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Traitor Tehran Tucker Carlson Gleefully Leaps Off Cliff

Tucker Carlson has been a fixture on the political middle and right for about six or seven years. For years he slowly built a real following while he was at FOX News, where he did journalism stuff. He earned his following because he asked good questions, he dug into people’s political backgrounds and background information on political and cultural issues of the day. He challenged all kinds of political blind spots and taboos and unhealthy “bipartisan” spaces where taxpayers and American citizens always seem to lose and corrupt political careerists always seem to make out incredibly well.

After Tucker Carlson left FOX, he seemed emboldened to break even more artificial constraints, to ask even tougher questions, and to promote more individual freedom in the face of an increasingly constitutionally questionable government apparatus. He was the quintessential “independent investigative journalist” that Americans want so badly.

Without question, the Biden Administration was his foil in his new independent role, and also probably his brightest time. With so much brazen Biden family corruption, protected and enforced by a brazenly weaponized federal bureaucracy, and so much more related stuff to chase down, Tucker Carlson found himself ever more squaring off against the entire estabalishment media enterprise. This “mainstream media” conglomerate made then and very openly today makes no bones about being completely aligned and in bed with just one political party.

So this was the boxing ring in which Tucker Carlson found himself. He then got a ton of money from Iranian businessman Omeed Malik, and if the Foreign Agent Registration Act documents dug up by ace investigative reporter Laura Loomer are true, Tucker also got substantial money from Qatar. And then he bought himself a classic hunting and fishing ranch in Montana, and started interviewing people in his flyfishing man cave.

Bit by bit, aspects of Tucker Carlson’s raging hatred began to seep through, then shine through, and then eventually poured out in these interviews. Probably due to open pressure to at least try to appear not to hate all Jews, Tucker hosted an interesting guy named Bret Weinstein. And throughout the entire interview, Tucker’s hostile face set barely changed an iota. Despite receiving fascinating new information from Weinstein that corroborated a great deal of conclusions that Tucker had come to on certain political issues, he never smiled or showed any warmth toward his guest.

Check out the photo below that I screenshotted from that otherwise excellent interview.

Contrast Tucker’s demeanor towards fellow Israel hater Rep. Thomas Massie, where they are all chummy, laughing, easy going during that interview. Which is also a fascinating interview, and were Massie not a hater of Israel and Jews, and not such a theoretician and purist, I could then see why his presence in Congress was so useful.

Anyhow, Tucker started racking up interviews with professional Jew haters, for whom publicly breaking this Western taboo is a source of professional income. People like US Lt. Col. Douglas Macgregor, and history-dabbler Darryl Cooper, neither of whom have anyting positive to say about Jews or Israel, and who make a living saying nonsense about them. Not even the Nobel prize winners, the leaders in economic, medical, or technological areas. Nothing good to say, period, which indicates they have a problem.

In his many hours interviewing them, and others like an Arab Christian in Israel, Tucker never challenges them. He does not ask them to more fully explain their questionable ideas. Rather, Tucker just lets them say whatever they want about Jews, the European Holocaust, and Israel, and then after encouraging them, agreeing with them, he moves on to the next thing.

And then Tucker himself became an open antagonist towards Jews and Israel. He recently sat interview-style across from US Senator Ted Cruz with cameras running, and instead of an interview, Tucker went on the attack, including the bizarre assertion that the Jews of today are unrelated to the Jews of the Bible and ancient Israel.

As an aside, if today’s Jews are not descended from the ancient Jews, then why does their DNA show them to be from the Near East, despite at least a thousand years living in white Europe? Why are they the only people on Earth who speak Hebrew, study Scripture in Hebrew and Aramaic, and practice Judaism? If not them, then who and where the heck are the Jews? Tucker does not bother to answer this simple question, as casting doubt on Jews is his only goal.

The final straw for a lot of former Tucker Carlson admirers like me just happened, days ago. If you thought the man had an atom of Christian belief, human decency, American loyalty, or even just some integrity inside of him, Tucker Carlson has aggressively, even wantonly, dispelled that notion. Tucker conducted a ridiculous, puffball questions, friendly “interview” with one of the most evil, violent, cruelly despotic autocrats on Earth today.

