Kamala Harris is the “stability” candidate if by stability you mean that she will continue the chaos, inflation, censorship and lawfare that the Biden administration has engineered. She has a “plan” to reverse the chaos, but can’t tell you what that plan is or how it’s different from the “plan” that has caused the chaos she is seeking to reverse. There is no reason to believe Kamala has a “plan” for doing anything, having shown no ability to actually do anything. However, She’s such a thoughtful and serious person that she was able to come up with a “plan” for making everyone’s lives better as soon as Biden dropped out. What a joke.
Kamala has a plan. She told us she had a plan. She said her plan indeed was a plan. Her plan is such a plan, it is a plan. Kamala's plan is a plan that she has.
Watching the newest generation of voters taking their cue on how to vote from their singing idol makes me think that escape is the only possible solution. If I could figure out which state will be the first to secede from the union, I’d move there in a heartbeat!
I left Cali about 24 years ago. As a nurse I could no longer afford a neighborhood safe enough to raise my kids in. I was born and raised in Southern California and even in 1990's I could see the future wasn't looking too good
Be on the alert. The TdA is operating there - human smuggling, trafficking and theft. Extreme violence. At least most of the counties have constitutional sheriffs!
That state will be crushed instantly and the leaders will be facing J6 type sentences.
We can trust some of law enforcement and some of the military. But not all. Fat pensions and life-time health care make cowards of many, most of whom have families also.
If we can't vote our way out of this, we don't have a chance.
Four years ago, we sold our house near Sacramento, packed everything, and moved to San Antonio, TX. Life here is much better. And I suspect that "The South" would secede as a block - again.
And it can be plotted on a Venn diagram. Don't you just love Venn diagrams?! I love Venn diagrams, I do, because, you know, when you can diagram something, it becomes so much clearer how helpful Venn diagrams actually are!
72 and yes. L.A. born. Democrats are groomers, and go after teens as prey. My HS (same class as Larry Fink, BTW) had a few radicals, yes, but the nearby Junior College kids came over to our campus to recruit kids to throw rocks for peace. (True.) THIS (then) naive girl fell for some of it. I came home and told my (then) single Mom who was struggling to support us and keep the house, said "WHO DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO PAY FOR ALL THAT?" and yes, she yelled. Best lesson ever.
Now it's 53 years later, and Los Angeles under D rule is literally a burning s#!t-hole.
If there's one thing I can teach you about Democrats, it's NEVER "for" something in a bill. It's all a scam with them. CA has had 50 years of unchecked illegals, homelessness has exploded and we are $73B in debt. If you add our $1T pension shortfall due to lying to unions for votes and collective bargaining, it's much worse. Add those pensions invested in private equity in China, including funds that Trump banned as connected to the Chinese military? Treason.
Did she leave her “ plan” in the yellow school bus? She lost her plan somewhere because nobody knows about her plan. Who doesn’t like a “ plan?” ( I mean a yellow school bus)
Amazingly enough, it's the same plan that Democrats have had in place for over 50 years in California! We are now $73B in debt. Over $1T actually, as our underfunded pension system (CalPERS, not CalSTRS - different fund) is invested in private equity, in China. Including a CCP fund that Trump banned, short by that $1T. Oh, that "isolationist and xenophobe!"
Obama is a Marxist and so is Kamala. She's been handed her jobs through favors, and this time is the first she's ever had to actually make an effort. Ugly, isn't it? LOL.
California, the land of the original fakery, rejected her by a 96% disapproval rating in 2020. Even the left of Lenin Los Angeles Times posted those facts in their article. That had to hurt. She's every bit the liar that Biden (and Newsom) are, every bit compromised by China that they both are. It's also all about her - every bit like the two of them are.
Her stance on the Cartels for example? She would have had an opportunity to stop them, except Newsom allowed them to set up shop in Republican counties in California, destroying them. OOPS. Daily Caller had that story. It's now behind an archive paywall, but I know it's saved at archive.is.
(Wink wink.)
Conservative Californians are fed up, speaking out on Twitter (X). Just enter Kamala or Que Mala and you'll see a vast amount of evidence.
And the plan? Promise everything, especially to unions. Lie, do nothing, brag about how hard you're working ...while doing nothing. When someone asks why isn't it done? It's THEM, those Republicans! And the trained, clapping seals buy it. Along with all the unions who were given collective bargaining by Jerry Brown (1970s) and are now called upon to "go there" for Socialism/Marxism/Communism - pick one, all the same end goal. Taxpayers screwed over.
She has been unqualified for every position that the Democrats have handed to her. She is the perfect front woman for the Democrat party. If she were to “win,” she would be president just as Biden has been President. She would say what she is told to say and do what do what she is told to do. Virtually everything she would say and do would be antithetical to our interests and would erode our constitutional and God-given rights as she cackled away.
Yes, no argument from me! It's even likely she'll be installed before November. IF that happens, then she'll pardon the Bidens. They're drooling over the 14th Amendment to nail DJT on some "insurrection" charge to get him into prison. We're being run by Obama and his holdovers, like Valerie Jarrett.
Her father-in-law was BFFs with Frank Marshall Davis, the communist who mentored Obama.
The more I read, the more it sickens me, how many Democrats are either Communists or pro-Communist. David Axelrod another.
California has interesting accounting. Leading up to the election, we have billions in surplus!!! The day after the election, we are broke to the horizon!
Commie Harris has a plan, a CLEAR plan, a FIVE YEAR PLAN. It's called "Be defeated by the PRC" as stage-managed by the Sinophile Tim Walz. As Russia completes its takeover of Eastern Europe (again) while Iran and proxies overrun Germany, Britain and western Europe. After all, Spain was once under Muslim rule, and they want it BACK!
And Donald Trump is the only person who stands in the way of those plans.
I was watching some of his uber-meh travelogues recently after returning from una vacanza italiana particolarmente affascinante, as we fake medieval Venetians are prone to do.
He’s a pinchy faced ( Libtard phenotype A) mediocrity, as I told Mrs. Tanto, who has cleverly glommed onto Americans’ fascination with what they believe to be sophisticated European culture and skates by on some pretty trite content. Serendipity indeed.
America was better when we could be more honest than we are now. I had a Korean lady in the office yesterday who I’ve had as a patient for many years. She married an American she met when he was stationed over there. She’s very smart, very blunt, and very funny. She always cracks me up because she has no filter. She just says what she thinks in the moment. So we understand each other and she can also take what she dishes out. She says, “I’m honest”. And I tell her that honesty doesn’t work now in America. She agrees.
We need to get back to honesty. No trigger warnings. No snowflakery. No micro aggression fake nonsense. Tell the truth.
Thanks for a good article! I love the image at the end. That's how I feel about Washingon DC. The pretending needs to stop! The problem is that most of America (and Europe) don't want to look at reality or even acknowledge it exists. With the IC running it all, information is usually not even available.
When Steves first started (around 1988), he was a revelation with his book, 'Europe through the Backdoor'. I had already figured most of it out on my own. But to see it in print!
This reminds me of the trailer I saw recently for "Am I Racist?" (which looks fantastic), where an AWFL is attending a "Race to Dinner" event, complete with fine wine and polished silverware, proclaiming "we just have to burn the whole system down".
They're going to succeed at that, I think. We're one major event away from the whole thing collapsing. No joke. Keep water and shelf-stable food. Stay strapped. Know your neighbors.
