Posts Tagged → Democrat Party
Podcasting’s dark side
The other reason I do not have a podcast, is that podcasting has a dark side. And while I may have an occasional “dark side” myself, I neither need any new ones nor do I want this particular extra one added to my already cumbersome burden.
Here’s the thing about podcasting: To succeed, you must devote yourself brilliantly, daily, and even then chase clicks. Most of us are not brilliant, nor can we afford to quit our day job to fully implement a podcast, and so that leaves just the click chasing. Or, as many podcasters who now have opened up a clear view into their own dark side, as is pretty commonly called, they/ you / the aspiring podcaster becomes a “click whore.”
In other words, to aggregate as many internet “clicks” as possible, a podcaster must throw a pretty wide net. This wide net requires the aspiring click whore to essentially bite the heads off of chickens, live (the podcaster, not the chicken, which becomes dead), on air. Yes, the old freak show stunt of biting a head off of a live chicken is perhaps just a teensy exaggeration here, but it is a sad fact that in order to attract and hold viewers, the successful podcaster must really stand out in a crowd. Daily.
As Jim Seif, the former secretary of PA DEP, said in a hearing back in 1998, after taking the podium from the sixth speaker before him, “I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband. I know what to do, I am just not sure I know how to make it exciting.”
Great line, and I have used it several times myself, including on September 11, 2001, when I had just begun giving testimony in a Pennsylvania House hearing on land conservation. Moments later the 9/11 jihadi terror planes began crashing in NYC and DC and Flight 93 hit in rural PA, and everyone in the room was spared my own attempt to make the same warmed over fare seem appetizing, if not exciting. We were evacuated from the PA Capitol as I was in mid speech. Oh, my fortunate audience…
Anyhow, podcasters who have survived six months at it know that they must make the mundane seem exciting, or they must begin breaking taboos and saying naughty no-no things. All of it exciting, yes, until all those live chicken heads inside their stomach begin pecking away, trying to get out. The pressure to perform well enough to draw an audience every day results in some podcasters making nutty claims, and then doing mental backflips and wild leaps of logic to try and keep the whole dog and pony show going. They go nuts.
This dynamic is what destroyed Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens’ podcast careers, and Nick Fuentes has the rest of the same type of podcast listeners, who must also do hits of meth and huffing spray paint while nodding along with whatever repetitive thing he is saying that day.
As a podcaster, you will always find an audience, and some audiences are made of either really bored or simplistic individuals. Many podcasters have an audience of fifty, some get to fifty thousand. To get beyond that number, and thus begin to get enough clicks to make a living, well, you gotta be like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband and perform like a porn star, every night.
Most normal people cannot or will not do this. I am not normal, but neither will I attempt to bend myself into a pretzel shape in order to chase clicks.
Oh, the irony that the ideologically rich and fabulously diverse ecosystem of podcastistan is ruled by such a hard iron rule! Would it not be somewhat of a relief to be a mainstream media personality, and have an incurious audience, or a dumb audience, or, in the case of CNN, almost no audience? So much easier!
This is the life of, say, George Stephanopoulos at ABC. He is an openly politically partisan activist, masquerading as a “news reporter.” He is not a fair-minded arbiter of accuracy or facts, and his audience would fade away were he to become such a person. No chicken head biting or dog and pony show for George Stephanopoulos. Just rote activism, day in and day out. Same boring narrative (“Donald Trump bad, Democrats good“), every day.
But it was this very vacuousness that created podcastistan!
It was the ABC News / mainstream media’s failure to address real substance, or to use accuracy and real facts, and its nonstop political partisanship, that drove thinking Americans away from the legacy media outlets in the first place! And it is this market failure of the mainstream media that is causing parent companies to turn over, say, CBS, to new editors, in the hope of breathing new life into the dead body.
See? There is no easy answer to this podcast thing. To jump into it, you must have something of value to say and the ability to say it in an engaging way. To get an initial audience started and then held, you have to hit the ground running hard. And to then maintain and grow your audience, you must have greatly incisive wit and glowing personality, as well as either a whole roost of chickens or a three ring circus full of dogs and ponies.
Yes, podcasters are better people than the George Stephanopolusususes of the world, but eventually the line between them can become thin, if one is not careful. Or one can become dark, and break taboos, and say naughty no-no things that hurt people, because stimulating a particular audience’s otherwise hidden sadism streak is all ya got left.
So no, no podcasting for ol’ Josh. Nope. None of it is appealing to me, though I do enjoy listening to some podcasts, here and there.
Thanks for being here and listening!
Why isn’t PA in the National Fair in DC?