Yes, from his Montana man cave, Tucker Carlson interviewed the hand puppet “president” of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, who reports directly to Ayatollah Khameini, the “Supreme Leader” of Iran, on July 4th, American Independence Day. In his time with Pezeshkian, a true monster, Tucker has no interest in asking real questions, like can we go inside Evin Prison and interview some of the women your forces are raping and torturing right now. Nor did Tucker go to Iran and do a “man on the street” tour, where the journalist just asks random citizens their opinions on things. Of course, Iran is oppressive and is run like North Korea, where one small mis-step costs you your family, your home, your wife, your life, so even if Tucker would insist, he would encounter stone faces.

Instead, Tucker Carlson willingly, and occasionally with outbursts of that weird fake glee he has, served as an airbrushed mouthpiece for the mullahs who rule Iran with a brutal and unjust fist, and who threaten the world with their genocidal, homicidal death cult. Tucker makes excuses for them, he aided and abetted them, he gave aid and comfort to them, he put lipstock on their pig faces, he made common cause with them.

One utterly contemptible example: “Has Iran tried to assassinate President Trump?” To which Pezeshkian answers that this is an Israeli lie meant to rope America into forever wars. And Tucker Carlson simply nods in agreement and moves on! No second question, no aw c’mon ya can’t blame everything on Israel. 

Apparently Tucker Carlson really meant it when he wrote in 2020 that he never liked Trump anyhow. Yeah, no kidding. You won’t even challenge this bold faced lie by your Iranian buddy.

They, the Iran of “Death to America!” since their 1979 revolution. They of at least a thousand Americans killed through Iranian terrorism in Lebanon, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, elsewhere. They of known attempted assassinations against President Trump and election hacking in 2020, documented by the FBI.

There is speculation that Tucker Carlson must have been paid a lot of Iranian money to do this, and that seems reasonable. Whether Tucker just sold out America for the symbolic thirty silver Shekels, or whether he was paid directly into a Swiss bank account, or whether he gets some syndication rights income from this, any way we cut this last horrendous act, “Tehran Tucker” Carlson is a traitor to America.

Interviewing Bret Weinstein on Covid policy vs Covid science

Bret Weinstein maintained his composure despite Carlson’s open hostility on a subject Carlson would normally be animated about

His face hardly changed from this unfriendly grimace the entire interview. Tucker just does not like Jews, not even Dr. Bret Weinstein, a conservative and risk-taking researcher willing to help Carlson

 

Happy 249th Birthday, America

Best tattoo, ever

I am not a tattoo person. No one in my family had or has tattoos, including me, same for my wife. The rural people I grew up with occasionally had tattoos, all associated with their military service. When this current tattoo craze took off, what, fifteen years ago, I admit to being surprised. Some of the choices I have seen are… curious. When I ask the wearer why this particular tattoo, I usually get back an indifferent shrug and something like “I was feeling especially whimsical that moment.”

My various sports coaches all taught me one important lesson: Your body is your temple, and you must respect it. I am not judging anyone, but please think a little harder or look at some pictures of pretty flowers, before deciding to forever alter the body God gave you at birth with some of these tattoos. Yes, the Maori warriors have some gorgeous tattoos representative of their culture as head hunters and cannibals. But your culture is mid-America white girl and white boy, not savage warrior, nor tough about anything, really.

Because I work with a lot of rural loggers and machine operators, who are the epitome of tough as hell and who in my book earn the right to even culturally appropriative self expression, I do get a pretty dandy gander at tats running from hand to neck, and, I am told, in other more “remote” body locations. I admire the ones that had a lot of thought, deep symbolic meaning, planning, and careful execution put into them.

Starting decades ago in the military services, which until Marxist in Chief Obama and China’s Man in DC Joe Biden was largely populated by rural Americans, tattoos are no longer just a military or rural fad, as the entire country became enamored of the self expression and inevitable interesting interpretations of sagging aged flesh sure to come with time. Even demure, serious soccer moms have Playboy Bunny on their ankles. I have even seen effete feminine urbanite Marxist hipsters with their own tattoos (I wish I was rich enough to be a socialist like them), as well as the myriad blue and pink haired far left, Antifa, even conservative patriot bikers, too.