Rod Dreher tells a story in Live Not By Lies of a Russian intelligensia dinner party in the late 19th century where the host gave a toast (paraphrasing, since I don't have the book handy): "I celebrate the generation that will come after us, those who will liberate the Russian people by burning our social system to the ground. I only pray that we may drink and be merry while the fires burn."
Elites can never conceive that their world is built on the backs of others who will not see the world the same way they do.
Oh, and based on historical experience, if you ever encounter a "student-led revolutionary movement", run the other way quickly. College students have the worst track record at revolutionarily improving life for the masses.
The Russian Nihilists, while of course being fools and the intellectual equivalent of children playing with matches, at least had the excuse of living in an often-cruel monarchy where there was mass poverty and mass misery, while still being under the sway of all sorts of techno-utopian dreams (steel, electricity and railroads will build a glorious future!) and the Cult of Reason that promised to magically transform fractious apes into a brotherhood of bonobos; but our transgressive elite have no such excuses, they live in the safest richest most prosperous country ever created but want to"burn the whole system down" because someone somewhere has a wounded feeling and/or because there are still some flat surfaces that refuse to tell them they're the fairest of them all—when what they most crave is letting the whole planet know how special, stunning and brave they are.
Our transgressive elite are the equivalent of one of those child monsters from "My Super Sweet 16" who gets a new Porsche for her birthday but then weepily denounces her parents because it's the wrong color. They are afflicted with a terminal case of radical ingratitude and can only denounce and destroy what they could never build. If the price of freedom means living with a permanently aggrieved class of performing infants always searching for social fires to pour lighter fluid on, then maybe the rigid Russian aristocracy wasn't so backwards after all.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!
When the revolution starts,the youngest people you’ll see n the front lines will be over 60. The only ones with the balls to do it, and with the least to lose.
It's never happened. Revolutions are always led by the young. It's one of the reasons I'm not optimistic and am willing to consider a variety of illiberal solutions that would have appalled me even 6 years ago.
But there's never been a revolution of fat men, either. And our boys are actually losing testosterone, and it's use to body fat not accompanied by requisite muscle. So, they are fat. And soft. And some are even feminine.
That cohort will not lead a revolution.
I am pessimistic but also my Chrisitan faith and the reading of history has shown that cultures sometimes recover for a long while.
Saw it last night- it was a hilarious take down of know it all , anti racist ( not a real thing) grifters posing as experts. I thought it was brilliantly done - the audience was in on the grift & laughed at the fools. It was clear who the racists were. Pretty full theater too.
I'm lucky -- I have a well. And a generator. And enough fences and firepower to keep the urban refugees away if necessary. I hope I won't have to use any of it, but after COVID, only a fool wouldn't plan.
A word of advice, get a dual-fuel generator but don't ever run it on anything but propane. Gasoline really fouls an engine; propane burns clean.
The way I rigged mine was through a couple of extra circuit breaker slots. I ran a 4-wire, 220V, 30A cable to where my generator sits and put a reversed (male) outlet (called a generator box) there. I keep the breakers off and the generator "plugged in" all the time. If I need it, turn off the main to the house (VERY IMPORTANT!), turn off all the breakers I don't want, and start it up to run the rest.
Propane goes a long way. It takes about 6 minutes of generator to refill my 300 gallon pressure tank. A 500 gallon propane tank sitting next to my house gives real peace of mind.
My problem will be medicine. I have a 100-year-old capped well that's excellent in my once country, now city, yard. A little Well Bucket will draw up a lot until we can rig up a pump.
Where I live, the second season there would be a wide and deep abundance of food because people still know how to grow it.
In a few months, I will get to do this to my AWFL neighbor while roasting a chipmunk on the plastic-coated grate that came from my fridge. It's the one thing I'm looking forward to.
Last year in a Facebook group, I was catching grief about my mansplaining from a couple of women. This led me to say somewhat testily to one, “Well, I guess it would be mansplaining to a femininny!” To her credit, she thought it was funny. She and the other woman weren't being nasty, just a little pushy, and they both realized that I don't dismiss women's intelligence as a true mansplainer would. As far as I know, I coined “femininny” right then and there. Every neologist hopes his new word will catch on, knowing that his only reward MIGHT be an eventual citation in a dictionary.
Move to a small town. We not only know our neighbors, but we also know who looks like they aren't from around "here."
We don't dislike them, but we will take zero guff.
We will protect our homes, our food, our gasoline, our hospital with weapons if we need too.
If social order breaks down, we might break a sweat because the AC will be off, but we won't be worried if 1,000 looters come looking for stuff they need. They won't stand a chance.
And I'm an old, harmless man, but I will shoot to protect my family, my neighbors, my friends, my church, my right to live as I want.
I don't think we are that close because the bad guys don't have things assured, yet. They need several more years. They need people who remember personal freedom to die off. They need another generation of university taught kids to pass to their side.
One of the few places they have lost a few young people is among disaffected young men. They want to make sure those boys are stopping bullets for them, and those boys aren't ready to do that yet.
But diversity is our strength! Save an owl to stop clear-cutting but hey forest fires are a bonus; climate change is SO real. And Kamala is still stuck on an "I'm talking" moment. /Sarc off
I'm skeptical of Trump but who really votes to see it all burn down? I hate that I'm forced to show up and vote for people that will disappoint me but the alternative is Hell on earth.
Exactly! Just finishing the book by Paul Kengor, The Communist. Also reading his book, Dupes. BOTH books describe how the Communists used groups, starting in the 1920s, then dumped them. Even called FDR a fascist, until he did something they liked, when they stopped calling FDR a fascist. LOL. What we're going through isn't new. Commies never stop trying.
Thanks. It couldn't have happened without communist-friendly people in our government. Like Pelosi, for one. Her father was affiliated with a Communist front, ACPFB (American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born) among others. Also he was a reported mobster in Baltimore. Came in handy when Pelosi's brother was the only one not convicted of gang -banging young girls. Wikipedia (now deleted) said the father "stared down the jury."
Pelosi herself praised a communist union leader as "most progressive" ten years AFTER he died. What's the point? Appeasing someone still living?
Plenty of willing accomplices for decades here in the US. One of the first, singer, actor Paul Robeson. He was used, spit out. Same with Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall, Gene Kelly - many big names. Not just Taylor Swift. Commies also tried to recruit blacks, using the Scottsboro trial in the 20's. When the accused were found guilty, the commies dropped them like a hot rock. they only tried to stir up trouble in the US. Much like the CIA did in the 1960s in California. They ran 3 black ops in CA. One of which drugging people to replace their own memories with CIA-manufactured thoughts/memories. F-ing scary and evil.
Books for this - Dupes (Kengor) and CHAOS by Tom O'Neill.
The government was the last, and arguably, least important target of the operations that doomed American culture.
Kengor is a neocon with minimal understanding of the actual covert world--which is origin of the Hate-America-First belief system. His work did not reveal the roots of the infestation.
The belief system was inserted into American culture, with the goal of destroying our culture from within, by the Comintern's covert influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg.
Muenzenberg conceived of, planned, and sent his operatives to handle the American organizations that made Scottsboro, Sacco and Vanzetti, and other issues high profile.
He targeted the three legged stool that supports American culture: education/academia, the media, and Hollywood.
