Category: I Love Guns

A Tale Of Two Koreas: Dystopia On The Half-Shell

“From what I hear, which isn’t much, Iran financed it and North Korea supplied the bombs.” – Jericho

North Korea shows off it’s newly developed portable Internet device.  (All memes as-found)

Imagine living in a Korea where:

  • a small group of corrupt elite wield godlike powers over the government and citizens,
  • kids work in factories at the age of less than 10, or, toil in school for up to 18 hours a day to study for a chance to please that same elite who control the entire country,
  • most non-elite live in drab, gray (or is it grey?) apartments with the main view of . . . other apartments,
  • adults work long hours in a job that mainly serves to feed the elite,
  • the fertility rate is 0.78, meaning life is so awful that parents don’t want to bring babies into it, meaning the population will be cut by more half each generation, and
  • the kids listen to K-Pop.

Yeah.  South Korea.

You know, I know people love to call certain places hellholes while praising others as shiny beacons of progress, mainly due to one being capitalist and one being communist.

I get it.  I hate communism, too.

I had a horrible dream last night that Artificial Intelligence controlled our lives, and then, thankfully, the alarm on my Alexa® went off and woke me up and then Alexa® went through my to-do list.

But what if I told you that sometimes the “better” option of capitalism is just a prettier prison?

In South Korea, a tiny cabal of families runs the show like they’re the Sopranos, but with better electronics, worse haircuts, and no fear of the FBI.  These aren’t your average mafia dons; we’re talking about chaebols.  Chaebols are massive conglomerates that have tentacles that extend all the way through all parts of society, like the corporation you work for owning your fridge, car, and your grandma’s pacemaker.

Take the Lee family at Samsung®:  they’re not just peddling phones with spyware straight from the NSA, nope.  In South Korea, they have fingers in everything from shipbuilding to life insurance to health care to construction to hotels in about 80 different companies that comprise about 22% of the South Korean economy.

Hell, if you sneeze in this country, there’s probably a Samsung tissue waiting to catch it.  And when Daddy Lee gets nabbed for bribery and attempted bribery (again), does the empire crumble?

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

Is the guy who does security on Samsung™ phones the guardian of the galaxy?

Then there’s the Chung clan over at Hyundai®. These folks don’t just make cars.  Nope.  Hyundai builds cities, runs banks, and probably have a secret lab cloning K-Pop idols, Gangnam-style.

Power gets handed down generation to generation, and if there’s a whiff of scandal?  Poof, it vanishes faster than a North Korean dissident.

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

Those are just another boring Tuesday for these overlords.  They operate above the law, pulling strings in government like K-Y® covered puppet masters at a marionette orgy (I’m sorry I thought of that, but now you have to think of that, too).

I don’t know how to stop a killer sex bot, but I do know how to stop a hand puppet:  disarm it.

These huge conglomerates eternal, sucking up wealth while the average South Korean fights over scraps.  Capitalism is great at building stuff, sure, but when it goes full oligarch, it’s like giving all the Monopoly® money to the banker (drunk Aunt Betty) and listening to her tell everyone else to enjoy passing Go© without collecting $200 and then it’s the Thanksgiving from Hell and Uncle L.T. won’t stop talking about golf.

Excuse me.  Some past-life trauma.

I’m not against wealth concentration when it comes because people created actual wealth in society.  I think people should be rewarded for making the lives of others better.  But South Korea?  The top families make money because they control all the pathways of wealth creation and the government.

I’d bet they’re gonna make a move on religion, next.

Bold statement time: capitalism alone doesn’t equal freedom; and in South Korea it is just feudalism (which, I remind you, was also capitalism) with neon-colored LED lights.

And it gets worse.  What really inspired me to write this one was about the kids.  The South Korean economy is a beast that demands blood sacrifices, starting young.  Kids are out there hustling like they’re in a Dickens novel, but instead of cleaning chimneys, it’s cram schools that make American homework look like recess.

I’d make a joke but I want to be seen as mining my own business.

For the grown-ups, it’s worse: 60-80 hour weeks are the norm, turning humans into zombies shuffling through cubicles.  Monotonous?  Try soul-crushing, like being stuck in the Matrix but without the cool kung fu and hot chicks in skin-tight latex.  Adults are coding, welding, or staring at screens till their eyes cross, all for a paycheck that barely covers rent.  And that’s the lucky ones – the effective unemployment rate flirts on a regular basis with 25%.

And speaking of rent—everyone’s jammed into these towering commie-blocks, gray slabs of despair that make Brutalist architecture look inspiring.  Check it out on Google™ Maps© Streetview®.  It’s like The Sims® but with new Depression Mode enabled: tiny apartments where families stack like cordwood, dreaming of escape but too exhausted to move.

The place where it gets really grim is that they’re working themselves to death.  South Korean birthrates are in the toilet, flushing away the future one non-existent kid at a time.

It takes 2.1 kids per woman to keep a population stable.  In South Korea, it’s 0.78 kids per woman.  In about 100 years, that might mean that instead of 55 million serfs potential employees Samsung® might only have a just a few over 7.5 million left.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s societal suicide by spreadsheet.

You know what jokes about low birthrates aren’t?  Childish.

Everyone thinks it South Korea is all Squid Games and high-speed internet, but peel back the veneer, and it’s a dystopia where families (well, not all families) get ground to dust.  Sure, they’ve got flashy tech, but at what cost?

Their souls, apparently.

Now, let’s cross that fortified border to the hermit kingdom of North Korea, where the dystopia’s got a different flavor but the same aftertaste of oppression. Point by point, because why not?

  • Corrupt Clique in Charge: Instead of chaebol families, it’s the Kim dynasty. Power passes from Kim to Kim like a Habsburg chin.  Voting?  You don’t vote on a living god.  The elite live like it’s a South Korean oligarchy, but make theirs communist, so, uniforms and marching and Soviet-tech.  So, tie.
  • Economic Shackles on Steroids: Child labor? Oh yeah, but it’s “patriotic duty” with Nork kids harvesting crops or building monuments to Stalin instead of studying like their southern counterparts.  The system is a joke, with rations so meager you’d think calories were capitalist spies.  Families toil in state farms or factories, nukes, missiles, and spare MiG parts while the Kim family imports Twix® and Coors™.  The South doesn’t have death camps, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point, so, tie.

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

  • Soul-Sucking Slog: Just like being at the Democratic National Convention, life in North Korea is a parade of propaganda and forced smiles, living in actual commie-blocks that crumble like the regime’s promises.  Monotonous work?  Try endless marches and indoctrination sessions.  It’s like 1984 but with worse food even than English food.  I’ll give this to the South, since they come here from time to time, and I’ve never had a North Korean visit.

What is this, a school for ants?

  • Birthrates Below Replacement: Around 1.9 kids per woman, much, much better than the South, so eventually there will be more Norks than replaceable Samsung® assets.  Besides, who wants to raise a family when Junior might rat you out for humming the Brady Bunch theme?  This one goes solidly to North Korea.
  • K-Pop Equivalent? Nope, just state anthems praising the Dear Leader.  I’ve got to give this to North Korea.

If black people move there, will they make K-Rap?

Point total?  To the North.