Came as news to me that there even was a national state fair. Being held on the National Mall, in Washington, DC. Cotton candy, rides, Ferris Wheels, fried foods guaranteed to jump start your heart and then clog it, stuffed teddy bear prizes for your sweetheart, strong man competitions, rope-pulling contests, the usual fun stuff seen at most county and state fairs around America for the past 100 years or more.
Either I do not spend much time online, or the marketers for this big event were not aggressive about it. I just knew nothing about it, read nothing about it, heard nothing about it, had seen nothing about it until a week ago, when it was a couple days away from opening.
Turns out that this “National State Fair” is really big time. Almost a World’s Fair in some ways, with new technology and products being debuted. Pretty darned cool. It runs for a month, and covers America’s 250th birthday celebration on July 4th Independence Day. We are told the fireworks “will be like nothing you have ever seen, that Washington has ever seen.”
Yeah, OK, but is there a place and a role for one of my black powder cannons? Those things really go BOOM.
And so it came as a shock to see recent follow-up articles about how my home state of Pennsylvania is not (or was not) participating in this National State Fair on the National Mall in DC. Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, not participating in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington? Really?
Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State for some good reasons, some historic reasons. We were the keystone colony and then state that held together the northeastern and southern colonies and then states. Home of the Declaration of Independence. Pennsylvania’s natural resources literally built the America you experience today. Our own coal fueled the mills in Steelton and Pittsburgh that smelted our own iron ore into steel, that in turn became the railroad tracks laid on Pennsylvania oak railroad ties (of which I have sawed up many on my own sawmill).
The state of Wyoming is not some western name. It is an eastern name, from the Delaware Indian word for “great grassy plains.” The state of Wyoming is named after the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, because it was the eastern railroads built entirely of Pennsylvania materials that deposited European settlers out on the Wyoming plains (after the Indians had been forced onto reservations). I do not know what the various Indian tribes called what is today Wyoming. But I do know that Pennsylvania had a big hand in making it so.
Pennsylvania coal, iron, and old growth hardwood timber drove the Industrial Revolution in America. Forty minutes due east of Harrisburg is the village of Cornwall, in Lebanon County. An enormous pit there is now filled with water, but it used to be filled with men mining heavy iron ore from the ground. In 1776, those pits were opened to produce the iron to make the cannons that Revolutionary War general George Washington needed to face off against the most hardcore British military, with much of the subsequent cannon blasting and men bleeding happening on Pennsylvania soil (and again at Gettysburg in the Civil War…hmmmmm… this Keystone State thing just keeps raising its head).
I could go on and on about Pennsylvania history in the founding and development of America, but you should get the point here. Pennsylvania got the nickname “Keystone State” for a lot of good reasons, worthy reasons, hard-won reasons.
So, Pennsylvania, having played such a huge role in the founding and early development of America, should naturally be well represented in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington, DC, right? Right? RIGHT?
Ummmm, nope. PA governor Josh Shapiro very recently stated to the press that his administration was unable to locate any PA businesses who wanted to participate in the National State Fair, or who could afford to participate in it.
Apparently, I was not alone in learning this new information, as both of our US senators, John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, have in the past 72 hours leapt to action, together, to find both interested businesses and the private funding to get them situated at the National State Fair.
Their bi-partisan action to save the day for Pennsylvania on the national stage is news in and of itself, because just finding a Democrat who wants to be caught dead anywhere near a Republican, much less work with one towards some common shared goal, like, say, a National State Fair in Washington, DC, is harder than raising Lazarus from the grave.
So bravo! to senators McCormick and Fetterman, who say that they have received an outpouring of interest from all of the associated and related and even distantly related associations, groups, and individuals and businesses. PA -based manufacturers and inventors are especially keen to showcase their wares at the event, and have now publicly said so.
Which brings me back to the lurking elephant in the room (it is more of a big donkey than an elephant): Why is Governor Shapiro not out in front of this, leading the charge down to the National Mall? Why did he just kind of low-T diss this event and downplay it, as if it is no big deal for PA to be AWOL on something so important as the national celebration of America’s 250th birthday?
Does Governor Shapiro really, truly, sadly suffer from an affliction of TDS so terribly fatal that he became grossly partisan and petty about something so important?
What a big missed opportunity this is for a man who has represented himself as a political centrist, a uniter and not a divider. Governor Shapiro has aspirations of being re-elected this Fall, and of possibly running for President of America in 2028. As a former Democrat myself, I find myself shaking meself’s old head, once again, at the sad turn the Democrat Party has not just taken once or twice, but which now continues to take even farther off and over a steep cliff.
