No, That's Your Side All Right

I've had some fun discussions with leftists lately. In particular, it's fascinating to watch the mental gymnastics they go through to avoid recognizing their failures. I've spoken about this years ago, but it never really stops. Observe.

The first conversation was with a very nice older couple who also happen to be far, far left. We had kind of a truce to have the dinner, but as you know, liberals cannot help themselves. They really think that their political beliefs are just commonly accepted thoughts and they share them... well, liberally. In fact, I used to point to a sportswriter named Peter King who was a prime example of this. He would say things like how it was time we banned guns, how we need reparations for blacks and how Al Gore's film was vital viewing for everyone, yet would claim with a straight face that he never expressed "political opinions"... everything he said "was just common sense, not political." Delusional.

Anyways, the truce held despite repeated liberalisms slipping out. Then the topic of Portland came up and they lamented the terrible state of Portland. Portland, as you all know, has turned to sh*t because of progressive policies -- legalize all drugs, let criminals go, defund the cops and scream fascism when people complain about the murderous homeless camps. Crime rate shoots up. Murder rate shoots up. Overdoses at record highs (no pun intended). Businesses fleeing (including progressive businesses). How would they lament poor Portland without admitting this you ask? I assumed they would say Covid, but that's nonsense since everywhere else had Covid but didn't become like Portland. The answer? The opioid epidemic. In other words, it's the fault of one evil family (the Sackler family) and greedy doctors. Nevermind that opioids are not the issue in Portland -- it's meth, or that people are misusing opioids to get high, not using them.

Many of the more fringe left, by the way, claim Portland is a myth "of the right-wing media"... that nothing has changed. Riiight.

Then I had a mind-boggling conversation with a leftist anti-vaxxer who called right-wing anti-vaxxers "antiscience." When I said, you have the same belief, her answer was, "I know it's dangerous. They just hate science." Boom.

Then came my favorite. Keith Olberman, who is on the fringe left, commented on Bud Light. Guess what side he's on? I pointed out to a leftist that his opinion is to be expected because he's "far left." This brought the following: "Far left? Are you crazy? He doesn't believe in labor rights or communal ownership which makes him right wing." Sigh. I responded, "Labor rights? You gave that one up, kiddo. You backed Evil Corporate Disney because it tweaked DeSantis. Biden crushed the railworkers union to protection his re-election. Your biggest tech supporters send their work to slave factories. Don't tell me you support labor rights. All you have left is race baiting, trans tyranny and unfettered crime." He responded, "He's right wing, not left wing." Double sigh. And here comes the point... I've found this to be common with leftists throughout my life: they disown all the messes they make:

The National Socialists start a war, kill six million Jews and fifty million people... but they weren't leftists! They were right wing, like racist libertarians! The Soviet Union starves ten million Ukrainians to death, enslaves whole countries and sends tens of millions to labor camps while destroying their economy... they weren't really communists. Communist China kills 60 million locals. Not communist. Communists kill millions in Cambodia. Not communists. Vietnam fails and turns capitalist. Not real communists. Socialists nearly bankrupt Britain until Thatcher comes along. Wasn't us, it was the Arabs (oil). They cause crime to spike in the US in the 1960s. Wasn't us, it was having too many babies. They destroy Portland. It was opioids! Leftists turn San Francisco into a drugged out, crime infested wasteland. It wasn't us... everywhere else is just as bad. Look at Detroit, Portland, DC, Philly as examples. You mean the other cities with leftist crime enforcement? School are racist and fail kids! Schools... which are dominated by leftist teachers? Uh, no it's the parents' faults! College is unaffordable. College run by leftists and funded by a government program? It wasn't our fault, it was the loan administrators! Affirmative action and welfare will save black families! And after those policies destroyed black families? It's Ronald Reagan's fault. It goes on and on and on.

Every leftist policy has crashed and burned often hurting those it intended to help the most. Yet, liberals have never once accepted responsibility regardless of how obvious it is. They always find excuses and scapegoats. And when there can be no excuses because the actors claimed to be leftists and leftists cheered them on? They disown them after their collapse... they were never really leftists.

Delusional.

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The Real Reason Suicides/Mass Killings Are Up

In the last article, I pointed out that we've hit a record number of suicides in this country. I also pointed out that the left wrongly tried to blame this on guns because that's what their ideology/theology wants it to be. But guns have nothing to do with it. Let's talk about what is causing this, because I'm pretty sure it's the same thing that's causing a massive spike in mass shootings.

Let me start by noting Kyle's response in the comments, which I thought was thoughtful and really put a finger on it. He blamed the loneliness of modern society (please correct me if I've misunderstood you) deriving from a society that no longer offers the unifying forces of traditional values. Instead, it pushes values which drive people into single lives without families or the attitudes and skills to maintain them. Other aspects include the drive away from religion and with the substitution of materialism.

I agree.

Modern society has broken down the institutions that gave people a place to "feel part of something." That's bad for humans. Marriage has been shown over and over and over in study after study to be better psychologically and health-wise. People who are married are simply better off and happier. Their kids are better off in every category. Kids make life better too. And yet, the feminist left has spent decades undermining marriage. They want women to be economic engines and they know that marriage and children disrupt that. So they paint men as abusers, children as a burden and motherhood with disdain. They've made divorce easier than marriage, and abortion the most fundamental of rights for young women. All of this has cheapened families and made them harder to get, leaving people lonely. Television adds to this by putting out the most obnoxiously narcissistic values as normal through reality TV, teaching people to behave in ways guaranteed to disrupt families and friendships.

Then you have the undermining of religion, which provides community and comfort in bad times. It also provides the code that tells us how to live our lives in fulfilling ways. There is the undermining groups like the Scouts to weaken societal bonds and make friendships harder to find. There is the undermining of police to make the streets more dangerous and keep people scared and hidden indoors. Work from home is killing our last regular human contact.

All of that makes us increasingly lonely. But that's only half the picture...

Our culture machine (Hollywood, advertisements, books, celebrities, social media) pushes false expectations. Even the worst losers in our films and books and ads are surrounded by friends and wealth and respect most people don't have. Social media is ten times worse. It presents a fantasy ideal as normal, leaving people deflated. What? You don't vacation with movie stars on a yacht or fly on private planes? You've never been alone on a Moroccan beach? You don't have dinner parties with a dozen rich friends? Your parties aren't packed with young hotties? Loser. Even the mommy bloggers sell a level of perfection in their diets and housekeeping and consistent happiness no human can achieve (they don't actually achieve it either, they lie about it). By comparison, 99% of the human race compare as utter losers. That's not good for people.

Then it gets worse.

For about a decade-plus now, the left has been pushing hard on an ideology of hate called 'Identity Politics.' The idea is to unify non-white men under a banner of hate aimed at white men. They push this in every aspect of their lives too. So imagine if you are a young black kid. The world lies before you. The future is bright... only, everyone you know from black 'leaders' to your liberal white teachers to every talking head to characters in films tells you that white people will not let you succeed. They hate you because of the color of your skin. Even friendly white people secretly hate you. In fact, their hate is so ingrained that they aren't even conscious of how secretly they hate you. They hate you so much they plot against you. White cops are going to kill you if they get the chance -- heck, even worse, brainwashed black cops will too. Doctors use your kind for experiments. Employers cheat you.

How does that make you feel?

Young women are told men want to rape them and beat them. Hispanics are told the same thing as blacks (A line from Blue Beetle: "It used to be we had the wrong side of the tracks, not they want that too."). Affirmative action is actually meant to keep Asians out of college.

And it keeps coming in other ways too.

Environmentalism: The world is dying. We're killing it. If we don't stop somethingsomething it will be too late in 3 5 10 15 years. The ice caps will melt. Your city will flood. The polar bears will die. Oh, you had a fire? Global warming! A heat wave? A cold snap? Global warming! YOU are destroying the world! Why won't you change?!! Don't you care?