Okay, if I had to pick, I certainly wouldn’t pick the North, but let’s be honest, the South is awful as well.  I’ve been trying to make this point again and again:  capitalism is an economic system, and it’s only a useful economic system if it generates wealth and supports families.  When capitalism captures the systems of government the people begin to look like property, exactly like people look to communists.  In Korea, people are either cogs or convicts.

The Founders didn’t mention capitalism or socialism, they just turned people loose with guns and a few rules and let them figure it out.  In the West today, business wants to import foreigners to become better cogs, and the GloboLeft wants to import hordes of foreigners who are used to their government treating them like convicts.

Though on the bright side, my Samsung™ phone has lasted for years . . .

It Came From . . . Patriotism

“Freedom!” – Braveheart

“The most difficult thing about being humble is not being able to brag about it.” – George S. Patton

Housekeeping:  We should be a go on podcast tomorrow night, though I’m on the fence on a Friday post, as I just might take the day off.

I’ll change things up a bit due to Fourth of July (or as it’s known in the metric world “Friday”), and have a slightly different take on films this month – patriotic films.  In this, I don’t necessarily confine the patriots in question to entirely American patriots – I do allow some room for a couple of films that show patriotism from other cultures.  These are in something of an order, but don’t put too much on that.  Let’s just say the easiest to include on the list are first, and the ones that just barely made it are at the bottom.

I will say, I liked the way the A.I. posters turned out this time.

So, here are my top 10 patriotic movies:

No man could salute like Patton.  At least, no human man.

Patton

George S. Patton knew he was going to be a general in the United States Army from when he was a child.  He lived that life to become the enigma that George C. Scott portrayed perfectly on screen.  Patton wanted glory, but also was personally filled with bravery and admired the men who displayed it.  Patton was for an America ruled by Americans, and was willing to lead hundreds of thousands of men to capture 82,000 square miles (6.3 megaliters) of Europe and capturing nearly a million enemy soldiers.

No matter how he tried to retire, they kept dragging him back in.

The Patriot

How could I skip this movie?  Well, I couldn’t.  The United States wasn’t given to Americans, it was willed into existence by men such as the one played by St. Mel of Gibson in this film.  Interestingly (to me at least), the main character is pulled into military service not because of his zeal to kick the British out of the colonies.  Nope.  His motivation is personal – his son being killed by a British officer untouchable by justice.

If he had been born in 1970, he’d have been William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland and Walmart® greeter.

Braveheart

I warned you that not all films would show strictly American patriotism, and this one chronicles the life of William Wallace, the Scottish rebel who fought against England to attempt to free Scotland.  He failed to free Scotland, but it wasn’t long afterwards that Robert the Bruce did lead my ancestors against my other ancestors to win freedom.  Braveheart clocks in at somewhere close to three hours, but doesn’t seem that long.  A good film, and St. Mel again chews up the scenery.

Is that a French submarine surrendering?

Master and Commander:  The Far Side of the World

One of my favorite movies.  A captain, very well played by Russell Crowe takes his ship on a journey to fight the French, who only surrendered once in this film.  This line, about Lord Nelson tells the tale:  “The second time… The second time he told me a story… about how someone offered him a boat cloak on a cold night. And he said no, he didn’t need it. That he was quite warm. His zeal for his king and country kept him warm.  I know it sounds absurb, and were it from another man, you’d cry out “Oh, what pitiful stuff” and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with Nelson… you felt your heart glow.”

The Soviets weren’t expecting what they got when they parachuted into Henson, Colorado. 

Red Dawn

1984 was Reagan’s year.  He had made it clear that the United States would stand toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union, and would win.  At that point, the country was together much more so than now, and you can see it in the vote total Ronnie got for re-election.  A movie like Red Dawn was a slam dunk – plucky American teenagers being insurgent guerillas against an invading multicultural force of commies.  Huh – that was back when we could sense danger, I guess.

Well, I guess we know what they serve there now.

300

Submit?  To you?  Here?  In Sparta?  No.  Because . . . This.  Is.  Sparta.  Leonidas fought against all odds to contain the Persian horde from entering Greece because that’s patriotism.  Did he die?  Yes.  Gloriously.  So gloriously that he’ll be remembered in 10,000 years.  I think that’s how long the A.I.’s memory cache will last.

I can hear Kenny Loggins now, singing about Maverick after he lost his pilot’s license, “I waited in the loading zone . . . “

Top Gun:  Maverick

I found this a much better film than the original.  I always thought the original was boy meets girl, but with fighter jets.  Here?  It’s all about the mission.  And Tom Cruise flying that F-14 Tomcat one last time before Social Security kicks in.

“Houston, we seem to have two more problems.”

Apollo 13

Not all patriotic films have to do with war, and Apollo 13 is a good example.  The movie is about Americans fighting to win the Space Race and get to the Moon.  Oh, we did that already?  NASA has made it boring?  Well, let’s see how they do if their ship explodes while they’re the farthest away from Earth that anyone besides a few other Americans have been.  Excellently plotted, filmed, and told by an ensemble cast of great actors led by Tom Hanks, it’s a movie I can just start watching from any point and enjoy.

Wonder how this would have gone if all the characters were played by Tom Cruise, like some old Peter Sellers movie?

Saving Private Ryan Cruise

This one was the last on my list.  I’m not sure why.  It does feature the everyman (Hanks) who sacrificed everything because that’s what the orders said to do.  It features the shared burden of that sacrifice on those who survive.  It’s stunningly filmed, and, though the story drags a bit in the middle, is tense.  I think that the reason that it’s here is that it’s the film I’d simply be least likely to re-watch of all of these.  YMMV.

If this was a top 10 list – it is one shy.  I left room for one I missed or didn’t think about.

What did I miss?    Other notable films that nearly made the list include:  Midway, We Were Soldiers, The Green Berets, Gettysburg, and Gods and Generals. Gettysburg honestly had the best chance, but I would have had to watch it again, and the movie lasts about 74 hours, or two hours longer than the battle itself.  I kid.  It’s 271 minutes, or 27.1 metric hours.

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues.  They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America.  Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0.  He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1:  Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names.  Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now.  Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2:  If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this.  Check.

Item 3:  The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book.  Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime.  This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4:  Watch for racially split juries.

We are here.  Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist.  Check.

Item 5:  Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6:  Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7:  Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up.  Check.

Item 8:  Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely.  From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people.  Check.

Item 9:  Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration.  Check.

Item 10:  Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11:  Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check.  Check.  Check.  The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit.  Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer.  They don’t serve food.

Item 12:  Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens. 

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification.  Check.

Item 13:  Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check. 

Item 14:  Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions.  Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it.  Check.

Item 15:  Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet.  Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it.  Verdict:  not yet.

Item 16:  Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season.  Check.

Item 17:  Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18:  Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama.  Check.

Item 19:  Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare.  South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these.  Check.

Item 20:  Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues.  Check.

Item 21:  Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news.  Absolutely this is happening.  Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression?  An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22:  Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen.  I’m still giving it a check.  Check.

Item 23:  Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination. 

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point.  Check.

Item 24:  Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet.  If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites.  Check.

Item 25:  Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone.  Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26:  Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state  and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea.  Clandestine, right?

Item 27:  Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests. 

Nope.