That someone of Governor Shapiro’s caliber is sulking and boycotting America’s national 250th birthday celebration is a baaaaaad sign. Bad for our body politic and bad for Governor Shapiro’s larger political aspirations.
Past PA governor Ed Rendell was as partisan a politician as you could find anywhere. Rendell was a huge and tireless champion for the Democrat Party. And yet, Rendell also took every opportunity to work cooperatively with his political opponents when those opportunities were given. Rendell understood that it is better to bask in the spotlight of national appreciation with political opponents, than it is to sulk alone in some partisan silo, holding one’s ball close to the body and vowing to never play with those kids ever again. That behavior is bad for everyone.
Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro likely has better things to do than read this blog, but if he does, I would (and do) ask that he hightail it down to the National Mall, and share the spotlight with the two US senators from Pennsylvania, McCormick (R) and Fetterman (D).
Promoting Pennsylvania is Job #1 for elected officials from Pennsylvania, and doing that with a smile on one’s face makes everyone involved look like emotionally healthy adults. And it makes all Americans feel like there are still some sane, normal people involved in retail politics. People we can look to for leadership. People who care about all of America, and not just about their own little slice of the electorate, off in some corner, away from everyone else American.
Now, please excuse me while I go hang my Happy 250th America flag on my front porch.
January 2026 vs “January 6th”
One of the toughest lessons we learned in 2020 was that delaying tough action against open rebellion, lawlessness, insurrection, election fraud, results in power illegally transferring to the people doing those things.
We damned near lost America in 2020, and I do not believe the insurrectionists now rebelling against the enforcement of federal law will stop once they have regained power. The force they are trying to impose on America must meet the force we elected to stop them.
Think about how the overwhelmingly peaceful protest of January 6th 2021 was used as a political weapon, to target you, Mister President, and your strongest supporters. Maybe a few hundred people behaved badly, many of whom were federal agents or official provocateurs paid by our own government.
And compare J6 with the entire January of 2026, where entire cities and entire states are in open rebellion against the federal government. Hundreds of thousands of people there are breaking the law daily in Minnesota, as compared to a few hundred people for a few hours on January 6th 2021. Much political hay was made over J6, but very little has been made over the January of 2026. Big mistake.
“Sanctuary” states and cities, where thousands or millions of illegal aliens illegally vote (for just one political party), are themselves alone cause enough for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. It has been used many times by many presidents in the past. It is high time, past time, almost too late to use force to quell the open rebellion going on in Minnesota. Just for the illegal use of illegal aliens to get illegal votes and an artificially higher Census count.
And that rebellion in Minnesota is being done to obscure and protect the artificially dominant political party there from being subjected to necessary legal scrutiny, for all of the outrageous taxpayer fraud being committed of, by, and for that one political party. Done by its artificially imported foreigners, mostly unassimilated Somalis, whose disdain for America and hard working taxpaying Americans is not hidden or disguised. It is enabled by the political structure of Minnesota.
One of Donald Trump’s main weaknesses is that he is a reasonable guy, who thinks negotiating a win-win outcome in every situation is not just in everyone’s best interests, but is sufficient incentive for bad actors to stop. It is the capitalist version of the leftist mantra “If we are nice to them, they will see that we are good, and they will not harm us.”
Sorry, President Trump, you are mistaken here, as you were mistaken in 2020. You thought back then that appealing to the Left’s better ideals and sense of fairness would cause them to relent from their open theft of the election. And you were wrong. And you are wrong again now, having useless AG Pam Bondi send strongly worded letters, instead of sending in the troops to restore order and arresting open criminals (governor) Tim Walz and (Minneapolis mayor) Jacob Frey.
You (and I) are up against people for whom nothing matters more than amassing unassailable power, tyrannical power, absolute power, total power. It is all they want and it is all they understand. And anything short of getting that results in them rioting, burning, looting, murdering etc.
You cannot reason with these people. You cannot beg these people. You cannot ask these people.
They got caught running a gigantic RICO fraud scheme with Somali-run childcare etc, all of which sent billions of dollars to Tim Walz’s political party and to Somalia itself, and they are going to throw tantrums and hurt people and break things to make you back down. They cannot afford to lose.
Don’t back down. America cannot afford to lose this contest.
Invoke the Insurrection Act and behave like American hero Abraham Lincoln was forced to act, when the Democrat Party of 1860 also engaged in a wild, violent, nationwide insurrection. End this now, or you will be remembered as the president who blinked, and who lost America.
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Is it January 2026 or December 1859?
I know the date today is January 13, 2026. But it sure feels like late 1859, after anti-slavery Republicans won America’s national elections and the pro slavery Democrat Party went into violent insurrection mode.