Guilt trips, hate and paranoia are shoved on people 24/7. Fear. You will lose your job if you don't conform. The world is dying because you like baths. All the black/white people you see hate you. Why won't you save the world from you? Add the fear that you will never have friends or family. Add the feeling of failure when you watch the internet or television and you see the fake-perfect lives being shoved into your face. Is it any wonder suicides are up? Is it any wonder some guy becomes unhinged and shoots up a building full of people of a different race or gender or a school full of kids who mocked them? Have you realized how many films promote gun violence as an heroic solution?

This is what the left doesn't want to talk about when they whine about guns. Their behavior is unhinging society and if it isn't guns causing these things then it's time for serious self-reflection, something most people do not like to do. So it's better to blame guns than to admit that I've harmed my kids by preaching the end of the world to them, by making them hate, by taking away their hope, and by isolating them.

Thoughts?

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Leftist Dogma

Howdy folks. I'm back from vacation. It was beautiful, but hot. The people were incredibly nice. They also weren't at all insane, which is not true here anymore. Indeed, one of the things that bothers me these days is how absolutely batsh*t crazy everyone has become here. The 'right' has gone totally lunatic and the left has devolved into this dark religious-like cult. One aspect of this cult is that they are awash in dogma -- things that are obviously false, but which they take as TRUTH and which they miss no opportunity to espouse. You see this over and over on every topic. Here are some examples darkening my internet pages.

• The wildfire in Maui is the result of a windstorm created by a natural event -- a Pacific storm -- mixing with sparks, and hitting wooden structures. Yet, no report on Maui would be complete without referencing "global warming." So say we all. Oooohm. Nothing about this in any way is the result of global warming, so why add it to the story? Because they are 'true believers'... who see their Jesus in every piece of toast.

• There is a black NFL assistant coach (Eric Bieniemy) who has become a poster boy for racism on the left by the fact that a series of Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinators all got head coaching jobs and he did not. See, it must be racism because they were white and he's black and he was the only one not hired, so it can only be racism. So say we all. Oooohm.  And anyone who suggests there might be something wrong with the guy is clearly racist. So say we all. Oooohm. The thing is, unlike the others, Eric doesn't call plays. And there's probably a reason for that. What's more Kansas City just let him walk to another team as a coordinator. In the rational world, this suggest there's something wrong with him. If he couldn't call plays like the others and they let Mr. Amazing go, something is wrong. But that's blasphemy. He's a victim of racism. So say we all. Oooohm.

So the other day, his new head coach criticized him for rubbing the players the wrong way. This brought down the fury of the true believers in the sports media upon him. Why would this man criticize our blessed Victim of Racism? The racist! So say we all. Oooohm. The coach apologized, which would not have happened if Eric had been white, but the true believers didn't stop. They are speculating that this Hispanic coach is racist. So say we all. Oooohm. They are speculating that he's trying to protect his own job... somehow. And they are calling out the players for being racists. Black players. Seriously.  The narrative is that black players have racistly accused a black coach of being too harsh on them and, in so doing, they have been abetted by a racist Hispanic coach who wants to save his job from the Blessed Victim. This is the most twisted application of dogma you can imagine. It's the kind of thing that makes you realize how utterly un-bound by reality the left has become. And it's not the first time you've heard this either?  Have you noticed how many of the "racist" cops are black or other minorities?  This is dogma spewed by the deluded.

• The US had over 50,000 suicides last year.  This is a huge increase and a record. The liberal response is... wait for it... "the availability of guns" is to blame. So say we all. Oooohm. Bullship. There are basically the same number of guns in the US today as last year as the year before that and the year before that and the decade before that. There is the same access to guns too. To blame a non-change for causation is ridiculous. That defies every law of reality from the laws of physics to the law of human nature. Something else had to cause this.  So why blame guns?  Because leftist dogma says guns are to blame, whether it makes sense or not.  (What's more, blaming guns avoids some awkward questions, like "is it possible that the hate we've been spewing on people is causing suicides?" (Hint: yes, it is).) So it must be guns. So say we all. Oooohm.

It is driving me nuts that no matter what you talk about, no matter what the issue, leftists inject their theology no matter how obviously false it is or how irrelevant. You can't turn anywhere without it being shoved down your throats.

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China Is Failing, Not Ascending

I'm going to be out for a week. I'm traveling to a wedding. While, I'm going, I will leave you with this...

Throughout my life, there has always been a boogieman. There was always one before I was born too. Nazi Germany, the Soviets, Japan Inc., China. People in the US pushed the idea that these societies were better organized than us, had a longer-term outlook, outworked us, out-thought us, out-bred us, and would eventually beat us. It was never true. In fact, to believe these things, these people had to ignore so much evidence.

In the case of China, I've been telling you all this since the beginning of the blog. China is a paper tiger. And now, people are finally starting to catch on. What has tipped them off? LINK

(1) China's demographics are terrible. They may (or may not) have reached a billion people but they are now crashing fast. The reason is they don't produce enough kids, their population is aging, and they have 40 million "extra" men (or missing girls) who will never have families. I've always understood China will fall from a billion people to around 750 million, but now the Chinese themselves are estimating it's going to be 587 million. Think about that. Their population is going to halve over the next fifty-sixty years. Imagine if half the people in your town vanished. Think about the economic, societal and psychological effects. Think about the effect on property values, the business environment if half the consumers are gone, and long-term development with half the number of scientists, businessmen and thinkers. Demographics has tripped them up... it always would.

Making this worse, it turns out their lower officials are lying to their central government and their population figures might be overstated very badly. Some estimates say by as much as 25%. That has led to a worst case estimate of just over 400 million. That's the size of the US in about 10 years. So much for world dominance.

(2) For years, we've been treated to article after article about the Chinese economy passing ours. Some pretended to gnash their teeth and then gloatingly claimed they might even have already done it. In the early 2000s, some group tried to sell this idea by re-figuring the Chinese currency based on hocus pocus to add a hidden 25% to their economic value -- and then recommended we better get humble. Yet, somehow China never caught up. Imagine that. And now many are saying they never may. Why? Well, demographics is a killer. But even more, as their currency has gained in value, their economic growth stalled. Why? Because China made its money being a cheap place to put factories. But as wages and the currency went up, it stopped being cheap. It's now cheaper to put a factory in Mexico than China... never mind Bangladesh and Vietnam. So that is where the factories are going. This was inevitable if you understand even basic economics.

Third, China wastes its resources very badly. This is the controlled economy problem. This is why the Soviets could build a decent fightercraft but couldn't produce enough food to feed their people... and why it cost so much to build. The world is just too complex for one person to run it. It takes billions of people making decisions every day to balance an economy. China has tried to do it the totalitarian way which has resulted in ugly, unmanageable cities, civic projects that destroyed more than they helped, fraud, failed economic kickstarts over and over, and a massive debtload. How large of a debtload? There's a really good article that explains everything I'm saying here. Here's the LINK. In it, the author explains how US debt has basically doubled since 2007 whereas China's has gone up 50 times. That's insane, and it's not slowing down. China is trying to buy a perfect future and is bleeding money on boondoggles in the process.

(3) China has no friends either. China has tried for years to buy friends through something called the Belt and Road Initiative. It's like US foreign aid only more direct. The idea is to build infrastructure in foreign countries to bind them to China. Africa in particular has been a recipient of this. The problem is, the Chinese are arrogant. They bring Chinese workers and (abusive) managers, preventing any economic benefits from hitting these countries. They remain secretive, angering these places. And they drive hard bargains for these projects, killing any goodwill. The end result is that China has poured billions into foreign countries with precious little to show for it. Even their plan to hand out Covid vaccines to buy friends turned into a disaster because China's vaccines really didn't work.

