Category Archives: General Interest

August 4, 2023 · 12:56 pm

Where has President Obama been?

Yesterday, there was some buzz on politics Twitter about an interview, The Obama Factor, of a historian, David Garrow, who wrote a biography, Rising Star, about former President Obama in 2017. I don’t recall a lot of talk about this biography in 2017, but then again our political media was in complete #Resist mode and 24/7 meltdowns about how President Trump was going to destroy the world.

I realize that most people don’t have time to read a lot and this interview is a long piece. It covers Obama’s life, his writings, and a lot of other topics beyond the part that caught my attention the most – the weaponization of the federal government. Here’s the paragraph that stuck out:

“But while the attention of Republicans in Washington turned to questioning the FBI, more careful observers could not fail to notice that the FBI had hardly acted alone. After all, Russiagate had not originated with the Bureau, but with the Clinton campaign, which having failed to get even sympathetic mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to bite on its fantastical allegations, was reduced to handing off the story to campaign press apparatchiks like Slate’s Franklin Foer and Mother Jones’ David Corn. The fact that the story only got bigger after Clinton lost the election was due to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who in November and December of 2016 helped elevate Russiagate from a failed Clinton campaign ploy to a priority of the American national security apparatus, using a hand-picked team of CIA analysts under his direct control to validate his thesis. If Brennan was the instrument, the person who signed the executive order that turned Brennan’s thesis into a time bomb under Trump’s desk was Barack Obama.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Brennan has become a permanent “Trump/Russian Collusion” mouthpiece on CNN and MSNBC since Trump took office in 2017 and yet this interview points out that Obama has pretty much disappeared from being in political news a lot, other than the stories of the Obamas fancy mansions and hobnobbing with the ultra-rich elites. Obama’s people are everywhere though – in the media and in the White House, but Obama wasn’t out there ranting about Trump or politics. This interview mentions that, unlike other former presidents, the Obamas live mostly in their home in Washington DC, yet the press never talks about what they’re doing in Washington or who visits them.

This other paragraph was illuminating too:

“That Obama might enjoy serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone, was a thought expressed in public by Obama himself, both before and after he left office. “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony,” he told Steven Colbert in 2015, “I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.””

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Well, the Biden White House is filled with Obama’s people and it’s been obvious since that Locked In The Basement 2020 campaign that Joe Biden isn’t running things. Obama had initially tried to generate political momentum for his friend and ally, Deval Patrick, former Massachusetts governor in the 2020 Democratic primary, but that effort failed. Biden won the Democratic nomination and there seemed to be a bit of a power struggle within the Biden circle.

I didn’t know the Obamas still live in Washington DC, because the media only mentions their other mansions and their vacations. However, I’ve suspected Obama was running the Biden White House and this interview bolsters that opinion.

In recent months, Hunter Biden has moved into the White House and is by his father’s side constantly. I’ve wondered if the top Dems (Obama and his peeps) are working to orchestrate a “dignified exit” for Biden to drop out of the 2024 race and if Hunter’s there to squash a palace coup. Who is really running the Office of the President right now, Hunter or Obama? At this point it’s hard to tell. What is clear is Michelle Obama and Gavin Newsom keep getting liberal media buzz as alternatives, not Kamala Harris, if Joe Biden drops out of the race.

Before ending this blog post, I wanted to touch on my own waffling about the focus of my blog. I started this blog in 2012 blabbing about politics, foreign affairs, military matters and assorted culture war topics, but as the polarization and “politicization of everything” in America escalated, I’ve thought about skipping the politics and writing about less controversial topics and about other things I think are important – like emergency preparedness. However, I really do enjoy reading through articles and books and reports hunting down information and I’ve been writing about how America’s political and culture war are being fought out via a corrupt, media-driven spin information war, long before most politicos even talked about the weaponization of news. In an information war – digging for reliable or accurate information is vital, because the spin efforts create walls of lies and deliberate misdirections.

Words really are the weapons in spin war. Back in 2016, I wrote a blog post, The “War about Words” (Part 1), and here’s a bit from that:

“Trying to explain this dichotomy of Americans who boldly proclaim their principles and independent-thinking, then become devoted followers of obvious con men and demagogues, I remembered  this book by Brian Burrell.  He relates DeTocqueville’s observations on Americans from 1831 and perhaps this American characteristic still gets passed on in our cultural DNA. DeTocqueville identified the American reliance on “experts”, that still persists today:

“On his visit to the United States, Tocqueville noticed that the Americans he encountered tended to exhibit two opposing tendencies: they did not want to be told what to do or think, and yet their collective will could easily be rallied behind certain carefully chosen words, to which he gave a name.  “In the United States, Tocqueville concluded, “the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of the individuals who are thus relieved from having to form opinions of their own.””

pages 4-5, The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, And Pledges That have Shaped America, by Brian Burrell”

There’s still a great deal of truth in DeTocqueville’s observation that Americans tend to rally behind the loudest “public opinion” and the architects of our American spin information war use many tools driving public opinion to con the American people. They eagerly use repetitive messaging bombardments in the media, where the liberal media jump on repeating the same inflammatory and/or deceptive words to incite mob type behavior and fuel the latest cancel culture trends. At this point the Trump circle effectively borrowed the same Dem/liberal media spin tactics too and they’re using the polling spin game against DeSantis – hyping “winning in all the polls” to con Republicans into believing that polls reflect the will of the GOP voters. In reality polls are only a momentary snapshot of the opinions of only a very few people. When the media hypes the majority in polls they’re trying to convince people that if you aren’t in the majority your views are “out of the mainstream” of the group being polled. Many people don’t want to be called fringe and they will move to be part of the mainstream. This media/political effort to drive public opinion by hyping polls creates opinion cascades to push public opinion in a certain direction. It’s fascinating to realize that DeTocqueville in 1831 recognized this culture trait in America.

