe that it will help generate an acute social crisis which will turn people away from the American system. It is Lenin’s old dictum: the worse, the better. There is a fly in the ointment, however: the Left is the Ruling Class. So, when the people do turn against the system, these junior league Bolsheviks will find all of the hatred directed their way.
Team Pudding Brain has their solution to the inflation problem: order the MSM to talk about how it isn’t a problem. And like proper lapdogs, the MSM is going right along with this order. I’m not sure how well telling us to disbelieve our lying eyes will work. I suspect it won’t. One smart guy did point out that Biden hasn’t remotely hit bottom: apparently, he shoveled out some money for parents and didn’t broadcast too widely that the money is their child tax deduction for 2021…which means that when people go to do their taxes in April of 2022, they’ll find that they already spent their child deduction. I’m sure that’ll go over real well.
Lots of people are noting that Latino voters are dropping the Dems. For males the Latino vote is almost mirroring the vote for white males. If you really drill down to it, the only really strong demographics for the Democrats are African-Americans and white, college educated women. And even the black vote is starting to get a few cracks in it. I don’t think that the Democrats can win much with that. As for the Latinos – don’t expect them to be Buckley-ite Conservatives. They just want law and order, good schools and a vibrant economy. In other words, what the Democrats would at least try to get for them before they were taken over by the aforementioned Bolsheviks. It is, though, our opening…and the GOP should push hard for Latino votes. A vote in 2022 for a good economy can be turned by, say, 2028 into a vote for limited government.
Russia is making waves in Ukraine and it looks like Pudding Brain will roll over for them. In this, probably for the best: can you imagine how catastrophic our defeat would be if we got into a shooting war with the current crew in charge? Also, we don’t have a strategic interest in who governs the Donbas. OTOH, the case can be made that we should stand against military aggression, as such. Not so sure I’m on board with that. Used to be. Maybe not any longer. Some things have to be worked out and war is just politics by other means. Putin – correctly – sees control of the Donbas as vital to his national security: the resources there are vital. Our largest strategic interest is to contain China. Sending an army to Kiev doesn’t serve that interest. Meanwhile, our useless allies won’t send an army…mostly because they haven’t got one. And, finally, the reason Putin is moving is because he knows he’s only got a short time – the miracle of having such a useless American President might never happen again. He kept quiet for Trump because he knew – from Trump’s actions – that Trump wouldn’t put up with it. Putin knows that he can walk all over Biden.
As I write it is late Tuesday so we still don’t know the Rittenhouse verdict – I am nervous about it as the self defense was so patently obvious that not guilty should have taken an hour. Is it hung up on one or two holding out for innocent, or one or two holding out for guilty? I guess we’ll find out when we find out.
The bottom line, though, is that where there is a Democrat DA, you don’t have a right to defend yourself. If you do against those allied politically with the DA, you will be prosecuted and if nothing else, the process will be the punishment. I urge anyone living under a DA where there is risk of Leftist violence to move to a place which has a Republican DA. But even then, watch out: if the federal government under a Democrat decides to charge you with civil rights violations because you defended yourself, you’ll be in the same predicament.
What this trial has done is shown that we need specific laws on the books securing the right to self defense. We have to make it clear that if you start violence, anyone can pretty much do anything they like to you if they feel that you are a threat to persons or property. We obviously will not be able to get these things enacted in Blue States, but in every State we can, do it. So that if a local Blue DA decides to mess around, won’t be able to.
“I Did That” Biden stickers are showing up everywhere as Republicans learn political street fighting. They are heavily effective – and things like high gas prices are set to sink the Democrats quite a lot.
It looks like we finally have a whistleblower at the FBI who is on our side – revealing that the FBI has conducted counter-terrorism investigations against parents attending school board meetings. This is terrifying stuff – the FBI is becoming the Demcorats Stasi. The next GOP President will have to largely dismantle the FBI and start all over.
Glenn Reynolds notes that we’re hampered in our space program because we worry too much about safety. Sure, we do have to take care – but the bottom line is that if humans really want to live in space and on other planets, then humans are going to have to die in space and on other planets. We should already have a permanent presence on the Moon and be scouting sites for a permanent presence on Mars by now. If we’re going to go, go. Don’t fuss too much about it.
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