(4) China's military is crap too. We hear talk of China's military build up every day. The problem is, they have based their military on building their own versions of Russian garbage. The same stuff getting smoooshed in Ukraine right now is the stuff China is building. The pride of their navy is their third (but really first to work) aircraft carrier. It's based on a Russian design from the 1980s. Keep in mind, the Russians were not known for their naval expertise or their carriers and the ship this is modeled on is so terrible that tugboats accompany it overseas in case it breaks down and sinks. Not joking. The Chinese bought its scrapped sister ship and then built their own two based on its hulk. The new one is the first that's really seaworthy.

The Chinese are building volume. That is true. And they are excellent spies. True. But they have no ability to project their military outward and, even if they did, it would get crushed in a real battle... just like the Russians in Ukraine.

I'm not saying China's not a threat to start a war, but keep all of this in mind the next time some professor or stockpicker tells you about China's inevitability. The only thing inevitable about China is its collapse. The US remains the preeminent economic and military power and we are pulling ahead every day. The reason is economic freedom, individuality allowing creativity, and our cultural mix of seeing ourselves as problem solvers and dreamers. That is what we must defend.

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The Points...

I want to clarify the points I am trying to make in the last article because I don't want them to be lost in the details. What you should take out of the last article about Barbie is the following:

(1) Feminists know they must hide their beliefs from the public, because the public does not accept them. Basically, they have to trick people into being exposed to their views. This also means the public is not lost to them.

(2) Feminists lie to promote their propaganda, including lying about it being political and lying about its success (or lack there of), and their fellow travelers in the media do the lying for them.

(3) Feminism, at its core, is anti-woman. Feminism denigrates women and all things feminine that do not conform to their singular view of acceptable womanhood.

(4) Feminists use things like this movie to claim a mandate for societal change. The battle for the future is being fought here, not on Capital Hill.

I could give you more, but those are the vital points.

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Lessons from Barbie

I watch a lot of different things to understand what is really happening in our world because people give themselves away in many ways and they do so more honestly through their actions than their words. One thing I watch is movies. Movies tell us what is happening in society because left and right fight propaganda wars over them and the public votes with its dollars. With that in mind, let's talk about some rather interesting lessons we can learn from the movie Barbie.

Lesson 1: Feminists Know They Must Hide Their Beliefs.

Hollywood, like corporate America generally, has learned to lie as a matter of policy. They lie about everything to do with film, particularly when they think something will offend. This is why actresses in sleazy roles talk about how they only took the role because it was a "strong woman," why actors and directors scream about how faithful they are to books they adapt even as they gut everything the story was, why they hide budget numbers, why they cut trailers deceptively, why everyone praises moron actors for their intelligence, why actors always seem to save drowning children when right before a premier, and so forth. When a film does something Hollywood knows will not fly with the public, they simply lie about it: we aren't doing that at all!

From the get go, Barbie was obviously a feminist movie. It was written by feminists, directed by a woman who has only done feminist films, and premised on attacking a feminist boogieman... the evil Barbie doll, corrupter of little girls. The scenes they've released address feminist talking points. The film even uses the word "patriarchy" many times -- the zenith of recent feminist dogma. Yet, from the first day of production until only about two days before the film's release, everyone associated with the film denied that it was a feminist movie. No, no, no, we're doing this to love and honor Barbie! There's no feminism in this! Only in the last two days before the release, once they figured they had hooked little girls everywhere, did interviews appear admitting that the film is actually a feminist rant and explaining why the film is "significant" for that reason. So basically... they lied. They lied because they knew feminism doesn't sell with the public so they lied to hide what this film was so people would come see it.

The lesson: feminists know they must hide their views if they are to attract the public, and lying to do so is not beneath them.

Lesson 2: Feminists Lie To Claim Successes They Did Not Earn.

With this film becoming a massive feminist propaganda push, it became vital that it be seen to be a success. Not only does 'success breed success' because of the herd instinct (i.e. people want to do what they are told everyone else is doing) but with them finally admitting this was a feminist sermon, they could not be seen to fail. Failure would equal rejection and would expose their lack of support. They could not allow that. So we have been told...

This movie is historic! It's opening is the biggest opening ever for a female directed film! (Our time has come!) It's opening is the biggest movie ever for a film with a female lead. (Society wants women leads!) This was the biggest opening of the year! It had the biggest preview night ever! It blew away the initial estimates of $40 million to score an incredible $167 million ($300 million depending on the article).

But is any of this true? Well, no.

First, the actual original estimate for Barbie was "it will save theaters." This was turned into a range between $85 million and $155 million, which will not save theaters. That was before the marketing campaign began. About a month ago, this was suddenly lowered to "$120 or more." A week ago, it was strangely lowered again to "$55 million to $85 million" even with pre-sales being in line with $155 million. Two days later, it was reset to $155 million or more. It scored $167 million. That does exceed $155 million, but it's not such a huge exceed that it would draw headlines for any non-ideological films. Indeed, if it had been a Marvel film, it would have been described as "in line with estimates." Instead, hundreds of articles were written gloatingly declaring a victory for this film (and films "headed by women") with most comparing the $167 to the "original estimate" of $55 million (some have claimed $40 million, which seems to be entirely made up and others compare the worldwide opening to the domestic estimate), even though $55 million was never the original estimate and seems to have been a lie meant to let them claim a smashing success.

There's more too. Barbie did not have the biggest opening of the year as all these articles claim. Super Mario Brothers opened to $170 million. That's close though, right? Eeeeeexcept, Barbie lumped in Thursday presales into Friday to boost its opening. In other words, Barbie counted its first 4 days to get to the $167 million opening (a fact dutifully scrubbed from news articles and even Box Office Mojo). If you look at the first four days of Super Mario Brothers instead of the three commonly used to decide an "opening", it actually scored $205 million, blowing Barbie away. Barbie didn't have the biggest preview night either, as they claimed. Its $22 million lost to the $32 million of Mario Brothers.

So all these claims of being the number one film etc. etc. are provably false. So why are they repeated? Because they serve the narrative. They also serve the studio, which knows about herd instinct. In fact, to make sure things didn't go wrong, Warner Brothers only reported "estimated" ticket sales for the first three days so it made sure to beat out the highest grossing female directed film (Wonder Woman) and other recent films. By controlling the data, they prevented any nasty surprises. Racist-left Little Mermaid did that too so they could claim to be the number one film the weekend when they came out. The problem was, Disney overstated the Little Mermaid's first day opening by 25%. That size mistake is called a lie, not an error. Warner Brothers at least was able to back up the estimates after the weekend, but it shows you they were uncertain enough to lie just in case.

Again, why lie? Because these articles are not promoting a film, they are promoting a feminist sermon and it is vital to these people that it be seen as a success, the more smashing the better. "It's historic!" Indeed, there are already articles saying "hey, Barbie was such a success, it showed the public wants feminist films, films directed by women and films led by women... Hollywood needs to accept this change in society." And the fact they are willing to lie to make that case is the lesson. This is the basis of propaganda.

Lesson 3: The Public Is Not Buying Leftism.

But so here's the question, did all of this help? Did the film reach "the public"? We won't know until we see how well this movie does long term, but right now I would say no.

Here's the thing, for an ideological piece to be successful in affecting society, it must reach beyond the true believers. Did Barbie do that? Based on average ticket prices, I would estimate that around 12 million people have seen the film so far. That's less than half the number who watch any generic regional NFL Sunday game (games of the week can get as high as 40 million). That's only 3.1% of the population. That's still in true believer territory. For this thing to "win" ideologically, it needs to get to little girls and their moms, and that has not happened yet. And looking at audience pictures, it seems to have captured exactly what you would expect: Barbie-hating feminists and gay men. Indeed, the film was marketed on floats at Pride parades and almost every woman who has reviewed the film (and repeated the false claims above) goes out of her way to mention her disdain for Barbie as a child. I saw no evidence of moms with kids or straight males.

