Senseless
07/05/23 07:03
I went to bed last night reading my Twitter feed about how every asset in the Russian military, from submarines to nuclear bombers, had departed from their bases and were heading toward Ukraine. Whatever the Russians had in mind, it was on and on in spades. I wasn't sure if this was a retaliatory strike in response to Ukraine's drone attacks on oil tanks in Crimea in recent days or maybe just a preemptive strike to counter Ukraine's promised Spring counteroffensive. Whatever the case, I would have to catch up after the fact since I was going to sleep. I can't be sure about the full scope of the attack since I'm just now catching up the morning after, but what I have read tells me it was a long night in certain cities in Ukraine. A long night indeed.
I'm not sure why these conflicts need to take as long as this one seems to be taking. Don't get me wrong; I have no particular dog in this hunt, so I couldn't care less who wins. I just know that the body counts don't get any lower the longer the conflict goes. Maybe I should have a dog in this hunt. Maybe I should not want Russia to invade a sovereign country like Ukraine. If Ukraine wants to be one of the most corrupt shitholes on the European continent, that's their business. If Ukraine wants to join NATO, then who is Russia to tell Ukraine that they can't join NATO? At some point, the longer these conflicts go on without a clear winner, the more it looks like one side is in it to punish the other side. I have to believe that Russia has the means to deliver a decisive blow, yet the daily grind goes on, and the bodies continue to stack up on both sides.
This one poster on Twitter that I follow was offline for a few hours last night. He's usually a reliable source when it comes to getting news out about who's doing what to whom in the war between Ukraine and Russia, so I have to wonder if the powers that be wanted to take his posts down so as not to inform one side or the other about the impact of the strikes on Ukraine by the Russian military. They are perfectly happy to remind me night after night that the Ukrainians are holding their own in Bahkmut against the encirclement of the Russian forces. They are just as happy telling me night after night that the Russians are striking population centers instead of military targets, which is against one convention or another when it comes to waging war. Narratives are important and never underestimate the power of the government and their praetorian guard, the media, to spin a narrative in order to fashion public opinion. That would make Elon Musk complicit. No?
The missus reminded me that the hummingbirds are scheduled to arrive for the summer season here in New England soon, and we should have the feeders out when they arrive. I think the same ones return year after year, but I'll be damned if I can confirm that one way or another. She offered to buy me a container of that red nectar you see in stores around this time of year, but I say no when it comes to food dyes and unnatural substances. Nothing but the best will do for my fine feathered friends, so the missus offered, and I accepted, to make her own version of the hummingbird food that we know they love: I think it's four parts of water to one part granulated sugar. They'll be here until early September, so we want to get off on the right foot by having their food out early this year. All I could say when she brought up the subject was, "is it that time of the year already?"
Are the Democrats right when they say that their ticket to the White House in 2024 is Donald Trump? In other words, Trump is so toxic to Democrats, thanks to the non-stop demonizing of Trump since 2016 by the national media, that Democrats will crawl over broken glass to vote for Biden if Trump is the nominee. This shows you the power of the media in determining who and who doesn't get to sit in our beloved White House. Since the media is in the pocket of the leftists and the Democrats at large, this no doubt gives the media the imprimatur they need to do their official or unofficial bidding. It is true, as they say, that Biden didn't win the 2020 election. Rather, Trump lost the 2020 election. The only way Biden ever got to eighty million votes is that people voted for Biden because of their hatred for Trump. I do wonder if Trump has ever come to terms with why he lost in 2020, although there were enough reasons to wonder if the hijinks employed by the Democrats didn't create votes out of whole cloth after the tallies had Trump winning on the night of the election.
I think it's also true that Trump was so toxic, thanks to the media, that most people who had any control over any part of the election process were willing to do whatever it took to ensure that Trump didn't win the election, even if that meant breaking the law. In my book, that's the classic definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yes, it exists. There were a lot of people in the government, call them the Deep State if you will, who also had an interest in seeing to it that Trump didn't get a second term in office. They had wars to wage, a military-industrial complex to feed, and plans to replace leaders in shithole countries across the face of the planet, and Trump being in office was antithetical to every last one of those plans. People who typically profited from such governmental skullduggery were essentially put on ice for the duration of the Trump presidency. As rules go, getting between a neocon and a governmental contract is never a good or healthy place to be.