The traditional terms “disinformation and misinformation” are pretty meaningless at this point, because Democrats and their vast liberal media sphere have called just about everything “Russian disinformation” to attack Trump or during the pandemic calling information that differed with their experts’ views as “COVID misinformation” and working to silence them, so I’m going with “deliberate misdirections” (LIES). I’m hoping providing links to information I come across might help others be aware of this information and be encouraged to do their own research.

I continue to work on my own preparedness, but I feel there are loads of better preparedness sites and videos online than what I can write or create. In my own life I get frustrated when people I care about don’t seem to take my preparedness advice seriously and ignore my warnings about how if they wait until there is a serious crisis to prepare for an emergency, it’s too late.

Along with natural disasters, the constant growing threat in America continues to be the polarization and politicization of everything,” fueled by our media and social media. Most of the spin war hits us daily through controversies that seem like trivial, stupid stuff – like the Jason Aldean song or arguing about pronouns. However, all of these culture war media/social media controversies are part of the larger political war, being waged constantly via the 24/7 spin information war. While it’s understandable to try to ignore these ridiculous controversies and the partisan dramas, as American citizens we all should at least be aware of the partisan divides and about how media and social media play a major role in the political and culture war swirling constantly.

In the words of the Aaron Tippin country song, “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War, Politics

August 2, 2023 · 1:32 pm

More bad financial news

The partisan political drama in America yesterday was about Biden’s 20 “perfect” phone calls with Hunter’s business partners and then later more Trump indictment drama. Here’s the bigger headline from yesterday:

Fitch downgrades US’ long-term ratings from ‘AAA’ to ‘AA+’

Today the fallout from that downgrade is already impacting: Stocks sink after historic US credit rating downgrade. Here’s a quote from this CNN article:

““In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters, notwithstanding the June bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt limit until January 2025,” Fitch said in its explanation.”

https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news-today-credit-downgrade/index.html

It’s very easy to get caught up in the political media drama-of-the-day or the partisan echo-chambers being hyped and completely miss the important news. This blog post will jump around a bit, from partisan politics to the larger global politics.

For the next year Americans will be bombarded with partisan presidential election garbage, so I’m going to try to look beyond those loud distractions and seek out news that’s getting drowned out.

Democrats will be selling “Bidenomics” and telling us how spectacularly the economy is doing, while Republicans will be in-fighting for the foreseeable future. The Iowa caucus, the first in the formal nomination process despite the hype about who is winning based on polling, isn’t until January 2024.

In the GOP roster of candidates, so far, it appears to me that Trump and DeSantis are the only two candidates who are likely to be the GOP 2024 candidate and Trump definitely has a huge advantage.

To get a sense of how immersed the GOP is in in-fighting, many Republican candidates and pundits quickly jumped on board the latest Dem “You Racist!” spin smear attack against FL governor, Ron DeSantis, over the new FL K-12 history standards – especially Trump’s campaign attack dogs. After all the unfair Dem spin smears against Trump, Trump’s campaign mouthpieces embrace and then amplify every vicious Dem smear against DeSantis.

I still believe DeSantis is the only candidate who has demonstrated an ability to dismantle radical Dem laws and efforts by getting laws passed in FL. Unfortunately, Trump never united the GOP while president and his defenders will insist it’s because of the “Uniparty in DC” or “RINOs in Congress,: but the truth is if you are the leader of a party, you are responsible for building a cohesive and unified team. Trump’s way of operating has always been to play people against each other, even in his own cabinet, which is poison to building a team that works together. Trump did take some actions as president, in the form of executive orders, to dismantle Dem policies, but those lasted only as long as Trump was president. The Biden administration reversed those Trump executive orders on day one.

DeSantis has many flaws as a candidate too – he’s too invested in imitating Trump’s spin drama tactic of harping about whatever the latest “woke” spin drama is, but what he’s missed is that the segment of the GOP that eats up that spin drama is Trump’s most loyal group of supporters – who aren’t going to switch to DeSantis. DeSantis’ potential base is former Trump supporters, who lost faith in Trump’s abilities and more moderate Republicans and independents. DeSantis also empowered too many online campaign mouthpieces, who created unnecessary controversies of their own and did nothing to build support for DeSantis. The responsibility for that falls on DeSantis, so as his campaign is undergoing a restart or whatever they’re calling it, it’s going to be difficult to make up lost ground and almost impossible to regain lost trust or voters his campaign has alienated. Trump is immune from that sort of accountability, because his supporters don’t hold him to any standards whatsoever and will excuse him for just about anything (and usually blame someone else for Trump’s bad behavior).