Moreover, the film has produced zero iconic moments that catch on with the public: go ahead, make my day... use the force... squeal like a pig boy... I'll be back... the boy who lived. These are moments that capture the public's attention and become part of public discourse. People know what these mean and where they come from, even if they haven't seen the film. They take on meaning. Barbie hasn't offered a single image or quote yet that has done this.

So far, there is simply no evidence Barbie, like other leftist attempts, has influenced the public. The only caveat I put on this is that because 'conservatives' are so awful right now, there is no one offering a reasonable alternative.

Lesson 4: Feminists Hate Women.

Finally, we come to something that's been clear for a long time and which this film highlights: feminists hate women. Like all leftist ideas, feminism cloaks itself in talk of equality and tolerance but it seeks power, not equality, and it is highly intolerant to those who don't toe the line. This is why feminists have for years mocked housewives, disdained childbirth, and have undermined "female" values and femininity itself. Like all obsessives, this devolved into the most sniveling, personal types of attacks too. Hence, Hillary Clinton stepping in it when she mocked cookie baking.

Barbie has long been a feminist boogiewoman. Feminists accuse Barbie of causing all kinds of issues. Basically, they have dumped all their insecurities on the doll and blamed it for all of them. She made me feel ugly! She wasn't inclusive. She undermined my career potential! Nonsense. So here comes the film, and it's message is that attractive and femininely dressed women who like men are shallow and stupid and secretly unhappy. This is sour grapes as ideology. Of course, the film also hates men, but men are barely relevant to them. The real target is women. If you are attractive, you are shallow and stupid. If you like "girly things" instead of thinking about death and depression, you are shallow and stupid. If you like men, you are shallow and stupid. That's the real meaning at the heart of this film. The lesson is that feminism really is about unhappy women looking for ways to make themselves feel better at the expense of women who are well adjusted, and they are rather petty about it.

That's the dirty secret of feminism: feminists hate other women and seek to destroy them. There is a ton of evidence to support this, from lying about the psychological impact of abortion and being single to forcing girls into sports for which they are not suited to making them judge themselves by standards they don't want to denigrating the very things girls like... feminism is about destroying other women.

Thoughts?

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The Problem: The Outrage Machine

Probably the biggest problem with politics is the outrage machine. It has killed conservatism and liberalism and replaced it with irrelevant outrage, a mob mentality, rumor acting as fact and conspiracy acting as wisdom. How did this happen? Well, interestingly, sports explains it.

I don't know how many of you follow sports, but it provides some fascinating parallels to politics. This is one instance. If you look back at the sports media (writers, newscasters, game announcers) from a couple decades ago, what you would find is people who learned the craft of sports analysis. That involved gaining a solid understanding of the sports which they covered and then applying that knowledge to what happened on the field. But that's no longer true. Today, sports analysis is a wasteland of hate, rumor and idiocy.

What happened is that with the advent of talk radio, ratings became the biggest driver of analysis. The meant the value of shock and hype rose and the value of thoughtful analysis fell. After all, it's a lot easier to get ratings when you say obnoxious things that play on people's negative emotional needs than it is to entertain people with a treatise-like discussion of formations and skills. "If it bleeds, it leads," they used to say; today they just say "scream it."

Naturally, those who could shock better did better, whether they knew anything about the sport or not, and those who could not shock floundered. Making this worse, shock is like an addiction: it requires constant feeding to maintain its appeal and it requires greater shocks every time for the same effect. Thus, things devolved to the point everyone is just spending the day trying to shock people with the most outrageous opinions and going off the deep end about rumors. Actual analysis no longer matters. Basically, they replaced the sports William F. Buckleys with drunks arguing at the bar.

The media, acting rationally in the pursuit of ratings, started giving bigger contracts to the shockiest, whether they knew anything or not -- in fact, it's better if they didn't because facts usually get in the way of outrage. So they slowly dropped the guys who knew what they were talking about because people weren't listening to them anymore and they replaced them with the loudest hate-mongers they could find. And the most successful were promoted from radio to television, given their own shows, and moved up to sports shows like ESPN Sports Center. Soon, they were all that was left.

The perfect example of this is Skip Bayless. Bayless is a human turd who specializes in sports talk. He got famous suggesting that Dallas Hall of Fame Quarterback Troy Aikman was a homosexual. He was essentially a rumor monger. This drew a huge audience, so eventually Fox (which employed Aikman at the time) actually hired him to bring his garbage to their television. Once there, he got show after show, started appearing on sports recap shows, and was soon considered one of the top sports analysts. The joke is, he doesn't know anything about sports. He just knows how to attack people! A team lost? Well, it wasn't because of a bad strategy, it was because the coach is a moron who needs to be fired because he "lost the locker room!" The quarterback is too told! The running back is after a new contract! Etc. His most recent "outrage" is that LeBron James is switching to No. 23. He literally used the word outrage. Nevermind that LeBron has switched between 6 and 23 several times before. This time, "it's an outrage!"

Guys like Bayless and Stephen A. Smith and a dozen others turned sports into a hate-filled world of sheer idiocy. All they know is anger. And that has filtered down to all levels. You no longer need to know sports to write about it, you just need to know how to gossip and scream.

How bad is it? Let me give you an example. As I watched the NBA finals, the Miami Heat made a decision in one of the games to shoot three point shots instead of twos. I recognized this because I saw the pattern where they managed to easily get the ball to a player under the net over and over, but he never tapped the ball in - an easy 2 point shot. He forswore the easy two point shot and instead passed it out to the three point line. Based on that, I knew they would lose. Why? Because the odds of shooting threes is so much lower that they could not compete with the Nuggest who were simply putting in two point shots every time (around 40% versus 90+%). Thus, I realized that the Nuggets would score 4 points on every two possessions (shooting 2 of 2) whereas Miami would score only 3 points on their two possessions (shooting 1 of 2). The Nuggets knew this too and moved their guys away from the net to try to block the three point shots, basically leaving the player under the net free to score if he wanted... because they knew he didn't want to. The result was that Miami got killed and had to change strategies at halftime.

That's really good analysis (sorry for the lack of modesty). It was predictive of play after play, it explained what each team's strategy was and why Miami's wasn't working, and the final result. It even explained why certain players were acting the way they did.

Do you know what though? No one mentioned it. Not the announcers. Not the post-game analysts. None of the writers the next day. None of the talk radio guys. They all hammered away with tropes ("The Nuggets are too tall for the Heat!" or "the home crowd gave the Nuggets energy") and then went on the outrage bandwagon: Miami's Jimmy Butler "disappeared!" He's washed up! He was never good enough! Trade him for picks and start over!! They drafted wrong!!

Do you understand the problem here? These people are the people who tell the public what to think. None of them understood what had really happened. Miami chose a risky strategy and it failed. That was all. Miami knew it, they changed at the half. Denver knew it, they practically dared Miami to do it. But the paid announcers (the supposed cream of their crop of basketball knowledge) didn't recognize it. The half-time analysts, all former players and coaches, didn't recognize it. The talk radio guys who claim to live and breathe this stuff and talk for three hours a day about it didn't get it either. All we heard was personal attacks on coaches and players, conspiracy theories about the refs, and pie in the sky garbage about fantasy player swaps and messiah-like demands for draft picks ("he's the next LeBron").

Think about that. That is why sports analysis is utter garbage today. It offers zero actual analysis. Instead, it involves outrage, hyperbole, misdirection to gossip all hidden under the thin veneer of meaningless statistics to make opinion sound supported. They've even invented a conspiracy-theory style of thinking called the "hot take" to excuse being wrong time and time again and stepping over lines: "That was just a 'hot take', you can't hold that against me!"

Politics has gone the same route.

