Oh Joni, you’re a mean ol’ granny but I like you
Aging hippie and outstanding musician Joni Mitchell became an American citizen this week. After sixty some years of living here, and benefiting from America, she finally became a citizen. She used her newfound freedoms and opportunities to immediately attack the guy responsible for her admission, President Trump.
It was the usual bad form, lack of appreciation, and selfishishness of the political Left, who act like they were raised in caves by packs of wolves or lions.
Having been raised by hippies myself, which is like being raised by wolves, as well as being raised myself by an actual pack of wolves – no lie, absolute truth – I can both relate to Joni Mitchell’s music, enjoy her music, understand her weird counter-culturism, while rejecting a lot of it for the corrosive immaturity it is, and also say “Joni, you are a mean old granny, but I like you.”
One of my favorite songs is Joni Mitchell’s “Carey,” which today serves as a time capsule or a time machine back to the freewheelin’ early 1970s. I recommend listening to it at least twice; once to hear the words, and twice to understand and envision them. If you binge listen to it a bunch of times, you are a normal and healthy person.
And while I am here lauding Joni Mitchell’s song, I would like to say that I wrote an eponymous apology letter recently. It is the epic apology letter of human history, and for the one young reader we have here, I can give you some advice: Follow your heart when you are young. Be like Joni Mitchell in that way, and go where your heart takes you. Be brave; do not let fear or uncertainty stand in your way. You will regret it. And if you do not regret it in your mature years, you have no heart, never did.
Here are two versions of Carey: One where she gives a great on-stage introduction, and the produced version, which is easier on the ears, and thus easier on the mind creating mental images of 1970s Greek beaches… true freedom in a sense.
I saw China dumping today
Today, I saw tangible evidence of China just outright dumping its products at give-away prices, way below manufacturing cost. It was such a dramatic sight that it made me wonder why they are doing this. Come along with me on this trip, and see what conclusions you come to yourself about what we see together.
This morning I arrived at the Pine Run Auction in Linden, PA, good and early. Got my bidder card, #6, and walked around, looking at the items coming up for auction starting at 9:00am. Nearly everyone in attendence looked the same, dressed the same, was the same age. It was humorous, because when I threw on clothes this morning, I thought surely I would be overly rustic. Nope. We all looked the same, all the old rural northcentral Pennsylvania guys. Well, “old” is a relative thing; I was one of the younger men there. And the truly young were in their forties…..
Among the rusty old American farm machinery, tri-axles, crates of machinery attachments, tools, the almost-retired CAT excavators and the chipping and peeling John Deere bulldozers, lay piles, literally piles, heaps, of shrink-wrapped brand-new Chinese made machines. I mean piles. Brand new.
Being sold by the bushel.
Mini excavators and their extra attachments, mini skid steers, machines designed for the enterprising individual American man, sold for a few hundred dollars each. Barely their value as scrap steel. Photos below, if you doubt me.
Begging the question: What is China doing? Why are they taking these huge losses? Is China being beaten down by American tariffs, as our president said they would? Is China’s economy in free-fall? Is China in big economic trouble?
Or is China so wealthy and successful that they can afford to literally just give away their most expensive consumer products, at this huge loss? Imagine all of the myriad other little auction houses like Pine Run, all across America, all auctioning off these same machines, attachments, for pennies. This is a huge amount of steel, rubber, hydraulic fittings, and petroleum stuff being just wholesale dumped across America, by our biggest frenemy.
My impression is that this is the behavior of a drowning person.
Pine Run Auction of Linden, Pennsylvania, might be just one molecular data point in a galactic constellation of economic activity data points generated by one and a half billion human beings (America plus China). But there are calculus equations for calculating the slope (the direction) of a single data point, and while I can barely do one plus one type calculus, my gut instinct about today’s Pine Run Auction is that the Chinese economic slope is heading in a severe angle straight toward the planet’s surface in a huge flaming fireball.
Part of the bidding gang. A lot of bidders participated by Proxibid
Chinese mini excavators that should have cost thousands of dollars, sold for huundreds each.
Steel attachments for the Chinese-made excavators, many of which sold for more than the matching machine, because they will be re-fabricated and adapted for other American machines
Interesting concept, a mini-skid steer. Stacks of them. Selling for hundreds of dollars. How much did China pay to make these, versus how many pennies did they get back?