Well, today I got to see the best tattoo ever, in the history of tattoos. It wins all the awards for creativity, simplicity, symbolism, etc. The owner is covered feet to neck in tats, and when I asked her if she had any regretted old boyfriend names lurking anywhere among the visual mayhem, she said “just the initials of my ex husband, now artfully incorporated into and erased by a tattoo of the toxic waste symbol”. She then showed me. It is small, easily lost among the rest of the colorful inks, and not particularly artistic or flowing or eye catching, but I swear, it is the best tattoo ever.

 

Memes, memes, memes

EDS NOTE: OBSCENITY A flash bomb explodes on the 101 Freeway near the metropolitan detention center of downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025, following last night’s immigration raid protest. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)

Tucker Carlson, dingbat mean girl

The past two years of Tucker Carlson’s life have been devoted to attacking Israel and everyone who supports it, as well as revisiting essential Adolf Hitler messaging, like “the Jews” control media, banking, government etc. One of the pro-Israel groups, AIPAC, is one of his special whipping boys. Tucker accuses AIPAC of forcing American politicians to “obey” and thus AIPAC “controls” American government. He says.

Tucker ignores the truly vast amounts of money spent lobbying and influencing American government and decision makers at all levels by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and many others who are definitely not American allies. AIPAC’s pipsqueak budget doesn’t compare, but if you are looking for a scapegoat, nothing beats “the Jews.”

Another thing Tucker has repeatedly said is that Iran is not America’s enemy (even though it very much has been since 1979), Iran is only Israel’s enemy, and that any real war against Iran’s nuclear bomb program, by either Israel or America, will automatically result in WORLD WAR THREE.

In this way, Tucker became the chief Iran First advocate in America. Given his open, unhidden, unapologetic personal animosity towards Jews and Israel, Tucker probably supports a nuclear-armed Iran as some sort of counter-balance to Israel’s longterm survival, and thus the survival of the Jewish people, if not an outright threat with a high likelihood of succeeding in turning Israel into smoking rubble.

But the problem is, if you are Iran First, like Tucker is, then you are America Last, and yet Tucker claims to be a MAGA America First guy. He cannot have it both ways. Iran’s record of hostility towards its “Great Satan” America runs the gamut from holding 66 American hostages for 444 days, to multitudes of bombings that have killed Americans around the world, to holding weekly rallies declaring “Death to America” in Iran and in countries it has exercised control over, like Syria and Lebanon. Iranian leaders have said countless times that its nuclear bomb program is intended to destroy both Israel and America. Iran has openly bragged about having terrorist sleeper cells here in America.

And yet, Tucker has done all one person can to protect Iran from military intervention by its likely victims. He really is Iran First, and so it logically follows that Tucker is okay seeing American cities go up in mushroom clouds if he also gets to see Israel destroyed. And while Tucker harbored anti Jewish sentiments in the past (e.g. his initial FOX News report on Sam Bankman Fried’s felonious Ponzi scheme dripped with personal animosity towards Jews), it was given rocket fuel by huge payments from both Iranian businessman Omeed Malik and Qatar. Reportedly over ten million dollars.

Yes, the same Qatar that has been funding the destruction of American college education in the pursuit of destroying American culture and borders.

So, Tucker may have been a kind of mean girl in the past, but his dislike for Jews and Israel really took off after he left FOX News. Left to himself and his anti-Western, Islamo-supremacist financiers, Tucker’s anti-Jew stuff ballooned into an open movement, a greater-good willingness to sacrifice America on the old Adolf Hitler altar that also destroyed Germany.

To this neo-isolationist banner Tucker attracted a whole posse of fellow MAGA conservatives, like open Jew hater Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Jack Posobiec, Patrick Bet David, even Charlie Kirk, who I thought would have had the common sense and honest Christian charity to stay away, and a whole bunch more. Some of these people have embraced Jew hatred as a business, and honestly, they seem to be doing OK at it.

Led by Tucker Carlson, this posse of mean girls has subsequently greatly shaped the public debate, the internal MAGA debate, and President Donald Trump administration’s policies about Israel, Iran, and American foreign policy in general. To intervene or not, to get regime change or not, to support an underdog ally, or not.

My opinion is that Tucker’s posse of mean girls has elevated non-interventionism and neo-isolationism into a graven image, an idol to be worshiped at any cost. Really guys, no regime change in Iran now, when probably 80% of the Iranian people want it? When we can most easily achieve it? You have a solid argument for this? I don’t see it.