In the not-too-distant past, aggrieved parties took matters into their own hands. Think Kennedy assassination. Didn't the CIA or others have a hand one way or another in that sordid business? Maybe I've been watching too many Oliver Stone movies. I worry about that sort of thing when it comes to Trump. As I said, honest players do dishonest things in the interest of maintaining the status quo. Money and influence make an even more compelling case to effect change when effecting change is the order of the day. The Democrats have already shown us that they are willing to do anything to get and keep power when they installed a hapless senile old fuck like Joe Biden as president of the United States. Now, keeping senile and demented old Joe in power at all costs is mission-critical for the Democrat party and their deep-state counterparts. Maybe we don't need to worry about Trump since the Democrats believe that he's their ticket to another term for Bumbles. Lots can happen between now and then.
Speaking of Trump, he's scheduled to do a town hall meeting with CNN right here in the state of New Hampshire in a couple of weeks. You heard me right, a town hall with CNN. CNN, the network that Trump has been referring to as fake news since he came down the elevator in 2016. Kaitlin Collins will be the moderator for CNN. I don't know what to make of her as a moderator for this event, so I guess we'll see. Had they used Dana Bash instead, a Trump-to-the-bone hater, I might have worried about things going south from the jump. I think John King might have passed muster as a moderator as well, but he's not in the mix.
Trump will be taking questions from a live audience, so it should be a hoot. Don't think for a moment that CNN isn't going to have a couple of Trump haters planted somewhere in the audience, just waiting for their chance to ask off-color questions like how often do you beat your wife, did you rape E. Jean Carroll in that department store dressing room, etc. That just goes with the territory when you go into the lion's den. Good on Trump, though. FOX wants nothing to do with him, so their ratings will continue to suck even more than they have in the wake of Tucker Carlson's firing. That's more gravy for networks like NewsMax and CNN and more exposure for Trump, for better or worse.
I'm reading about another oil tanker grab this morning in the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians now have possession of another American oil tanker. I think this is the second tanker grab in the last two to three weeks. I don't watch or listen to mainstream news, so I don't know how this is being portrayed, if at all. That's my point. It isn't about the oil tanker. It's about the mainstream media who tell us Americans what they want us to hear. Maybe more to the point, we get the news that the White House wants us to hear, or not hear, whichever the case. It could be that the media doesn't want to create a crisis in the news that would sideline or embarrass their president in the White House. It could be that they don't want the financial markets to overreact and set something in motion that they can't control. That's what a praetorian guard does. The ends always justify the means when it comes to attaining and holding on to the reins of power.
Were Trump in office, the leftists in the media would have round-the-clock coverage since seeing a video of Americans held hostage would be welcome news for the mainstream media since it would serve to diminish Trump's standing in the eyes of the American people. They would be, sad to say, likely praying for harm to come to the Americans being held hostage. What are the chances that Bumbles Biden is working behind the scenes with the Chinese and the Iranians to snatch these tankers in order to drive up the price of oil? The price of oil is dropping like a stone these days due to recessionary forces, i.e., a lack of demand at the pump due to fewer people in the workforce, people who never returned to work in the office following the pandemic, etc. A slack demand for oil also reduces the federal tax dollars collected at the pump at a time when tax collections are down measurably due to a faltering economy. And, we all know how the Climate Change freaks feel about oil. Bumbles has their back at every turn. I'm guessing nothing comes of any of this. Or, if it does, we'll only hear about it if it serves the pleasure of the fool in the Oval Office.
What is this I'm reading about Bumbles sending Pakistan $500 million to English teachers in Pakistan teaching transgender youths. Give me a fucking break. I mean, this is a joke. Right? They're putting this out there as a trial balloon. Right? I thought they tossed gay people off highrises in countries like Pakistan. I want to be careful here since not all gay people are transgender if that makes any sense. Nor, are all transgenders gay. See what I did there? Anyway, what we do in our own country when it comes to this transgender stuff is one thing. It seems we don't even have our own house in order when it comes to trans issues (think Bud Lite), so we ought not to look to export these cultural oddities to other countries where they may not be welcome. Surely there are better uses for American tax dollars in our own country. States are passing laws left and right to stop the madness associated with gender identity issues and the mutilation of our children before they reach the age of consent. Bumbles and the radical trans activists who surround him should take note.