Cowboy hats and bib overalls, rural America, baby. Way off in the distance Bald Eagle Mountain is visible through the open bay doors
Oh, the ironies swirling around Columbus Day
Yesterday was Columbus Day, the traditional official day where Americans mentally or culturally mark the European discovery of what became America, also known as the New World.
Columbus Day has become a cultural battlefield, a friction point between cultural traditionalists, fair-minded empathists thinking of the displaced Amer-Indians, and cultural Marxists seeking to just tear down all of America and Western Civilization. That my calendars all say that yesterday was both Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day is evidence that the cultural Marxists are successful in penetrating into our national mindset and identity. This is more meaningful than the illegal defacement and vandalism of Christopher Columbus statues everywhere by knuckle-draggers performing as humans.
But oh, the rich ironies that surround all of this debate and discussion and deliberate, wilful ignorance on all sides!
Irony, one asks? Why yes, sh*t tons of ironic moments surround the Columbus debate.
First among them is the scientific fact (not theory) that Christopher Columbus was in fact…Chaim Colon… a Jew. How ironic is it that among the greatest modern tormentors of the Jews (the Spanish, and the Catholic Church) then became the greatest cheerleaders for one, when it suited their own cultural appropriation desires?
And is it not ironic that the evil 1492 Spanish total ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Spain, and the theft of their money, their businesses, their homes, and even their children, and their mass forced conversions and burning alive at the stake for religious “thought crimes,” then resulted in one of these same Jews fleeing the Spanish crime wave, and in his flight with a large crew of Jews aboard the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, Columbus ended up locating a large and largely uninhabited continent upon which all abused people – Celts, Protestants, and Jews – could find refuge?
And was it not ironic that the barbaric Spanish Inquisition, which was really just a mass sadism, rape, pillage, and steal scheme by the Church (led by the ironically appropriately named Queen Isabella, which is the Latin name for Jezebel, the notoriously evil pagan Jewish queen of Biblical times), was so evil that it ended up creating the Protestant Reformation in response?
And that those same fleeing Protestants then populated Columbus’ “New World” and founded the free and prosperous America that we all know and love? That then relies upon the Jewish-Catholic Columbus as its modern day patron saint and national symbol?
Quite a cycle of ironies, stacked on top of one another.
And about this “Indiegnous People’s Day” thingy bob: Who are these Amer-Indians? I mean yeah, we all know they most likely pre-dated the arrival of Europeans, but where did they come from, originally?
ASIA!
As if Asia is any closer to America than Europe…the take-away here being that the American Indians are themselves migratory transplants in America, also from a distant continent. They are, in effect, no different than Christopher Columbus, the Protestant Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, or the subsequent waves of Italian and Irish and European immigrants.
I dunno, but maybe one human migration is the same as another? And if Europeans being here in America is some sort of huge racial crime, then what do we say about the mass invasion of Europe by non-Europeans? Should only fair-skinned indigenous Europeans inhabit Europe? They are the natives there, after all.
Native land is native land is native land, and trying to say that one native land is off limits to subsequent human migration, while the other native land should be wide open, is racially discriminatory. Which I think is actually the whole point of this cultural Marxism attack on Columbus Day and America’s Western heritage. If you ask me, it smells like an imperialistic Han Chinese plot to keep the Asian migration to America wide open, and the undermining of Western freedoms ongoing….
Whole new meaning to “October Surprise”
“October Surprise” is a phrase associated with last-minute, last-ditch, late-in-the-game efforts to damage political opponents right before the annual early November’s Election Day.
Usually based on outright lies, half truths, lies by omission, or some partial evidence of a candidate’s possible or implied failure of character or legality, the “October Surprise” is always cast as a dirty trick meant to make a strong candidate un-electable. An October Surprise is usually a fake smear, amplified by a partisan establishment media, though there are occasional last-minute information releases that are truthful.
Well, it is election season in America, and it is an important one, but tomorrow, October 7th, marks the other kind of “October Surprise.” Like the big, deadly attack that America experienced at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and which brought America directly into World War II. And while our subject October 7th was a surprise attack, and it resulted in a huge sadistic massacre of mostly civilians, it was not just about that one moment. Its implications are world-wide. Even though it occurred in one of the world’s smallest nations, inflicted upon one of the world’s tiniest groups of people.