Anything could happen between now and November of 2024, but one thing I am sure of is Dems, the left’s vast activist apparatus, liberal media and liberal big tech, and even global entities committed to the green transformation will be working overtime to make sure a Democrat remains in the White House in 2024. The global green transformation depends on having an American president who is fully-committed to the UN Agenda 2030 radical world transformation.

Here’s a reminder from May 2023 on where things are going with the green push: John Kerry targets agriculture as part of climate crusade. Along with targeting home appliances as a threat, agriculture in America, which has helped feed the world for decades, is now on the environmentalist chopping block:

“Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.

“A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” he said during his keynote address. “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.””

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-kerry-targets-agriculture-part-climate-crusade

Leftist utopian plans often include terms they make up, like “net-zero,” with the word “zero” in them, as if getting to “zero” holds some sort of magical power. Back in the 1960s, there was the Zero Population Growth movement and other “zero” movements followed. During the Obama years, the left came up with a “Global Zero” movement, with the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons by 2030 (so it was part of that UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals). “Sustainable” is another of those murky terms the global environmentalists harp about, but how they define that term is fraught with politics, more than something scientifically measurable – “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

I remember this Global Zero movement, because I wrote a blog post, Global Zero: Another Nothing-Burger Plan, about it in 2013. Yep, I’ve been tired of hearing about “zero” movements a long, long time. I wrote, “Here’s a thought, perhaps, the greatest threat just might be weakness, which this loopy movement would increase dramatically.  My best advice for people – if some morons come up with a plan that has ZERO in the title, consider it null (nothing but hot air).”

I still feel the same way about “ZERO” movements. Even back in 2013, when this Global Zero movement started, Dems were hard at work laying the groundwork for the UN Agenda 2030, which was signed onto by 193 countries, including the US, in 2015. Unfortunately, it seems many right-wing Americans seem to have only awakened to this UN global effort in the past few years. Dems have embedded these global 2030 “sustainable goals” in US Congressional spending bills and other legislation for years now, while most of the right in America is just now figuring out the scope of the global transformation ready to steamroll over us.

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July 27, 2023 · 12:31 pm

About “benefiting” from slavery…

This post isn’t about whether you support DeSantis or Trump or Biden or Cornell West, or whoever else is running for president, even though I’m going to mention another of those “Racism” dramas in the 2024 presidential election. I’ll tell you upfront, the point of this post is about reading history, not just repeating partisan talking points you see on TV or social media.

The Florida Department of Education has been working on their own African American history standards, after rejecting the AP standards in mid-January, which they claimed focused on Black Lives Matter, reparations, Black feminism – you get it, the woke topics. So, Florida put together a work group to come up with Florida’s new African American history standards for grades K-12. A few days ago those standards were approved by the Florida state board of education. Then the backlash started.

Democrats “pounced” – here’s a NBC headline to give you the gist of the complaints: New Florida standards teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills. The big issue was mentioning “benefited.”

FL governor, Ron DeSantis backed the new standards, Democrats, liberal media and activists rushed into full-throated condemnations of DeSantis and the usual “Racist!” smears, but Trump’s campaign also decided to jump on the Dems’ smear effort too. Vice-president, Kamala Harris, usually mercilessly mocked for her ridiculous, disjointed speeches, rushed to Florida to grandstand about… how dare they teach children that slavery benefited slaves.

After all this brouhaha, members of the work group that developed the new standards spoke out and defended their standards. Here’s Megyn Kelly interviewing, Dr. William B. Allen, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University, who was part of the FL work group:

Dr. Allen mentions Frederick Douglass in this interview (at minute 5:32), as an example of a slave who “benefited” from skills he learned as a slave.

Then last night DeSantis’ press secretary tweeted out information about the AP African history standards, which include the same point that the VP, Dems, liberal media and Trump campaign were ranting about to attack DeSantis:

And what ticks me off the most is this is just another idiotic political media circus, to label DeSantis as a racist and this actual point – the power of how individuals persevere in even the most awful conditions – is something every American should learn in school. In the Megyn Kelly video, Dr. Allen mentions Frederick Douglass, who grew up a slave, became a abolitionist, writer, and famous orator. Dr. Allen says we should listen to the words of these people in history. I find Douglass’ words truly inspiring.

I wonder how many of the people ranting about the FL standards have ever read Frederick Douglass’ writings? I have a high school education, but I’ve always been a voracious reader. I also like studying history and researching things just to satisfy my own curiosity. I always want to know, “Well, what really happened?” and “Why?” With the internet, you can easily hunt down Douglass’ writings and read them free online.

This bogus racial drama brought to my mind Frederick Douglass immediately. I’ve mentioned Douglass in other blog posts and I believe every American should read his story, My Bondage and My Freedom, if they want to feel the inhumanity of slavery, in heart wrenching, but eloquent words. I’ve linked it to a free copy at guternberg.org.

Douglass related that while a slave learning to read was forbidden, but a white mistress began teaching him how to read, until her husband found out and forbade her to continue. Douglass, then undertook a secret and dangerous mission to learn to read and educate himself. I have these quotes in a 2015 blog post, The power of free thinking:

“Seized with a determination to learn to read, at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish the desired end. The plea which I mainly adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of using my young white playmates, with whom I met in the streets as teachers. I used to carry, almost constantly, a copy of Webster’s spelling book in my pocket; and, when sent of errands, or when play time was allowed me, I would step, with my young friends, aside, and take a lesson in spelling. I generally paid my tuition fee to the boys, with bread, which I also carried in my pocket. For a single biscuit, any of my hungry little comrades would give me a lesson more valuable to me than bread. Not every one, however, demanded this consideration, for there were those who took pleasure in teaching me, whenever I had a chance to be taught by them.”

