After last year’s election and especially since January there has been a noticeable change of tone, one of hope, freedom, even excitement. Your posts reflect that and I’m always an avid reader of your stories. Nevertheless, I can’t but worry that this is a short lived moment, calm before the storm. Institutions are totally corrupted, an important and significant part of the population lobotomized, the rich donors richer by the day. What will happen when the tables turn? I really wish Trump stood by his promises, stopped American interference abroad, and focused each and every day on cleaning up the mess in his backyard. Unfortunately, I believe he’s lost the plot.
I am amazed at what Trump has accomplished in 8(!) months.
Border is closed, illegals being deported, 25,000 missing children saved.
USAid closed bankrupting, hundreds of NGOs, tens of thousands government employees let go and hundreds of legacy media personalities and staff fired.
The BBB gives clarity on taxes, bankrupted Planned Parenthood and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and last week the CBO said, "Oops! The BBB in 10 years will generate a $300 net surplus, not a $3 trillion deficit." Hint: The surplus will be much bigger.
Tariffs--will bring in $1.2 trillion annually, with no inflation. We are in an economic war to level the playing field for American businesses to avoid a kinetic war.
The Fed and Treasury--created an entire new market for U.S. Treasuries with US dollar stable coin (USDT). (Whatever happened to the $8 trillion bomb left by Yellen in Treasuries coming due that would bankrupt the U.S. this summer? Solved, and interest rates are lower., which no Wall Street. "expert" predicted.)
Next up, freeing Fannie and Freddie from conservatorship where Obama skimmed hundreds of $billions ANNUALLY for NGOs, setting the stage for the largest IPO in history to recapitalize the woking class with low interest rate mortgages.
Regulations--EPA out of the climate change nonsense. CAFE standards for automobiles, SUVs and pick-up trucks eliminated. DEI dead in the government.
Jobs--fast tracked skilled trades licensing with a 1 million man program, just effectively killed H1B Visa program with $100,000 fee.
This little list is just 1/1000th of what Trump has accomplished in rolling back bloated and corrupt practices, and he did it in the face of an unprecedented tsunami of lawfare in District II courts, a hostile press and a hostile Congress.
Exactly, that's what I see as well. Also, many arrests have been made for yrs but it's been kept quiet - you don't want to give your hand away to the deep state ones who haven't been arrested yet. There are numerous actors playing the roles of those who have been arrested, I've noticed that a lot of these folks now are different heights than they used to be just for one. Also if you check earlobes they are a giveaway. I'm glad you posted what you did, great post and summar!
I think most MAGA are upset about the lack of accountability and only 1 arrest of deep state actors. I also think many misunderstand what Trump has accomplished abroad, because most people find it hard to comprehend that our mortal enemy is the City of London and the Davos crowd.
Where is John Brennan, for instance? He disappeared after Tulsi released RussiaGate intelligence.
Hillar, Barack etc. were arrested in Trump's first year as president, there are videos of this, don't know if they are still up but they were on You Tube for a long time. They had to take down main players first or else none of the white hats would be alive, they would have been killed by now. The arrests are almost finished, follow military sources by white hats. There's A LOT of info out there but you have to dig deep. Also I don't see a lack of accountability, Trump sends quiet messages to us all the time, but we have to decode them. You don't broadcast your plans to the enemy in war and this is the biggest war the world has ever seen. It's good against evil and it is worldwide. Agreed about City of London and Davos crowd.
You have to do more than just follow events - you have to put the pieces together. Videos were put out in fall of 2017 showing them being arrested. Michelle was with Obama and they both were arrested. The truth IS out there but you have to hunt for it.
Beautiful pictures - in words and visual images Chris. I remember Morro Bay - spectacular reality. Thanks for this timely reminder of the nature of reality and the reality of nature!
Yesterday I went to church here in deepest blue Northern California and met the most wonderful people. There were several of us who were there for the first time. The pastor encouraged us during his sermon to all to be more vocal and outward-facing about our traditional values, even though there is so much pushback around us.
I haven’t felt this hopeful in years.
I love California and can’t imagine giving it up. It is so worth saving. I want every American to feel proud of California, to feel welcome to come here and see our incredible landscapes, and viscerally understand why we won’t leave it behind. Never give up!!
Likely it was not a Lutheran, Episcopal or Protestant denomination church. Nor a Catholic Church. All those groups are still woke and lefty, especially in “deepest blue NoCA”. A non denominational Christian Church, perhaps?