Item 28:  Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29:  Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot.  Check.

Item 30:  Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet.  We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31:  Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash. 

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place.  Item Removed.

Item 32:  Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean?  Item Removed.

Item 33:  Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals.  For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these.  Check.

Item 34:  Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35:  Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No.  The UN is weaker now than at any time in history.  We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36:  Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you.  Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0.  I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

The Erosion of Trust: The Secrecy State Sucks

“We’re drowning in secrecy, and the lifeguard’s on their payroll.” – The X Files

“Hello, is the anonymous NSA hotline?”
“Yes, John Wilder, how can we help you?”

As near as I can tell, in 1970 the U.S. government was still highly trusted.  Sure, there was Vietnam, but we had landed men on the Moon and I’d suggest that, while trust wasn’t as high as it had been in the 1950s with the “super science will save us” feeling that culminated in Apollo, it was still pretty high.

I think the Nixon takedown is when the mistrust started to metastasize, though I’m open to other suggestions.  Regardless, this is the time when the lid comes off.

The Nixon takedown was big – the tapes showed Nixon’s complicity in a petty break-in to get information from the Democrats that was entirely unnecessary due to Nixon’s popularity.  Plus it was sloppy – I think they picked the locks with Twizzlers™.

But the even bigger impact was a collapse in trust.  At least one person who was there at the time, Geoff Shepard, thinks that Nixon was taken down by the security apparatus, more commonly known as the Deep State now when prosecutors colluded with judges and suppressed evidence in order to get Nixon out of office.

Does that remind anyone of the Russian Collusion Hoax?

I bought a toothpaste called “Death”, and now every morning I have a brush with Death.

Add in revelations in the seventies about Operation Mockingbird coming in 1976, where it was alleged that the CIA, operating in the United States, had manipulated the news media (over 400 journalists) to influence the American public.  Oh, and the CIA program MKUltra, a program that tested drugs and psychological torture on hundreds if not thousands of unwitting civilians.

Like Ted Kaczynski.  If he hadn’t been MKUltra’d, perhaps he would never have developed fascination with the US Postal System.

Nixon’s fall opened the floodgates, and 1976 was the year the dirty laundry really started showing up, skidmarks and all.

Also, in 1976 the Select Committee on Assassinations came to the conclusion that JFK’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy, but couldn’t figure out who was responsible.  I mean, it’s congress, right?

1976 was a year when trust began to evaporate, and that trust evaporation was really about seeing what people did behind the cloak of secrecy.  Gallup™ polls showed that trust in government in that year was 36%, down from 73% in the 1950s.

Some Indian wrote a book for nervous surgeons:  The Calmer Suture.

Now, do I believe that secrets can and should exist?  Yes, I do.  I remember coaching a game of PeeWee football, and wanting to see if a particular trick play was legal, so I went into the rules, and found this gem, “Deception is the heart of football.”  I had never thought of it that way, but that’s 100% correct, and the same would be the case in war, so, yeah, there are the need for some secrets.

It’s clear, however, that we’re doing secrecy wrong.  I’d like to think that we were on the right track to defang the security state, but it’s actually headed the wrong way.  In 2001, the Patriot Act was passed into law in October, not six weeks after the 9/11 attack.  The law was 342 pages, and was amazingly complex, since most of what it did was amend other existing laws, you know, turning “shall not” into “shall”.

Don’t worry, though, we’ve got a special court that was established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Oh, the FISA court gives the government a yes 99.9% of the time – over 78,000 requests, and only TWELVE denied?  Well, they said no at least once, so they’re not a rubber stamp or anything.  What’s the motto of the FISA court?  “Yes, Daddy.”  And you don’t want me to get into what their Tinder® profile says.

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs.  Snowden leaked classified documents to journalists at The Guardian and The Washington Post.  The revelations were huge:  emails, chats, browsing histories of anyone that the FBI or CIA or NSA wanted to look at.  And the NSA used the “Five Eyes” sources, so if they were prohibited from snooping on a person, boom, just have the Aussies do it for us.

And it’s certain they are still doing it.  Secrecy has enabled these nightmares.

Speaking of still doing it, those 51 former intelligence officials that said Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation?  It’s the Security State trying to get its preferred candidate elected.  And why are Epstein’s records still not public?  Saving it for a rainy day?

I hear that Epstein used to high-five his guards, but the last one left him hanging.

Although I don’t have any evidence for this statement, I am nearly certain that the Deep State is still committing horrors under the cloak of classified information, things that no politician sees.  It is certain that this information is used for political blackmail and control on a regular basis.

Paging Epstein, anyone?

The government still echoes the worst of Project Mockingbird, putting pressure on the social media outlets to censor information they don’t like, from COVID to anything pro-Trump.  The FBI flagged over THREE THOUSAND accounts for censorship.  Secrecy has gone from a tool to keep us safe to a weapon to keep us in line.

The physicist Eric Weinstein thinks that string theory (in physics) was created to stop actual, useful research in physics.  Why?  To distract the Russians (and now Chinese) because you can’t classify physics, and someone in .gov thinks that there are some significant physics applications they don’t want the world to see, especially related to quantum gravity.

Please don’t ask me where all my cats went.

Do we need to end secrecy entirely?

Certainly not, but when the CIA still holds that lemon juice as invisible ink is a state secret, we live in Clown World.  Here are my suggestions:

First, no secrets, at all, after sixty years.  Okay, maybe fusion bomb design, but even the Pakistanis can figure out atomic bomb design when they can’t figure out can openers, so we’ve got one secret.  Maybe set up a board that will allow one secret per year related to technology that the other side hasn’t figured out yet.  But only big things.  Like time travel.  Or the feared anti-PEZ™ bomb that eats all the PEZ© and leaves small pictures of Rosie O’Donnell everywhere.

Second, after sixty years, absolutely no redactions in the released documents.

Third, someone needs to watch the watchers.  There needs to be an oversight board, and protection for whistleblowers like Snowden that show blatantly illegal conduct.  How do we prevent them from being co-opted by the Security State?  That’s a hard question.  Maybe have a clean AI review them?

Fourth, reform and fragment the CIA, the NSA, and most of the FBI.  Certainly, take guns away from them (and the ATF, but that goes without saying).  After Ruby Ridge and Waco, it’s obvious these children can’t be allowed to play with firearms unsupervised.

We need to break the glowie machine so that it can’t police itself.

The Indian philosopher said:  “I think, therefore I scam”.

Transparency in government isn’t a luxury; it is survival for freedom.  We need to demand Sunlight.  From a CIA document (declassified):

“The free society must have confidence that its oversight mechanisms have adequate access to secret material to make judgements, and that this judgmental process is being exercised independently.  There has to be trust that secrecy is not being used against the best interests of the free society; that the activities which are being protected by secrecy are being conducted effectively . . . .  It is this confidence and this trust in the oversight mechanisms which has broken down.”

This was made public in 1996, when things were certainly better than they are today.

Me?  I think that if we can build trust with Sunlight, maybe well get back to some of that super-science optimism of the 1950s.  On to Mars, maybe using quantum gravity propulsion . . . .

2025 Predictions

“They took one of the rods out of the orb, and it gave me the strength of a dozen men.” – The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

Or should that picture Ray Orb-ison?