Imagine being so “pro freedom” that you violently argue for ninety million Iranians to remain under the jackboot of the evil Shia mullahs. Because regime change is supposedly always bad. Again, I don’t see the logic or sound reasoning of this argument by the posse of mean girls. The blood of this week’s Iranian victims, civilians right now being rounded up by IRGC soldiers, is on your hands.

For the record, I have been MAGA since 2015, when Citizen Trump descended the escalator to announce his candidacy. Max campaign donations (even still on a monthly basis), all of the MAGA/ Trump tee shirts, boxer shorts, socks, hats, signs, banners, memes, you name it, I paid top retail to show my support for the one person I believe can save America. This blog is a record of my absolute commitment to President Trump at every turn over the past ten years. His America First policies are everything I believe in.

And for the record, I was a huge Tucker Carlson devotee when he was at FOX News, because he asked all the right questions about the right things, policies, and people. His goal was freedom and his aim was true. Tucker’s unintentionally comedic WASPy hostility towards Jews at the end of his Sam Bankman Fried report was tolerable, because who the hell doesn’t dislike Leftist Jews? They are a pox on America, as are most Leftist Catholics, Leftist Protestants, Leftist Muslims, Quakers et al.

Yes, Leftist Jews should know better than anyone else about how evil Leftism is, because of all that the Jewish People have been through, especially at the hands of arch Leftists. But Tucker has made it openly clear, most recently in his interview with US Senator Cruz (where Tucker revealed that he is a deliberately fake Christian), that he maintains an animosity for all Jews, including the politically and culturally conservative ones who are devoted to America and Western Civilization. The same people a politically active conservative would normally share the political trenches with.

World War Three never happened after the apocalyptic genocidal death cult running Iran was brought to heel, and America and Israel successfully defended Western Civilization together without America losing one military person or citizen. And thus is Tucker revealed as a destructive dingbat, and not a serious thought leader about real policy issues.

Israel is defending Western Civilization, say thank you

Forgive my long absence. Last week I had a careless tired body-tired mind workplace accident where I got to watch my body’s hydraulic fluid spray out like a hose from my leg. That scared me, and I drove myself to the ER forty minutes away, dodging possums, porcupines, rattlesnakes, and deer in the roadway the entire way. I got stitched up and am moving around, but one thing I am beginning to accept is that while I am still very strong, I am no longer forty or even fifty. And when I feel tired now, after working hard all day, it is time to put down tools and step away from the work site.

It is a pretty good reason for being a week overdue here on the blog. Really, you should have seen my place. It looked like a murder scene…blood everywhere. Took me hours to clean it up.

So, Israel is defending Western Civilization from Iran’s nuclear hungry genocidal Islamofascists, and all of a sudden I am surrounded by the “woke right.” As if genocidal dictators who have stated for almost fifty years that their intention is to force convert or blow up, destroy, and kill America and Israel, as well as the rest of Western Civilization, all infidels, should have nuclear bombs.

If Israel has nuclear bombs, why can’t Iran?” goes a common question. Finding moral equivalence between one of the world’s few free democracies, Israel, and one of the world’s most oppressive, cruel, destructive, war-mongering, terrorism-exporting, deceptive theocracies, Iran, requires a person to make a huge leap in rational judgment and factual observation, and do so with a healthy boost of ridiculous raw Jew hatred.

Turns out the woke right, the fake Christians like Tucker Carlson, Patrick Bet David, and Candace Owens, understand that hating Jews is a good business. They get lots of online clicks and a decent angry support mob to follow them around. To win a policy argument about nuclear proliferation among genocidal regimes, versus the democracies being targeted by them, all the woke right people have to do is malign all Jews (not just the leftist ones, who we all must admit are especially aggravating because they are especially destructive when they of all people should know better), or ascribe malice to all things Jewish and Israel.

America must stop fighting the Jews’ wars” or “Israel’s wars” goes another refrain, as the woke rightsters strut and preen, puffing up their supposed anti war chests, pretending to be superior while our Western Civilization is burning to the ground from within and without.

Never mind Iran’s (and China’s) public plan to destroy America, the Great Satan, which they could easily do with all of the jihadis they have hidden here in America. No, apparently all wars are started by “the Jews” because you know… it’s simply just “the Jews.”