Three years ago on October 7th, Islamic jihadis broke through the Israeli border near Gaza, and attacked friendly, trusting small villages and a world-love music festival (the Nova Festival). The invading Gazan jihadis committed unspeakable human rights violations, war crimes not seen since World War II, and sadistic atrocities that are unimaginable and even unbelievable to the normal person.
Unfortunately or fortunately, the Gazans proudly recorded their crimes, and the heart-breaking / soul-shocking footage is visible at a lot of websites. Babies burned alive in front of their parents, who were then raped and murdered. Lots and lots of gleeful torture by green-wearing Jihadis, who did the whole Allahu snackbar thing after each crime.
Islamic cruelty is not just a specially noted thing of past European history, or of our own 9-11 plane attack, or of the many crazy reports home from American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is something naturally organic to that desert culture, which we got to see most recently in the 2012 civil war in Syria. Well, all of it was replicated on the Hamas-led civilian attack on Israeli Jews on October 7th.
And while October 7th was supposedly about Gaza, a place the Israelis had completely abandoned in 2005, it was really the opening salvo in a world-wide jihad against the West. Just like Arch Duke Ferdinand’s murder started the dominoes that triggered World War One, it appears that Gaza’s October 7th surprise attack was the beginning of a highly prepared, well coordinated world-wide jihadi assault on Western Civilization.
If there were such a thing as a Muslim peace movement, three years ago would have been the time to see it rise to the occasion. Instead, our planet has been enveloped in a unified mass invasion of Western nations, a massed political attack on Western democracies by the Red-Green Alliance of Islamic jihadis and Marxists, jihadi candidates for Congress and US Senate in Michigan. Using democratic processes and institutions to achieve non-democratic sharia-compliant end results, October 7th triggered an avalanche of attacks on America and Western nations.
October 7th, 2023, was the October Surprise of all October Surprises. Small place, small beginning, but enormous shockwave with civilization-ending implications still building up steam right now.
Tomorrow is October 7th, the modern day Day of Infamy. Folks, ya better try to get everyone around you to wake up. Before it is too late. You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy Levi’s Jewish rye bread, and you don’t have to be Jewish to understand the deep threat to your family implied in October 7th.
You are in a civilizational conflict, whether you realize it, or not, whether you like it, or not.
One good reason to vote for Scott Perry
Scott Perry is the current congressman in Central PA. Has been for something like ten years, maybe twelve…fourteen? As political careers go, Scott is just about to enter the “been around a long time” category, a category I am normally leery of, because long term career politicians always lose touch with their constituents. They become institutions in their own right, and use that institutional hold to self-enrich, while hardly ever doing The People’s business.
Career politicians usually slide into cruise control mode and make pretend about doing something, bloviating, and then go on long vcations.
The fact that Scott has to work hard and campaign hard in a competitive district in order to hold on to his seat is a good thing. It is good for him, because it keeps him honest and responsive, and because it forces him to listen to his constituents. It is good for us, his constituents.
Scott Perry has several different reputations, some I understand and some I just do not understand. Some of these are well-earned, for better and for worse, and some are just bitch-and-moan partisan politics, which I categorially reject. I can say that I have had conversations with Scott where we disagreed, and where we agreed.
One of his good (I think) reputations is as an independent maverick, an independent thinker, his own man, who operates away from political party oversight and control. It is this way of conducting himself that has earned him my vote.
Where each political party has its own constellation of circling sycophantic self-interested parasite groups, say, teacher’s unions for the Democrats and tobacco for Republicans (it is a toss-up which is worse for you, the teacher’s union or constant tobacco use), the unusually rare career political reps like Scott Perry have constructed their own unique support network that is tailored to their own/ his own unique way of advocating and voting. Their financial and political support structure is by nececssity grass roots, organic, natural, and personal. Not the kind of massive, illegal Communist Chinese support that officials like Mitch McConnell (R-KY) get. Or the massive, illegal Islamic Republic of Iran support that Barack Obama (D-Kenya) got.