Talk radio learned that selling outrage, rumors and conspiracy is the key to getting listeners. It feeds people's anger and frustration, and that sells. So the same thing has happened. These people don't care about the ideology and wouldn't understand it if they did, all they know is that outrage sells... so sell outrage. This trickled out to places like Fox and MSNBC and then print and finally politicians themselves. The end result is that liberalism has gone from "problem solving through government" to hate-filled identity politics that borders on Nazism. Conservatism has gone from "encouraging the responsible use of freedom and the value of traditional values" to lunatic conspiracy and hating whatever they don't like.

Think about this sentence above:

All we heard was personal attacks on coaches and players, conspiracy theories about the refs, pie in the sky garbage about fantasy player swaps and messiah-like demands for draft picks ("he's the next LeBron").

Now ask yourself if that sounds familiar with a few changes

All we heard was personal attacks on political opponents, conspiracy theories about government and the powers that be, pie in the sky garbage about having sufficiently pure party leaders, and messiah-like demands for a political savior ("he's the next Reagan").

It's the same thing. This is what has happened. Talk radio, media and our politicians have destroyed conservatism and liberalism and replaced them with hate, rumor and conspiracy. Remember that the next time some "conservative" tries to whip you into a frenzy over some irrelevance like Biden not acknowledging his illegitimate grand daughter, or the government's up-coming attempt to take your riiiights, or he attacks an ally for lack of purity, or tells you that only the messiah can save conservatism, even as he represents nothing even close to conservatism. Liberals have the same problem, but it doesn't make it better. And sadly, there is nothing we can do about this. We are surrounded by idiots and suckers now and they are only getting worse. To borrow a quote, they are f-ing up fast and picking up speed. But you can at least keep your sanity by understanding this and learning to see through it.

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I Shall Return...

All right. I am going to keep writing. I think someone has to. Someone has to talk sense. You certainly aren't hearing it on talk radio. Who knows... maybe we can bring conservatism back from the dead? And yes, it is dead.

Before we start again, here are some quick thoughts on recent events:

• The founder of Qanon died. Yup. Got a dirt bike shoved up his ass. Naturally, his followers think he's not really dead. That made me chuckle. So true to form.

• Issues affecting America:

Inflation, destruction of middle class jobs, crime, drug addicts, violent-narcissistic public mentality, out-of-control corporations, AI risks, supply chain fragility, risk of nuclear war, the destruction of American medical system

• Issues Republicans are Outraging On:

Map in Barbie movie, who ain't loyal enough to Our Lord Trump, gas stoves, who's sellin' queer stuff, commie ice cream maker said stupid shit, and some dopehead left coke at the White House

• Issues Democrats are Outraging On:

that's racist!, you used the wrong pronoun, erasure of women (particularly in sports), protecting criminals from people trying to defend themselves

Anybody see a problem there? Or is it just me?

• Affirmative action won't be as easy to kill as people hope, but its death will be the first step in ending the cult of black victimhood in this country

• Biden is looking to kill free trade. That's fine, no one wants to stop him. But just to be clear, free trade is what brought the world its incredible prosperity over the past thirty years.

• The public is rejecting woke. I'll prove it in an upcoming article. Too bad no one's offering an alternative.

• Anyone notice that the left has become a religion? I'll prove that too.

• Finally, do you know what's triggered the anti-trans backlash? Pedophiles.

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Trump

So I'm still debating if I want to start writing again. The state of "conservatism" has honestly gotten so depressing that I don't even like to think about it.

 

I will say this though. Having looked over the Trump indictment, I now know why he kept the documents. I've wondered about this for some time.  Why would this idiot keep these things?  Having seen the documents now (nuclear secrets and how we would attack Iran if it came to that), there is really only one explanation:  he wanted to sell them to the Saudis.

Somehow, I'm not surprised.

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Understanding Deception and Misdirection

I think it's important to understand the art of deception. Indeed, many of the problems we're facing right now as a people are the result of various interests lying about their activities, their goals, "the science" and the such. And the problem, as I'm increasingly seeing, is that the people who are meant to watch these interests are either negligent or complicit, and our political system now works to misdirect you to keep you from seeing the real issues you should be caring about. To see what I'm talking about, let's talk about what happened with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

For those who don't know, Silicon Valley Bank recently failed. It was the third or fourth largest bank failure in US history and its failure threatened to cause a series of cascading failures which would destroy millions of jobs and bankrupt tens of millions of people. Good times.

As a people, we should be outraged because of the following:

(1) Why was a bank allowed to become so large that it endangered the American banking system? This was supposed to have been fixed by the Democrats in 2008 when they "fixed" the issue of too-big-to-fail under Obama. How could a bank become too big to fail in light of that? And why are there still so many that have become so big? Why have they not been broken up?

(2) The Fed knew there was a problem months ago, so why did it not act before this became a potential doomday disaster? Indeed, the Fed even sent the bank a warning letter almost a year ago, but never did anything more.

(3) Why did the Fed and Treasury at first agree to cover all bank deposits in the US only to have Janet Yellen turn around and say that only those banks whose failure endangered the US banking system would be saved? In other words, she agreed to protect only the too big to fail banks, while abandoning the smaller banks. This resulted, as it obviously would, in a massive drain of funds from small banks which were then deposited in the too big banks, making the system even more dangerous.

(4) One of the reasons SVB got so big was that to get the best rates, you had to agree not to use other banks. That made its failure even more dangerous. That also happens to be a violation of anti-trust law and yet the Justice Department did nothing about it. Why not?

(5) Why was the bank board staffed with people who knew nothing about banking? That's negligence... but it protects insiders and famous people.

(6) Why was the bank allowed to hand out massive bonuses knowing it was essentially broke? Why were they allowed to make a massive amount of loans to insiders? That violates the very essence of good governance and is a fraud on depositors, creditors and shareholders.

These are the questions we should be focused on and demanding answer for as these are the reasons this became a crisis: Why did the government let a bank get so big that it endangered the system? Why did the Fed fail as a regulator? Why, when called upon to act, did the Treasury Department take steps that protected the big connected banks while thrusting a dagger into smaller banks? Why have the board and executives not been held to account?

Yet, no one is talking about breaking up banks or changing the incestuous relationship between the regulators and the regulated. Only Elizabeth Warren is talking about changing the law to let the government claw back bonuses and salary from executive (do you know how much it kills me to praise her?). So what is everyone talking about?

Well, the main stream media has ignored the issue of the failure of too big to fail. Instead, they have tried to shift the blame to Trump. So rather than report on the failure of too big to fail or dig into how the regulators failed or how the boards/executives functions, they tossed red meat into the ring and gave the left their villain to absorb all the blame and simultaneously distracted the right by getting them to defend Trump. This was a distraction. It was misdirection. What about Elizabeth Warren? They morphed her comments into a discussion of whether or not she'll run for President again.

It gets worse.

Progressive talking heads are doing what they always do. Too-big-to-fail was their thing and it failed, so they are shifting blame. They have chosen Trump as their scapegoat, claiming that he weakened key components of the regulations, even though those had nothing to with any of the issues in 1-6 above. Thus, they are blinding leftists to what is important here and leading them down the Trump rabbit-hole.

The right is no better. Talk radio found out that some pointless VP at SVB is a lesbian and was working on lesbian appreciation month and off they went to the deep end once more. You couldn't find a less significant criticism if you tried and yet talk radio has been pounding this home, along with the equally stupid idea that the bank made loans to woke causes. None of that was the issue here. Of course, you also had chest pounding that bailing out the banks was "socialism," proving that these talkers neither understand how to handle a crisis or what socialism really is. So after weeks of table pounding, their followers remained utterly ignorant and blissfully outraged.

Do you see the problem here? A group of insiders misbehaves in ways that endanger the whole country but escape any consequences because left, right and center would rather obsess about their pet peeves than understand what really happened. And let me tell you, this is happening on issue after issue after issue. The Romans talked of distracting the public with bread and circuses, well, our circus is called politics and our ringmasters are making a whole lot of bread keeping the clowns fighting.