Willing Accomplices explores a case study in each of those three domains:
Education/Academia: Dr George S. Counts
Media: Walter Duranty
Hollywood: Dorothy Parker
Muenzenberg's only mistake was misjudging how long it would take for his operations to bear fruit. He thought it would take a few years. It ended up taking 80 years.
It is nice that you noted that Congress refuses to adequately fund both NASA and federal firefighters while spending 175 billion just on a lost war in Ukraine. A war threatening to go nuclear at that.
Hell, for that 175 billion dollars just how many American firefighters, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, trash collectors could have been trained, if needed, and hired to clean up the waste, fight fires, and (re)build the national parks, housing, and NASA?
Even at one million dollars per a person, that would hire, train, and equip 170,000 people. I am sure that we could find some more of that lose change in the congressional-military-industrial complex's losing wars. Perhaps another 175 billion dollars? For half a million each, we could build 340,000 really nice apartments for the roughly one million Americans that go homeless each year.
We have socialism for the wealthy, the connected, and the corrupt, but we have capitalism for everyone else, don't we?
Oh, we're funding both sides. I heard an interview on RSBN yesterday or the day before, and Ukraine has had $7B worth of our jets shot down. Public knowledge of 1 being shot down; it's SEVEN. Ukraine has never had a chance of winning. Why? Ukraine can't defend against Russia's hypersonic missile system. Why? Because the Clintons gave them that technology.
Daily Caller, again. Article is titled, "Hillary's Hypersonic Missile Gap." You should be able to find it with that.
Also, Zelensky started it in the Donbas region. Not Putin. Look on Substack, Kanekoa News (Kanekoa the Great) for the title, 'OSCE Reports Reveal Ukraine Started Shelling The Donbas Nine Days Before Russia's 'Special Military Operation'
That money was spent to cover up evidence for the machine. There is so much treason being done in the last twenty years to keep the courts busy for decades!
Treason that will never be sent to the courts. Remember, rules for thee, but not for me.
I get really annoyed with the law-and-order, pro capitalist, free marketeers who refuse to see the oppression and poverty wrought using the law as a weapon by all the levels (federal, state, and municipal) of corrupt government for the welfare of the wealthy and corporations.
You mean the same “committed conservatives” who adamantly refuse to do anything about Big Tech’s censorship at the behest of Big Gubmint, cuz “They’re PRIVATE CORPORATIONS! If you MAGATs don’t like it, build your own Facebook/Google/etc.!!”
Yeah, I’ll love watching their reaction when that tiger turns on them after devouring everyone else.
Since I really started paying attention to politics, the American people have yearned to flip the bird to the establishment. We thought we were doing that with Obama, and we definitely did it with Trump. (Bernie was another huge sign.)
I would vote for nearly anybody who's running opposed to the neocon agenda that's effortlessly 'switched' from the right wing of the uniparty to the left.
Edit: Was thinking of the Ron Paul campaign but didn't actually say it above.
I think it would be pretty difficult to find Ron Paulers who aren't already on board. Maybe Dave Smith? The addition of RFK to tackle censorship issues was huge.
We are deep in a hole. We are in a very dangerous place. Trump will slow down or stop the madness but we have a lot of work today. Think and act very carefully.
Asking "the world" if it /wants/ American "leadership" would certainly a welcome novelty, and it's one thing that might have a chance under Trump 2.0, even if it was to come about from so-called isolationism.
The most common sentiment about US foreign policies is, "Stop meddling!". The second is "Let people sort out their own differences!". I dare say I think most US citizens are onboard with that?
From a European perspective, the EU and European nations both stand to gain more from putting an end to acting as an extension of the American hegemony, and I think the USA would actually benefit from that too, and not just economically.
Meanwhile, the main issue among our politicos and pundits is, they do trust Trump (they loathe him still and are allied to the machine behind Harris) because he is exceptionally easy to understand; they do not trust Harris (or Biden) because they know full well that they do nothing but lie and cheat in the interest of their string-holders (that they still follow is an essay-length topic in its own right).
The main fear is, Trump will enact policies that actually solves problems and by doing so show what the problems are, and that they need not exist, something which goes against the spiritual grain of all sorts of progressives and liberals: either a problem is to be solved according to their dogma, or it isn't to be solved.
The armies of homeless you mention is one such problem, that can be solved within weeks, if one wants to solve it more than one wants an ideologically correct solution. The same with invasion across the border. The same with cartels, gangs and pedophile rings of human traffickers. The same with abject poverty.
All quite easily solvable. The /causes/ for either is a different matter. But to use an image: when there's fire, you first put it out. Then you look for the cause in order to prevent more fires.
I live in a tony DC suburb and am a law firm partner. Everything I see around me is great, actually, so saying anything is wrong is inherently racist, you racist. Be quiet and eat your $15 Taco Bell tacos, work your several gig economy jobs with no benefits, and leave me and my low capital gains rate alone while our schools queer your kids or send them to fight for democracy in other countries. You have a lot to be thankful for, actually, and you’re welcome. (#sarcasm)
It seems to me that the machine does think that Trump can reverse the decline. Otherwise they would not have spied on him, lied about him, impeached him twice, set him up on J6, indicted him, and tried to murder him. He railed against the swamp last time but he didn’t truly understand how deep the mud is. He’s got on his thigh high boots this time, shovel in hand. Let’s hope he makes it to dig us out.
They might think that he can drain some of the grift from the managed decline. My view is that the rot is in EVERYTHING. The work of reversing it is generational, at least, and has to be fought at the local, state, and federal levels. Fifty-plus years of consistent effort at every level. No single person is going to reverse all of the decline everywhere.
Exactly what I said in another post. The rot and grift goes very deep.
But something about all the rage, lawfare, and now assassination attempts makes me wonder: is the other side genuinely worried about the outcome of this election? Are they less than certain that their “fortification” efforts will succeed? Maybe I’m just trying to see a glass half full.
Note to self, add Rick Steves to the growing list of folks are qualified to speak and influence people on topics other than politics. Unless my memory serves me poorly, the only people who suffered under Trump were those who hated anything he did that turned out positive. I will, and hope most Americans will, never forget the men and women wearing pink vagina hats who were aggrieved on the day Trump got sworn in. From that point forward, it was clear that nothing would ever make them happy again. Kamala's strategy to use the slogan "We're not going back" is a winning message for Trump as most will remember that things were actually better back then (four short years ago).
Interesting that you brought up the Forest Service and wildland firefighting. My daughter has been on a Forest Service "Hot Shot" crew for a couple of years now; on a regional team before that. She is deployed almost continuously between March and November in the Mountain West and California. She will 100% support your comments and observations about lack of resources, underfunding, etc. Americans have no idea the value they get from this relatively small and inexpensive federal agency.
Have had this discussion with USFS folks on camping trips. Once you get them started, they tend to rant. Such an easy thing to fix, if we would just focus on fixing it.
I spent a summer, 26 years ago, backpacking around Europe with a rail pass. Rick Steves provided a bunch of decent practical advice, back then, of the "where to do your laundry" variety, and a reasonable amount of "here's where to convert your traveler's checks into local currency" stuff. I'm gathering that he's become dumber.
Steves was not bad, in the old days, with basic travel tips for Americans going to Europe.
But today he's simply a PC-Prog follower.
Have you seen his 2018 screed, issued in the midst of the PC-Prog's new message about the fascist threat of American domestic terrorists, and their leader, Trump?