Over the spring and summer, Congressman Perry did something that few other elected officials in either party did: He opposed Flock Cameras. Wow. This is a brave thing to do, especially in an election year. Takes real conviction and principle for any politician to take a stand against such a political and financial behemoth as Flock Cameras.
Something so powerful, that promises so much (fake) security, what could go wrong, right?
What are Flock Cameras? For those readers living in a cave (welcome to my own cave here, by the way, proud to say it) or in Rio Linda, and who do not know what Flock Cameras are, here is my perception of them:
Flock Cameras are a high technology evil portal to Hell, where, while of and on this earth, they are combining with artificial intelligence (nothing super about that, yet) to quickly bring the end of a free and Constitutional America and usher in the age of robot warfare against humans.
We have already seen the dystopian futuristic movies and read the books they are based on (1984, THX1138, Terminator, etc), to know what an all-seeing anti-privacy robot eye can do to humanity, to you. Well, Flock Cameras are the watching all-seeing surveillance eye sent by Satan to control us. This is no hyperbole, and it is refreshing to see that American citizens of all mindsets and policy thinking are now coalescing around opposing Flock Cameras.
And while lots and lots of elected officials in America were taking Flock Cameras cash, some above board and some apparently undisclosed, and signing very very illegal Non-Disclosure Agreements with the company so it could set up in thousands of communities around America, Scott Perry was one of the few, one of the early voices among elected officials, to say STOP THIS.
Scott Perry is up for election in a month. Some things he promotes I do not agree with, some things he votes for or submits legislation on I do agree with, such as his official opposition to Flock Cameras. Such a love-hate relationship is healthy with elected officials and constituents alike. But then again, this is the thinking person’s approach to politics and policy. People who are trained seals clapping and barking for their partisan “team” will not understand this kind of critical thinking approach to life.
If you are a central PA voter trying to figure out whether to vote for Scott Perry, I recommend voting Yes. If for no other reason he had the balls and principle to stand apart from the big money pack and stake out policy territory popular with The People, but unpopular with elected officialdom. Scott said No to Flock Cameras, and he has thus earned my Yes vote next month.
Calling President Trump! Calling President Trump!
Americans elected Donald John Trump to represent them in 2024, because he ran on a platform of reform and reconfiguration of a tremendously bloated and corrupt federal government. Without question, President Trump hit the ground running in 2025 and began implementing huge changes.
Eliminating USAID was an important step, because it was 100% captured by one political party and was serving as a fire hose of taxpayer money going directly to Democrat Party activist groups.
Ditto for the unneeded Department of Education. If education is a state and local thing, then what the hell does America need a federal agency for, to what end? To further enrich the greedy and destructive teacher’s unions? No thanks. Not a good use of limited taxpayer funds.
Ditto for US EPA, a place I worked for seven years and for whose complete and utter corruption and ideological capture I can personally attest. Burn that place to the ground and start over with a pencil stub and a scrap of paper. Administrator Lee Zeldin is making slow but steady progress towards taming that freakshow.
But one of the problems the Trump Administration faces is the unbelievable lawlessness of the judiciary, where so many ideologically activist judges openly flout the law and Constitution to block Trump Administration policies. Policies that are solely the purview of the Executive Branch, and about which the Judicial Branch should have zero jurisdiction or oversight.
Latest in this judicial over-reach is the White House expulsion of far left ideological activist groups falsely representing themselves as “news reporters.” Included are CNN, MS NOW, and some other openly partisan group that is hardly an arbiter of fact or news, but rather an actor trying to create news and political narrative.
President Trump is within his right as Chief Executive to expel these frauds, and anyone else he wants, from access to the White House, which is the home and office of the Chief Executive. Absolutely no one else has anything to say about White House operations. Not the Congress, not the Judiciary.
And yet, another lawless activist judge has “ordered” that the White House allow these leftist activsts inside its doors…and instead of just saying no to this lawlessness, President Trump appears to be deferential to it.
Recall that judges do not run America. Their decisions are not final, nor are they binding if they are illegal. Judges do not make executive branch policy, nor do they make legislation, which is the purview and job and sole jurisdiction of the Congress. Judges who over-reach and who try to make policy, write legislation, or run executive branch operations are waaaaaay outside their constitutionally defined role, and are putting their own credibility and influence at great risk. Judges who over-reach and then get ignored are like the boy who cried wolf; people stop listening to them altogether.