When you see issues like this, ask yourself, is the guy on the radio or television actually talking about what really went wrong and is he offering a solution that can fix it, or is he just jerking me off with talking points.

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Reparations... for Morons

So many things to talk about. The world is such a disaster right now. Let's start with something that is breathtaking in its idiocy and its crapulence: reparations.

For those who don't know, San Francisco and some other dens of liberal dogmacy are hard at woke jerking themselves off with the fantasy of reparations. What are reparations? Supposedly, they are paying black people for the ills of slavery. Words fail, however, when it comes to describing the utter idiocy of this whole concept. Let's go through some points:

(1) There are no living slaves. So who exactly is supposed to get this money? Why, black people of course. But you forget that we don't go back generations to hand out compensation, because we have never legalized original sin. Nor do we allow group guilt because that is the worst form of racism. And if you want to open that can of worms, you better hope none of your relatives killed anyone or stole anything because anyone can make themselves a victim if they want to.

(2) Many American blacks have no slave ancestors, either being free blacks or coming from Africa long after slavery ended, so you're trying to pay people who were never injured. That makes this fraud, at best.

(3) You've already got compensation through things like affirmative action and minority set asides, public housing, food stamps, etc.

(4) Not one single American alive today ever owned a slave AND the overwhelming majority of whites came to the US after slavery ended, so you are trying to tax people for something neither they nor their ancestors did... that's called slavery.

(5) As an aside, "taxpayers" includes more than a couple Asians, Indians, native Americans, Mexicans, Pacific Islanders, and God-knows-what else. How did they benefit from slavery?

(6) California was never a slave state, so your argument is invalid on its face. And your claims of "structural racism" are crap because, a vast number of minorities of all types succeed despite these supposed barriers.

(7) The amount of money demanded is insane. San Francisco wants to give blacks in San Francisco something on the order of $640 billion when last reported -- the number keeps going up. San Francisco's budget is $13.2 billion annually. So that proposal would require the entire San Francisco budget for 49 years.

(8) Clearly, math is not your strong suit either because the $640 billion is based on an average payout of $360,000. BUT the proposal actually includes a $5 million payment to each candidate plus a yearly salary for life of $97,000 plus debt forgiveness plus $1 homes. I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure that actually works out to a lot more than $360,000.

(9) And let's assume the $360,000 is a real number for a moment. If you were enslaved by evil San Fran'ers for generations and then supposedly kept down by their wicked structural racism for your entire life, would $360,000 come anywhere near paying that off? So is this all just some giant jerk off?

(10) Moreover, let's assume the $640 billion number is real for a moment. San Francisco's GDP is around $500 billion a year. So while these race-baiters like to claim that America was built on slavery, which I assure it was not -- everything the South build was reduced to ash at the end of the civil war (meaning $0 in asset value at the end of the war), they are claiming that the total value of the labors of the entire slave population of San Francisco and as much as the racist whites and Chinese could steal from these poor victims through their structural racism is supposedly compensable by roughly 1.28 years of GDP? Really? So slavery contributed 1 year's GDP to a country with 300 years of economic growth... 0.3%. If I was black, I'd been kind of pissed to be told that's my value to America.

Personally, I think they should go for it. San Francisco should pass a law obligating the city to pay this $640 billion (enhanced by the stuff they aren't counting) until every penny is paid. In the meantime, the city should not be allowed to racistly pay another penny for anything. What's more, to make sure the guilty don't escape, they should require anyone who lived in the city in the past 20 years to pay an equal share, regardless of where they've fled to since. It's only fair.

In all seriousness, this is idiocy of the lowest order. It's insulting. It's stupid. It's an attempt to stir race hate and enshrine official victim status. What's worse, if you want to spark a race war, this is how you do it. Go tell poor white trash and Mexican laborers and Chinese small business owners, all of whom are scraping to get by, that because some rich land owners over 160 years ago did something wrong, they need to pay massive guilt money to black doctors and computer programmers, and see what happens. You're going to get a lot of very nice people killed with this crap.

Thoughts?

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Been Busy

Hi everybody. Sorry for being away. We had some stuff going on. A surgery, a couple new jobs and just some stuff that kept me crazy busy. I will start posting again in a couple days. Lots to talk about. The Chinese balloon. Why people don't accept that the economy is better (hint: it's really not). And I want to get back to those articles I promised to discuss on basically debunking everything progressivism is using as arguments. I will also answer Jed's question about the idiot brigade in Congress.

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Docu-Gate

Some quick thoughts on Biden's ILLEGAL possession of classified documents.

First, what a fool.

Secondly, the media has been trying desperately to claim this isn't at all like Trump, but it is from a criminal perspective. Trump may have been a bigger ass about it and tried to claim he was being persecuted, but the underlying crime is the same. That's bad for Biden.

Third, if the left hadn't tried to destroy Trump over this, this would not be a scandal. Biden would have returned the documents and it would have been swept under the rug. But after all the self-righteous venomizing against Trump, there are too many words of condemnation to let this pass.  And finding the documents in his garage makes it impossible to claim someone from his office did it by mistake.

Fourth, I still don't know why Trump kept the documents he did, but my suspicions are not good. Most of the documents he kept were stupid or ego related. But there are some key ones related to French nuclear technology which only seem valuable if they are being sold. I am not saying that's the case, but that is my suspicion. Now Biden has documents related to Ukrainian security. Huh. Why have those? Well, my suspicion: we know that Hunter got a huge bribe from the Ukrainians when Biden was VP. The bribe came through a Ukrainian oil company. My guess is that they're related. My guess is that these were part of that deal. I guess we'll see how hard they try to avoid looking into that.

As an aside, Ukraine and France both have some of the more impressive spy agencies out there. We could be seeing some of their best work here.

Fifth, Special counsels are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's a way to defuse things politically. It's like sending something to committee to keep from having to make a decision. On the other hand, special counsels tend to get obsessed. Ultimately, this may be very bad for Biden.

Sixth, Biden's comment about his corvette being in a locked garage is yet more proof that he's too far gone to defend himself. Once he goes off the teleprompter, it's dementia time.

Thoughts?

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Here's the Thing

I really didn't want to go too deeply into the current idiocy, but I thought it was worth making one more point. This is for you to think about... (I apologize in advance for the swearing).

I begin with the following assumptions about you (and me):

(1) You are rational.

(2) You believe in conservative ideas of small government, economic and personal freedom balanced with responsibility, and that traditional values are important for societal cohesion and raising the next generation to be happy and successful.

(3) You understand that the United States is a two party system and that the Republican Party is the one that is closest to what you believe and therefore must be supported, even if imperfect, and steered to where it represents us best.

If you don't believe these things, then go away. I. don't. want. you. here.

Now, based on those assumptions, let me point out two separate but related thoughts. First, the more I think about it, I really do think it would be best for McCarthy to make a deal with the Democrats. I think that is a golden opportunity to rid the party of the types who scare the public and who mislabel their paranoia as conservatism, and to cleanse the party's image after a decade of hijacking by hateful assholes who hate everything and anything and want to see the country burn. Unfortunately, I don't think McCarthy has the balls to do this right -- that is, to stand up and make a huge, proactive deal about it -- but I think it is the best course and I will hope he has it in him. You may disagree, and I'm cool with that. I think it's true though. Feel free to explain your rational reasoning if you think I'm right, I would love to hear it.

Either way, of all the options available, the least palatable one is to give concessions to the freak faction and let them hold sway over the party. It's time for that sh*tshow to end.

My second point: I'm done with the freaks, and you should be too. They are not conservatives. They don't understand conservatism, and they don't care about it. They are paranoids and exploiters of paranoids who live in a world of imaginary conspiracies, self-aggrandizing fantasy, idiocy and lunacy. They don't support the GOP and never will. They want to destroy it to get money and adulation from other paranoids. They are using you and the GOP to jerk themselves off and enrich themselves.