We kept our California residence when we opted for other shores (and ended up in two of the wokest spots on earth, Boston and Bruxelles). When we return every year, it’s to the wonderful other California you describe here—at least until we’ve been there a while. I recall thinking that neither Bush nor Gore could completely screw up the country in 8 short years and then applying the same “logic” to Newsome. But we’ve come to see that it isn’t just the pols who have been corrupted—the rot has spread to even our better friends, whose acceptance of their social and philosophical half-lives baffles us no end. It will take a generation to dig us out of this one.
Think of it like building infrastructure...except it's the infrastructure of ruin.
It took a lot of work to take the richest state in the nation and replace competent, or at least not maliciously incompetent, people with incompetent, arrogant fools. But we've begun seeing the results of decades of Democrat work really paying off in Cali.
You hear a lot of people wondering who moved toward the edges of public debate in the last decade or so, and I’m of the opinion that it is the left. Many of my good liberal friends hold opinions today that they never would have entertained even ten years ago. I’ve always been a bit of a Mercutio (“A plague on both your houses!”), and that hasn’t changed more than an inch or two. To paraphrase Patrick Henry, “Give me efficiency or give me death (or at least a tax cut)!!!” My right wing friends are still a bit loopy, but no more than they ever were. My lib friends are all wallowing in a pool of the shallowest nihilism.
“Many of my good liberal friends hold opinions today that they never would have entertained even ten years ago.”
And I would add that they have absolutely no consciousness of this fact — and what’s more, they would vociferously deny it. But those denials don’t change the truth…. They are living in a backwards mirror image of the Colin Wright political cartoon, where they believe that THEY have stayed the same , while everyone else has shifted to the “far right”.
This is my experience as well. I've been eligible to vote since Bill Clinton's second term and Democrats my age would be viewed as raving radicals by the 1997 version of themselves.
I am a third generation Californian. My grandmother moved here prior to WWI. My best vacations have been in the Sierras, camping and fishing. I am sad to report that I have given up on the state and with my retirement looming ahead of me, am planning to flee to somewhere slightly more sane (admittedly a very low bar).
It is good to walk away from the insular chatter of algorithmic social media and breath fresh air and talk to others. A few days after Charlie was shot, I had to disconnect. The drama of the offended and offender (which is everyone as your POV shifts) was more than I could handle. I've walked back slowly, but really happy to have missed most of it.
I grew up with people who remembered the smell of orange blossoms sceting the air around Los Angeles when they were kids. My mother was born in San Francisco, such an incredibly beautiful city that is unrecognizable in some places it has been so crippled by woke corruption. I love my state. Let's get it back.
I grew up in suburban NYC and I can vividly remember my first visit to CA. I was 19, in the US Navy and didn't know a damn thing, but I recognized it as a place of magical beauty immediately. Decades later I would hike with a German work colleague for hours in freezing rain at Mount Baldy. After, we drove down to Rancho Cucamonga and thawed out in 80 degree sunshine over a couple... maybe more, of beers. Again, magic. Pre-Apocalyptic San Fran was awesome, and I hate that people on the right degrade the city for what it is, and don't understand that it's not always been this way. Doesn't have to be this way! I could fill the page with stories of my many visits to California over the decades, but I'll spare you. It's unfortunate that a place so abundant, beautiful, and magical, could be ruined by grasping nincompoops with no care or sense of stewardship for a place they should feel awe and humble gratitude towards.
I was born and raised in pre-apocalyptic SF. Even with the weirdness of the 60s and 70s, it was a lovely place, and someplace where middle class families could live in. Rural Marin and the northern coast were beautiful. My education took me away to the Midwest and then WA, where I still live. Visiting SF for me now is equally infuriating and heartbreaking, knowing what it was and what it could be. Of course, western WA has plenty of issues, and our single-party government seems hell-bent on outdoing CA.
Remember when you were a little kid and you first learned of Tammany Hall and thought: "Whew! Thank God that nasty situation's over and has never happened again"?
I live on that 50 mile coastal stretch you mentioned, and even though I sometimes feel like I'm being strangled by the pall of politics that took over our little town, I am only a five minute walk to the beach. If I get through maze of directive signs that tell us how to behave on the beach (no fireworks, don't turn your back, no access, etc. etc) and hit the sand, sometimes there is not another person in sight. Just me and the crashing California coast. Thanks for helping me keep things in perspective.
That membrane is very real. My brother lives in Ohio, and keeps asking me when I’m getting out of here.
Well, he came to visit me (I live on the western slope about 75 miles from Lake Tahoe), so I took him for lunch up there. Hwy 50 follows the American River Valley, and the river, for a good part of it. It was Spring, so the snow melt had the river quite full. When we returned to my home, He said to me “ now I understand why you don’t want to move.”