Recall that American government is set up with three co-equal branches of government, and a natural tension exists between them. That natural balance is upset not only when one branch over-reaches its established jurisdiction, but when it is allowed to do so by the other co-equal branches.
Which is what is happening right now with this aggressive over-reaching judge (and many other judges) and the over-weaning White House.
Yes, America has a Constitutional crisis over press access to the White House only because President Trump is waaaaaayyyy too deferential to lawless judges, who themselves have zero standing in saying how the president runs his White House. There is no other Constitutional issue here, certainly no First Amendment right to access a government building exists, and certainly not the heart of the Executive Branch.
Freedom of the press means that fake news misinformation groups like CNN and MS NOW, as well as actual legitimate news organizations, are free to say to the American public anything they want to say. It does not mean that these disinformation activists at CNN get to go say it wherever they desire to go.
I am not going to elaborate over the double standard here, not only ignored but also sometimes protected by many of the same over-reaching judges now trying to insert themselves into the presidency, compared to when the Joe Biden White House yanked the credentials of 400-some news reporters who refused to regurgitate Biden talking points and narrative. Or when the same Biden White House ordered Twitter and Facebook to shut down political voices and information sources that the Biden Narrative opposed. Or when the Biden FBI kicked in the doors of journalists who were lawfully reporting on the salacious and disgusting contents of Ashley Biden’s diary (she made her father, Joe Biden, sound like he sexually molested her).
No, what is really at the heart of this issue is Donald John Trump’s softness, his dislike of confrontation or of prolonged difficulties. I know, his enemies describe him as the opposite, but the proof is right here in front of us.
He very much wants to make everything into a New York real estate deal, a natural and healthy give-and-take negotiation that results in an even handed resolution. He is also doing it with Hamas in Gaza, Iran’s IRGC, Turkey’s modern day Caleph Erdogan, and with America’s grossly over-reaching judiciary. All with huge problems resulting from his lack of a firm hand, a firm stance. Big mistake, President Trump!
American government involves an on-going, nonstop power struggle among the three branches of government. This natural tension is built into the framework of America’s bones. When it fails, the entire premise of American democratic rule is placed at risk. And it is failing now, because one political party is devoted to grabbing as much power as it can “by any means necessary,” while the other political party is deliberately in avoidance and refuses to fight back, regardless of the cost. One party is crazy, the other is lazy.
And the one man America pinned a badge on to bring order to the chaos is throwing gasoline on the fire, instead of putting it out.
This failure is made worse by President Trump’s outright refusal to stand up for his office, for the Chief Executive, for his basic Constitutional rights as the only person elected by the whole country. Bizarrely, he keeps deferring to his enemies, including this rogue judge, as if they will give him a fair deal, a fair shake, fair treatment. He seems to keep on hoping that his sworn political enemies will somehow come around and see the wisdom of mutual benefit conflict resolution, when the result of his deference and kindness is just more intransigence and confrontation and undermining of his executive role and policies.
It is long past time that President Trump puts his foot down and tells these rogue judges to go ahead and enforce their illegal, unconstitutional decisions, if they can. Without his compliance, their power-grabbing decisions are meaningless. And there is no reason why a self-respecting Chief Executive like President Trump should be outsourcing management of the White House to the Judiciary, which has zero jurisdiction there, especially on White House day to day operations.
Calling President Trump! Calling President Trump! The Bat Light is flashing over Gotham, the bad guys are rampaging through society, and we need you more than ever now! Where are you, President Trump? Where did you go?
Party or Principle: To which are you loyal?
Just curious because of the curious elections going on around America right now. Appears that a lot of Americans are loyal to one political party, and not necessarily to a set of immutable principles.
Which are you loyal to, a political party or to certain principles?
Maybe you remember a certain political party back when it stood for certain principles, and I also remember that political party. From my seat now, it is hard to see how either of America’s two main parties have stayed true to a set of immutable principles, though one party has stayed much closer to its original founding ideas (anti-slavery, keeping the American union of states together, ensuring that new states admitted to the Union were not slave states) than the other.