Not Iran itself. Not jihadism. Not Islamofascism and Islamosupremacism as witnessed through a tremendous amount of violent jihadism focused on Israel and Jews worldwide. No, according to Tucker Carlson and his fellow woke rightsters, we are supposed to believe that a population of maybe ten or twelve million Jews total on the entire planet is manipulating and victimizing the two billion Muslims and one and a half billion Christians and one billion Hindus and one and a half billion Han Chinese who own everything and run everything. And so, accordingly these Iran Firsters say Iran must have nukes. Because the Jews.

This is humiliatingly lame Neanderthal stuff. It is intellectually indefensible. While I am proud to be MAGA since 2015, and I have all of the MAGA hats, tee shirts, socks, underwear etc of Trump MAGA Land, I am embarrassed to have to share one inch of ideological space with these woke right people. They are making common cause with true evil, and spreading evil and hate, while claiming to be real Christians, real Americans. Tucker Carlson is a fraud, I hate to say. I had been a huge fan of his for all of the right reasons (he was an excellent journalist who asked the right questions), and now I detest the guy, for all of the right reasons.

For the past year, Tucker Carlson has been warning that an Israeli war with Iran will result in World War Three and the end of the world. In the past few days his anti Israel scaremongering has been proven wrong, but he has not relented. He wants Iran to have nukes so Israel can be bullied and blackmailed and forced out of existence, if not blown out of existence. Never mind what happens to America in the process. Carlson is a Jew hating America hating Iran Firster.

If you hate Jews, you hate Jesus, and if you hate Jesus you hate Christianity. If you hate Israel so much that you are willing to sacrifice America, like Carlson, you are not MAGA, and you are not pro America. Being an America First conservative, as I am, means putting America before all other countries. But it does not mean crawling under a rock and hiding and pretending that the world outside is not happening. That is childish.

If you are that much of an isolationist, then you are a fool and you really do hate America, because you want America to fail. America is part of this world, and we must live within it, we must engage it. That means having alliances and relationships with other countries, and occasionally defending ourselves from other countries. The planet is a chess board on which we must occasionally project power. Failing to project power means that others will project power onto us, and America is not too big to fail.

War does not need to be conducted with American boots on the ground, or even by Americans. Being anti war does not mean just laissez faire letting things happen randomly, like letting Iran get a nuclear arsenal and then them bringing America-ending nuclear war directly to us. To every thing there is a season, a time for peace, and a time for war. Sometimes we just have to give war a chance. Smart Americans can define or implement war however they want, so long as our national interests are protected and our precious military personnel are not squandered.

In 1979, Iran openly declared war on America and Israel, and they and their allies have never missed an opportunity to burn our leaders in effigy and our flags in public. Iran’s war with Israel did not start a few days ago, it started in 1979. Now on the cusp of confronting nuclear powered maniacs who hate all of us Westerners, Israel is taking huge risks and making huge sacrifices to ensure that Americans sleep comfortably at night. Israel is taking a beating to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.

If you are truly MAGA, and truly American, then you appreciate hard work and risk taking. Say Thank You to the Israelis, who did the heavy lifting that no one else was brave enough to do. Don’t be a mean spoiled brat, like Tucker Carlson. His behavior is not American.

 

 

Go see latest Mission Impossible movie

You should go see the latest Mission Impossible movie. You will not regret it.

About once per year I get to see a Hollywood movie. Not because of limitations on time, or money, but because 99% of what Hollywood produces is dreck, garbage, stupid, juvenile, destructive amoral nonsense. So sifting through the many no-go movies usually results in one that I will see, per year, and this year I went and saw the latest, and supposedly the last, Mission Impossible movie, starring Tom Cruise.

About Tom Cruise: I like him, because I like the values he showcases and promotes in his movies. His movies have plenty of action, and also pit good vs. evil, honesty vs. dishonesty, tradition vs. popular modernization, etc. Very few of Hollywood’s actors or movies are about good values. Most Hollywood movies are about silly, superficial entertainment, performed by actors who in their private lives lead silly, vacuous, superficial lives full of ridiculous childish drama and bad decisions. They make their money doing dress-up and make-believe. Then these same people are quick to tell working Americans how to live, what to value, and so on. They are disbelievable.