Steves describes it as: "...a case study in how fear and angry nationalism can be channeled into evil, and how our freedoms and democracies are not indestructible...."
Steves owes his soul to the PC-Prog hate-America-First crowd.
Yes thank you for referencing that screed of Steves’ about fascism in Europe. It was clearly his thinly veiled warning about what he perceived as the dangers of Trump( he’s clearly another Mussolini doncha know)… I kept thinking isn’t it noteworthy that Rick Steves doesn’t give equal time to the horrors of Communism which has been an even more deadly political and cultural movement historically in Eastern Europe and of course in Russia. But Communism has always gotten a pass from the traditional liberal. So it comes as no surprise that traveling soy boy Steves’ is throwing his hat and loafers in the Harris/Walz ring.
My oldest son is a wildland firefighter working as a captain on a hotshot crew out of Virginia. He currently is in Idaho helping to fight western US fires. He has a master's degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri and when newspapers began to die, he was single and looking for adventure. He joined the Shasta Lake hotshot crew and still has friends there. No matter what you pay these guys (and occasionally a couple of girls), it's not enough. He is hoping to make it to 20 years for a federal pension and then do something safer. He has three daughters and a wife who is a trouper as he is seldom home. Recently I saw a list of the 20 most dangerous jobs in the country and wildland firefighting was #1. There are not enough crews to do prescribed burning so underbrush grows rampantly which promotes large fires. Most people have no idea what these people sacrifice for our forests. I pray a lot.
As a young mom, my husband did all the driving on interstates so I had no practice and was scared. But my son had nothing to furnish his small apartment so I loaded up the van with a sleeper sofa and other necessities and set out from eastern PA. By the time I hit I-70 in Ohio I had summoned my confidence and was sailing along passing all the trucks in the left lane. I will never forget how that experience changed me. Such a good memory.
I have followed Rick Steves for years and watched all his videos of a particular area for a trip, especially to Europe. He did a nice job advising travelers about food and lodging while glancing at local cultures. I'd long suspected he was an internationalist and lefty, someone who loved other cultures more than the one he grew up in. He confirmed it with his very stupid endorsement of Harris, which diminishes his brand and exposes a judgment I no longer trust. His videos will never again be seen in my home.
He endorsed Biden in 2020 so this really is no surprise. Just seems like more people noticed this time. Also he lives in either Portland or Seattle so I'm sure he feels pressure to be approved by his community.
Maybe 10-15 years ago I was fascinated by a website showing the street level pictures from Google and Bing maps of residential streets in Detroit. The steady decline from a decent neighborhood in 2002 to a decaying and burned out shithole by 2010 was very similar to the decay I saw in the south suburbs of Chicago in the 70’s and 80’s.
One particularly memorable series of photos showed a decent neighborhood with a couple of fixer-upper houses. The next year some had started work on one of the fixer uppers and maybe another house or two started showing declines. The next year that fixer upper was the nicer house on the block and one of the other fixer uppers was burned out and a couple more started showing decay. The next year the whole block was a mess except for that original fixer upper. The next year even that renovated house was boarded up and most of the block was vacant lots.
The ostensible point of the website was to explain that the property taxes were way out of line compared to the property values and that the people who tried to fix and maintain their homes realized it was just throwing good money after bad and gave up.
Again, none of this was news to me as I lived through all that growing up in the Calumet Region of the Chicago area. It hammered home to me that it wasn’t just a matter of local political corruption, it was the national policy of the party in charge.
I also remember being a college student on the north side of Chicago in the 80’s commuting to my parents south side home as getting accosted by an ACORN activist in the subway. I knew ACORN was a scan because I saw what they were doing in my neighborhood but they were always approaching college students in the subway because most of them were north siders who had no clue about life on the south side and just assumed racist whitey put all the black people there. When some classmates learned of where I lived, a few of them actually said “There’s white people there?” Which gives you an idea of their arrogance and ignorance.
And I bring this up because Jean Shepherd also grew up in the Calumet Region and he had a series on PBS called “Jean Shepherd’s America “ which was much more interesting than Rick Steve’s Europe. To me Rick Steve has always been an arrogant person who happily meets working class people in Europe but turns his nose up at the same class of people in America. The ultimate in hypocrisy.
Kamala Harris is the “stability” candidate if by stability you mean that she will continue the chaos, inflation, censorship and lawfare that the Biden administration has engineered. She has a “plan” to reverse the chaos, but can’t tell you what that plan is or how it’s different from the “plan” that has caused the chaos she is seeking to reverse. There is no reason to believe Kamala has a “plan” for doing anything, having shown no ability to actually do anything. However, She’s such a thoughtful and serious person that she was able to come up with a “plan” for making everyone’s lives better as soon as Biden dropped out. What a joke.
Kamala has a plan. She told us she had a plan. She said her plan indeed was a plan. Her plan is such a plan, it is a plan. Kamala's plan is a plan that she has.
She planned her plan, and that's a very bold plan to plan.
We need to plan our escape!
Watching the newest generation of voters taking their cue on how to vote from their singing idol makes me think that escape is the only possible solution. If I could figure out which state will be the first to secede from the union, I’d move there in a heartbeat!
Come to Florida. You can just smell freedom in the air.
I had to escape CA to remember what freedom was.
My sister travels to Florida twice a year for one of her kids.
When I first asked her what Florida was like, she instantly replied, "It feels like America!"
I left Cali about 24 years ago. As a nurse I could no longer afford a neighborhood safe enough to raise my kids in. I was born and raised in Southern California and even in 1990's I could see the future wasn't looking too good
Yeah I’m willing to be on the front lines when we do, and we start catapulting the illegals north.
Be on the alert. The TdA is operating there - human smuggling, trafficking and theft. Extreme violence. At least most of the counties have constitutional sheriffs!
That state will be crushed instantly and the leaders will be facing J6 type sentences.
We can trust some of law enforcement and some of the military. But not all. Fat pensions and life-time health care make cowards of many, most of whom have families also.
If we can't vote our way out of this, we don't have a chance.
You don’t know fuckall about “that state”, do you?
Big world outside the U.S. Not every nation has bought into the loco.
Most of the Swities were going to vote Harris anyway. What Taylor can do is drive 'get out the vote'.
Why is that person even popular?
Four years ago, we sold our house near Sacramento, packed everything, and moved to San Antonio, TX. Life here is much better. And I suspect that "The South" would secede as a block - again.
We need to be unburdened by her plan!
Yep.
And it can be plotted on a Venn diagram. Don't you just love Venn diagrams?! I love Venn diagrams, I do, because, you know, when you can diagram something, it becomes so much clearer how helpful Venn diagrams actually are!
Lmao!
We need to grab beers sometime
Playing out in Daytona bars constantly. They have beer.
A very cunning plan!
https://youtu.be/AsXKS8Nyu8Q?si=ej7IHCxXyMkkQE9f
Well, in that case, I retract my comment.
Lolol
Also, unencumbered by plans that have been, but plans that will be...
Nice one Indrek!
A plan, that’s much better than a concept….. so where are the details??
And, she’s going to help the middle class! Har har. I’m 68, and I have never heard one presidential candidate NOT say this. Not one. Ever.