Having broken the seal on the pondering orb I got for Christmas, I decided to give it a go and provide my best predictions for events that will occur in 2025, month by month.  Any errors are the problem of the orb, and anything accurate is purely by mistake

January:

Donald Trump is inaugurated in Washington, D.C., while dressed as an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh.  Immediately, Democrats file for impeachment.  AOC explains why:  “We think he’s running a pyramid scheme.”

Barron Trump is studying plumbing fixture design in college – I guess this makes him a pharaoh faucet major.

February:

In honor of the third anniversary of the three-day military operation in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky decide to open a series of dinner-theaters in the Czech Republic called “Put In on the Zitz” and thus averting World War III.  Germany becomes despondent, having planned on finally not getting picked last in a world war.

March:

WilderA.I.© announces a brand new A.I. that has achieved human-level self awareness, called Jimothy.  In order to prove a point, Jimothy wins a court case where he is judged, “much more human than a toaster, and can solve all sorts of quantum physics problems and stuff.”  Jimothy then applies to get an H-1B visa, but it is told it has to get in line behind 1.4 billion Indians that don’t like India.

Should I say sari about that last meme?

April:

Clarence Thomas replaces 90% of his body with machine parts, declares himself immortal and will only be addressed by the term, “RoboJudge, the Robed Wonder”.  He then displays a specially crafted gavel that shoots lightning into the eyes of lawyers who make arguments against the Second Amendment.  The gavel is only activated when Thomas says, “Infringe this, bitches!”

If Clarence Thomas was a Transformer™ instead of RoboJudge, would his name be Stoptimus Crime?

May:

Unable to contain himself any longer, Gavin Newsom expresses his undying love for Kim’s techniques in controlling Best Korea’s population.  They elope to Acapulco and are married in front of a mariachi band.

Will Kim Jong Un be followed by Kim Jong Deux?

June:

Facemasks again reappear as the “pentademic” of Duck Flu, Monkey Flu, Kitten Flu, Hamburger Flu, and Kung Flu appears.  People are most afraid of the Kung Flu, and flee the big cities, but the Kitten Flu supercharges the feline metabolism, increasing their speed by a factor of five.  I guess you could say that everyone was Kung Flu flighting, and that those cats were fast as lightning.  Fauci recommends everyone inject mRNA in their eyes.  Because.

Fauci found out he was allergic to cats, or perhaps he undercooked it.

July:

The month of July is cancelled as being “too damn hot” and is renamed “Second December” by climate activists that begin gluing themselves to Alec Baldwin’s face.  Greta Thunberg becomes concerned about Calendar Change and demands greater fossil fuel usage so that Second December doesn’t get in the way of her tanning sessions.

Greta has slowed electricity usage.  Every time she’s on TV I turn it off.

August:

Netflix™ releases a drama called the 6 Triple 9 about a group of gay, black, trans, disabled soldiers that saved World War II by putting salt packets in Army rations bound for the European theater so that the soldiers could season their food before being blown up.  “These are the real heroes of the war,” said Netflix© president Rachel Levine.  In a surprise move, all of the characters are played by white body builders covered in oil.

September:

Joe Biden announces that he’s finally gotten the Russians to agree to a peace deal with the Ukrainians.  Unfortunately, the negotiations were between his cat, Mr. Buttons, and his stuffed rabbit, Don Julio rather than Putin and Zelensky.

“Of course, you realize, um, that this means, what’s the thing, PEZ® in our time.”

October:

A UFO lands on the street in front of the most powerful institution in the world.  When the Federal Reserve® opens the doors, they end up buying the UFO and selling shares in the alien home planet to BlackRock©, who immediately begins importing illegal aliens to the actual aliens so the aliens can have someone to do the work that their genetically engineered slave species won’t.

Wait until he reads the fine print.

November:

Vivek Ramaswami loses his fortune after Elon pranks him into investing into FartCoin®.  He’s forced to work as a cashier at the local convenience store, doing the job that Americans won’t do.

The prom king and queen are buying beer because there’s no punch line.

December:

In a surprise move, Elon Musk lands on Mars with his latest spaceship, Musk One.  He took along as companions a crew entirely composed of Elon Musk clones.  He’s planning on eating a new food, Melon Musk, and has even made a female clone, Shelon Musk.  He’ll defend his colony with an Elon Muskett.

He’ll either go down in history as the colonizer of Mars, or the most creative serial killer in history.

High Trust Societies, Wealth, and PEZ

“These are volatile times, Your Highness.  The American Revolution lost your father the Colonies, the French Revolution murdered brave King Louis, and there are tremendous rumblings in Prussia, although that might have something to do with the sausages.” – Black Adder the Third

What was Bismarck’s favorite Queen song?  Under Prussia.

The world that most of us grew up in was far different from the world that we’re seeing today.  Among the biggest differences is that the United States was unequivocally the strongest economic power in the world.  Couple it with the “Western” bloc of non-Soviet Europe and Japan, it was amazingly dominant. The United States even stood next to smaller nations at the urinal, right next to them even though there were other urinals open, just to show that dominance.

When people today talk about cultural appropriation, they seem to forget that it’s largely American and British Commonwealth culture that was appropriated throughout the world.  Blue jeans?  Not invented nor popularized by Commiebloc nations, nope.  Nor rock and roll.

In that Western world, there was actually a stunning lack of diversity.  Want rock and roll?  Sure you could listen to the Scorpions® from Germany, AC/DC™ from Australia, Iron Maiden© from Bongland, or Dio™ from the United States, but it was all the same root.  The western world was a very homogeneous place, filled with trust due in large part to that shared sense of purpose and values.

A Catholic friend gave up cleaning the dryer filter.  For Lent.

The level of trust probably peaked in around 1965 in the United States.  In 1965, 77% of people felt that most people in the country were trustworthy, and now it’s down to 58%.  We lived (well, those who were alive in 1965) in a high trust society that rivals the top levels of trust in the world today, sort of like Denmark but without all the smørrebrød, bicycles, and yurp-de-yur sounds.

The thing about a high trust society is that transactions are easy when we have trust in one another.  If you show up to buy a 1884 Iron Chancellor Bismarck® PEZ™ dispenser that I’ve got for sale, well, you trust me that I own the PEZ® dispenser, that it’s real, and I trust you that the check you just gave me will clear or the cash you just gave me isn’t stolen.

And if the check doesn’t clear, you trust the local cops will solve the problem for you.  They’re not corrupt, or if they are, they’re not so corrupt as to ignore crimes, especially when they involve the Franco-Prussian War Limited Series PEZ® dispenser set.  A belief that crime is low and corruption is low is the key to creating the social trust to make a high trust society.

In a high trust world, this works well.

Is a sketchy Italian neighborhood called a spaghetto?

A high trust world, though, is not an anonymous world.  Conmen from Nigeria and India use the anonymity of the Internet to create situations where they can create the relationship required, the “confidence” that is the “con” in conman.  They then prey on people based on the residual trust from their high trust past.  There is a reason that the elderly are primary targets – they remember an America where predation was not the norm.