Right now, it appears that pretty much every single Democrat Party run jurisdiction is a haven for illegal invaders, Democrat Party-organized government fraud, and election fraud. It sure appears that every single one of these jurisdictions is against ICE removing illegal aliens, including the illegal alien rapists, murderers, child dealers, etc, so that the illegal aliens can be turned into illegal voters and also be illegally counted in the US Census.
Counting illegal aliens in the US Census (illegally) gives greater proportional representation to areas that harbor illegal aliens, and thus more political power than these areas would otherwise qualify for. This in turn takes away political power from American citizen taxpayers who play by the rules and who follow the law.
Chasing out federal investigators tracking down state government-enabled fraud in federal welfare programs also helps the state Democrat Party avoid accountability. This looks like illegal rebellion to me, but what do I know. I do know that this is not how “democracy” works.
Minnesota may be in the headlines for its well organized Somali-run fraud that is hooked up to the Democrat Party like a Dollar bill firehose, but now there are indications that every single place run by the Democrat Party is like this. Essentially the Democrat Party is a big RICO enterprise, using taxpayer-funded government welfare programs to enable its political efforts. Obviously this is totally illegal and completely at odds with the way America is arranged.
Until now, America has been a trust-based society, with legal accountability for criminal activity. Now, it seems that anyone on the political Left can say or do anything they want, without receiving corrective action. Or worse, they can try to run over a federal officer with their SUV, get shot in defense, and become an overnight martyr.
That the Republican Party is indifferent to this unfolding disaster does not help Americans recapture control of their own nation, politically or culturally. A lot of elected Republicans try to pose as “moderate” which enables them to escape from making any difficult decisions, one way or another. These “Republicans” hold elected office for the insider deals, the prestige, the power, not to zealously represent the interests of their citizens.
That the American Attorney General, Pam Bondi, does not aggressively pursue investigations and federal charges against everyone involved also does not help us Americans recapture our nation from the clutches of criminals and freeloaders. Her inactivity energizes and encourages the rebellion we are witnessing.
Why AG Pam Bondi is inactive is anyone’s guess. Some people muse that she was a RINO plant from the get-go, while others speculate that she immediately folded under the intense pressure of the job, and decided that she would rather go on TV talk shows and get paid tons of money to speak “as a Republican” than to actually do her job and make waves and make enemies.
All I see is an AG who does nothing in her important job. Or next to nothing. On January 6th the statute of limitations passed for holding federal police officers accountable for their civil rights violations against peaceful J6 protestors. We are quickly approaching the end of the statute of limitations for holding various prison officials, FBI agents, DHS agents, and US Marshals accountable for their torture and abuse of J6 prisoners. The list of prospective criminals is long, and the list of AG Bondi’s actions is very brief.
So it appears that the insurrectionist Democrat Party of 1859 is fully back in business. But that political party learned a few tricks in the intervening years after they lost the Civil War to the abolitionist Republicans. The Democrats learned to buy their most reliable dependants through welfare programs and defrauding said welfare programs, rather than trying to coercively enslave these people from the get-go. Yes, the Democrat Party has spoken loudly about disarming and collectivizing and oppressing and enslaving the rest of us Americans who do not embrace their form of Marxism. But in order to do that, the Democrat Party needs as much political power as it can get first and foremost. Hence the illegal voters…
And so we are watching street battles in Minnesota, California, New York, and other Democrat-run cities, where Democrat Party insurgents are pitted against federal agents who are enforcing basic federal law. A ton of naturalized citizens moved to America with zero interest or intention to assimilate into America, and some of them are involved in the most strenuous insurrectionist verbage. These people moved to America not to join it, but to destroy it from within. Why they are not being arrested, denaturalized, and deported is beyond my comprehension. But then see the paragraph above about paralyzed Republicans who are unable to lift a finger against lawlessness…
Right now it sure looks like America in late 1859, as the pro-slavery Democrat Party decided to take on the anti-slavery North, sparking a destructive civil war. I really really hope we avoid that this time around. A firm hand and non-stop one-way flights to distant destinations will stop this crap before it gets fully out of hand. But then see the paragraph above about paralyzed Republicans who are unable to lift a finger against lawlessness…
Good luck, America. I love you! It is still January, and I am really looking forward to a great and successful 2026, not a revisit of 1859 and 1860 and 1861…
Democrat Party shut down the US govt, aiming for America
American federal government has been shut down for weeks now, as a result of all Democrat Party US senators being unwilling to vote for the same continuing resolution bill they voted for four or five times already in the past several years. Because this funding bill requires a super-majority, not a simple majority, even the minority party (Democrat) can stop it.