Anyone who would humiliate their party, as these twenty assholes are doing right now, is not trying to help the GOP, they are trying to destroy it. They want the drama. Again, they are using the party you need to bring about conservatism to jerk themselves off. It is a tool for them, that is all. If you doubt me, tell me what conservative principle they are standing up for right now? Even dumbass Marjorie Green understands this -- look at her statement about this being about Gaetz and Boebort demanding perks.

Now think about this...

Matt Gaetz is quoted as saying that he doesn't care if the Democrats get the speakership so long as it's not McCarthy. Does that sound like someone who truly has the GOP's best interests at heart? No, that is a child who is threatening to take his ball home if he doesn't get what he wants and what he wants is drama and perks. He doesn't give a rat's ass about conservatism, if he even knows what that is.

Then there are people like Tucker Carlson. For years now, Carlson has attacked the GOP. No matter what the GOP does, he attacks. Does that sound like he wants to make the GOP better or is he using it as a punching bag to make money on you? Why mention Carlson? Because yesterday, he gave an explanation for his failure in predicting a red wave. He said that he misjudged the election because he hates the Democrats so much that it interfered with his judgment. Ok, fine. But here's what caught my attention. When explaining why he was blinded to reality, he said: “I wanted [to see the Democrats lose] so much, not because I like the Republicans — I really dislike them more than I ever have — but I dislike the other side more.” This is what I'm talking about again. There is no subtlety or context in this thought. This is not a man who says, I support the GOP but I wish they were more X or Y. He simply dislikes them. He even says this gratuitously; i.e. there was no reason to even mention the GOP to explain his hate for the Democrats. In other words, he went out of his way to throw that into his explanation so you didn't get the wrong idea and think he actually liked the GOP. This is not a man you should trust or consider an ally. He is anti-GOP, not work-with-the-GOP. This is not constructive. So when he tells you, here's what the GOP should be done, you are getting advice from a man who hates you. Is that smart?

Let me give you one last example of who these people are. There was an idiot who left an anonymous comment here, which I deleted, in which he countered my suggestion by attacking Mitch McConnell on a personal level. Think about that. McConnell has nothing to do with this situation, yet that is his defense -- smearing Mitch McConnell. That person is someone who is so twisted with his own hate of the GOP that he can't even respond rationally. That's not someone you can work with and it's not anyone you want on your side. That is what I'm talking about. It's time to turn our backs on these bigots and fools and nutjobs. They are not our friends or allies and they never will be.

That is why I think McCarthy needs to strike and the rest of the party needs to start getting rid of them. You saw the way MAGA candidates under-performed non-MAGA Republicans by 5%, that's GOP voters sending a message. They want these people gone. Here's the chance, Kevin.

Finally, on a person level, I ask that you think about this. Can you really support people who hate you and are using the things you believe in for their own twisted purposes? Don't support them. Tell your friends why they shouldn't support them too. And watch for people who do this. They will give themselves away through genuine disloyalty which they will justify in the name of purity.

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House Cleaning

I got an email asking me if there's a way out of this for the GOP, and I figured I'd answer this with a post. The answer is: yes, several. One involves the "Freedom Caucus" giving in, which won't happen. Another is McCarthy giving in, which apparently won't happen. The "Freedom Caucus" also could choose to abstain, giving the Democrats the win. That actually seems right up their alley. Another involves Democrats abstaining and letting McCarthy win without them. That is probably how this ends.

That said, there is another way this could go which actually presents a tremendous opportunity for the GOP if they choose to grab it.

Here's the thing. Remember these facts:

(1) This is a rump Congress. Nothing will happen because the Senate is deadlocked and Democrat-controlled and Biden runs the White House as a leftist factory of hate and paranoia. So GOP control means very little. The only power they really have is investigative power and the power to send pointless bills to the Senate to die. So power is not an option.

(2) Biden plans to blame the GOP for all his failures because they control the House. He can't do that unless they actually control the House.

(3) The image problem the GOP faces is that it's seen as scary because it has a lot of crazy members. The Lauren Boeberts and Matt Gaetzs are the very crazies that scare people.

Given that, it seems pretty obvious that McCarthy should make a deal with the Democrats. Either some grand unity thing where they split committees and influence, or he can find five swing-district Democrats desperately looking for bipartisan cred. Either way, he trades committee seats for votes. Then he announces to the public that they intend to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan manner and work with the Democrats in this time of Biden-policy-created crisis to solve the nation's problems.

Then comes the Machiavellian part. McCarthy excludes every one of the twenty from any committee seat and never lets them introduce legislation -- those are seats he trades to Democrats. Not only is this hardball old-school-Democrat style, but he sells it to the public as a means of cleaning the GOP of its ranks of cranks and election deniers. Not only does this solve his problem but it recasts the GOP as centrist, which plays well almost everywhere... and the places where it won't hurt aren't places that will vote Democratic no matter what. So there's little harm.

Will talk radio howl? Of course, but they will howl no matter what. They make money selling fear and purity.

Will the GOP lose some voters? Sure. But there are vast more numbers to gain. Don't forget, Reagan threw out the racists in the early 1980s and the GOP dominated until Clinton moved to GWB's right and got a huge assist from H.Ross Perot.

Won't this result in Democrats getting their policies in place? Well, that's already happening. It's been happening for years. And these 200 GOP House members voting for McCarthy are hardly liberals or RINOs... those are long gone. So I wouldn't worry about that.

Thoughts?

(As a quick aside, McCarthy basically is a Freedom Caucus guy. He's parroted all their views. That might give you a clue about what is going on and whether this is about conservatism or cynicism.)

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And 2023 Begins Like 2022

McCarthy lost the speaker vote, at least the first one. Ho hum. Same circus. Same clowns. I don't really have any comment because conservatism doesn't really have a dog in this fight. Conservatism no longer exists in the GOP. It is frustrating both as a conservative and an American, but it's become so common that I think I'm numb to it. I'm hoping that one of the governors who will run in 2024 can revive it, but we'll see. Sorry to be so depressed, but our politics has become depressing.

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Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a great new year.  Enjoy your time with your family and friends!

Andrew

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Some Election Follow Up

There has been quite a bit of election news under the radar, so I thought I would get you all up to date.

1. Republicans seem finally to be getting how much of a disaster Trump caused the GOP. I think he's done. But we'll see... cockroaches and all. Biden trying to elevate Marjorie Green is pretty good evidence that Trump is old news and he needs a new lunatic to shadowbox, so is the dismissive tenor of the news articles about him lately. It's also a good sign that several governors are starting to get good press. The latest to be recognized nationally are the Governor of Virginia and the retired Governor of Maryland.

2. Sinema left the Democratic Party, as you may have heard. I'm not sure if you heard why. The reason she left is that she realized she could not win the Democratic primary next cycle because their party no longer tolerates anything but raving lunatics. She had something like 17% support in the party. She's betting that she can win over Arizonans by being a moderate liberal and beating the clowns to left of her and the next joker on the right. It's a hard road to go, but it's honestly her only option at this point. Do I think it might work? Eh. It has a chance. The Dems and the Repubs will play into her hands and nominate lunatics, and she can leverage her fame to make the whole thing plausible... but in the modern era, people tend to vote out of utter terror that the other side will win. That doesn't bode well for her wedging off people from both parties. Ultimately, I think she sinks.

3. There are people speculating Joe Manchin will jump next, but there's no reason for him to do that. West Virginians are not as party-bound as people in other states. They vote for whoever brings the most bucks back to the state, and Manchin is good at that. Plus, he's generally liked in the state and I think people will vote for him no matter what party he is in, i.e. he doesn't need to fear the state's rightward drift. At the same time, the Dems in West Virginia aren't California Dems, they are coal mine worker Dems who purr when you whisper union words. He fits that demographic perfectly.