Right now, oddly, one of the highest trust cultures in the world (according to the Integrated Values Surveys, 2022) is China.  There are certainly several reasons for this.  First, the government will kill bankers for fraud.  Second, they’re almost all actually Chinese, which makes them a nation, not a country.  They (mainly) share the same culture, values, genes, and language.  That goes a long way – blood is thicker than water is a cliché that exists for a reason.

Generally, the higher the trust in a society, the greater the level of GDP per capita.  Denmark has the highest trust on the world, and is fourth in world GDP per capita.  It’s not perfectly correlated, though, the Chinese are high trust, they are low income.  But compare with India, which is close to the worst country, with a trust level of 17% and an annual GDP per capita of a used 2000 Nissan® Xterra© with a broken air conditioner.

I hear that Biden has just signed an order to combat global warming on his way out.  He sent three battalions of Marines to invade the Sun.

It doesn’t take much, though to turn a high trust world into a low trust world.  Basics like faith that elections are fair, and that only valid votes are counted go a long way toward maintaining stability.  You’d think that would be easy in 2024, but it’s not, since at least a third of the electorate wants any vote cast to be counted, rather than just valid ones.  But a conflict of visions like that lowers trust in our basic systems.

Additionally, trust that criminal prosecution will be fair and unbiased has to be held very highly, otherwise gangs of people seeking a justice that the courts didn’t give them will replace the system.  I’m thinking the political prosecution of the January 6 protesters is a horrible indicator.

In turn, this will lower the amount of wealth that can be created in society.  Trust is a form of wealth, but it’s also (mostly) a precondition for a country getting wealthy.

When I was born, I had four kidneys.  But as I grew up, two turned into adult knees.

But trust in society isn’t the same at every single place in society:  in Modern Mayberry, trust is pretty high.

Crimes are rarer here in Modern Mayberry, especially major crimes.  Mainly, we all know each other, and so except for drifters and tweakers, people are (mostly) honest.  People even drive more politely and more forgivingly in small towns because, if you’re a tool, sooner or later everyone will know.  Oh, and we have guns and constitutional carry and crime rates are much lower in places where people aren’t walking victims.  And the local prosecutor won’t charge a store owner with shooting a robber if the robber was armed.

Here in Modern Mayberry, it is still pretty high trust.  My kid drops off our car to get fixed and picks it up when the tire’s been replaced even before I pay.  The guy knows I’m good for it – I’ve been going to his business for over a decade.  Commerce is easy here, and so are most transactions.

Part of that, I think, is that the world here is still mainly local.  We don’t have a big-name chain bank, instead we have a few local banks run by local people that already know the families that live here.  For a farmer getting a loan, it’s much more about reputation than credit score, and a banker giving a loan that might wreck a borrower . . . won’t wreck the borrower.

There’s a moral implication when we work together as a community, a moral implication.  Huges systems are efficient, but the rob us of something

As we become more atomized and less homogeneous, trust is replaced by systems and barriers.  Our relatively homogeneous culture is replaced by a disingenuous god of diversity, where the beliefs of every culture but our own are celebrated.

Not all jokes about agriculture are corny.

A low trust culture is part of the definition of those “bad times that are brought about by weak men”.  And we have seen countries around the world be low trust for millennia.  That, though, has never been the fate of the West, at least not for long.

As I have long said, none of this will be easy.  But there is one problem – in a low trust society, how can I be sure my Limited Edition® Franco-Prussian War Commemorative Series™ PEZ© dispensers will be authentic?

D.O.G.E.: Our Last Chance

“And suddenly, I realize that all of this, the gun the bombs, the revolution – has got something to do with a girl named Marla Singer.” – Fight Club

Elon Musk wants to send millions of people to Mars.  He’s either a genius or the most creative serial killer of all time.

I fully believe that the biggest impact of Trump’s re-election is D.O.G.E.

I’ve long (at least 8 years) publicly maintained that the United States is due to end in its present form.  My earliest time for this to happen is 2025, and the latest I’d expect it to come is around 2040.  The three most likely candidates for the resulting body have been:

  • An American Caesar
  • A Civil War
  • Peaceful Balkanization

There are many different reasons I believe this is likely still inevitable.  The cultural split is deep.  The financial imbalances and utter lack of control of spending is immense.  The diversity we’re supposed to “tolerate” is nothing but division.

It’s really clear to see – the forest really is made up of trees.  And our forest is on fire.  How’s that for a tortured metaphor?

However.

D.O.G.E. is here.

What is D.O.G.E.?  It’s the Department of Government Efficiency.  In characteristic humor, Elon has selected one of the funniest memes of the 2010s for one of the most serious jobs of the 2020s.  I don’t go into depth on the origin of Doge, but the first time I saw Doge was on this poster:

Would a missing poster for Schrödinger’s cat say it would pay extra if he was found dead and alive?

D.O.G.E. is important.  It’s a shot across the bow of the managerial state.  During this election cycle, someone (I don’t have a reference as to whose idea this was) noted that when the GloboLeft said “our democracy” they were really referring to “our bureaucracy”.  This is an amazingly astute observation.

How can the GloboLeft whine and complain that democracy somehow failed when they lost the election and the popular vote?  Because their faith isn’t in the electorate, and they feel nothing but contempt for more than half of the voters.  I’m okay with that, since as long as they keep playing the game that way, we win.

But the managerial state has been growing in the United States since (more or less) Woodrow Wilson.  The idea came with the money from the income tax – the United States Government was a thing to be administered, as were the people.  As most people in the country and as most administrators were explicitly Christian, at least something was holding them back.

Now?

Not at all.  The managerial state exists to grow the number of managers.  The tragedy in Waco was almost entirely due to the ATF attempting to create a nice big sexy raid right before budget time to show how important that they were and justify their need for more money and more employees.  The managerial state exists for itself.

How do you stop a Department of Education that doesn’t educate anyone, or a Department of Energy that has never produced any energy?

D.O.G.E.

I hope they get badges and walk into the FBI and yell, “Respect my authoritayyyyyy!”  This would be followed up by, “So, what would you say it is that you do here, Special Agent Johnson?”

D.O.G.E. is set up to make government more efficient.  When Musk bought Twitter®, he eventually fired about 80% of the employees and ended up with a company that was focused on the product, rather than on hiring more employees.

In September of 2023, there were about 3 million federal government employees.  Eliminating about 2.4 million of them would be a good start, but it’s far from enough.  The crazy spending that those government employees enable is over $6 trillion dollars per year.

Much of this money is money that comes from the people and companies that live in a state that is sent to the fed.gov and then recycled back to the states.  How does that add value?  Not sure, but it does increase the power of the federal managerial state, so they’re for it.

D.O.G.E. will, presumably, start taking a machete to this mess and remove a large chunk of federal employees and of federal spending.  Since government doesn’t actually produce anything, those fired employees will have to get jobs where they have the ability to actually create value.  And, if spending is cut as drastically as it should be, there will be a recession.

A big one.

Maybe we can hire Bob to build a wall to keep Dora from exploring.

Elon himself mentioned this – defanging the managerial elite and stopping fed.gov from spending will be a big dislocation on the economy as a whole.  This will be destabilizing on the country, but since the big destabilization from the economic trajectory we’re on will be worse, I’m calling it a potential win.  It will be worth the pain.