72 and yes. L.A. born. Democrats are groomers, and go after teens as prey. My HS (same class as Larry Fink, BTW) had a few radicals, yes, but the nearby Junior College kids came over to our campus to recruit kids to throw rocks for peace. (True.) THIS (then) naive girl fell for some of it. I came home and told my (then) single Mom who was struggling to support us and keep the house, said "WHO DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO PAY FOR ALL THAT?" and yes, she yelled. Best lesson ever.
Now it's 53 years later, and Los Angeles under D rule is literally a burning s#!t-hole.
If there's one thing I can teach you about Democrats, it's NEVER "for" something in a bill. It's all a scam with them. CA has had 50 years of unchecked illegals, homelessness has exploded and we are $73B in debt. If you add our $1T pension shortfall due to lying to unions for votes and collective bargaining, it's much worse. Add those pensions invested in private equity in China, including funds that Trump banned as connected to the Chinese military? Treason.
Yes, with "deadlines around time."
Did she leave her “ plan” in the yellow school bus? She lost her plan somewhere because nobody knows about her plan. Who doesn’t like a “ plan?” ( I mean a yellow school bus)
🚌 🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌
LOLOLOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAYDiPizDIs
Don't forget, it is her plan, and her plan alone.
Love the video! Spot on! 😂
Amazingly enough, it's the same plan that Democrats have had in place for over 50 years in California! We are now $73B in debt. Over $1T actually, as our underfunded pension system (CalPERS, not CalSTRS - different fund) is invested in private equity, in China. Including a CCP fund that Trump banned, short by that $1T. Oh, that "isolationist and xenophobe!"
Obama is a Marxist and so is Kamala. She's been handed her jobs through favors, and this time is the first she's ever had to actually make an effort. Ugly, isn't it? LOL.
California, the land of the original fakery, rejected her by a 96% disapproval rating in 2020. Even the left of Lenin Los Angeles Times posted those facts in their article. That had to hurt. She's every bit the liar that Biden (and Newsom) are, every bit compromised by China that they both are. It's also all about her - every bit like the two of them are.
Her stance on the Cartels for example? She would have had an opportunity to stop them, except Newsom allowed them to set up shop in Republican counties in California, destroying them. OOPS. Daily Caller had that story. It's now behind an archive paywall, but I know it's saved at archive.is.
(Wink wink.)
Conservative Californians are fed up, speaking out on Twitter (X). Just enter Kamala or Que Mala and you'll see a vast amount of evidence.
And the plan? Promise everything, especially to unions. Lie, do nothing, brag about how hard you're working ...while doing nothing. When someone asks why isn't it done? It's THEM, those Republicans! And the trained, clapping seals buy it. Along with all the unions who were given collective bargaining by Jerry Brown (1970s) and are now called upon to "go there" for Socialism/Marxism/Communism - pick one, all the same end goal. Taxpayers screwed over.
She has been unqualified for every position that the Democrats have handed to her. She is the perfect front woman for the Democrat party. If she were to “win,” she would be president just as Biden has been President. She would say what she is told to say and do what do what she is told to do. Virtually everything she would say and do would be antithetical to our interests and would erode our constitutional and God-given rights as she cackled away.
Yes, no argument from me! It's even likely she'll be installed before November. IF that happens, then she'll pardon the Bidens. They're drooling over the 14th Amendment to nail DJT on some "insurrection" charge to get him into prison. We're being run by Obama and his holdovers, like Valerie Jarrett.
Her father-in-law was BFFs with Frank Marshall Davis, the communist who mentored Obama.
The more I read, the more it sickens me, how many Democrats are either Communists or pro-Communist. David Axelrod another.
Biden will resign early if she clearly wins the election.
He will spend his last days like Fredo at Lake Tahoe.
Is it too much to ask that he has a terrible fishing accident like Fredo ?
She was well qualified for one position.
A regular Cathy Smith, a groupie, but unlike Sweet Sweet Connie, never named in a song. Let's hope the U.S. isn't John Belushi.
You're on a roll!
Kamala Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho Harris will definitely save the world, and gibe free UPC (or is that NPC?) arm tattoos for all!
Viva lé Brawndo!
California has interesting accounting. Leading up to the election, we have billions in surplus!!! The day after the election, we are broke to the horizon!
We have always been at war with East Newsom!
Like our magically disappearing pension shortfall. LMAO. That's over $1T, alone.
“Que Mala”!! Brilliant
That's been around since she was first installed. :D
Installed in CA government, that is.
Commie Harris has a plan, a CLEAR plan, a FIVE YEAR PLAN. It's called "Be defeated by the PRC" as stage-managed by the Sinophile Tim Walz. As Russia completes its takeover of Eastern Europe (again) while Iran and proxies overrun Germany, Britain and western Europe. After all, Spain was once under Muslim rule, and they want it BACK!
And Donald Trump is the only person who stands in the way of those plans.
For certain values of "stability" that include chaos.
Nice. Right on the money.
“Trump is a danger to our Democracy!”
“Raygun is the world’s #1 break dancer!”
“Linsay Davis is a serious journalismer.”
Sure.
I can’t believe you brought up Rick Steves.😂
I was watching some of his uber-meh travelogues recently after returning from una vacanza italiana particolarmente affascinante, as we fake medieval Venetians are prone to do.
He’s a pinchy faced ( Libtard phenotype A) mediocrity, as I told Mrs. Tanto, who has cleverly glommed onto Americans’ fascination with what they believe to be sophisticated European culture and skates by on some pretty trite content. Serendipity indeed.
America was better when we could be more honest than we are now. I had a Korean lady in the office yesterday who I’ve had as a patient for many years. She married an American she met when he was stationed over there. She’s very smart, very blunt, and very funny. She always cracks me up because she has no filter. She just says what she thinks in the moment. So we understand each other and she can also take what she dishes out. She says, “I’m honest”. And I tell her that honesty doesn’t work now in America. She agrees.
We need to get back to honesty. No trigger warnings. No snowflakery. No micro aggression fake nonsense. Tell the truth.
Thanks for a good article! I love the image at the end. That's how I feel about Washingon DC. The pretending needs to stop! The problem is that most of America (and Europe) don't want to look at reality or even acknowledge it exists. With the IC running it all, information is usually not even available.
When Steves first started (around 1988), he was a revelation with his book, 'Europe through the Backdoor'. I had already figured most of it out on my own. But to see it in print!
"Europe through the Backdoor" sounds like a bad German porn film.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
What was the revelatory aspect of the book?
Do you know how much grief I get for just doing that.
?
I wouldn't go near that comment with a 10" -er--pole.
This reminds me of the trailer I saw recently for "Am I Racist?" (which looks fantastic), where an AWFL is attending a "Race to Dinner" event, complete with fine wine and polished silverware, proclaiming "we just have to burn the whole system down".
They're going to succeed at that, I think. We're one major event away from the whole thing collapsing. No joke. Keep water and shelf-stable food. Stay strapped. Know your neighbors.
This is EXACTLY IT. A perfect image.
Rod Dreher tells a story in Live Not By Lies of a Russian intelligensia dinner party in the late 19th century where the host gave a toast (paraphrasing, since I don't have the book handy): "I celebrate the generation that will come after us, those who will liberate the Russian people by burning our social system to the ground. I only pray that we may drink and be merry while the fires burn."
Elites can never conceive that their world is built on the backs of others who will not see the world the same way they do.
Oh, and based on historical experience, if you ever encounter a "student-led revolutionary movement", run the other way quickly. College students have the worst track record at revolutionarily improving life for the masses.