Douglass, Frederick (2009-10-04). My Bondage and My Freedom (p. 85). Public Domain Books Kindle Edition.

Douglass wrote about hearing white schoolboys talking about a popular schoolbook, The Colombian Orator, which was filled with essays and speeches on republican virtues (learning about liberty and good citizenship) and he determined to get a copy. I located a link to The Colombian Orator years ago, because I was curious about why Douglass found that school book so inspiring. I am always curious about books that inspired important people in history. Here’s what Douglass wrote about what The Colombian Orator meant to him.:

“I had now penetrated the secret of all slavery and oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation to be in the pride, the power and the avarice of man. The dialogue and the speeches were all redolent of the principles of liberty, and poured floods of light on the nature and character of slavery. With a book of this kind in my hand, my own human nature, and the facts of my experience, to help me, I was equal to a contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether among the whites or among the colored people, for blindness, in this matter, is not confined to the former. I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility. I could entertain no such nonsense as this; and I almost lost my patience when I found any colored man weak enough to believe such stuff.”

Douglass, Frederick (2009-10-04). My Bondage and My Freedom (p. 87). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition

When I compare the stirring, eloquent words of Douglass, a man who grew-up in slavery and basically educated himself, to the bumbling, blathering of our Vice President, Kamala Harris, a woman who attended both Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of Law, I feel sad for the state of our country. Sometimes, it seems to me that we, with all our modern conveniences and advantages, fail to even understand how ridiculous most of our political and culture war dramas really are. VP Harris could learn a lot studying Frederick Douglass’ writings and speeches. It might improve her public-speaking skills.

Douglass absolutely “benefited” from those few reading lessons his white mistress taught him when he was a slave and then he set about doing everything possible to learn more. Douglass’ soaring oratory helped drive the abolitionist movement in America.

Frederick Douglass’ life is a slave story every American schoolkid should learn about. He fought against slavery with every fiber of his being and his is an American freedom story every American should know about.

7/27/2023, 8:54 pm, Note: Just like in the Jason Aldean “racist” song allegations, with the pushback from DeSantis and the work group who developed the FL African American history standards, the attacks from the left are shifting. A new term was floated today – “policy violence.”

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Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics

July 21, 2023 · 3:21 pm

Here’s how these liberal pile-on attacks go

The Jason Aldean commotion will likely die down, because Aldean and his wife, aren’t backing down. Plus, the song that’s at the center of this leftist-created controversy shot to #1 on the country charts. At first the controversy was supposedly about the racist lyrics and when Aldean defended the song, the “racist” allegation shifted.

The next faux controversy floated by liberal mouthpieces was about the location where the video was shot – about the courthouse Aldean is standing in front of in the video: The grim history of the courthouse in Jason Aldean’s new music video. This second attempt to trash Aldean brings up some lynching in front of that courthouse in the 1920s. This old history explanation for the outrage is all bs and I’m going to explain another similar attack that happened recently on Twitter. I seriously doubt Aldean knew anything about that 1920s courthouse history.

Back in June, Casey DeSantis wore a black leather jacket with an alligator emblem on the back in Iowa and immediately when I saw a tweet, by this man, whose bio lists historian, author, progressive Democrat, I quote tweeted it, Later the Community Note discrediting the “alligators are racist “allegation showed up:

Very quickly, Donna Brazile, long-time Democrat strategist ran with that historian’s take and I quote tweeted that also:

I had been avoiding Twitter for a while, but then I started checking out the political drama again. Anyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to make the allegation that someone is racist on the flimsiest evidence, citing some old history, is absurd and should be challenged.

With the attack on Aldean, “mainstream” media has jumped on board trying to breathe life into the “racist” allegation. The article about the courthouse I linked is from NBC, but there are other major “mainstream” news outlets trying to bolster that 1920s courthouse history angle too.

Aldean’s song speaks to the truth about a whole lot of people across America – of all colors and ethnicities – who don’t want the type of urban lawlessness they see flashing across the news daily happening in their small town or rural area. Why the left keeps trying to shut up people who mention the rise in lawlessness is because that lawlessness can be directly attributed to the BLM – Defund the Police effort and the Antifa chaos. Liberal policies have created the urban lawlessness. That’s the truth. All the people who rushed to support the Defund the Police policies will keep pointing the finger at everyone, but themselves for the chaos that has ensued where officials embraced those BLM policies. There are people of all colors and ethnicities who want the police to keep their neighborhoods safe. Law and order is important for all of us. Most people, regardless of race or ethnicity, yearn for a safe, close-knit community, where neighbors help neighbors, which is the overarching theme of Aldean’s song, I think.

Once someone on the political left in America launches these attacks, there’s usually a leftist pile-on effect (mob attack) from liberal media, liberal mouthpieces and politicians, to try to get the target to start apologizing and backing down. A few years back there was a media pile-on against the Covington school kid, that resulted in that kid and his school receiving death threats. No one wants to be dragged through the mud in public and labeled a racist or bigot, but the minute the target gives an inch, the radical left mob smells blood in the water and the attacks and demands intensify. The Covington kid, Nicholas Sandmann, filed defamation lawsuits – CNN and WashPost settled.