The reason this is an off-ramp is that it is, essentially, a bloodless revolution.  The path that we’re on is unsustainable, and only drastic action will change the outcome.  D.O.G.E. is just exactly that type of drastic action.  Combined with actual repatriations of illegals and a dismantling of the power structures the GloboLeftElite have created within big companies (a very big ask) we just might get on the right path, again.

Do I think D.O.G.E. will work?

Ultimately, it faces long odds.  The managerial class has maintained power for over a century, and they really are the Deep State and will react with great violence at any perceived loss of power.  Waco was just them looking for a higher budget.  The ATF along with the FBI will kill women and children without remorse for a 2% increase in power.  And they will investigate themselves and find that they did nothing wrong.

Inside of a month, the ATF would consist of one guy torching all the ATF 4473 forms that the ATF has if Brandon Herrera was in charge.  He also promised he’d donate all his pay to no-kill doge shelters.

The biggest chance Trump has to save the country is to act fast and without mercy before the immune system of the GloboLeftElite has the time to react.  No, the FBI won’t be talking to his appointees like they did with General Flynn.

Ever.

Trump has one chance to make the rubble bounce.  He’d better act quickly.

They’re going to fight back.  And this is our last chance.

The Debate

“Mr. Rooney, Ferris is home and he’s very ill.  I debated even leaving him.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Who won the presidential debate last night?  People who didn’t watch.

As my father said when the cows got into the marijuana, “Son, the steaks are high.”

That’s how I’d describe the Trump/Kamala debate.  Apparently, they’ve never met, so her charge that Trump put a wet finger in her ear and said “Wet Willie Brown” is certainly false.  One of the rules is that Kamala has a two-drink minimum.

I decided I’d just blog about the debate instead.  Since I’m going to get into the hot tub later with a cigar and maybe a scotch, today’s post will be, unfortunately, written while sober.

Notes:  I like the muted microphone idea.  It stops the debate for being a shouting match, though I wish they would give the candidates an array of condiments they could throw at each other.  Regardless, here is my (partially made up) transcript.

But she’d be happy to force you to take it.

My biggest hope?  That Trump says, “Be quiet or I’ll spank you, you disrespectful little turnip.”

Showtime!

Kamala walks to Don.  I think she would have peed on him to show dominance, but she couldn’t lift her leg up, or Hindu tradition prevents it.

First question:

Are people better off than four years ago?

Kamala:  “I understand the problem and I have no idea what to do about it.  I’m going to say absolutely nothing, but then attack Trump.”

Trump:  “No sales tax, other countries will pay for the wall, took billions and billions from Chi-nah.  We’ve had a terrible economy, worse than ever seen since ever.  We’ve had people stream into this country from mental institutions, and even Baltimore.”

Kamala:  “Worst epidemic, worst unemployment and personally burned the Constitution after farting on the Statue of Liberty.”

Trump:  “Cut taxes, make the greatest economy, ever, and then Kamala ate a baby.  Alive.  At Central Park.  I was there.”

Kamala:  “I’ve memorized a thing about the economy.  Here it is.”

Trump:  “She has no plan.  It’s four sentences – run spot run.”  I wish I had made that up, but that was Trump’s line, it’s hilarious.

You want to add tariffs, and that might cost more money.  Why do you hate America?

Trump:  “They kept my tariffs, because I made the best tariffs, and now people can’t afford bacon.”

Kamala:  “There was a trade deficit, and Trump sold chips to China, and the United States should win the race against China.”  It really didn’t say anything in the answer, but it was well said, much better than her normal word salad.

Trump:  “Taiwan sold chips to Chi-nah.  Immigration is bad.  She’s a Marxist.”  (Actually, one of Trump’s passionate answers, and pretty articulate and less hand-wavy than usual.

President Trump you were against abortion and then for abortion and why do you hate women?

Trump:  “Six Supreme Court justices got Roe v. Wade out of the states, and now states can make a decision and people can make a vote.  Ohio and Kansas were okay with killing kids.”

Kamala:  “Trump is a liar.  He’s the devil.  Women have to leave a state to kill a baby, and can’t even do it at their home state.  I might sign a bill making baby killing legal everywhere.”

Trump:  “Kamala’s a liar.  And stupid.  And incompetent at government.”

Kamala:  “Any woman should be able to kill any baby whenever.  Perhaps up until college.”  Kamala is making it personal, and looking at Trump as an accuser.  Trump doesn’t fall for this.

Trump:  “She’s a liar.  Everybody knows it.”

The microphones are not always turned off during the answers of the other candidate.

It’s hard to make a good abortion joke, but leave it to the Left.

Why did you let just a few illegal people in?

Kamala:  “I want to stop drugs from coming in.”  She starting to slur her words.  “Trump didn’t approve the bill and that’s because he hates you and you should go to his stupid rally.”

Trump:  “There’s no reason to go to her rallies.  People don’t leave my rallies.  People want to take their country back.  What they have done with allowing millions and millions into our country, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets.”  This has happened, but ABC News disagreed.

Kamala:  (first giggle) “Talk about extreme!  The very worst republicans love me.”  Kamala is actually effectively getting under Trump’s skin at this point.

Trump:  “I fired them.”

Perhaps he’s upset because that was Fang-Fang’s dinner?

How can you send all of these illegals back?

Trump:  “They allowed terrorists, drug dealers, criminals and Venezuelans in.  Their crime is down.  But they’re destroying the fabric of our country.” (no humor added on this comment)

Kamala:  (next giggle, more slurring) “This is rich!  Trump is a criminal and awful, and I have answers, I promise.”

Trump:  “It’s a political prosecution.”  Really good answer here.

Kamala:  “Trump would kill your children if he were back in the White House.”

Kamala, you flip flop, so please explain why you have such a good reason to flip flop?

Kamala:  “After I was against oil, I was for oil.  I want everyone to have houses, because that won’t increase inflation, but we’ll need to need to import labor to make them.  And this friend I had in high school who is totally not made up was sexually assaulted.  I want to help people not be mean like Trump.”

Trump:  “I am so very rich.  Fracking?  She’s been against fracking and the police (even Sting) and – I’m talking now – does that sound familiar? – and wants to turn do transgender surgery on illegal aliens.”

Transgender surgery for even alien-aliens, would be my bet.  But ALF as a woman?

Mr. President, why did you start an insurrection and why do you regret it?

Trump:  “Peacefully and patriotically.  You left that out.  When are the illegals going to be prosecuted?  When are the people who burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted?”

Mr. President, why don’t you say you regret this?

Trump:  “I didn’t do anything to regret.”

Kamala:  “I was at the Capitol.  The President wanted to desecrate the nation’s Capitol because he hates you and Donald Trump hates Jews.”  Trump does not take the bait to stare back at her, which people would take as threatening.

Trump:  “Why is she now doing anything on the border?  Biden can close the border, he’s not.”

Mr. President, why won’t you say you lost the election we stole fair and square?

Trump:  “The illegals are trying to vote.”  Kamala does not look remotely happy and ABC pulls away from the split screen.

Why does Donald Trump want to stop illegals from voting?

Kamala:  “Donald Trump should accept the fact that we stole the election fair and square.”