Tom Cruise is the complete opposite of 99% of the Hollywood goofs. He communicates his values and beliefs through his movies, and rare interviews, and leaves us peons (who are also his paying audience) alone the rest of the month.

For example, his movie The Last Samurai is the improbable but beautifully done story of a white dude roundeye who is captured by racist Samurai during the quite real Satsuma Rebellion. It all comes down to Captain Algren (Cruise) talking with Lord Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) around a campfire after escaping a false arrest (please accept my dialogue paraphrase that is close to the actual script):

Algren: “So That’s it. You will now just end it all, by your own hand, because of some supposed failure?

Katsumoto: “Yes. It is our way of keeping our honor.”

Algren: “Honor? What better way to show honor than to live a life of service and sacrifice, as you have done your whole life?

Instead of beating us over the head with political speeches on X Twitter, in just a little bit of movie dialogue, Tom Cruise shows us he values tradition, service, sacrifice, and personal honor. For all the people who dislike Cruise’s association with Scientology, why can’t you just accept him for who he actually is, and not what you merely suspect him of thinking? Based on what we see, the guy is A+ material.

His Mission Impossible series never failed to entertain, not the least reason being that Cruise does most of his own incredible stunts. Reportedly, he routinely breaks ribs, fingers, and damages all kinds of other parts of his body doing these stunts. How many other Hollywood actors do any stunts, much less real stunts that are really dangerous?

Ummmmmm… probably none.

And, how many other Hollywood actors bother to stay in great enough physical shape that they could do their own stunts, if they wanted to?

Ummmmmm.. probably a small handful. So I give Tom Cruise all of the credit he deserves for all of the rare stuff he does. He gives his all to his movie audience, which is much more than can be said for most actors who just stand in front of a green screen and pretend to fight an imaginary foe.

This last Mission Impossible ties together all the past ones. Kind of a high-tech version of the Sherlock Holmes movies mixed with James Bond. But also give Tom Cruise real credit for taking a huge risk with his pro-America, physical adventure-loving audience: His movie cast is a racial- and gender-diverse mix of people, who do not simply appear on screen because they have a certain skin color or boobs. Rather, Cruise has selected exemplars of each: The reliable old black guy sidekick is a tech genius, who goes down fighting, and whose genius level tech work saves the world. The lady SEAL looks like the unique lady SEAL would have to look, very muscular and tough. And so on.

Cruise’s movie-wide racial & gender diversity is not painfully unrealistic and crammed down our throats. Rather, it is realistic enough for us not to have to suspend belief. This is exactly the kind of diversity that Cruise’s audience can accept, because we see it to some degree in our every day lives (not that any of us see world-saving superhero acrobatics play out, ever, but rather we see people like us doing exceptional things sometimes).

For example, I found myself alternately painfully gripping the poor Princess of Patience’s thigh, arm, and hand at different points in the underwater scene. Because in my youth I was a Water Safety Instructor, waterfront lifeguard, and very active SCUBA diver, I had experienced quite a few saves as well as close encounters. On one night dive in the Florida Keys in the mid 1980s, I had to tow my exhausted dive partner to the surface and back to the boat, which was marked only by a single underwater strobe light in the pitch blackness. Leaving my spear back on the bottom, and using an adapted rescue maneuver, I fought the same strong current that had caused him to run out of air in his dive tank, and run out of energy to do anything but slowly drown as a limp rag. Eventually I reached the boat just as I too was running out of energy, weighed down as I was by a tank, regulator, wetsuit, buoyancy compensator, and various kit.

It was a very close call that was suddenly brought back to life by watching Tom Cruise’s realistic near-drowning scene in the sunken nuclear submarine. With the jumbled torpedos laying and falling all about. As he is running out of air and time and body heat. Swim, Tom, swim up!

Anyhow, a bunch of Cruise’s acrobatic stunts in this unbelievably entertaining movie have gotten him Guiness Book of World record recognition, as well as Most Dangerous Stunt Ever, Most Ridiculous Stunt Ever, Stupidest But Coolest Stunt Ever, Most Incredible Stunt Ever…especially for a sixty year old white guy.