In America, we have the right to free speech, even controversial or unpopular speech. Many people in foreign countries don’t understand that, but free speech is a right in America, not something the powers that be allow us.

Certainly, CMT has the right to pull the video of the now #1 country song in the country. Country music fans also have the right to not watch CMT. I quit CMT years ago, when they started running all sorts of stupid shows and less and less music, but after this incident, well, I’d imagine CMT will face a backlash like the Bud Light ad campaign. I don’t drink, so I wasn’t a Bud Light customer anyway. I also was not a Target shopper. I am not a boycott or protesting kind of person, but as more and more companies jump on board these partisan political causes, well, I certainly will think twice where I choose to spend my money and I will speak up if I feel something is wrong. There’s a whole lot wrong with the media mob attacks in America.

The important thing is to stop and ask a lot of questions when these pile on attacks or allegations of racism hit social media and the news ecosystem. And don’t trust the “mainstream” media to present the facts. Speak up if you disagree.

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July 19, 2023 · 9:53 am

Jason Aldean’s now under attack

Country star Jason Aldean is under attack for his song, ‘Try That in a Small Town.” Here’s a billboard article: CMT Pulls Jason Aldean’s Controversial ‘Try That In a Small Town’ Video: Exclusive. I’m not sure exactly what is controversial about the video, because the way I took the lyrics and video was this song expresses that small towns are about community and won’t put up with the chaos and violence in American cities that flashes across the news every single day.

If you’re against violence and lawbreaking, well, I don’t see what’s controversial about that and the rise in crime, especially in many American cities, makes headlines in the news constantly. Americans in small towns and rural America don’t want the social chaos that’s growing in American cities and we shouldn’t be afraid to say that.

I expect the efforts to censor Aldean’s song will be met with an even stronger reaction than the Bud Light ad fiasco.

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July 14, 2023 · 9:26 pm

The stupid in Trumpworld grows

There’s a whole lot of historical ignorance among the Trump-right mouthpieces, who spout Putin-apologist takes. Here’s one of the most ignorant takes I’ve ever seen:

Trump unabashedly gushes over the strongmen thug type leaders in the world and has done this long before he got into politics. And Gaetz, being a Trump mouthpiece, set up a ridiculous, historically false strawman argument that I’ve heard various Trump pundit/mouthpieces assert. The argument goes that China is the real threat and Russia isn’t the problem – Ukraine is. Some variations on this Trumper crowd anti-Ukraine stance assert that by backing Ukraine, we’re pushing Russia and China closer together.

It helps to read some history, which seems something that Trump’s cadre of Congressional sycophants obviously haven’t done. The Trump Republican Party now sells selective rules they choose to follow and their own selective patriotic norms. There’s now an antiwar right, so self-absorbed and enmeshed in partisan politics that they no longer care about America writ large, unless it coincides with their own partisan political views. They refuse to accept that Biden won the election and are really no different than the #Resist Dems, who refused to accept Trump’s win in 2016 and refused to accept him as a legitimate president.

Let’s look at some history, starting with Soviet Russia post WWII, where Stalin rolled over Eastern Europe and seized control of what later became known as the Eastern bloc. Here’s an explanation from Britannica:

“The Eastern bloc originated at the end of World War II. At the 1945 Yalta Conference, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin pledged to hold free and fair democratic elections in eastern European countries that the Red Army had liberated. Rather than carrying out this promise, occupying Soviet forces supported takeovers by local communist parties and the restructuring of eastern European governments and economies according to the Stalinist model. The U.S.S.R. also facilitated the rise to power of former communist partisans in Albania and Yugoslavia, who quickly allied themselves with the Soviet Union.”

Trump and his segment of the right-wing media punditry have taken the position that Putin is the good guy, Ukraine is the bad guy and NATO is a force for evil in the world, that the US should abandon, even though the US was instrumental in the formation of NATO as a long-term investment in Western security, post WWII. We were purchasing long-term security insurance, not only for our European allies, but for ourselves too. NATO allowed America to grow and prosper and most of all it insured our vast American economic interests too. We benefited mightily from maintaining the NATO alliance. The Americans trashing NATO assuredly won’t like a world where the Russia/China alliance calls the shots in the world and we’re forced to grovel and appease them.

I saw the iron curtain in person and I served in West Germany during the Cold War era. The Soviet threat was real. I was also back in West Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed, the wall came down and Germany reunified. I believe firmly that NATO has been a net positive for American national security and worth the investment.

Next let’s move on to Gaetz setting up the strawman that China is the real bad guy and we’d be better allowing Putin’s Russia into NATO. First, it’s completely idiotic to suggest letting Russia into NATO, since NATO was started to check Soviet Russian aggression – the kind like we’ve just seen with Putin launching a full-scale invasion into Ukraine. Putin’s Russia has been actively working to destabilize Moldova too – same Russian blueprint for how the Eastern bloc came into being post WWII. Again the reason NATO was formed in the first place was to check Russian aggression.