So you thought we'd seen the last of the spy balloons when Bumbles allowed those spy balloons from China to traverse our country a few months back. Bumbles ordered it shot down over the Atlantic after it had done its job, and never another word was heard about if they recovered it, what they found when they recovered it, or anything else of the sort. Now, they tell us that there is another spy balloon flying over Hawaii of unknown origin and capability. Don't believe a fucking minute of it. They know exactly where it came from, and, if I'm right about this, they know the precise mission that it's on. It's also possible that Bumbles and his clowns in our defense establishment floated the sucker so they can shoot it out of the sky and look like tough guys for being so "decisive." They know that Americans know that we have satellites in orbit that track these sorts of activities, so why do they lie to our faces about this shit. And, after the last embarrassing international kerfuffle with the Chinese spy balloon, why would our military even think twice about shooting that fucker out of the sky? They wouldn't, unless Bumbles told them to stand down. Can you say "compromised"?
Speaking of being compromised, Congress issued a couple of subpoenas yesterday to the FBI to produce a particular document that proves that Joe Biden was engaged in a pay-for-play arrangement with a foreign country. Now we're talking. Biden, according to the document in question, took money in exchange for his influencing policy in our country. That's treason, no matter how you slice it. This subpoena came out of a whistleblowers account of what transpired when Biden was Vice President. It involves Ukraine somehow. The whistleblower may have knowledge of the specific form that Congress is looking to subpoena because he or she may have completed the form. I'm surprised that someone doesn't have something more current, although the Biden bank records Congress has received to date paint a perhaps even more devastating pay-for-play gambit since it involves up to 12 Biden family members in the alleged chicanery. It's a bombshell of an allegation, although you'd never know it from listening to the mainstream media. They're not even covering it. It's crickets.
You know things are getting bad when even FOX goes out of their way not to report news like this. I tuned into Neil Cavuto on FOX while on my bike ride yesterday, just as this story was breaking in my Twitter feed. The news hit the wires maybe an hour before I went on my ride, so I thought I might get the scoop from FOX. Cavuto must have gotten word from the top that he was to avoid the story like the plague. Do you know that Cavuto went with a 4-hour-old story about a shooter in Atlanta who was still on the loose after shooting five people in a hospital waiting room? Not only did he go with the story from the start, but he spent the entire hour on the story. Shootings in our cities are somewhat commonplace these days, so harping on this story seemed, well, over the top if you want my honest opinion. It had everything to do with avoiding the Biden story and very little to do with the shooter on the loose. Why would FOX be so interested in not covering the Biden story? Is it because the story might give oxygen to the effort to bring Biden down? What, are they in bed with CNN these days? I'm not so sure I'm wrong about this.
The other story in the news yesterday, along with the Biden corruption story, was the drone attack on Putin and the Kremlin. FOX and Cavuto could have easily spent the hour talking about that, but they did not. Again, I think it was FOX's feeble attempt to hide the breaking news about Biden. If you had any suspicions about FOX going over to the other side, now you have your proof. That isn't to say that they won't be forced to cover both the drone attack story and the Biden corruption story because I think they will. As of this morning, just twenty fours hours later, Russia is holding the United States responsible for the attempt on Putin's life. I guess we're inextricably linked to any and all activities carried out by the Ukrainians, and that includes attempts, misguided or as futile as they turn out to be, on Russian lives and Russian infrastructure. We are in a proxy war with Russia, so I'm not sure their allegations are unfounded. Russian warships have been seen in recent days mapping out oceanic undersea cables, which could if destroyed, disrupt global communications. This has a Nordstream 2 feel to it, if I'm right about this. What's good for the goose?