Much has been said elsewhere about why the Democrat Party would not vote to keep their own precious government open and their own precious federal workers (Democrat) on the job and paid. Yes, it is true that they (Democrats) are demanding (forgotten) taxpayer subsidies for illegal alien healthcare that (forgotten) taxpaying Americans themselves do not qualify for, let that sink in.
And yes, these same recalcitrant senators have already voted a bunch of times for the same “clean” bill before, without the illegal alien healthcare subsidies they want put in it now.
But what seems to be missing in the public debate about why the Democrat Party has shut down the American federal government is the real why. The core purpose. Which seems to be their goal of shutting down America, all of it, all of us, forever.
After all, this is the same group of people (elected Democrats) who allowed an incredible illegal invasion of America to happen from 2021 to 2024. The roughly 15 Million illegal aliens who illegally crossed our borders imposed budget-breaking costs on hospitals, public schools, and public infrastructure, and sky-high crime rates that overwhelmed police departments and court systems.
You don’t allow America to be overwhelmed and severely damaged, if you love America.
This is the same group of people (elected Democrats) who have time after time, even this weekend, sided with violent illegal alien criminals over American citizens, sided with South American drug dealers and child sex slave traffickers over American citizens, sided with violent repeat American criminals over law abiding American citizens, etc.
The Democrat Party is openly not on the side of America being successful or peaceful or happy. Rather, they (Democrats) are public about their disdain for pretty much everything that makes America successful. Except your tax money, of which they want a lot more.
So this government funding dispute seems to be really about just shutting down America, totally, trying to create all of the chaos and unhappiness possible, and probably also about trying to stop the Trump Administration from operating.
For the umpteenth time over the past ten years at least, it sure appears that the Democrat Party wants to once again burn America to the ground.
So I have a question for registered Democrats: Can you explain this situation? Can you defend it? Can you help us bystanders understand it?
Can you tell us what the Democrat Party stands for that American citizens might support? Can you explain why you continue to vote for Democrat candidates?
I ask as a former Democrat myself. Because I did not leave the Democrat Party, they left me; just like they are leaving America behind right now. And I am confused about how anyone who loves America continues to support this bizarre and destructive organization.
Why retain lousy judges?
Pennsylvania voters will have the rare opportunity to NOT RETAIN three lousy judges in a few weeks, and how can you vote to retain these people?
Don’t!
The “PA Dems” send me their daily emails, which I dutifully read. It is fascinating material, mostly because there is no substance to it. It relies on an “Us vs. Them” version of politics, which I think most Americans are tired of in so many ways. This same tribal hate-filled scapegoating is what got Charlie Kirk murdered, and which has boiled up from the far-far-Left gutter of the Democrat Party’s base.
Just like the phony “COEXIST” bumper sticker, the old “Hate is Not a Family Value” bumper sticker also was a bold lie. Americans who sported these on their cars were neither coexisters nor peace loving non-haters. The coexist people are the meanest, angriest, least capable of co-existing with different Americans, and hate is now an out-and-proud defining characteristic of the Democrat Party base.
It all flows from the 1960s Marxist academics, like Herbert Marcuse, who told their college students that it is OK to hate and hurt people who disagree with Marxists, because those people are automatically just bad, bad people, and they deserve to be hated, and hurt. And so hate has become a fundamental part of the Democrat Party messaging, including the emails that I get.
The PA Dems say that the court is their “firewall” on policy, but this is all wrong, that is not what courts are supposed to do. Congress and state legislatures are charged with writing laws and policy, and the courts are supposed to simply interpret it all as either consistent with the constitution, or not. Not act as another legislature of just a few people. And so it is this political activist judge thing that has got so many Pennsylvanians wound up tight about this upcoming retention vote.
Says one activist I admire, “Vote “NO” to retain the PA Supreme Court Justices. Below are the current salaries of those justices along with all tiers of the judicial system including our local Common Pleas Court Judges. By choosing to run for retention instead of re-election, these Justices, if retained, will be serving another 10-year term in which their salary for that time will total $2,619,760, and the Chief Justice will receive a total of $2,695,990. I don’t believe she can serve another full term due to mandatory retirement age in another two years or so. In addition to their generous salary, they also receive an annual cost of living raise and the best benefits as far as healthcare, prescription drugs and eye care. Regardless of the justices being on the wrong side of so many issues, there is no reason to hand them another term instead of making them stand for election.”
In other words, the judges chose a simple political dodge instead of running a real campaign, to stay in their cozy taxpayer funded jobs. Even one who should automatically age out in just a couple years!