Binary-thinking and arguments are what Trump lives and breathes. You’re either for him or against him. Every situation in Trump world pits Trump-followers on one side (the only good people) vs. the bad people. The political arguments Trump and his crowd of loyalists spread are in that same simplistic vein. A Republican can go from being great in Trump world, but the minute they get on Trump’s bad side, well, then they are cast out and a RINO or worse. Their reasoning is as wacky as the far-left, where you either jump on board their latest culture war push, use the new words they come up with, or you’re banished from the tribe.

Gaetz mentioned China’s military activities in Cuba as a rationale for China is a threat, not Russia. That’s ludicrous on its face. Russia and communist China’s close ties are long-standing, so nothing we do is going to push Russia and China closer together – they’ve been close allies since post WWII, when Mao led the Chinese Communist Revolution. Mao turned to Stalin for training, funds and arms to launch the Chinese Communist Revolution, after the Japanese were driven out of China. The US had some military advisors and troops in China, Burma, India during WWII. We helped the Chinese fight the Japanese. Imperialist Japan had invaded China in the 1930s:

“Conflict in Asia began well before the official start of World War II. Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace. In 1939, the armies of Japan and the Soviet Union clashed in the area of the Khalkin Gol river in Manchuria. This battle lasted four months and resulted in a significant defeat for the Japanese.” – https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/invasion-manchuria

The US decided not to do much to aid the nationalist Chinese government to counter Mao’s revolution, while the Soviets were advising and arming Mao’s forces. After the communist takeover of China, the Soviets, over time, sent all sorts of advisors, assistance and support to China. There have been some rocky patches in Sino-Soviet relations over the years, but they remain close allies – regardless what we do and regardless what happens in Ukraine.

Gaetz mentioned China’s military activities in Cuba as a rationale for why China is a threat, not Russia. That’s also ludicrous on its face. The Russians have been in Cuba for decades too. The Russians operated the Lourdes SIGINT station in Cuba spying on the US. That station was shutdown in 2002, but in 2014, well, here’s a Business Insider report, Russia Is Reportedly Reopening Its Spy Base In Cuba :

“Russia and Cuba have agreed to reopen the signals intelligence (SIGINT) base in Lourdes, Cuba, which was primarily used to spy on the U.S., Russian business daily Kommersant reports.”

So, if Gaetz is so concerned about China in Cuba how does he feel about continuing Russian spy operations against the US in Cuba, which are obviously being coordinated with Russia’s close ally – CHINA. Gaetz and the entire Trump cadre of spin clowns should do some studying WWII and the Cold War, because this pacifist, apologist kind of idiocy just emboldens both China and Russia.

Russia and China have been close allies for decades and they will work together to undermine and damage America and American interests wherever they can. Again, we aren’t pushing Russia and China closer together – they have been working closely to undermine Western interests since the end of WWII.

It’s fine if you don’t want the US supporting Ukraine, but such ahistorical tripe as Gaetz peddled here left me feeling sad for the state of American education and leadership. A sitting US Congressman peddling allowing Russia into NATO dishonors all the Americans who stood firm and sacrificed so much during WWII and the Cold War to keep the Western world free.

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July 13, 2023 · 11:46 am

A small water situation happened here

This is just a small object lesson on preparedness. Yesterday when I got up the water in my bathroom sink came out in a trickle, so I went to my kitchen sink and turned the water on there. Same thing with just a trickle of water and low water pressure. Next I went outside to check that there wasn’t a leak in the pipes coming into my house. Everything looked normal.

After 9 am, I decided to call my local water department, as I’m on municipal water, and the lady told me there was a water main break and they were working on that. Later, the water pressure returned to normal, but then came the announcement of a boil water advisory until the water department completes testing of the water. Here’s the quote:

“The advisory is being issued out of an abundance of caution – there is
the potential a health hazard may exist due to microbial contamination in these areas without positive pressure.”

Once again it’s been driven home to me that having emergency drinking water stored is important. I didn’t have to run to the store or alter my daily routine, because I have drinking water stored and a Berkey water filter. I have lifestraws and other water purification means too.

I certainly wasn’t expecting a water main break near me when I woke up yesterday, but having bottled water and other water purification options on-hand was a relief. You never know when some type of incident or emergency will happen, so even small preparedness efforts can bring peace of mind when something out of the ordinary does happen. And the thing is all sorts of things out of our control can happen to create problems. Just a small bit of preparedness effort can mitigate a whole lot of inconvenience and worries.

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July 10, 2023 · 1:48 pm

Protecting the family interests

This is going to be a politics post about the 2024 election – fair warning. While I don’t feel like doing the usual right-wing rant about Hunter Biden’s laptop and his fortune acquired through influence-peddling off of his father’s high government position as vice president, this post is about Hunter Biden and the larger 2024 Democrat political drama playing out.

Upfront, I have serious doubts Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president. When the mainstream liberal media start hyping news stories about Biden’s fitness for office, that’s a clear indication the liberal media has gotten those talking points from high up in the Democratic Party machine. Otherwise, they’d still be running happy “What flavor ice cream cone did you order, Mr. President?” drivel. Today Axios has a story, Old yeller: Biden’s private fury, about Joe Biden’s “temperament,” with a section about, “Zoom out: Biden’s temper comes in the form of angry interrogations rather than erratic tantrums.”

The knives are out within some high-level of the Democratic Party to pressure Joe Biden to step aside, but don’t expect Biden to go easily or without putting up a fight. And that brings us to Hunter Biden.