I live here on the Central Coast. Morro Bay is especially lovely in the twilight with all the sounds and the cool damp air coming in off the water. My wife was out of town over the weekend, so I took my kids on a Dadventure Saturday, up the 1 into south Big Sur. We wandered around a redwood grove, dipped our toes in streams of cold clear water, and walked a lonely beach to where I could paddle out into the bull kelp and catch a few small waves while I watched them frolic on the sand. It's a frustrating political reality I endure, but our life is so beautiful it's almost embarrassing.
I went as far north as Willow Creek. Hwy 1 is still closed past Esalen. But the south ridge road is open, as is Nacimiento-Ferguson. To get into Big Sur proper still requires coming down from Carmel.
Well said fellow Californian. The vivid spectacle of D politics here is a dark hole made big by social media but it's really a small thing compared to the extant goodness of this country on the ground.
I understand what you are saying. One of the most beautiful places I’ve been is the Monterey Peninsula. Was lucky enough to dine in the club house on the 17th at Pebble Beach. Also the Coppola vineyard in the Napa Valley. Such a beautiful place ran by fools.
I love the energy of California. I lived there from age one to seven. Born in Canada, moved to the Bay area, then back to Canada. Cali still feels like home when I am there. It was more alive and alert down there in the depths of the 2008-2010 recession than Canada is at the maximum height of euphoria it can achieve. But not a chance I could live there now. Ruined by lefties and lawyers.
After last year’s election and especially since January there has been a noticeable change of tone, one of hope, freedom, even excitement. Your posts reflect that and I’m always an avid reader of your stories. Nevertheless, I can’t but worry that this is a short lived moment, calm before the storm. Institutions are totally corrupted, an important and significant part of the population lobotomized, the rich donors richer by the day. What will happen when the tables turn? I really wish Trump stood by his promises, stopped American interference abroad, and focused each and every day on cleaning up the mess in his backyard. Unfortunately, I believe he’s lost the plot.
I am amazed at what Trump has accomplished in 8(!) months.
Border is closed, illegals being deported, 25,000 missing children saved.
USAid closed bankrupting, hundreds of NGOs, tens of thousands government employees let go and hundreds of legacy media personalities and staff fired.
The BBB gives clarity on taxes, bankrupted Planned Parenthood and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and last week the CBO said, "Oops! The BBB in 10 years will generate a $300 net surplus, not a $3 trillion deficit." Hint: The surplus will be much bigger.
Tariffs--will bring in $1.2 trillion annually, with no inflation. We are in an economic war to level the playing field for American businesses to avoid a kinetic war.
The Fed and Treasury--created an entire new market for U.S. Treasuries with US dollar stable coin (USDT). (Whatever happened to the $8 trillion bomb left by Yellen in Treasuries coming due that would bankrupt the U.S. this summer? Solved, and interest rates are lower., which no Wall Street. "expert" predicted.)
Next up, freeing Fannie and Freddie from conservatorship where Obama skimmed hundreds of $billions ANNUALLY for NGOs, setting the stage for the largest IPO in history to recapitalize the woking class with low interest rate mortgages.
Regulations--EPA out of the climate change nonsense. CAFE standards for automobiles, SUVs and pick-up trucks eliminated. DEI dead in the government.
Jobs--fast tracked skilled trades licensing with a 1 million man program, just effectively killed H1B Visa program with $100,000 fee.
This little list is just 1/1000th of what Trump has accomplished in rolling back bloated and corrupt practices, and he did it in the face of an unprecedented tsunami of lawfare in District II courts, a hostile press and a hostile Congress.
Exactly, that's what I see as well. Also, many arrests have been made for yrs but it's been kept quiet - you don't want to give your hand away to the deep state ones who haven't been arrested yet. There are numerous actors playing the roles of those who have been arrested, I've noticed that a lot of these folks now are different heights than they used to be just for one. Also if you check earlobes they are a giveaway. I'm glad you posted what you did, great post and summar!
I think most MAGA are upset about the lack of accountability and only 1 arrest of deep state actors. I also think many misunderstand what Trump has accomplished abroad, because most people find it hard to comprehend that our mortal enemy is the City of London and the Davos crowd.
Where is John Brennan, for instance? He disappeared after Tulsi released RussiaGate intelligence.
Indeed. He is 1st on my “should be jailed for life” list.