We do not need more elected officials with this rotten, selfish mindset.
Additionally, the activist policies these judges pushed were destructive nonsense that served the political interests of just one political party, at the cost of tossing our rule of law right out the window along with believable election results:
- they approved a heavily gerrymandered electoral map, which a lot of Americans say they do not like,
- they allowed the use of highly corrupt vote “drop boxes” despite Act 77 not authorizing them,
- they extended the deadline for mail-in ballots by three days, in violation of the law, among other non-legal, anti-legal decisions that damaged Pennsylvania’s election integrity
Christine Donohue, David Wecht, and Kevin Dougherty do not deserve to serve as judges any longer. They have failed at this job, badly, and they should not be retained. Time for a change, time for people with integrity to sit in those seats.
Vote NO on November 4th to not retain them on the court.
You must flip over your ballot to check the NO box.
And you can also term-out Judge Dubow and Judge Wojcik, too.
A Tale of Two Men, Two Peoples
We have in the past couple weeks been able to observe the best and worst of human behavior in America. Since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the outpouring of grief and love on the one side, and the mockery, cruelty and evil on the other, has stratified Americans like few other events.
Even the George Floyd response (before the resulting burning, looting, and murdering riots) had some basis in widespread earnest initial belief that Floyd had been unfairly killed by a policeman, which crossed all political and ideological boundaries.
Not the Charlie Kirk assassination.
Starting the day of his assassination until just a few days ago, I have spent a good deal of time with mainstream liberal Americans at different events, and I can tell you there is no sensitivity there, that I can detect. No sorrow, and no open animosity, either. Indifference mostly, as far as I can tell. Unless we scratch the surface…
Last week, at a mostly liberal soiree in a special place, a nice looking older woman approached me and chatted with me. Her name tag said she was from New Jersey, so I made some humorous quip about the unfavorable Pennsylvania view of New Jersey’s polluted environment and its erratic drivers.
“Oh no, I live in the center of the state, near Princeton,” the nice lady replied. “Though I have to admit I also live near HIS golf course, if you know what I mean. The TRUMP golf course.”
Her eyebrows arched up and down with implied meaning. Apparently rotten-to-the-core Princeton is just fine, but a pretty golf course has all sorts of problems for her.
Said I, using one of my standard golf-related quips, “I do not play golf, I hunt. Because there is not a golf course anywhere on this planet with sufficient liability insurance to allow me to pick up a club. I am safer to be around with a shotgun chasing after geese in the water hazards than swinging at a ball.”
She smiled wanly, un-used to meeting anyone at a posh soiree who does not at least pretend to like golf. When our pregnant quiet moment was at its ripest, I followed up with “Besides, I am a huge Trump fan. And I don’t think we should all be shooting at each other over these differences, because we are all Americans and can work out our differences with our words.”
What she said surprised the hell out of me: “No, we shouldn’t.” And then she was gone, a scowl on her attractive visage. As if anyone on the Trump side of things has been shooting anyone, anywhere. Or maybe she meant that we shouldn’t be using our words…?
There are two different peoples here right now, inhabiting our country. Each one orbiting two different men, Christian activist Charlie Kirk, on the one hand, and once-humorist pagan Hollywooder Jimmy Kimmel, now fired and late of late night TV, on the other hand.
While some Americans oppose Charlie Kirk’s policy preferences on intellectual grounds, I guess, a lot of them also seem to be seething with hatred or animosity about him and anyone associated with him. This is strange to me, because Charlie Kirk never hurt anyone. He was a gentle person, civil, generous, a listener, he asked questions. He did politics the right way: He talked. What on earth about him would make people filled with hate?
Yes, he had some strong opinions based on his Biblical values, the same values that founded America. And….guess what? His political opponents also have strong views, based on God only knows what, because I do not know. Does having strong opinions simply make a person a bad person? If so, then the hate should flow both ways. But it does not.
It appears that the ever-angry, lying, mis-informing, wildly partisan Jimmy Kimmel is fully representative of the political Left and the Democrat Party partisans right now. When faced with consequences for his poor behavior (mocking the assassination of Kirk and lying about who did it), Kimmel is defiant and petulant. People losing their TV and radio shows in the cancel culture war was fine for Kimmel when they had different opinions than he. However, when the shoe is on his foot, and his words fail in the marketplace, suddenly he is aggrieved, and foot stomping, and like a spoiled child demanding demanding demanding.