Meanwhile, the little grifter in his camouflage tee shirt, Zelensky, is running around Europe doing God only knows what. At this point, it looks like Putin has put a target on his back after the failed assassination attempt. It's game-on, as they say in the business. You should have heard the turds on the telly last night making the case that it's okay to try and assassinate Putin because he invaded Ukraine, but the rules of war don't allow for reciprocal action by Putin. I don't think Putin sees it that way, and it sounds like the wanted posters are already up on every street corner in and around the Kremlin. Could the untimely death of either of these two men at the hands of one or the other change the trajectory of the conflict in Ukraine? I'm thinking that's entirely possible. It does make you wonder if Putin knows the whereabouts of his nemesis at any given point in time. Do you think it's possible that Zelensky is working on behalf of China as he bleeds the West of resources so China will have an easier time of it when the time comes to bring Taiwan back under the CCP umbrella? Just thinking out loud here.
I heard someone say yesterday that it was the first day in our history when every bank stock in America was down. Can you say, contagion? Even the big boys like JP Morgan and Bank of America were down by the close of the market at 4 pm Eastern time. This is despite the assurances from everyone from Bumbles Biden to Jerome Powell that our banking institutions are strong and dependable. Don't get me wrong. Just because a handful of regional banks have collapsed in the last few weeks doesn't mean we're going to hell in a handbasket. The bigger banks have stepped in at the last minute and bought up these banks on the brink at fire sale prices. Maybe that's the point. Maybe that's been the game plan all along. That didn't stop Powell from raising rates in his announcement last week, so we're probably not out of the woods yet. Well, the regional banks aren't out of the woods yet, to be more specific. Does this have anything to do with our government's efforts behind the scenes to digitize our currency? I don't know, but I'll be damned if I want the government to know how I make my money and how I spend my money. Nor do I want them freezing my assets because they don't like my politics. Is there anyone who thinks that can't happen?
If it's true that Bumbles Biden handed off the Artificial Intelligence (AI) issue to his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to deal with, then we are truly in some deep shit. The leaders in AI, like Microsoft and Google, met at the White House yesterday, and Harris sat in on said meetings. That should scare the living hell out of anyone paying attention. I don't think anyone thinks that she has the bandwidth or the attention span to absorb what these people have to say on the topic of AI. The head of AI at Google stepped down last week and is now devoting his efforts full-time to warning the public about the dangers of the technology. He was probably not at this particular meeting, but that is neither here nor there.
Did you see the headline in the news the other day about companies who were not hiring any more employees until they could fully see how AI might otherwise do those same jobs? I mean, holy jumping Jesus. This damn horse is out of the barn for better or worse, and I don't think anyone, including VP Harris, can do anything to stop it. You can bet your sweet rear end that our enemies are going full bore in the race to the AI finish line, whatever that means and whatever that looks like. I suppose there are just as many ways to use this technology for good as there are for bad. Can it cure cancer? If not, why not? I actually googled a few things yesterday because I'm interested in seeing what AI tools like Chat GBT can do for me. I know I'm just scratching the surface, but you have to start somewhere. Right?
We're two or three days out now from the breaking news about that balloon flying over Hawaii, and it's fucking crickets in the news. That's what I mean when I say that Biden's praetorian guard, the mainstream media, covers what it deems to be good news for the Democrats in office and Biden more specifically, and it suppresses everything that it deems to be bad news that could damage Biden's prospects for a second term. Were it in the news, there would most certainly be a hue and cry from Americans about spy balloons and Biden's feckless bending over for his masters in Beijing. I suppose the balloon is doing what spy balloons do as we Americans go about our business being none the wiser because we have such short attention spans. The damn thing is probably hovering up my every stroke at this here keyboard as I sit here this morning wondering how my day is going to play out. Don't think for a minute that the Bidenistas aren't taking full advantage of the 24-hour news cycle that we live in to both inundate us with minutia and, maybe more importantly, distract us from the things we should be concerning ourselves with.