The Russian Nihilists, while of course being fools and the intellectual equivalent of children playing with matches, at least had the excuse of living in an often-cruel monarchy where there was mass poverty and mass misery, while still being under the sway of all sorts of techno-utopian dreams (steel, electricity and railroads will build a glorious future!) and the Cult of Reason that promised to magically transform fractious apes into a brotherhood of bonobos; but our transgressive elite have no such excuses, they live in the safest richest most prosperous country ever created but want to"burn the whole system down" because someone somewhere has a wounded feeling and/or because there are still some flat surfaces that refuse to tell them they're the fairest of them all—when what they most crave is letting the whole planet know how special, stunning and brave they are.
Our transgressive elite are the equivalent of one of those child monsters from "My Super Sweet 16" who gets a new Porsche for her birthday but then weepily denounces her parents because it's the wrong color. They are afflicted with a terminal case of radical ingratitude and can only denounce and destroy what they could never build. If the price of freedom means living with a permanently aggrieved class of performing infants always searching for social fires to pour lighter fluid on, then maybe the rigid Russian aristocracy wasn't so backwards after all.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!
This
When the revolution starts,the youngest people you’ll see n the front lines will be over 60. The only ones with the balls to do it, and with the least to lose.
It's never happened. Revolutions are always led by the young. It's one of the reasons I'm not optimistic and am willing to consider a variety of illiberal solutions that would have appalled me even 6 years ago.
But there's never been a revolution of fat men, either. And our boys are actually losing testosterone, and it's use to body fat not accompanied by requisite muscle. So, they are fat. And soft. And some are even feminine.
That cohort will not lead a revolution.
I am pessimistic but also my Chrisitan faith and the reading of history has shown that cultures sometimes recover for a long while.
I am a fat man. You're getting personal there. :-) Of course, by military standards, I'm an old man (51) too.
Im not fat but I'm even older.
I think "Tank Man" in Tiananmen Square was an exception.
He lost.
Saw it last night- it was a hilarious take down of know it all , anti racist ( not a real thing) grifters posing as experts. I thought it was brilliantly done - the audience was in on the grift & laughed at the fools. It was clear who the racists were. Pretty full theater too.
I stockpile water. My wife thinks I am insane.
Come the Day . . . I may or may not share it.
I'm lucky -- I have a well. And a generator. And enough fences and firepower to keep the urban refugees away if necessary. I hope I won't have to use any of it, but after COVID, only a fool wouldn't plan.
I need to buy a generator but do have the well. I used to have wood heat as a backup but not any longer.
People were wanting to jail others in under a year. We're no different than the Germans between the wars. Easy to fool, apparently.
A word of advice, get a dual-fuel generator but don't ever run it on anything but propane. Gasoline really fouls an engine; propane burns clean.
The way I rigged mine was through a couple of extra circuit breaker slots. I ran a 4-wire, 220V, 30A cable to where my generator sits and put a reversed (male) outlet (called a generator box) there. I keep the breakers off and the generator "plugged in" all the time. If I need it, turn off the main to the house (VERY IMPORTANT!), turn off all the breakers I don't want, and start it up to run the rest.
Propane goes a long way. It takes about 6 minutes of generator to refill my 300 gallon pressure tank. A 500 gallon propane tank sitting next to my house gives real peace of mind.
My instructions to my family are "If something outside is going really wrong, fill up the bathtub".
We used to do that at the start of ice storms. Plus, I have a well in my backyard if things got bad.
My problem will be medicine. I have a 100-year-old capped well that's excellent in my once country, now city, yard. A little Well Bucket will draw up a lot until we can rig up a pump.
Where I live, the second season there would be a wide and deep abundance of food because people still know how to grow it.
Ammo and medicine might be a problem.
Mansplaining.
In a few months, I will get to do this to my AWFL neighbor while roasting a chipmunk on the plastic-coated grate that came from my fridge. It's the one thing I'm looking forward to.
Hey that’s a real thing. My husband is totally unaware when he does it.
Last year in a Facebook group, I was catching grief about my mansplaining from a couple of women. This led me to say somewhat testily to one, “Well, I guess it would be mansplaining to a femininny!” To her credit, she thought it was funny. She and the other woman weren't being nasty, just a little pushy, and they both realized that I don't dismiss women's intelligence as a true mansplainer would. As far as I know, I coined “femininny” right then and there. Every neologist hopes his new word will catch on, knowing that his only reward MIGHT be an eventual citation in a dictionary.
I’m sure there may be 1 or 2 things that I do that irritate my husband. Gotta have a sense of humor.
Move to a small town. We not only know our neighbors, but we also know who looks like they aren't from around "here."
We don't dislike them, but we will take zero guff.
We will protect our homes, our food, our gasoline, our hospital with weapons if we need too.
If social order breaks down, we might break a sweat because the AC will be off, but we won't be worried if 1,000 looters come looking for stuff they need. They won't stand a chance.
And I'm an old, harmless man, but I will shoot to protect my family, my neighbors, my friends, my church, my right to live as I want.
I don't think we are that close because the bad guys don't have things assured, yet. They need several more years. They need people who remember personal freedom to die off. They need another generation of university taught kids to pass to their side.
One of the few places they have lost a few young people is among disaffected young men. They want to make sure those boys are stopping bullets for them, and those boys aren't ready to do that yet.
But diversity is our strength! Save an owl to stop clear-cutting but hey forest fires are a bonus; climate change is SO real. And Kamala is still stuck on an "I'm talking" moment. /Sarc off
I'm skeptical of Trump but who really votes to see it all burn down? I hate that I'm forced to show up and vote for people that will disappoint me but the alternative is Hell on earth.
It's always the same formula:
1) Provide fake personal anecdote
2) Recite bumper sticker slogans to give the "feelz"
3) Give the new "plan" Orwellian slogan
4) Never detail the plan
5) Repeat
Having that 80s song moment:
https://youtu.be/PGNiXGX2nLU?si=-NWVanRFpn6ddHhI
Some how I missed that one. I have NO memory of it.
I can die completed now.
Will wavery Democrats see through it this time? She's worse than usual.
All War is Evil. No More War.
Stop Paying these Monsters Income Taxes
Stop Paying for WAR.
The issue is never the issue, the issue is power.
Exactly! Just finishing the book by Paul Kengor, The Communist. Also reading his book, Dupes. BOTH books describe how the Communists used groups, starting in the 1920s, then dumped them. Even called FDR a fascist, until he did something they liked, when they stopped calling FDR a fascist. LOL. What we're going through isn't new. Commies never stop trying.
Try this, after Kengor. A bit better than Kengor's attempt at uncovering the covert influence operations that created Political Correctness:
Willing Accomplice: How KGB covert influence operations created Political Correctness
www.willingaccomplices.com
Thanks. It couldn't have happened without communist-friendly people in our government. Like Pelosi, for one. Her father was affiliated with a Communist front, ACPFB (American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born) among others. Also he was a reported mobster in Baltimore. Came in handy when Pelosi's brother was the only one not convicted of gang -banging young girls. Wikipedia (now deleted) said the father "stared down the jury."
Pelosi herself praised a communist union leader as "most progressive" ten years AFTER he died. What's the point? Appeasing someone still living?