Never mind that Kimmel was in essence telling leftists that they could murder their political opponents for disagreeing, and that TV personalities would cover for them. Kimmel was violating the basic conditions on which his employer, ABC, had been granted an FCC public broadcast license decades ago. We can debate whether the FCC should even exist, but it does right now, and if one has a broadcast license from the FCC right now, then one must meet its “public benefit” requirement, or let go of it. Kimmel’s lies placed his employer’s FCC license at risk, and so his employer cut him loose and with him the liability.
When we compare and contrast Kirk vs Kimmel, we see two totally opposite men, and totally opposite ways of conducting one’s self in public and in private. Charlie Kirk’s assassination has brought out a lot of good people, and also a lot of troubled people. We now have a tale of two different men, and the two very different peoples surrounding them.
I hope you, dear reader, choose the gentle one. America needs this, not the hate.
Labor: To work for something of value
Today is Labor Day in the USA, and while it might have some bad Marxist roots with the early unions, the fact is that it has also evolved into the uglier side of capitalism, which is an orgy of shallow consumerism. Big retail sales of everything from underpants to mattresses to cars, America today is awash in carnival tents and men in top hats and coat tails, barking loudly at the masses to step right up and buy the latest greatest gadget or whatever.
Not too long ago, labor unions played such an important role in American politics (and in British politics, for that matter), that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet knew precisely what Labor Day was about. That most Americans, especially our youth, make little or no mental connection between Labor Day and the people who labor away with their hands and bodies to make things of value for us, for them, is the real take-away meaning of today’s national holiday.
But how could young people know, or older Americans recall, what Labor Day is about if nearly all of our labor has been curiously shipped overseas, and to our enemies, no less? A factory job was the family and church and community- sustaining source of income from the 1930s until about 2000, when the last of our American factories were carefully packaged up and sent to China. Now we have 25 years of no no labor and no factories, just Rust Belt husks of buildings, churches, and communities across the Eastern and Mid-Western USA. No wonder our kids are clueless about Labor Day.
However, our snickering elected officials know precisely what Labor Day is about, because it is still directly relevant to them. These self-anointed elites who seek to dominate all of us use our labor to enrich themselves, through the mis-appropriation and mis-spending of our tax monies. This self-destructive activity happens most and worst in liberal “blue” states run by the Democrat Party, where voters enable single-party rule without the checks and balances of multi-party competition. That this repetitive voting pattern is self-defeating seems not to matter to leftist messianic utopians, whose Big Government god requires nonstop sacrifice and endless cash invested in friendly “businesses”.
Where does this endless cash come from, which enables the extravagant “public servant” aristocracy? YOU.
You labor, pay high taxes on your income, and that tax money is taken for messianic utopian policies, like disproven climate change nonsense, that enriches other blue aristocrats who are invested in these schemes.
Ideally, you, the citizen, pay taxes to the government so the government can pay for services to you, the citizen: Firemen, policemen, public education in math, history, and spelling, public roads, trash pickup, etc. This is the social compact of democratic representative government; you get concrete services in return for relinquishing your own money to the Tax Man.
But when government becomes detached from the symbiotic relationship, and begins doing things for itself, and ignoring the citizen, you have tyranny. This is becoming brutally apparent in Britain, France, and liberal states in America. California is an especially scary place because of how far out of alignment the state government is with the citizenry. No services, but instead illegal migrants, homeless encamped in private front yards, general lawlessness, and the highest of high taxes to boot. Complete breakdown of the social compact between citizen and government, and don’t you dare step out of line.
This failure continues because most of the citizenry continues to vote for a single dominant political party that hates the citizenry. In liberal venues, hating yourself is the greatest of virtue signals, and is highly rewarded with public acclamation. I myself could not live in such an unsustainable and bizarre place. The people there are living off of the banked fumes of once-great capitalist endeavors there, now either departed or departing for Texas, Tennessee, or Florida.
Last week Britain’s highest court ruled that the illegal migrants overwhelming British society – built with citizen labor taxes – have higher value and more rights than the citizens themselves. Such brazen detachment from the long established democratic social compact means the British citizens are now mere money sources, slaves, really, infested by and under the boot heel of a parasitic government and its new stakeholders, the illegals, who contribute nothing and demand everything.
Even the British Union Jack flag is being outlawed on the streets of Britain, because it “offends” the illegal border invaders! Say the “wrong” thing about this, do the “wrong” thing about this, and you actually go to jail. True tyranny, not freedom, not democracy.
Britain is headed to civil war, as any nation would be where the government has turned against the people it is supposed to serve, and upon whose tax-paying largesse the government depends. The same thing is happening here in American blue states, where entrenched single party rule, based on a taxpaying slave-political elite slave owner relationship, is about to be confronted by a fed-up federal government trying to hold the Union together. Something of value worth laboring for, again, as it was in 1861.