Hillar, Barack etc. were arrested in Trump's first year as president, there are videos of this, don't know if they are still up but they were on You Tube for a long time. They had to take down main players first or else none of the white hats would be alive, they would have been killed by now. The arrests are almost finished, follow military sources by white hats. There's A LOT of info out there but you have to dig deep. Also I don't see a lack of accountability, Trump sends quiet messages to us all the time, but we have to decode them. You don't broadcast your plans to the enemy in war and this is the biggest war the world has ever seen. It's good against evil and it is worldwide. Agreed about City of London and Davos crowd.
I am skeptical that Hillary or Barack were ever arrested at all. I follow events closely.
You have to do more than just follow events - you have to put the pieces together. Videos were put out in fall of 2017 showing them being arrested. Michelle was with Obama and they both were arrested. The truth IS out there but you have to hunt for it.
Thanks for posting this list. Those of us who care forget half this stuff. Those who don't will never listen.
Yes, I am also concerned about the potential short-lived-ness of this moment. People will go to ANY LENGTHS to cling to their beautiful lies.
DJT has shown that he regains the plot as well as he loses it.
More important than my opinion though, he has earned our support still.
I stumbled onto those sites a while ago, and wasted 5 minutes of my time and never went back.
“stopped American interference abroad”
100%. And how about stopping foreign influence in US govt, starting with AIPAC.
Beautiful pictures - in words and visual images Chris. I remember Morro Bay - spectacular reality. Thanks for this timely reminder of the nature of reality and the reality of nature!
Yesterday I went to church here in deepest blue Northern California and met the most wonderful people. There were several of us who were there for the first time. The pastor encouraged us during his sermon to all to be more vocal and outward-facing about our traditional values, even though there is so much pushback around us.
I haven’t felt this hopeful in years.
I love California and can’t imagine giving it up. It is so worth saving. I want every American to feel proud of California, to feel welcome to come here and see our incredible landscapes, and viscerally understand why we won’t leave it behind. Never give up!!
Likely it was not a Lutheran, Episcopal or Protestant denomination church. Nor a Catholic Church. All those groups are still woke and lefty, especially in “deepest blue NoCA”. A non denominational Christian Church, perhaps?
Yes, non-denominational!
We kept our California residence when we opted for other shores (and ended up in two of the wokest spots on earth, Boston and Bruxelles). When we return every year, it’s to the wonderful other California you describe here—at least until we’ve been there a while. I recall thinking that neither Bush nor Gore could completely screw up the country in 8 short years and then applying the same “logic” to Newsome. But we’ve come to see that it isn’t just the pols who have been corrupted—the rot has spread to even our better friends, whose acceptance of their social and philosophical half-lives baffles us no end. It will take a generation to dig us out of this one.
Think of it like building infrastructure...except it's the infrastructure of ruin.
It took a lot of work to take the richest state in the nation and replace competent, or at least not maliciously incompetent, people with incompetent, arrogant fools. But we've begun seeing the results of decades of Democrat work really paying off in Cali.
You hear a lot of people wondering who moved toward the edges of public debate in the last decade or so, and I’m of the opinion that it is the left. Many of my good liberal friends hold opinions today that they never would have entertained even ten years ago. I’ve always been a bit of a Mercutio (“A plague on both your houses!”), and that hasn’t changed more than an inch or two. To paraphrase Patrick Henry, “Give me efficiency or give me death (or at least a tax cut)!!!” My right wing friends are still a bit loopy, but no more than they ever were. My lib friends are all wallowing in a pool of the shallowest nihilism.
“Many of my good liberal friends hold opinions today that they never would have entertained even ten years ago.”
And I would add that they have absolutely no consciousness of this fact — and what’s more, they would vociferously deny it. But those denials don’t change the truth…. They are living in a backwards mirror image of the Colin Wright political cartoon, where they believe that THEY have stayed the same , while everyone else has shifted to the “far right”.
So true…they haven’t shifted, it’s all those MAGA, those “Christian Nationalists Fascists”!
Very well put!
This is my experience as well. I've been eligible to vote since Bill Clinton's second term and Democrats my age would be viewed as raving radicals by the 1997 version of themselves.
Newsom…no e on the end. I prefer to refer to him as Newscum.
"...governed by appalling failures, full of good lives in beautiful places."
Virtually the entirety of Western Europe is this.
Australasia as well.
I am a third generation Californian. My grandmother moved here prior to WWI. My best vacations have been in the Sierras, camping and fishing. I am sad to report that I have given up on the state and with my retirement looming ahead of me, am planning to flee to somewhere slightly more sane (admittedly a very low bar).