When the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in October of 2020, weeks before the election, the mainstream liberal media and a lot of influential, former, high-level government intelligence officials closed ranks and declared the story was Russian disinformation. Several social media tech giants blocked the NY Post laptop story from their sites and since that time a lot of liberal media effort has gone into doing damage control for Hunter Biden – until recently.

There have been a flurry of stories by liberal news organizations, acknowledging Hunter Biden’s pay-to-play activities, his drug use and the authenticity of the laptop from hell. However, this more candid reporting comes after the fact, so to speak,. Here’s a June 23, 2023 CNBC story: Hunter Biden to plead guilty to federal tax crimes, take deal on gun charge.

The latest Axios, Old yeller hit piece comes after last week’s, Biden White House whodunit – with the baggie of cocaine found in the WH library, nope, in a “heavily traveled” part of the West Wing, to then in a not so “heavily traveled” part of the White House and so it goes. Rest assured the White House spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, the worst WH press secretary in my memory, was quick to lambast anyone for suggesting the cocaine might belong to Hunter Biden, a known cocaine addict.

My initial suspicion was wondering if the cocaine had been planted there by some Dem, in hopes of creating another embarrassment for the President and to inch up the pressure for him to step aside.

Even The Atlantic ran a op-ed a few days ago: Step Aside, Joe Biden.

And here’s where Hunter Biden comes in, because Hunter Biden had been living secluded in a Malibu mansion with the Secret Service paying a fortune to rent a home in Malibu to protect him and his family, we were told. Here’s a People magazine article from April 8, 2022: Secret Service Agents Protecting Hunter Biden Have to Rent $30,000-a-Month Malibu Home: Report.

Alas, in recent months Hunter Biden left his cushy Malibu mansion and has become Joe Biden’s shadow… stage managing Biden’s public appearances and I presume to keep tabs on the White House, to protect his father’s and family’s interests. So, here’s a July 4, 2023 Newsweek article: Does Hunter Biden Live at the White House? What We Know.

The one thing that should not be underestimated about Hunter Biden, is he’s a lot like Jeffrey Epstein, in that he has connections everywhere in Washington – among Dems and Republicans, among lobbyists, among foreign operators, and he knows where a lot of bodies are buried in Washington. Hunter Biden isn’t going to let his father be pushed out to pasture easily and that’s the drama I think is playing out at the highest levels of the Democratic Party right now – some powerful Dems want Joe Biden to step aside soon and Hunter is there to thwart them.

Note: Just saw this FOX News report: Obama-era emails reveal Hunter’s extensive ties to nearly a dozen senior-level Biden admin aides

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July 1, 2023 · 2:11 pm

An important message on gardening

Last night I watched a YouTube video by MIgardener, who has a very popular organic gardening channel. He also runs a seed business and I have ordered seeds from him. I feel what he said should be shared. He’s not a fearmonger or someone who puts out alarmist content. In this video he’s urging gardeners to plant more food now and he stated that the heavy smoke from the large number of Canadian forest fires is impacting plant growth for crops and in home gardens in a large portion of the US.

We can add this looming problem to the drought situation in parts of the country too and it’s obvious our food supply system will be challenged in coming months.

I found this article, 1816 – The Year Without Summer, and here’s the first patragraph:

“The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 triggered a change in the global climate. The heavier material fell to the ground and the ocean’s surface. However, when lighter particulates reached the stratosphere, they spread out and created an aerosol cloud the size of Australia.The cloud blocked sunlight from reaching the earth and changed the global climate by 2-7 degrees Fahrenheit, the effects of which devastated much of the world in what should have been the summer of 1816. Crops failed across Europe and the U.S. due to the cold or lack of sunshine causing grain and oat prices to soar, torrential rains flooded crops in Ireland, novel strains of cholera killed millions in India, crime became rampant, and people starved in many countries.”

There are rumors galore about the cause of these Canadian forest fires, with the far-right media ecosystem putting forth that these fires were deliberately set by the infamous “THEY,” to starve “us” to death, but I don’t have the time or energy to invest in the constant conspiracy theory hot takes.

Heck, I even saw some conspiracy theory on Twitter, after reports of NYC was dealing with heavy smoke a few weeks ago, that the Canadian forest fires aren’t real, but it’s some evil US government plot that’s creating all this smoke in the US. I believe the Canadian forest fires are real and it’s neither here nor there about what caused these Canadian forest fires. The issue is these fires are burning and the smoke situation is impacting the US in many ways, including food production. There are drought conditions and crazy weather events galore in the US this year too.

So what can we do to lessen the impact on our families?

The video above is not alarmist. He’s urging people to grow more in your garden now and to keep planting. Trying to find ways to encourage people to take steps to be prepared for more potential shortage situations and more food inflation seems common sense at this point. You don’t need to get hysterical or jump into panic mode, but even small efforts to work on building up some extra food supplies in your pantry and trying to learn to grow some vegetables and herbs are better than sitting there doing nothing.

I know plenty of people who are resistant to “prepping” and have a million and one excuses for why they don’t do things that could lessen their worries and bring them more sense of control in rapidly changing times. However, calmly urging people you care about to take steps to be able to feed their family – no matter what crisis comes our way – matters.