Used to be that adherence to a political party resulted from agreeing with the policies it sought to implement. That kind of loyalty makes sense. It is a linear, logical relationship. And now that we see one of the American political parties so. freakin. far. from its historic beginnings, and yet still commanding loyalty of half of America, it is hard to square up.
In fact, this one political party is openly devoted to the interests of illegal border jumpers over those of existing American citizens, more supportive of Iran’s IRGC jihadi terror forces than of the American military forces seeking to stop them from nuking America, more supportive of pedophiles and murderers and rapists than of their victims, etc. The list of contrary policy positions is very long for this political party, to which tens of millions of Americans nonetheless pledge their allegiance, their money, and their vote. Imagine that your political party is supported by the IRGC, Russia, China, Cuba, and North Korea….the worst, most oppressive, most cruel, least-free nations all support…the Democrat Party.
Only one explanation for this makes sense to me: Self-destruction is the ultimate virtue signal.
In our modern digital world of personal signals and attempts to stand out, be unique, get noticed, break loneliness, gain influence or fame, nothing says I am superior to others than hating yourself and voting for policies that destroy yourself, your nation, your core necessities.
A stated willingness to sacrifice your own interests is the ultimate statement of purity, of goodness, or moral superiority, these leftists believe.
Problems with this are two:
One, leftists’ self-destructive (“suicidal empathy”) behavior is not limited to just leftists. They seek to impose this same destruction upon everyone else in America. So much for showing anyone the way and how socialism is supposed to be done right by living it successfully for the rest of us skeptics; nope, it has to be forced on us at gunpoint. And in their minds, the socialists are the ones with the guns…
Two, this behavior is based on the super rich irony that you have to be super rich and live in a super rich and super organized nation, like America, to indulge fantasies of self destruction. It requires living among such great wealth that one feels invulnerable, immune to accountability, to be able to entertain these moronic statements and beliefs.
Only spoiled rotten people can dye their hair blue, self-identify as a dog, change their pronouns daily, hate America, hate tax-paying white people, and also demand and expect expensive lattes and gourmet food. Starving people cannot indulge themselves in self-destructive fantasies, just like those humans who already lived under socialism, and got out alive, assiduously reject it.
We saw this mentality most vividly at the nationwide anti-Israel-anti-America-anti-police student + activist university encampments from 2023-2025. Students there made a big deal about going on hunger strikes to make their political point, and then just hours later they whined about the lack of “Door Dash” food deliveries to their violent environment.
Spoiled rotten pampered children of privilege acting out all brave and fierce, only to then complain about not getting exactly the kind of expensive, fancy food to which they are accustomed, or that the police they decried were also nowhere to be seen when needed to protect these overgrown children from each other.
What complete rubbish and childish nonsense.
Leftists and Democrats view America as an eternal safety net that is too big to fail, to which they must never donate but from which they can always take, that America is too successful to collapse under the weight of this sustained assault. At their deepest, leftists appear to believe that self-destruction is some sort of atonement, and that their lives will be better afterwards. And people like me say, in response, are you outta your freakin mind!
There is no food period in your leftist gulags. Forget Door Dash, or expensive lattes; food itself of any sort is in short supply at the education camps these fools envision for others but which will inevitably house them.
A great deal of this discussion is encapsulated in a powerful speech given by a Democrat at the Republican National Convention last week. Yes, he is a Democrat whose own family vilifies him for having broken ranks. But you know what? The people who care the absolute most about political party allegiance, like the Kennedy family, are not interested in ideas, or principles, or in being consistent, or in supporting the US Constitution. Rather, their political party affiliation is either their business, their family, or their religion.
For the Kennedy clan, being a Democrat is strictly business. It is access to power and wealth.
For many unaffiliated Catholics and Jews, the Democrat Party has become both family and the embodiment of their “religious values.” Not that abortion until after birth or defenseless citizens under the jack boot of all-powerful government are values of Judaism or Catholicism, as founded, but to the fallen members of these groups who are far far distant from actual religious teachings, these kinds of vacuous policies have supplanted tradition.
When coupled with the heroin-like dopamine rush these people get for always “voting correctly,” America ends up with tens of millions of uncritical Americans who are not anchored in principle, but who are rather loyal to a political party that changes with the winds, and which openly runs on self-destruction.