You gotta go see this movie, even if the rogue computer / rogue Artificial Intelligence plot has played out at least since War Games (1983), Dune (1984, based on the 1960s book), Terminator movies from 1984 to 2019, and many others, where humankind is almost the fatal victim of our own ridiculous curiosity. Mission Impossible is so good that we forget all that and buy deeply into the premise that our AI foe “The Entity” is about to destroy humanity, and so we must engage in or at least tag along on an impossible mission to destroy it and save humanity.

And one more thing about Tom Cruise: If he is actually deeply into Scientology, then it is treating him really well. Everything about the guy looks like success and contented happiness. We hear no stories about poor choices or destructve behavior.  Most of Hollywood is a-religious or non-religious, and most of Hollywood’s people are morally relativistic and quite lost on this planet. Their private lives are a complete mess, and very few of them have any sort of moral compass or true north. Scientology may sound weird, but I think all religions and belief systems sound weird to some degree. Even if it is weird, wow, is it ever working for this super successful, happy guy, Tom Cruise….one of the few real working actors left on our entire planet.

 

Seriously, Trump vs. Musk?!

Like so many supporters of President Donald Trump, I am unhappy, shocked even, at the unhappy falling out between the president and Elon Musk. Not only is the disagreement about policy, which happens every day in politics and which grown ups take in stride, without fracturing their relationship, because our relationships are more important than being “right” on one policy issue or another, but both men are not showing their best sides.

Why are both men acting like this in public? Because they are both high-T prominent businessmen who have built successful businesses and they are both used to giving orders and being in charge.

But it does not matter why they are publicly fighting with each other. It matters only that they are fighting, because it is personally and professionally bad for each of them, bad for America, bad for the Trump Administration, bad for public morale. Trump looks too easily upset and unappreciative, and Musk looks thin skinned, disloyal, and vindictive. All bad, no upside.

What I would like is for President Trump to say “Elon, I am sorry I lost my temper. You have been an incredible asset to this administration and a good friend to me personally. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you made to start DOGE and get American government back on track to serve The People. Let’s stay in touch.

And just leave it at that. Showing good, strong character and taking the high road. For the good of America, which President Trump has always done. And let’s be honest: Elon Musk has sacrificed a TON for his work to bring the federal bureaucracy to heel. We all owe Elon a huge thank you for that.

Edit: Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied storming of Nazi Europe. At huge cost and sacrifice, in the cause of freedom. America was the leader. This is true leadership, and the kind of thing that actually matters in life.

Thank you to The Blaze

June is Proud To Be Me month

June is the Proud To Be Me month.

Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever your skin color or who you sleep with, nothing says more about you than who you are by how you treat others, how hard you work, how honest you are. In other words, skin color, sexual behavior, gender, etc have really nothing to do with anything, and there is no reason to be “proud” of things you can’t change about yourself.

Want to feel proud of yourself, for good reason? Donate time to a real non-profit organization engaged in directly improving people’s lives. The Bethesda Mission here in Harrisburg feeds and clothes homeless people, discarded military Veterans, abused mothers with their children in tow. When you help these down-on-their-luck people, you should feel proud, because you have made the world a better place, at your own expense, and yet you know you have come out richer.

On the other end of the spectrum are ridiculous things of which to be proud, like skin color and sexual behavior. Yes, skin color was once something for James Brown to sing about, but that was then, and this is now. We are not still living in 1968, or 1958. Black people run most of America’s cultural institutions, and they are well represented in every nook and cranny of professional life.

And sexuality? Isn’t this a private matter? I think so. No one needs to know what you are doing, and only destructive perverts in essence rape those around them by sexually forcing themselves on us. What a shallow thing to be “proud” of, this raunchy and gross physical behavior. In this time of wide acceptance, acting like yesterday was the Stonewall Riot is just as silly as pretending Americans are still living in 1968 racial tensions.

If anything, we should each be proud of ourselves for being our best selves in ways that show we have choice and agency. For example, I always always always hold doors open for women. Occasionally a woman will either object to it, or more commonly, thank me and acknowledge the less and less common favor. My response to everyone who comments is this: “If I don’t hold this door open for you, I know my mother will leap out from behind that shrub over there and kick my butt.”

Meaning, I am proud of living the old fashioned civilization-sustaining values and behaviors that my mother and father instilled in me. Living this way and making other people’s lives better as a result makes me proud to be myself, my best self, my good self. You can easily do the same. All this other nonsense, you can give it a pass.