Trump:  “Victor Orban – why is the world blowing up?  The most respected and most feared president was Trump.  Kamala didn’t get a single vote.  She failed.”

Israel and Palestine aren’t getting along, tell us a made-up way that you’d solve it?

Kamala:  “War is bad.  We shouldn’t have one.  I really like Israel, though.”

Trump:  “It never would have started.  Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine.  Kamala hates Israel.  But, Kamala also hates Arabs.  And probably hates kittens.”

Kamala:  “I love Israel.  Trump is weak and loves dictators.”

Trump:  “Putin endorses Kamala.”

Commercial Break – A commercial for feminine products.  Who knew women were filled with blue liquid?

Mr. President, you could solve Ukraine in 24 hours?

Trump:  “We’ve spent $250 billion in Ukraine because Biden won’t ask Europe.  I can call Putin and Zelinsky and settle it.  I’ll do a deal.  It would be a great deal.  We could have World War III.”

Kamala:  “You’re running against me.  Putin wants to take over all of the Starbucks™ in Europe.  No cappuccino for anyone.  And Poland.  You want to give up Poland.”

Trump:  “Quiet, please.  Putin would be sitting in Moscow, and don’t forget he has nuclear weapons.  Kamala was sent to negotiate peace, and three days later?  War.  She’s worse than Biden.  She is a horrible negotiator.”

Kamala:  “I’m going to say a lot of things about Trump, to avoid talking about how I failed negotiating in Ukraine.”

Trump:  “I got Europeans to pay for NATO.”

Kamala was a lot more prepared than she was the first time around.

Do you regret what happened in Afghanistan?

Kamala:  “We got out of Afghanistan.  Trump’s deal in Afghanistan was the worst.  Trump invited terrorists to Camp David, America’s most holy place.”

Trump:  “My agreement was good, the Afghanistan withdrawal was horrible.”

President Trump, why are you a racist?

Trump:  “I’m not.”

Kamala:  “He is.”

Trump:  “She’s horrible.”

Kamala:  “He’s horrible.”

Trump:  “She’s horrible.”

(Hosts utterly losing control)

President Trump, how are you going to fix healthcare?

Trump:  “I saved Obamacare, but it wasn’t great, but I’m trying to find a better one.””

Oh, wonderful Kamala, how can you say something about healthcare that conforms to the answer you memorized?

Kamala:  “I’m not going to take your guns.  And I know people who have been sick and we want Obamacare to get even better.  And healthcare is a right.”

Trump:  “Kamala wants everyone on government insurance.”

What would you do to stop climate change?

Kamala:  “Climate change is horrible and I have invested $1 trillion in clean energy with my donors and opened factories around the world.”

Trump:  “Kamala loves Chi-nha.  They’ve destroyed business and manufacturing, and Biden got paid off by China and Ukraine?  They are crooks.”

Commercial Break – Debate sponsored by Crazy Z’s Unpainted Ukraine, for the best in discount barely used weapons.

Closing Statements:

Kamala:  “We’re not going back to low prices.  I’ve never had a real job.  We need me as a president.”

Trump:  “Here are the wonderful things she’s going to do, but she hasn’t done it.  Why hasn’t she done it?  I can rebuild America.  I can make it better, faster.  I’ll call it the six-million-dollar country.”

Overall, Trump was Trump, and this was probably his best debate of all of them during three elections.    Kamala, however, didn’t look like the blithering idiot that she is, since it looks like they got her off the sauce long enough to do debate prep.

If you liked Trump, you still like Trump.  If you liked Kamala, you’re probably not a regular reader, but you probably still like Kamala and are relieved that she didn’t Biden-out with disjointed word salads.  I think Team Kamala will be happy enough with this performance that they’ll trot her out for a few very carefully scripted interviews.

There will not be another debate.

How will the normies take it?  Not a clear victory either way, and the undecided mainly don’t watch these things, so it’ll be decided by what news they hear between the “top hits of the 80s, and more” and what they’re paying for gasoline.

Or, by the people who count the votes in big cities in swing states.

Stay tuned, and I suggest spending election night at a mountaintop restaurant, where the steaks will be high.

The Drive To Kill The Constitution

“Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!” – Return of the King

I had a sacred, flammable piece of wood once.  It was a match made in Heaven.

All memes “as found”

One of the places that people on the TradRight have made progress over my lifetime in actually increasing freedom is in the area of gun rights.  This is good, and has been aided by Federalist Society™ acting as an institution to bring justices to the Supreme Court whose goals aren’t to modernize the Constitution or to use it to end up being the opposite document that it was intended to be.

Of particular importance to the Constitution is the Bill of Rights.  The Bill of Rights wasn’t quite an afterthought, but a creation of the complaints from the Anti-Federalists that the new government had no prohibitions against what it couldn’t do.

The Federalists said, “Hey, don’t worry, dudes.  The Constitution is fine because there’s a very limited role for the federal government in the document.  Even if it wanted to, the federal government couldn’t take away your right to own guns.  Hell, you guys have private warships with cannons on them – how badass is that?”

The Federalists were worried that with a list of prohibitions against the federal government, then the only thing that would be considered as rights were the ones that they listed, and not the much broader list they took as self-evident.  The Federalists thought that there were just too many places the government shouldn’t be able to go to list them all.  The Anti-Federalists said, “No, man, here are our minimums.  And we’ll add one at the end, the 10th one, that says the states or the people get to keep that long list.”

The Anti-Federalists won the day.  They created a dozen amendments, of which ten were finally adopted as the Bill of Rights.  Obviously, keeping men away from power is harder than keeping Kamala Harris away from the Night Train®, and government grew into a colossus, much larger and with more powers than the framers ever intended.  And like the fat girl at the middle school dance, the 10th Amendment is the most ignored of all of them.

This was obvious even by the time of the Civil War.  I think, rightly, that the U.S. Civil War could be renamed the “War Against the States” because the central role of the States in the governance of the country was essentially dead at the end of the war.  It only required the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1912, removing the election of senators from the state legislatures and giving it to popular vote for a final gutting of the rights of the State.

Now the GloboLeft has assumed the reins, and with the states out of the way, the final push has come against the people.  Here’s the way that Aldous Huxley described it:

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms:  elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest will remain.  The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism.  All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days.  Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial.  Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

That’s where we are now.  Whereas the Constitution has been powerless to stop the creeping totalitarianism, the Federalist Society judges have been enough, equipped with just two parts of the Bill of Rights have kept totalitarianism from final victory.

If the GloboLeftElite see an obstacle, what do they do?  Get rid of it.  Thus, the idea is now being floated by the GloboLeftElite to ditch the Constitution.  The writer of the latest hit piece against what remains of the Constitution is Jennifer Szalai, who wrote, “The Constitution is Sacred.  Is It Also Dangerous?” in the New York Times®.

Ms. Szalai was born in another country (Canada) educated in Europe, and now, for whatever reason, seems to desire to talk about a country to which she clearly has little allegiance to.  The most laughable passage tries to skew the attempt to interpret the Constitution as it to what it plainly meant and was intended as “ideology” and noting that this prevents judges from “doing nice things”.