Plenty of willing accomplices for decades here in the US. One of the first, singer, actor Paul Robeson. He was used, spit out. Same with Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall, Gene Kelly - many big names. Not just Taylor Swift. Commies also tried to recruit blacks, using the Scottsboro trial in the 20's. When the accused were found guilty, the commies dropped them like a hot rock. they only tried to stir up trouble in the US. Much like the CIA did in the 1960s in California. They ran 3 black ops in CA. One of which drugging people to replace their own memories with CIA-manufactured thoughts/memories. F-ing scary and evil.
Books for this - Dupes (Kengor) and CHAOS by Tom O'Neill.
The government was the last, and arguably, least important target of the operations that doomed American culture.
Kengor is a neocon with minimal understanding of the actual covert world--which is origin of the Hate-America-First belief system. His work did not reveal the roots of the infestation.
The belief system was inserted into American culture, with the goal of destroying our culture from within, by the Comintern's covert influence genius, Willi Muenzenberg.
Muenzenberg conceived of, planned, and sent his operatives to handle the American organizations that made Scottsboro, Sacco and Vanzetti, and other issues high profile.
He targeted the three legged stool that supports American culture: education/academia, the media, and Hollywood.
Willing Accomplices explores a case study in each of those three domains:
Education/Academia: Dr George S. Counts
Media: Walter Duranty
Hollywood: Dorothy Parker
Muenzenberg's only mistake was misjudging how long it would take for his operations to bear fruit. He thought it would take a few years. It ended up taking 80 years.
https://kentclizbe.substack.com/p/kgbcominternsoviet-active-measures?utm_source=publication-search
A whole lot of smoke and mirrors.
It is nice that you noted that Congress refuses to adequately fund both NASA and federal firefighters while spending 175 billion just on a lost war in Ukraine. A war threatening to go nuclear at that.
Hell, for that 175 billion dollars just how many American firefighters, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, trash collectors could have been trained, if needed, and hired to clean up the waste, fight fires, and (re)build the national parks, housing, and NASA?
Even at one million dollars per a person, that would hire, train, and equip 170,000 people. I am sure that we could find some more of that lose change in the congressional-military-industrial complex's losing wars. Perhaps another 175 billion dollars? For half a million each, we could build 340,000 really nice apartments for the roughly one million Americans that go homeless each year.
We have socialism for the wealthy, the connected, and the corrupt, but we have capitalism for everyone else, don't we?
Oh, we're funding both sides. I heard an interview on RSBN yesterday or the day before, and Ukraine has had $7B worth of our jets shot down. Public knowledge of 1 being shot down; it's SEVEN. Ukraine has never had a chance of winning. Why? Ukraine can't defend against Russia's hypersonic missile system. Why? Because the Clintons gave them that technology.
Daily Caller, again. Article is titled, "Hillary's Hypersonic Missile Gap." You should be able to find it with that.
Also, Zelensky started it in the Donbas region. Not Putin. Look on Substack, Kanekoa News (Kanekoa the Great) for the title, 'OSCE Reports Reveal Ukraine Started Shelling The Donbas Nine Days Before Russia's 'Special Military Operation'
That money was spent to cover up evidence for the machine. There is so much treason being done in the last twenty years to keep the courts busy for decades!
Treason that will never be sent to the courts. Remember, rules for thee, but not for me.
I get really annoyed with the law-and-order, pro capitalist, free marketeers who refuse to see the oppression and poverty wrought using the law as a weapon by all the levels (federal, state, and municipal) of corrupt government for the welfare of the wealthy and corporations.
You mean the same “committed conservatives” who adamantly refuse to do anything about Big Tech’s censorship at the behest of Big Gubmint, cuz “They’re PRIVATE CORPORATIONS! If you MAGATs don’t like it, build your own Facebook/Google/etc.!!”
Yeah, I’ll love watching their reaction when that tiger turns on them after devouring everyone else.
Since I really started paying attention to politics, the American people have yearned to flip the bird to the establishment. We thought we were doing that with Obama, and we definitely did it with Trump. (Bernie was another huge sign.)
I would vote for nearly anybody who's running opposed to the neocon agenda that's effortlessly 'switched' from the right wing of the uniparty to the left.
Edit: Was thinking of the Ron Paul campaign but didn't actually say it above.
If only we could get more people like Tom Massie.
And if all those fervent Ron Paulers (now 40 something’s) climb on the Trump/RFK bandwagon we might have something.
I think it would be pretty difficult to find Ron Paulers who aren't already on board. Maybe Dave Smith? The addition of RFK to tackle censorship issues was huge.
We are deep in a hole. We are in a very dangerous place. Trump will slow down or stop the madness but we have a lot of work today. Think and act very carefully.
Asking "the world" if it /wants/ American "leadership" would certainly a welcome novelty, and it's one thing that might have a chance under Trump 2.0, even if it was to come about from so-called isolationism.
The most common sentiment about US foreign policies is, "Stop meddling!". The second is "Let people sort out their own differences!". I dare say I think most US citizens are onboard with that?
From a European perspective, the EU and European nations both stand to gain more from putting an end to acting as an extension of the American hegemony, and I think the USA would actually benefit from that too, and not just economically.
Meanwhile, the main issue among our politicos and pundits is, they do trust Trump (they loathe him still and are allied to the machine behind Harris) because he is exceptionally easy to understand; they do not trust Harris (or Biden) because they know full well that they do nothing but lie and cheat in the interest of their string-holders (that they still follow is an essay-length topic in its own right).
The main fear is, Trump will enact policies that actually solves problems and by doing so show what the problems are, and that they need not exist, something which goes against the spiritual grain of all sorts of progressives and liberals: either a problem is to be solved according to their dogma, or it isn't to be solved.
The armies of homeless you mention is one such problem, that can be solved within weeks, if one wants to solve it more than one wants an ideologically correct solution. The same with invasion across the border. The same with cartels, gangs and pedophile rings of human traffickers. The same with abject poverty.
All quite easily solvable. The /causes/ for either is a different matter. But to use an image: when there's fire, you first put it out. Then you look for the cause in order to prevent more fires.
I can’t wait till his first day,when he fires fifty thousand federal employees! And then thirty days later, fires another 50 k.
From a lecture back when I was a student trying to understand organisational theory:
"If management/admin staff in total is greater than 5% of the workforce, they're too many."
I live in a tony DC suburb and am a law firm partner. Everything I see around me is great, actually, so saying anything is wrong is inherently racist, you racist. Be quiet and eat your $15 Taco Bell tacos, work your several gig economy jobs with no benefits, and leave me and my low capital gains rate alone while our schools queer your kids or send them to fight for democracy in other countries. You have a lot to be thankful for, actually, and you’re welcome. (#sarcasm)
Or as Bill Maher said once “ it doesn’t matter if my steak at Ruth’s Chris costs $ 36 or $48 bucks!” Goof for you asshole!
I like Mr. Maher more by the week!
Actually in this instance he was arguing that inflation is not that bad…..
Ah…I do not have HBO. Lots to like about his views even if not everything!
It seems to me that the machine does think that Trump can reverse the decline. Otherwise they would not have spied on him, lied about him, impeached him twice, set him up on J6, indicted him, and tried to murder him. He railed against the swamp last time but he didn’t truly understand how deep the mud is. He’s got on his thigh high boots this time, shovel in hand. Let’s hope he makes it to dig us out.