Anatomy of a primary election

On May 20th, Pennsylvania held its primary election. Mostly local seats and judgeships were on the ballot, which are definitely important, but the real prizes were the PA Commonwealth Court and the PA Superior Court. As has come to be usual here and in many other states, the conservative/ independent-minded grass roots fielded their candidates and the state Republican Party fielded its candidates.

And as usual, the PA Republican Party was directly involved in the selection of the primary election candidates, their endorsements, their negative attacks, funding, etc. When a political party gets in between The People and their choice of candidate, the party always loses in the long run. When The People believe the party does not share their views or values, and is only pursuing the selection of certain candidates who will be malleable and loyal to the party, then The People lose faith in the party.

Here in PA there is real animosity between grass roots conservatives and the PA GOP establishment.

This election we had grass roots candidate Maria Battista vs. PAGOP candidate political establishment-endorsed Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court judge. Battista had run before as the GOP endorsed candidate, and had lost to the grass roots candidate. This time around, for whatever reason, she was on the outs with the PAGOP and on the in with the grass roots groups, like Lycoming Patriots. Wheatcraft had the PAGOP endorsement and money.

For the Commonwealth Court we had well known Second Amendment attorney Josh Prince vs. unknown state bureaucrat attorney Matt Wolford. Bureaucrat Wolford was mysteriously endorsed by the PAGOP, even though he has worked most of his career at the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, an agency that no matter which incarnation it embodies, and regardless of which political party is running it, nonetheless is associated with heavy-handed regulations and lawless bureaucrats who routinely beat up on private landowners and businesses. Not exactly a likely place to give birth to a solid Republican candidate for any office, much less a judgeship.

The long and short of these two races is that Battista the outsider defeated Wheatcraft the moneyed insider, and Wolford the party endorsed yet unknown bureaucrat and mystery “Republican” defeated grass roots favorite Prince. Moreover, Prince was endorsed by numerous organizations, like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, etc.

These are strange results.

Normally voters align with outsiders or insiders, but not with one candidate here and not that one over there. And yet that is what happened in this election. Normally, big endorsements gain big traction for candidates, but we saw no evidence of that in the Prince vs Wolford race. Despite his many big endorsements, Prince was utterly crushed even in very conservative rural counties, like Lycoming and Elk, where he was known, liked, and should have won handily. And yet, in these same counties, Battista blew off Wheatcraft’s doors.

Aside from a crooked vote tallying scheme, I have no explanation for this odd outcome that defies all odds and conventional thinking. Except for one possible variable that tends to get overlooked these days, and that is ballot position. That is, where does the candidate’s name fall on the ballot – top, middle, or last.

Studies have shown that ballot position does matter, or it can matter, but much less so when voters feel compelled to look up candidates on the internet. With its easy information access, the internet has been the great leveler of campaigns everywhere. Big campaign money cannot always defend a candidate’s bad record, which will be all over the internet, visible to the voters who but follow a few clicks on a search engine.

Battista had top and Prince had bottom on their respective ballots. Meaning that the 3/4-4/4 super voters who make up the primary election electorate, were unsure of who to vote for and simply and superficially chose the first name they saw for each position. That could explain the opposite results we got for both candidates, Battista and Prince.

As we see here, the voters have to want to know something about the people they are voting for in order to defeat the ballot position factor, as well as overcome often superficial campaign advertising. And so we learned a hard lesson here: The vaunted and lauded super voters did not necessarily do super research into the candidates. They apparently did not bother to look up the candidates before walking into the voting booth. They simply saw a name at the top and made their choice.

And that is the gory anatomy of Pennsylvania’s 2025 primary election, God help us all.

Does ballot position really determine who a lot of primary election super voters choose? From this election, it would seem so.

Elk County is a very conservative rural place where DEP bureaucrats are hated like poison ivy. The 2025 results there make no sense, unless ballot position is the primary factor.

Doesn’t it seem mean spirited to not even mention candidate Josh Prince? Doesn’t it further alienate his supporters? What is that all about?

I have never seen election results like this. If conservative rural Lycoming County super voters feel so strongly about conservative candidate Battista, they for sure would have felt just as strongly about conservative candidate Prince. And yet…the results seem to prove that ballot position is the most important determinant

Dauphin County

Dauphin County