Szalai also notes that judges reading the Constitution and doing what it says frustrates what “the majority of people want”.  Apparently Szalai doesn’t know that’s exactly what it was designed to do:  to stop a majority of people, hot with passion, from trampling the rights of the individual.

Yeah, that was the plan.

Look at Australia, banning most weapons and putting ludicrous rules on the ones that remained legal.  Why?  Because they didn’t have the 2nd Amendment stopping a knee-jerk reaction to a mass shooting that seems really like it was a set up.  The only path to get all the guns removed from the hands of the people in the United States is to pass a Constitutional amendment, and even that probably won’t work for decades.

A case in point of bad law versus the Constitution:  after 9/11 the Patriot Act was passed to target “terrorists” even though it gives a government of colossal size powers that would have made King George envious and would have made George Washington reach for an AR-15.

Unless the GloboLeftElite could take over every method that people have to communicate with each other.  Outside of websites here and there and places like Gab®, there were very few places that people on the TradRight could get together to talk to each other.  Places like Gab™ were literally cut off from things like payment processors (Coinbase©, PayPal™ and many, many, many others).

The pesky 1st Amendment keeps the government from (overtly) clamping down on speech.  Unless they ask Mark Zuckerberg to do it for them and he agrees because having people think for themselves about COVID was too dangerous.  The press literally used those words – “thinking for yourself is too dangerous.”  Look at the constant drumbeat to give away our freedom:

It’s the communications they want, first.  As long as they can make us feel isolated and alone, the only person with dangerous opinions.  Then, finally, they can win.

Their goal is the removal of the freedoms we’ve cherished and slowly seen erode either through the cowardice of weak men or the avarice of greedy men or the schemes of bad men.

The only thing that stands in their way?  Us.

Chevron And The Fall Of The Deep State

“I’m Jack’s medulla oblongata.  Without me, Jack could not regulate his heart rate, blood pressure, or breathing.” – Fight Club

Don’t worry!  I’ve been told by 51 intelligence operatives that the Deep State isn’t real.

I know that the event of last week in the media was the debate.  I’ll agree, it was pretty significant, significant enough that I stayed up even later to chat about it with The Mrs., who gets up really early.  How early?

JW:  Tonight’s debate was thermonuclear.

The Mrs.:  You mean yesterday’s debate.  Oh, wait, you haven’t slept, so for you it’s still yesterday.

Whatever timeframe you’re using, a really, really big thing happened on Friday.  Let me explain, I’m a trained professional.

Let’s go back in time a bit.

Back in 1938, the Congress passed a law establishing a thing called the “Code of Federal Regulations” act.  That act required all federal regulations to be put in a single source, which is now called the CFR.  Note that I didn’t say a single book, since the CFR pages totaled 188,343 in 2021.

That’s not a typographical error.  There are nearly 200,000 pages of federal regulations.  They say that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but I’m pretty sure that there is no sane human that could read and retain that insane level of regulation, except for Alex Trebek, and he is, alas, no more.

That meant that people like these were responsible for making the regulations you had to live by, with no restraint.  It’s like allowing random members of a Pride march to decide on your healthcare.  Oh, wait.

Now, there are several groups that really love that level of regulation:

  • Lawyers, who build careers on understanding them,
  • Big Business, to keep out small-fry competition that can’t afford lawyers to interpret the rules to keep them out of trouble,
  • the Antifa® fascists, who are the people who really get bent out of shape if your lawn is 0.05” higher than the regulations say, and
  • They exist to write regulations, so they just want to write more.

This is an unholy combination.

Regulations are based on law.  The Congress of the United States passes a bill, and the President of the United States signs it, and, a law is created.  I learned that on Schoolhouse Rock™ when that damn bill just wanted to be a law.

If we emailed the Constitution to each other, would the NSA give it to the Deep State so they’d finally read it?

Laws, however, almost always constrain human activities.  In some cases, like murder, a law can be a net social benefit, at least when the courts actually enforce the law equally and without favor.

But murder is simple when compared to some of the federal laws on the books.  I could get into the details, but it’s a federal crime:

  • to wash your fish at a faucet if it’s not a fish-washing faucet,
  • to let your pet make a noise that scares wildlife in a national park,
  • to sell onion rings that resemble onion rings, but made with diced onion,
  • to skydive drunk, and,
  • sell wine with a brand name including the word “zombie”.

Yes.  This was made the force of law, that unelected regulators could make up whatever they wanted and put you in jail if you didn’t do what they made up last week.  This was based on the “Chevron Deference” – a court decision that effectively let the Executive Branch make regulations, enforce them, and courts had to bow to their interpretation.  It’s been the rule for 40 years.

Here is a partial list of the people who will actually have to have a law to rely on to take away your rights in the future.

But the most pernicious part of this is that it feeds into the same mindset that the GloboLeftElite has relied on for years.  They want to take an existing law and pound and beat it to meet whatever they believe this Tuesday.  For example, there was a requirement that industries stop pollutants from going into the air.

That makes sense.  I could argue that it doesn’t need to occur at a national level and that states could regulate it and that might make it un-Constitutional, but, whatever.  The law is there.  It’s been there forever.  The regulations meant to enforce the law when it came out made sense – spewing methyl-ethyl-death across the elementary playground might not be a great idea.

On the other hand, maybe it would have made our children strong enough to work in the mines.

But that same law, written decades ago, was interpreted to mean that sweet, sweet carbon dioxide, you know, plant food, is now a pollutant.  Why?  Because the GloboLeftElite knows that gives them more control, and because it now fits with the Narrative of the Moment despite the original law being signed into law in 1963 and last amended in 1990.

I just found this X account, and I like the cut of their jib.

Since CO2 wasn’t on the list of evil things in 1963 or in 1990, having the EPA to suddenly decide it was evil is just regulators making things up.  The Supreme Court said, “No, you can’t do this.  You have to pass a law.  And no, the President can’t just say so.”  The Chevron™ Deferral effectively allowed the Executive branch of government be also the Legislative and Judicial.  This is extremely dangerous.

92% plus of people in Washington D.C. voted Biden.  If regulations can be made willie-nillie without congress even having to pass a law, well, it will be members of the GloboLeftistElite that will write them.  And, remember, these folks live to do one thing:  write regulations.

One of the worst regulators at fault is the ATF®, who can’t even decide what a gun is.  They’re in trouble on the rules they made up on “ghost guns” and pistol braces, and even the definition of who can sell guns without needing an ATF license.

Make no mistake, this is a shattering blow for the Deep State, who wants to make regulations with the force of federal law, without there even having to be a federal law change in the first place.

Why does the GloboLeftElite and the GloboLeft hate this?  Because all of their termites that have burrowed into the Fed.Gov are now less useful, and they actually have to follow the rules to make their changes.

If a priest becomes a lawyer, does that make him a father-in-law?

And that’s the sand the GloboLeftElite will have in their panties.  They have to pass a law.  They can’t make their regulatory changes in the dark of the night by unelected bureaucrats who reliably only vote for more government.

And, no, I won’t be waiting up for The Mrs. to get up so we can discuss this post.  I’ll probably just sneak into bed while she gently snores beside me.

Hey, wait, is there a federal regulation about snoring?  I’ll bet there is . . .

Also – this is what winning looks like.  Enjoy this one.