Even if that political party is destroying the America that protects and feeds them and caters to their every desire and dream. Their silly fantasy about showing how much they care by killing themselves and their interests takes precedence.
People like me inhabit the other end of the many spectrums (emotional, cognitive, religious) involved here. I am loyal to America’s first principles, its founding ideas, like the superiority of meritocracy, not to any political party, and especially not to any political party that deviates so far from America’s first principles.
And I have a tough time understanding anyone who acts otherwise, except to pity them as the in-effect lost-in-space drug addicts they are.
I am loyal to the ideas the old party used to stand for, not for the crazy, self-destructive policies it promotes today. I did not leave the Democrat Party, it left me.
Remember 9-11
Never forget, never forgive until America gets a full apology.
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MIssing Charlie, Missing America
Today is the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s murder in Utah, on a college campus supposedly devoted to learning, education, ideas, free speech, debate, and so on. Because you were a kind person with a big heart, I miss you, Charlie, and so do a lot of other people. Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 Islamic jihadi attacks on America.
Since the day Charlie was shot by a political leftist incapable of free thought or debate or learning or free speech, America has been subjected to an increasing onslaught of anti-free thought, anti free speech, anti debate, anti ideas by the political Left, especially on college campuses.
Incapable of standing and debating, the political Left and its Islamic jihadi allies always use violence, coercion, suppression, and censorship. Claiming victim status until they have sufficient power to firmly control their political opposition, political Leftists, and their political and cultural allies, demand equal footing in every venue, in every institution. Then, when they have enough votes, they take away everyone else’s vote.
And now, at Ground Zero in Manhattan, where 25 years ago the Twin Towers were hit by two jet airplanes hijacked by Islamic jihadis, and where over 3,000 Americans subsequently lost their lives in horrible deaths, the political Left is once again demanding shared space. Yes indeed, there are demands for a mosque (!) at the Twin Towers site. Because the murderous Islamic hijackers deserve to be remembered as victims, too. As though the murderers are the same as their victims.
Charlie Kirk stood for reasonable debate, but he also stood up firmly for Western culture, Western ideals, Western values. We must carry on this legacy, most importantly through voting for strong pro America, pro freedom candidates.
Charlie’s vision for America (and Europe) challenged people especially on college campuses, because his message was incompatible with the Left’s destructive moral relativism that has taken hold everywhere.
The same moral relativism that demands the 9-11 Islamic hijackers be treated the same as their victims has also infected the minds of the Lindsay Clancy jurors, who are now openly saying in front of cameras in public interviews that Lindsay Clancy was the real victim, not her three little children that she strangled with her bare hands, in her home, in their bedrooms, surrounded by all their teddy bears, toys, and other symbols of safe, happy, hearth and home. These women jurors are talking about “compassion” for the murderer, to the point where they would have her be found not guilty of brutally murdering three innocent children.
In other words, a year after Charlie was shot in the neck by a Leftist, America is still suffering from the Left’s attack on basic human morality and essential civilizational values held the world over, except in materially successful capitalist countries, like America, where citizens have so much stuff that they can afford to invent their own problems. Like so-called “compassion” for brutal child murderers.
Charlie, we miss you, we need you now more than ever, and I know I speak for many when I say that your legacy of freedom, core Western values, and open debate as fundamental to our American culture is not forgotten. Today we remember your martyrdom, and tomorrow we remember the martyrdom of the 3,000 innocent Americans burned alive, crushed alive, thrown into a fifty story fall to pavement alive, by Islamic jihadi murderers.
Hopefully, the lesson we Americans take from all this remembering is that we do not allow yet more Leftists to take elected office and perpetuate, nay, increase, all of this mayhem.
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Dear Labor Day: Make Appliances Great Again, please
How sad that our national holidays have become more about appliance and mattress sales than about the original purpose of, say, President’s Day, or Labor Day. But if I were to set out to write an essay about labor, and what working and worker’s rights mean to me, I would die of boredom trying to write it long before I finish it, and long before anyone might stumble onto it while cruising the internet at 3AM, and stay on it til the end. No one would read it, and even if someone might, I would never write it.
So appliances it is on this Labor Day’s essay, and we begin by asking Dear Labor Day, please make appliances great again.
