I’ve read some articles which assert that Democrats believe they have a winner in the Maryland Man issue – they figure they can move off from defending the man but garner support by pointing out the procedural error which got him back to El Salvador.

No. Serious! They seem to really think this. That the American people will rise up in outrage over deportations because the forms weren’t filled out correctly.

At first glance we just laugh – but then it dawns on us: the Left are the people who run the bureaucracy, public and private. All they’ve ever done in their life is check off boxes and make certain forms are filled out. They consider this an accomplishment and the height of intellectual achievement. Think about every issue: the Experts says it is so and so and with this report from the Experts there is nothing further to discuss. Just check off that box and move on! And heaven help you if you don’t…because they love to find the clerical or spelling error…makes them feel smart.

We are, as I’ve said, dealing with some very stupid people. And we really should have figured this out a long while ago – we thought the Green stuff was Secret Communism…and it is but it is also very, very stupid…anyone can see that if your goal is to reduce CO2 you’ll build nuclear plants by the dozen. Nope: place mirrors in the desert that don’t work! Student loans – how often do you hear anyone suggest making them dischargable in bankruptcy? Hardly ever, if at all – and it is the simplest solution. If the grad simply isn’t making enough money post-college to carry the freight, file for bankruptcy and be done with it. But they don’t want that – they want to annul the debt. After the forms are filled out, of course. This is the dumbest way to go about it. But the Left is wedded to it (to be sure, this could also stem from a lot of well-off grads just not wanting to pay the bill…if the solution is bankruptcy but you make too much money for that, then where’s the advantage for you?).

I’ve seen a lot of Doomers on X – people who are saying it is all over, Trump has failed, the GOP is finished…and it all would have been better if Trump had done Y instead of Z. We are on Day 92. Just past three months. The Doomers are getting irritating. Sure, maybe the whole Trump experiment fails…but it’ll take a couple years for it to happen. And even if we get whacked in 2026 that doesn’t mean Trump has failed…Reagan got whacked in 1982, after all. Keep in mind as we go forward that there is money to be had in clicks…and hate clicks pay as much as love clicks. Some people will just say things to get clicks. As for me, when I see a Doomer on X or other social media, I hit the mute button. Won’t engage. Not going to give them money for poisoning the well.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be wary of engaging in military action against Iran. This, and her unwillingness to go to war over Ukraine, is upsetting a lot of hawks. Anyone who has hung around the blog knows that I want no war with Russia but have long figured we should go to war with Iran. These are my opinions informed by my understanding of the facts. Others can come to different conclusions. That’s ok. It is possible for honest people to look at the same set of facts and conclude differently. Nothing doing with some people – because Gabbard doesn’t want war with Russia she is now a Putin stooge and because she’s wary of an attack on Iran she’s also a Mullah stooge.

Stop it, people. Gabbard may be right or she may be wrong – but she’s not a traitor. She’s an honest, patriotic American citizen. She also doesn’t call the shots – Trump does. She gets to say what she thinks and then Trump decides. And only fool would want Trump to only receive one point of view on policy matters. Lets hear every honest opinion and try to sift through them to the best result – understanding that there might not be an actual good choice in a situation…some times it is just picking the least bad option.

Got into an argument on X yesterday. Surprise! Anyways, it started with someone noting a Leftwing account arguing that every Confederate should have been tortured and killed post-war. Naturally, this clickbait was generating a lot of outrage (as was its intent) but I noted that the real problem wasn’t that we didn’t mass murder Confederates, but simply that Johnson pardoned them all. And he did this because he was trying to curry favor with the former Planter Class (whom he despised) for an 1868 Presidential run as a Democrat. It didn’t work – they wouldn’t forgive him for remaining loyal to the Union and being Lincoln’s running mate. But that, really, was the entire post-Civil War failure…it created the whole problem. Which wasn’t the Klan (insane violence is always only a temporary problem) – the problem was we let the Confederates vote themselves back into power and, by outnumbering black Americans in the South, vote black Americans into Jim Crow. If the former Confederates were disenfranchised for good, it never would have happened. The race issue would have resolved itself in a generation or two – by 1920 at the latest.

This, in turn, got me a bunch of “how dare you!” from the Right…the usual blather about how the Confederacy was spotlessly honorable and the men who served her needed to be reintegrated back into civil life. Balderdash – the Confederacy came about because the Planter Class had lost power at the Federal level and wanted to keep stealing the labor of black Americans. There were decades of propaganda built up for it – keeping in mind that the idea of the Confederacy was born under Jackson’s Administration – playing upon racial fears, disdain for Northern tradesmen (greasy mechanics, the South considered them), prospects for conquest south of the Rio Grande and a rather hypocritical view of States Rights (ie, they wanted their States Rights…except in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act which essentially made every State a slave State), the Southern Ruling Class got their war.

And it was a catastrophe. The least justified Civil War in history and then they botched the execution (Washington could have told Lee that his job was to remain in being and free to maneuver; not being tied down to defending one city while the rest of the war was lost out West). A million or so people ended up dead (war, disease, hunger-related illness and so on). They got their arrogant, upper class, Plantation butts handed to them on a platter. Repent? Offer reparation? At least admit it wasn’t such a great idea? Nothing doing – they started working up justifications for themselves, lobbied for pardons and then recaptured the political system they had failed…the worst aspect of it was the fact that the Union was merciful. Nothing is quite so American as Grant’s “let ’em up easy” policy. This should have lead to that repentance (it did in some, most notably James Longstreet, but there were others), but the mercy was spat upon…with a spasm of Klan violence and laws mandating smaller water fountains among other ridiculous indignities.

Look, I get it – great-great-grandpa who served in the Alabama 5th Infantry was a good man who fought for what he thought was right. No, we don’t need to be tearing down statues. There was a greatness in Lee, and the sublime courage Confederate soldiers showed even against hopeless odds still shines across the ages. But lets also not kid ourselves about what happened. Lets keep in mind all those corpses and only say the war was justified if we could go to them and say, “it was good you died for this cause”. It was good for Billy Yank … Johnny Reb? Not so much. He shouldn’t have had to show his sublime courage in a lost cause. Wiser heads should have prevailed. And so it goes with most wars – and that it the primary point I make these days. Sometimes you do have to fight – but only because someone else is doing something so egregiously immoral that there is no other way to stop them.