Apple reported reasonably good earnings after the Market close last night, so maybe we'll see some green shoots today. We've not seen any meaningful corrections as of late due to the problems in the banking sector, so maybe that tells us something about the resiliency of the market in the face of the enormous headwinds that surround us. I thought the financials were the proverbial canary in the coal mine when it comes to the financial markets. I guess it's true until it isn't. Apple makes up some ridiculous percentage of both the S&P and the NASDAQ, so that may well explain why we've not seen any corrections in the overall indices. I look at Apple, and I see a company in decline. They make some great products, but when is the last time they manufactured anything even close to being considered innovative? Steve Jobs has to be rolling over in his grave at just how boring and creatively stunted the company that he created has become. Throw in the fact that their supply chains run through Beijing and that exponentially increases Apple's risks to external events. I think some comeuppance is in order. Overdue, even.
There is a coronation taking place across the pond today, and it's sucking the oxygen out of the 24/7 news cycle. I mean, who gives a flying fuck about a coronation of a king? For what it's worth, I'd like to see the dismantling of the Monarchy. I'd like to see the estates that are now in the hands of the Royal family either turned into museums or given over to the homeless and their ilk. You can sell them to the latest up-and-coming pop stars for all I care. If there's a British Black Lives Matter organization, maybe they could use a palace or two to remind their brethren that reparations work, and they are living examples of same. Let the King and his extended brood go get real jobs like everyone else. Who the fuck has waiters and footmen these days anyway? Someone to dress the Royals and prepare their meals while people are living in the streets of London and begging for their next meal? The Days of Lords and their Serfs seem like something out of a storybook for children, so I'll be ignoring the lot of it today as best I can. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
Do you suppose Chat GBT might write me a script that I can use to negotiate the upcoming renewal of my services from Sirius Radio? It's the same schtick year in and year out. We call them up at renewal time and threaten to cancel our services, and after a certain amount of cajoling and caterwauling, they relent and offer the usual 75% discount just to keep us in good stead. I figure they'll be on to us sooner or later, and then where will we be? Does anyone pay full price for their services? Maybe it's precisely the people who pay the full price that allows those of us not wanting or willing to pay full price off the hook. Is my apprehension misplaced? What would I do if they ignored my pleas? Now that I've had the pleasure of their services all these past years, would I really tell them to screw? It seems like it was just yesterday that we were having this very same discussion here in our household with the fam last year. Do we keep it? Do we let it go? Who wants to do the negotiating? Let's git er done!
Have you seen that story about the black Michael Jackson impersonator getting choked out on the floor of the NY subway by the ex-marine? The black fellow succumbed to the chokehold and died shortly thereafter in a NYC hospital. I don't know what led up to the impersonator being taken down and put in a chokehold, but I suspect he was threatening the people in the subway car, and one thing led to another in short order. The black fellow had a long history of mental illness and an equally impressive rap sheet, as rap sheets go. The ex-marine had an equally impressive background, and he was doing, well, he was doing what you might expect a marine to do under the circumstances. You know what they say, once a marine, always a marine. I truly wish that the black fellow hadn't died. I wish that the ex-marine didn't have to live the rest of his life wondering how things might have turned out had he applied just a little less pressure to the man's carotid artery. Sometimes, just sometimes, no one wins.
I don't know what to make of this reparations thing that California has going. I don't know who qualifies and who doesn't, but it has something to do with blacks with a historical tie to the slave trade. I'm shooting from the hip here, so don't hold me to any of it. The latest is that the so-called eligible recipients are now not satisfied with the one-something million dollars per person that is currently under consideration. Who can blame them for wanting more when the ink isn't even dry on any one or more of the proposals? They aren't taking this sitting down, to be sure. Most of them probably already have the money, or most of it anyway, already spent before any one or more of them have two nickels to rub together. That creates a mighty strong incentive to do whatever you can to up the ante in advance of any decisions by the people writing the checks. If that means rioting, looting, or calling in that ambulance chaser, Benjamin Crump, or the Crumpster as they refer to him in Harlem, then that is what you do. No stone need go unturned when and where the righteous dare to tread.
I'll end this week's blog with a couple of thoughts about the killings in the mall in Texas yesterday. What was this mass killing all about? The cops killed the killer, so I'm guessing we'll get the version that they want us to get. So it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, I'll say it loud, and I'll say it now: Rest in peace, y'all. I'm pretty sure the shooter was Hispanic, so that strikes me as unusual. Were his victims Hispanic? Can we draw any conclusions from the people that he gunned down in cold blood as to what motives he might have had for doing what he did? Nothing can justify what he did, for sure, but we can take lessons from these shootings if that makes any sense. Maybe it was Cartel related. You don't want to not pay your dues to the Cartel that brought you here from that shithole south of the border that you used to call home. Maybe he had a bone to pick with recent arrivals who took his job, impregnated his daughter, stole his F-150, or otherwise irked him until he broke. I can't make sense of any of it.