If America is going to have this huge orgy of heavily advertised consumerism around this national holiday, can we at least have appliances worthy of their hallowed, legendary names and high advertising costs?
One must ask, because planned obsolescence is no longer a sideways joke among a handful of Americans who got burned once; today, everyone I know hates modern appliances. Because modern appliances are craaaaaap. All of ’em.
Got yourself a fancy, expensive WOLF stovetop, do ya? Guess what? It has the same exact cheap crap under the hood that the BOSCH has, that all the other ranges have. A little blue cartridge, some same wiring, some aluminum tubes to carry the natural gas, and four or five little piezo starters that are interchangeable among all of the gas stovetop ranges for sale today. And when the WOLF components go bad is about the same time as the BOSCH components will go bad, because they are all the same components. Just the names and a little bit of visible construction is different among the various makers.
How do I know this? Because I have been the ubiquitous frustrated husband who vows “Oh no ya don’t!” when the expensive appliance stops working, because some small electronic gadget way in the back in it goes bad, and I am faced with the bad choices of either bringing in the technician to fix it at nearly the price of a new appliance, tossing it and buying a new one, or trying to fix it myself, while our entire home just about shuts down until the problem is solved.
And I have now fixed enough of these various types of appliances to know the deal, the score, the trap that we are all presently in.
Recently, I bought a new clothes washer that has zero bells and whistles, does not connect to an application on a phone, has no lid lock, no digital display, no buttons. Quite the opposite: It has some old fashioned dials, an aggressive agitator that will rip your arm off, and is made in America. Smaller than most, by any measure, it cost much more than the fanciest washers for sale.
But it also has a waiting list, because Americans are sick and tired of crappy washing machines that put more emphasis on “efficiency” than they do on just washing clothes. Real market demand is bringing back ye olde fashioned washer.
I don’t care about efficiency when it comes to washing my clothes. I just want my clothes to be real clean, and not take all afternoon to appear clean. No low-energy impeller, a high-energy-suck powerful motor spins the agitator, and creates real water turbulence. The new Speed Queen starts and finishes in about twenty minutes total, and if the clothes survive the ride, they are real clean. You may also end up with very clean rags. This Speed Queen model is marketed to farmers and loggers. Think about that.
We Americans used to buy appliances by name brand, because name brand once meant something real, something substantive. Different brands offered different quality levels, different warranties, different life expectancies. Not anymore. Those days are long gone, far over, and I believe Americans all know it. Everything is now made by cheap whores for cheap whores, and tarted up with fancy shiny things and bold name plaques that are not worth the oxygen molecules you will breathe heavily around them as they are being initially installed in your home.
All are made somewhere far away from where legendary American brands started, out of the same crap internals. All of it, every name brand, all is cheap junk whose cheap junkiness will become revealed to you moments after the warranty runs out.
The places that once employed labor forces of American men and women to make the original name brand models, back in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, the 1970s, they are today deserted ghost towns. Elmira, New York, Utica, New York, half of Ohio, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, these places are overloaded with empty, crumbling brick buildings that once housed the original manufacturers of the famous name brands we so treasure today.
But today, most appliances are made in Won Hung Low, Long Duk Dong, and Chee Ho, China, and they are all crap.
I know that a lot of American husbands think like I do, are probably battle scarred like I am, and they would also happily spend double the price on whatever the appliance is, if they know it was made in America, by American workers, out of sturdy, reliable, long-lived American-made components, and will not require us to make an impossible choice of fix, toss, or replace while our whole home life stalls out in mid-air, waiting.
Can we please make appliances great again?
(Side note: Author-poet-farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry died the other day; he changed a lot of lives for the better. Gil Freedman, whose father built my home address in 1939, and whose bedroom was long inhabited by one of my daughters, died earlier this summer, from Parkinson’s Disease. Gil was an engineer, and also a conservationist and clean streams volunteer; a gentle person. Nicest guy you will ever meet pharmacist and SCUBA SAR volunteer Steve Markowitz died real young last week, of a cancer he only found out about in July. Folks, do not waste your limited days on anything but moving the ball down the field. Because the older I get, that you get, the shorter and shorter the field appears to get, and we are all running out of field to run down, I don’t care how young you think you are. Spread love, be kind, be good, make our shared planet a little bit better. Editor over and out)