4. There was this fascinating 'ha ha' article from MSNBC claiming that the GOP's supposed surge with Hispanics didn't happen as planned. The thing is, all the evidence they cite suggests a continued rightward drift of Hispanics. They noted that (1) Hispanics voted in "roughly" the same percentages as last time -- meaning we kept the increased numbers we got last time, (2) Florida had to be excluded to make the article work because Hispanics in Florida did jump right in vast numbers, and (3) wherever the Dems outspent the GOP by 5 to 1, Hispanic numbers did not increase, but anything less than that did show a GOP drift - which is hardly a ringing endorsement of MSNBC's point. They did note that in Pennsylvania, Puerto Ricans still voted in large numbers for the Dems.

So... the GOP kept the significant gains they made last time, made small improvements across the country except with Puerto Ricans, and dominated Florida. That sounds kind of like GOP improvement, especially as the GOP made big gains throughout South Texas. Not to mention, realignments don't happen all at once. It took 30-40 years for the Democratic South to become the Republican South. We've seen a huge jump for 8-10 years already. And don't forget, the overall numbers are so close nationally that even a couple percentage points makes a huge difference. I think this bodes well.

5. Most fascinating of all, young people (those under 29) shifted right significantly. During Biden v. Trump, the gap was +25 Biden in that age group. This time it was +12 Dems. That means the gap got cut in half. What makes this even more interesting is that these people are the most woke too. I wonder if we're looking at some sort of anti-woke backlash? One thing is for sure, Biden's student loan bribe didn't work.

All told this is good news. So long as the House GOP doesn't, uh, defecate the bed, then things are looking good for the next election cycle and possibly the future overall. They need to not fight, pass an agenda (knowing the Dems will kill it) and not get sucked into being pissy. We shall see.

Thoughts?

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Thoughts On The Shooting

Many thoughts on the "Gay club shooter." Here goes:

First, I am sickened by all the killings these days. But unlike the Democrats, I don't only care about the ones I think I can exploit. I am sickened by the shootings. I am sickened by the knifings. I am sickened by the subway pushers, the drive-by killers of children, the thugs who shoot McDonald's workers, the "friends" who beat another friend to death in hotel rooms. There is something sick in the human race right now and trying to exploit it to scare certain demographics is disgusting.

Secondly, it's disgusting how the leftist media bends and distorts people's histories to try to make violence seem like a conservative thing. They ignore violence by people in favored groups, redefine left as right, ignore obvious leftist backgrounds in criminals, and race to accuse conservatives no matter how obviously false the accusation all in the service of exploitation. They are propagandists like the Nazis and the communists, nothing less.

Selective liberal outrage is an endorsement.

Third, the problem with this little f*cker is not conservatism. The problem is trash. This kid and his family are trash. His father is a drug-addicted porn star. His mother is a petty criminal. His grandparents had custody. He is a heroin addict with run-ins with the law and delusions of potency. That's who most of these losers are these days. These people do not come from well-adjusted homes. They come from welfare, broken homes. They come from drugs and failed schools and value-less upbringings. They come from schools that cannot correct, a legal system which will not punish, and CPS which looks the other way almost every time. These are the institutions liberals have neutered over the past 70 years in the name of inclusion. Add to this poisonous cocktail that leftist Hollywood sells deadly violence as heroic, as the answer to problems, and the leftist media fetishize these people as celebrities. That's why this crap is happening and why it will never end. The left has created a class of these creatures. The attempt to blame guns is an attempt to evade responsibility for some very uncomfortable truths.

Fourth, this crap keeps happening in Colorado Springs, but these people are all out of staters. For some reason, Colorado has become the destination of choice for white trash fleeing warrants from the midwest and Californians. Californians are bad people, pure and simple. Something has gone wrong in that state and it is producing wannabes and ego-mad narcissists who think they're road warriors. This kid is one of those. My city is full of clones just like him.

Fifth, it is now being reported that the kid is "non-binary." Wow, really? Who could have known? Well... here's the thing. If this dumbass wanted to shoot up a gay bar to make a point, he wouldn't have picked some tiny, obscure bar in a back-alley strip mall across town from where he lived (I used to bowl near there). There are plenty of much bigger, more prominent places to attack. Why did no one ask that question before they assumed a motive? Why did no one ask: why this place? It honestly always seemed to me the kid is probably a latent homosexual (or an open one) who probably had a bad experience there. Now it's coming out that he was bullied for being gay and he claims to be nonbinary. That does not make him an anti-gay Republican. It makes him an unstable homosexual. If the media had used its brains rather than its ideology to report on this, they might have gotten that from the beginning. But they didn't and Biden and Pelosi and other Nazicrats exploited this creature of their making to smear half the population. It's time for this to stop. All of it.

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Post Election Thoughts

So I'm kind of depressed about the election. I actually think the GOP will get the Senate in the run-off (I think we win Nevada), but the whole election was a disaster. What's worse, too many people are learning the wrong lessons. That said, some aren't. Either way, here are some good things and bad things.

1. The election was a disaster. Let's be honest. In this environment and being a midterm, we should have crushed the Democrats. Inflation at 40 year worst. Recession. Job losses starting. Real wages in the toilet (worst in over 40 years). Housing market falling. Threat of nuclear war. Pandemics everywhere and the Democratic mishandling of the pandemics becoming obvious. And the Democrats were way off message, pushing stuff that turned people off. And yet... we lost. We lost tons of very winnable seats. That is a disaster.

2. So why did we lose? Hmm. Could it be that the candidates who lost largely had something in common? People like the Trump-backed election denier General in New Hampshire, the Trump-backed election denier news anchor in Arizona, the Trump-backed election denier Governor candidate in Pennsylvania, the Trump-backed veteran in Ohio who lied about serving in Afghanistan and who attended the January 6 jerk off festival, the Trump-backed hardcore MAGA candidates for Governor in Massachusetts and Maryland, the Trump-backed quack doctor in Pennsylvania, the Trump-backed election denying candidate for Governor in Wisconsin. Gosh, I feel like there must be some common thread, but I just can't quite put my finger on it.

Will history repeat in 2024? There are a lot of GOP people and news organizations pushing hard to dump Trump and switch to DeSantis, but the Trumpees I've talked to already think the problem was not enough Trump. Of course.

3. Colorado is lost. The numbers are shocking. We've gone from a slight Republican lead to a 200,000 statewide advantage for the Democrats. It's the millions of Californians who moved in. They are terrible people and they're highly destructive, and they vote Democrat. Colorado is as blue as California now.

As an aside, they voted to allow magic mushrooms because Californians do like their drugs. They also apparently like homelessness, petty crime and DUIs. Who knew that Portland was a good model for Colorado to follow?

4. I think Hispanics are actually shifting. Without that, Texas would be much bluer, Nevada would not be competitive, and Florida would not have been such a blowout. That is good.

5. DeSantis really proved his abilities yesterday. He built an incredible coalition. He makes me hopeful.

6. I think abortion played at the edges of this election, but wasn't what hurt the GOP. That was candidates and the big orange narcissist who would not shut up throughout the race. That said, please note that wherever it went before the people, the pro-abortion side won clearly. Even in Kentucky.

7. I suspect Walker will win the runoff. It never should have been that close though. That issue aside, the win by (anti-Trump) Kemp makes me happier about Georgia's future. It seemed to be slipping to blue, much like Virginia, as transplants flood Atlanta. But last night was a good sign that it could still be red.

8. Now the bad news. There is a lot of bad news coming in terms of jobs and inflation and housing. Now that the GOP will be taking the House (and maybe the Senate) they become the easy target for blame for that. They need to do their best to at least look proactive and like the responsible adults. I don't know if that's possible given the number of lunatics they still have to placate, but we'll see.

Thoughts?

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