Since the 4th of July is right around the corner here in America, perhaps explaining that working toward personal food security really is an integral part of personal freedom might work better than warning about doom and gloom events. Every little bit you do to learn more skills and work at becoming more self-reliant really means you’re on the path to personal freedom. I’ve got some of my family agreeing with me on basic preparedness now, so I feel like that’s progress.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, Gardening, General Interest

June 25, 2023 · 12:04 pm

Blah, blah, blah…

Do you ever hear some political or media person say something relating to history and then wonder if they really have any knowledge about the historical event or person they’re talking about? Well, recently I heard former President Trump make some garbled reference to a communist Chinese leader had to use a lot of force against his own people for the good of his country. He didn’t name the Chinese leader or give specifics though.

While I know any mention of Trump will have his supporters rushing to defend him and his detractors getting on their anti-MAGA soapbox, what I started thinking about was how little I really know about China’s history, especially post-WWII, which was what, I assume, Trump was referring to, based on previous comments Trump has made over the years, even, praising the Tiananmen Square massacre. Here’s a Trump response to a question in a 1990 Playboy interview:

“You mean firm hand as in China?
When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world—”

Trump has made comments similar to this, praising strongman leaders using excessive force, many times, long before he entered national politics. I mention Trump’s recent comment, because it prodded me to assess what I really know about China’s history.

Over the years I’ve read literally dozens of books on Russian history, Soviet history and Cold War history, but somehow beyond being fascinated by the ancient Chinese military strategy treatise, The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, my knowledge of Chinese history was sadly lacking.

So, I started on a three-book series on China’s post-WWII history by Frank Dikötter. I already had his book, Mao’s Great Famine 1958-1962 (hadn’t read it though), so I purchased, The Tragedy of Liberation (1945-1957), and The Cultural Revolution (1962-1976). I’m only about a third of the way into The Tragedy of Liberation, and I’m very surprised at how many new things I’ve learned. It’s a time investment to actually sit and read books, but rather than rushing to write blog posts or throw my two cents into the instantaneous social media fever swamp of hot takes, I’m slowing down about jumping to conclusions, which seems to be opposite from the way most popular social media influencers operate.

I’d rather offer something that’s accurate, researched and where I put in some time to verify information and think about situations. I did plenty of hot take reactionary blog posts over the years and too often I relied on right-wing media or cherry-picked legacy media articles that bolstered my conclusions. Unfortunately, I think my slowing down on leaping to conclusions doesn’t fit well with the way social media and our political news operate. By the time I’m done researching and thinking about a situation, that situation will be relegated to old news and likely be long forgotten, but at least I will have learned many new things rather than investing emotional energy into social media drama.

And that brings me to the latest hot news, which wasn’t about China, but instead was back to Russia. I was following Twitter with the Wagner Group sort of coup attempt (not sure exactly what happened there) and the first thing was I saw all sorts of people, blue check accounts and anonymous ones, on Twitter posting videos ostensibly from Russia. I had no idea when or where those videos were taken, what I was actually seeing as far as military action and I had no way to verify any of it. This is exactly what happened in the Ukraine War very quickly, where both sides have been engaged in a very aggressive propaganda war.

I don’t know what’s really happening in Ukraine and I stopped reacting to the hot takes war reporting very quickly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine – that full-scale invasion by Russia is a fact, that for some reason a lot of the right-wing media ecosystem and very popular media personalities (like Tucker Carlson) have spent an enormous amount of time and energy obfuscating and muddying with all sorts of misdirection. Russia did launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and not losing sight of that fact is important. Putin was not the victim.

With this situation in Russia, numerous media and political people floated epic conspiracy theories linking all sorts of things together – some even asserting this Wagner Group action was a CIA operation. There’s absolutely no proof of that given – just neatly tying together a news story about a Pentagon accounting error from a few days ago with the events happening in Russia in the past couple days and stating the CIA-connection conspiracy theory as fact. Many Americans instantly latch onto these types of anti-American government/Deep State conspiracy theories and while certainly some conspiracies could be true and a few sometimes turn out to be true, without some real evidence I don’t want to race down those wild rabbit holes constantly. You can get lost in them or lose any sense of reality, if you start buying into so much craziness, devoid of solid factual foundation.

Instead of embracing all sorts of dubious conspiratorial links, I’m working on hardening my personal defenses against spin information war, because every time you surrender to emotion-driven spin, you surrender a lot of your mind to buying into other people’s deliberate lies and efforts to manipulate and control you. The people on the right selling these wild conspiracy theories are not operating in good faith any more than left-wing spinmeisters selling conspiracy theories are. That’s the truth. If your only defense is “so and so said this” and you either trust this online personality, without question, or you think because “so and so” is part of “your tribe” that means what he/she said has to be right, well, that’s not thinking – that’s groupthink behavior and I want no parts of it.

With the situation in Russia, I don’t know what exactly just happened, why it happened, or have any insight into what the larger takeaways are. And neither do 99.9% of the people I’ve seen reporting and commenting on it. I certainly have no evidence about big conspiracy theories.

I can say though that I’ve learned a lot about mass indoctrination, reading about Mao’s communist takeover of China and somehow, I think learning more about this topic might be more relevant than leading the pack on social media hot takes about events, which I have no verified information other than these hot takes are trending on Twitter and “everyone is saying,” blah, blah, blah.

There’s more than enough blah, blah, blah on social media.

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