It is good to walk away from the insular chatter of algorithmic social media and breath fresh air and talk to others. A few days after Charlie was shot, I had to disconnect. The drama of the offended and offender (which is everyone as your POV shifts) was more than I could handle. I've walked back slowly, but really happy to have missed most of it.
I grew up with people who remembered the smell of orange blossoms sceting the air around Los Angeles when they were kids. My mother was born in San Francisco, such an incredibly beautiful city that is unrecognizable in some places it has been so crippled by woke corruption. I love my state. Let's get it back.
I grew up in suburban NYC and I can vividly remember my first visit to CA. I was 19, in the US Navy and didn't know a damn thing, but I recognized it as a place of magical beauty immediately. Decades later I would hike with a German work colleague for hours in freezing rain at Mount Baldy. After, we drove down to Rancho Cucamonga and thawed out in 80 degree sunshine over a couple... maybe more, of beers. Again, magic. Pre-Apocalyptic San Fran was awesome, and I hate that people on the right degrade the city for what it is, and don't understand that it's not always been this way. Doesn't have to be this way! I could fill the page with stories of my many visits to California over the decades, but I'll spare you. It's unfortunate that a place so abundant, beautiful, and magical, could be ruined by grasping nincompoops with no care or sense of stewardship for a place they should feel awe and humble gratitude towards.
I was born and raised in pre-apocalyptic SF. Even with the weirdness of the 60s and 70s, it was a lovely place, and someplace where middle class families could live in. Rural Marin and the northern coast were beautiful. My education took me away to the Midwest and then WA, where I still live. Visiting SF for me now is equally infuriating and heartbreaking, knowing what it was and what it could be. Of course, western WA has plenty of issues, and our single-party government seems hell-bent on outdoing CA.
All in favor of getting out and seeing real life beyond the screen
Photos in comments would be great. But I use the work around of posting a note and then linking the note in a comment. It's not as good, but it works
e.g. https://substack.com/@francisturner/note/c-158584642
It works beautifully. And that’s beautiful!
Yes!
Remember when you were a little kid and you first learned of Tammany Hall and thought: "Whew! Thank God that nasty situation's over and has never happened again"?
Bwahahahaha!
Actually, yes, and thought that thank goodness they have all those laws now they didn't then! 🤣
I live on that 50 mile coastal stretch you mentioned, and even though I sometimes feel like I'm being strangled by the pall of politics that took over our little town, I am only a five minute walk to the beach. If I get through maze of directive signs that tell us how to behave on the beach (no fireworks, don't turn your back, no access, etc. etc) and hit the sand, sometimes there is not another person in sight. Just me and the crashing California coast. Thanks for helping me keep things in perspective.
That membrane is very real. My brother lives in Ohio, and keeps asking me when I’m getting out of here.
Well, he came to visit me (I live on the western slope about 75 miles from Lake Tahoe), so I took him for lunch up there. Hwy 50 follows the American River Valley, and the river, for a good part of it. It was Spring, so the snow melt had the river quite full. When we returned to my home, He said to me “ now I understand why you don’t want to move.”
I live here on the Central Coast. Morro Bay is especially lovely in the twilight with all the sounds and the cool damp air coming in off the water. My wife was out of town over the weekend, so I took my kids on a Dadventure Saturday, up the 1 into south Big Sur. We wandered around a redwood grove, dipped our toes in streams of cold clear water, and walked a lonely beach to where I could paddle out into the bull kelp and catch a few small waves while I watched them frolic on the sand. It's a frustrating political reality I endure, but our life is so beautiful it's almost embarrassing.
Is Highway One open yet, or did you drive north as far as the road was open?
I went as far north as Willow Creek. Hwy 1 is still closed past Esalen. But the south ridge road is open, as is Nacimiento-Ferguson. To get into Big Sur proper still requires coming down from Carmel.
https://www.bigsurcalifornia.org/highway-1-conditions/
Well said fellow Californian. The vivid spectacle of D politics here is a dark hole made big by social media but it's really a small thing compared to the extant goodness of this country on the ground.
I understand what you are saying. One of the most beautiful places I’ve been is the Monterey Peninsula. Was lucky enough to dine in the club house on the 17th at Pebble Beach. Also the Coppola vineyard in the Napa Valley. Such a beautiful place ran by fools.
I love the energy of California. I lived there from age one to seven. Born in Canada, moved to the Bay area, then back to Canada. Cali still feels like home when I am there. It was more alive and alert down there in the depths of the 2008-2010 recession than Canada is at the maximum height of euphoria it can achieve. But not a chance I could live there now. Ruined by lefties and lawyers.