This is the meaning of Labor Day today.
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)
Judges Gone Wild
Years ago, hell probably decades ago, who the hell can remember any more, an entire film and entertainment genre was spawned based on amateur videos of “college girls” acting foolishly during Spring Break. The videos showed young, scantily clad women drunk and casual with their bodies, behaving badly or naughtily. Their carefree public exhibitions of what used to be private behavior fit within the free-wheelin’, whimsical attitudes of the 1980s.
Then followed cops gone wild, truckers gone wild, old people gone wild (usually hitting one another with their canes), and moments later, the adult movie industry riffed on the theme with whatever variations the human mind can possibly contrive, and well, here we are.
The general idea stuck, and is now a part of America’s daily lexicon. The “… Gone Wild” moniker has now come to represent how almost all human beings have a hidden wild side, a capacity for indecorous or careless behavior in view of the ogling public, regardless of income or education or upbringing. “And we have the videos and photos to prove it,” is what makes it all so enjoyable to the viewer.
Now we have a pretty fascinating addition to the Gone Wild entourage, that being some American judges. Turns out, highly educated people wearing ominous black robes and sitting in severe command of their court rooms, theoretically laying down the law of the land, have a capacity for indecorous behavior as well. Not just any judges, but overwhelmingly (92%) judges nominated by Democrat Party presidents.
Described as the “resistance judges,” a host of far-Left politically radical judges have issued decisions that have nothing to do with the American law, but everything to do with a personal commitment to opposing everything the Trump Administration does. If someone brings a lawsuit against the Trump Administration in one of these judges’ court rooms, there is a very high likelihood that the judge will rule against President Trump, regardless of what the law or the Constitution say. And then the judge will follow up with all kinds of non-judicial orders and demands for information that these judges have no business seeing.
It is as if these judges are trying to take over the day to day decision making of the executive branch. Which is so crazy, destructive, and unconstitutional that it has landed the judges in the Gone Wild category.
Recall that the American government is formed of three co-equal branches, each with their own lane, their own bailiwick, their own distinct role: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. Judges are not lawmakers, and their decisions are not law, nor are their decisions the final word on the law. As originally designed, the courts were simply to say if an executive or legislative decision was constitutional, or not. Judges have no right to make law and policy out of thin air, creating detailed government actions.
However, a hundred years of aggressive judicial expansion into performing the roles of the executive and legislative branches has resulted in a culture of un-earned deference to judicial activism. As if Judges Gone Wild deserve the same respect as judges who are cautious and careful with their decisions, who follow the plain letter of the law and Constitution, and who steer clear of acrimonious and often highly personal decisions.
This deference to wild people wearing black robes cannot stand, because the entire arrangement of our three separate branches of government is disintegrated. When a judge assumes the power of the executive branch, and begins making executive branch decisions, you do have a crisis. And the system must respond in kind and restore order and balance.
Yes, we all understand the political Left does not care about order or balance, but rather prefers chaos, destruction, mayhem and violence. The entire Democrat Party seems devoted to destroying America, hurting American citizens, protecting waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds, and burning Tesla dealerships and cars. But the entire American body politic is not Leftist, but rather centrist, i.e. at the middle where balance is found, and I cannot imagine that regular, normal taxpaying Americans will stand for this ongoing violence and lawlessness, even if some wild judges say it must continue.
Such as a Democrat president illegally imports ten million illegal aliens into America without response from the courts, which then immediately demand that none of the violent criminal illegal aliens be deported by the incoming Republican president. This is lawless, wild behavior by radical judges who do not respect the rule of law. It is a “legal” insurrection against the American People by a handful of un-elected people who are supposed to know better. But their commitment to chaos and destruction outweighs their respect for the carefully crafted legal system.
Presently there are discussions about how to address these Judges Gone Wild: Defund their offices, eliminate their offices, ignore their lawless decisions, impeach them. None of us know how this is going to turn out, but one thing is certain, the American People overwhelmingly voted in 2024 for a hard-about turn and change from this same lawlessness and Government Gone Wild behavior. It is difficult to understand how the Democrat Party is going to gain voter support while it stands for general lawlessness, placing violent criminal illegal aliens above the interests of our own American citizens, or continuing to waste and fraudulently abuse hard-earned taxpayer money.
But I guess the Democrat Party is not really thinking logically about the outcomes of their actions. They are in Gone Wild mode, come what may.
Over twenty years two thirds of injunctions were issued against Trump by nearly 100% far-left Democrat appointed district judges. Lawfare much?