They might think that he can drain some of the grift from the managed decline. My view is that the rot is in EVERYTHING. The work of reversing it is generational, at least, and has to be fought at the local, state, and federal levels. Fifty-plus years of consistent effort at every level. No single person is going to reverse all of the decline everywhere.
There are something like 24 million government employees.
Exactly what I said in another post. The rot and grift goes very deep.
But something about all the rage, lawfare, and now assassination attempts makes me wonder: is the other side genuinely worried about the outcome of this election? Are they less than certain that their “fortification” efforts will succeed? Maybe I’m just trying to see a glass half full.
Yep. And I don't think our young people have the grit. Maybe they will get some as times get harder.
Agreed.
Note to self, add Rick Steves to the growing list of folks are qualified to speak and influence people on topics other than politics. Unless my memory serves me poorly, the only people who suffered under Trump were those who hated anything he did that turned out positive. I will, and hope most Americans will, never forget the men and women wearing pink vagina hats who were aggrieved on the day Trump got sworn in. From that point forward, it was clear that nothing would ever make them happy again. Kamala's strategy to use the slogan "We're not going back" is a winning message for Trump as most will remember that things were actually better back then (four short years ago).
Interesting that you brought up the Forest Service and wildland firefighting. My daughter has been on a Forest Service "Hot Shot" crew for a couple of years now; on a regional team before that. She is deployed almost continuously between March and November in the Mountain West and California. She will 100% support your comments and observations about lack of resources, underfunding, etc. Americans have no idea the value they get from this relatively small and inexpensive federal agency.
Have had this discussion with USFS folks on camping trips. Once you get them started, they tend to rant. Such an easy thing to fix, if we would just focus on fixing it.
Too much crime to hide, too many criminals to protect.
Fewer and fewer campers cause like where’s the Starbucks? And like you mean there’s no showers and I have to shit in a tin can or bury my do do?
Rick Steves has always been a dope smoking liberal.
I spent a summer, 26 years ago, backpacking around Europe with a rail pass. Rick Steves provided a bunch of decent practical advice, back then, of the "where to do your laundry" variety, and a reasonable amount of "here's where to convert your traveler's checks into local currency" stuff. I'm gathering that he's become dumber.
We’ll he does reside in Western WA.
Along with Bill Nye the “Sort of Science Guy.”
Steves was not bad, in the old days, with basic travel tips for Americans going to Europe.
But today he's simply a PC-Prog follower.
Have you seen his 2018 screed, issued in the midst of the PC-Prog's new message about the fascist threat of American domestic terrorists, and their leader, Trump?
Rick Steves' Fascism in Europe
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/fascism
Steves describes it as: "...a case study in how fear and angry nationalism can be channeled into evil, and how our freedoms and democracies are not indestructible...."
Steves owes his soul to the PC-Prog hate-America-First crowd.
By the way, how light is Rick in his loafers?
Yes thank you for referencing that screed of Steves’ about fascism in Europe. It was clearly his thinly veiled warning about what he perceived as the dangers of Trump( he’s clearly another Mussolini doncha know)… I kept thinking isn’t it noteworthy that Rick Steves doesn’t give equal time to the horrors of Communism which has been an even more deadly political and cultural movement historically in Eastern Europe and of course in Russia. But Communism has always gotten a pass from the traditional liberal. So it comes as no surprise that traveling soy boy Steves’ is throwing his hat and loafers in the Harris/Walz ring.
But does he have Taylor Swift’s following ? Oh right, different demographic, all nine of them.
"decent practical advice" was my experience back then.
My oldest son is a wildland firefighter working as a captain on a hotshot crew out of Virginia. He currently is in Idaho helping to fight western US fires. He has a master's degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri and when newspapers began to die, he was single and looking for adventure. He joined the Shasta Lake hotshot crew and still has friends there. No matter what you pay these guys (and occasionally a couple of girls), it's not enough. He is hoping to make it to 20 years for a federal pension and then do something safer. He has three daughters and a wife who is a trouper as he is seldom home. Recently I saw a list of the 20 most dangerous jobs in the country and wildland firefighting was #1. There are not enough crews to do prescribed burning so underbrush grows rampantly which promotes large fires. Most people have no idea what these people sacrifice for our forests. I pray a lot.
The absence of prescribed burns and forest management is a scandal that deserves more attention.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m-X7arBJQVM
Yes. Yet all we hear is that climate change is responsible.
Hey. I got my undergrad from MIZZOU as well!
As a young mom, my husband did all the driving on interstates so I had no practice and was scared. But my son had nothing to furnish his small apartment so I loaded up the van with a sleeper sofa and other necessities and set out from eastern PA. By the time I hit I-70 in Ohio I had summoned my confidence and was sailing along passing all the trucks in the left lane. I will never forget how that experience changed me. Such a good memory.
I have followed Rick Steves for years and watched all his videos of a particular area for a trip, especially to Europe. He did a nice job advising travelers about food and lodging while glancing at local cultures. I'd long suspected he was an internationalist and lefty, someone who loved other cultures more than the one he grew up in. He confirmed it with his very stupid endorsement of Harris, which diminishes his brand and exposes a judgment I no longer trust. His videos will never again be seen in my home.
He endorsed Biden in 2020 so this really is no surprise. Just seems like more people noticed this time. Also he lives in either Portland or Seattle so I'm sure he feels pressure to be approved by his community.
I have some useful chess books by some very lefty guys. I am not throwing them out.
Go to google maps street view and click back to older versions and just look at the decay in pictures over time. Start here and click toward Alameda Ave. https://maps.app.goo.gl/6rwQswaBQVGgKK7T9?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
Holy shit
Maybe 10-15 years ago I was fascinated by a website showing the street level pictures from Google and Bing maps of residential streets in Detroit. The steady decline from a decent neighborhood in 2002 to a decaying and burned out shithole by 2010 was very similar to the decay I saw in the south suburbs of Chicago in the 70’s and 80’s.
One particularly memorable series of photos showed a decent neighborhood with a couple of fixer-upper houses. The next year some had started work on one of the fixer uppers and maybe another house or two started showing declines. The next year that fixer upper was the nicer house on the block and one of the other fixer uppers was burned out and a couple more started showing decay. The next year the whole block was a mess except for that original fixer upper. The next year even that renovated house was boarded up and most of the block was vacant lots.
The ostensible point of the website was to explain that the property taxes were way out of line compared to the property values and that the people who tried to fix and maintain their homes realized it was just throwing good money after bad and gave up.
Again, none of this was news to me as I lived through all that growing up in the Calumet Region of the Chicago area. It hammered home to me that it wasn’t just a matter of local political corruption, it was the national policy of the party in charge.
I also remember being a college student on the north side of Chicago in the 80’s commuting to my parents south side home as getting accosted by an ACORN activist in the subway. I knew ACORN was a scan because I saw what they were doing in my neighborhood but they were always approaching college students in the subway because most of them were north siders who had no clue about life on the south side and just assumed racist whitey put all the black people there. When some classmates learned of where I lived, a few of them actually said “There’s white people there?” Which gives you an idea of their arrogance and ignorance.
And I bring this up because Jean Shepherd also grew up in the Calumet Region and he had a series on PBS called “Jean Shepherd’s America “ which was much more interesting than Rick Steve’s Europe. To me Rick Steve has always been an arrogant person who happily meets working class people in Europe but turns his nose up at the same class of people in America. The ultimate in hypocrisy.
That was in reference to that Seneca Scott tweet.