I'm not sure why these conflicts need to take as long as this one seems to be taking. Don't get me wrong; I have no particular dog in this hunt, so I couldn't care less who wins. I just know that the body counts don't get any lower the longer the conflict goes. Maybe I should have a dog in this hunt. Maybe I should not want Russia to invade a sovereign country like Ukraine. If Ukraine wants to be one of the most corrupt shitholes on the European continent, that's their business. If Ukraine wants to join NATO, then who is Russia to tell Ukraine that they can't join NATO? At some point, the longer these conflicts go on without a clear winner, the more it looks like one side is in it to punish the other side. I have to believe that Russia has the means to deliver a decisive blow, yet the daily grind goes on, and the bodies continue to stack up on both sides.
This one poster on Twitter that I follow was offline for a few hours last night. He's usually a reliable source when it comes to getting news out about who's doing what to whom in the war between Ukraine and Russia, so I have to wonder if the powers that be wanted to take his posts down so as not to inform one side or the other about the impact of the strikes on Ukraine by the Russian military. They are perfectly happy to remind me night after night that the Ukrainians are holding their own in Bahkmut against the encirclement of the Russian forces. They are just as happy telling me night after night that the Russians are striking population centers instead of military targets, which is against one convention or another when it comes to waging war. Narratives are important and never underestimate the power of the government and their praetorian guard, the media, to spin a narrative in order to fashion public opinion. That would make Elon Musk complicit. No?
The missus reminded me that the hummingbirds are scheduled to arrive for the summer season here in New England soon, and we should have the feeders out when they arrive. I think the same ones return year after year, but I'll be damned if I can confirm that one way or another. She offered to buy me a container of that red nectar you see in stores around this time of year, but I say no when it comes to food dyes and unnatural substances. Nothing but the best will do for my fine feathered friends, so the missus offered, and I accepted, to make her own version of the hummingbird food that we know they love: I think it's four parts of water to one part granulated sugar. They'll be here until early September, so we want to get off on the right foot by having their food out early this year. All I could say when she brought up the subject was, "is it that time of the year already?"
Are the Democrats right when they say that their ticket to the White House in 2024 is Donald Trump? In other words, Trump is so toxic to Democrats, thanks to the non-stop demonizing of Trump since 2016 by the national media, that Democrats will crawl over broken glass to vote for Biden if Trump is the nominee. This shows you the power of the media in determining who and who doesn't get to sit in our beloved White House. Since the media is in the pocket of the leftists and the Democrats at large, this no doubt gives the media the imprimatur they need to do their official or unofficial bidding. It is true, as they say, that Biden didn't win the 2020 election. Rather, Trump lost the 2020 election. The only way Biden ever got to eighty million votes is that people voted for Biden because of their hatred for Trump. I do wonder if Trump has ever come to terms with why he lost in 2020, although there were enough reasons to wonder if the hijinks employed by the Democrats didn't create votes out of whole cloth after the tallies had Trump winning on the night of the election.
I think it's also true that Trump was so toxic, thanks to the media, that most people who had any control over any part of the election process were willing to do whatever it took to ensure that Trump didn't win the election, even if that meant breaking the law. In my book, that's the classic definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yes, it exists. There were a lot of people in the government, call them the Deep State if you will, who also had an interest in seeing to it that Trump didn't get a second term in office. They had wars to wage, a military-industrial complex to feed, and plans to replace leaders in shithole countries across the face of the planet, and Trump being in office was antithetical to every last one of those plans. People who typically profited from such governmental skullduggery were essentially put on ice for the duration of the Trump presidency. As rules go, getting between a neocon and a governmental contract is never a good or healthy place to be.
In the not-too-distant past, aggrieved parties took matters into their own hands. Think Kennedy assassination. Didn't the CIA or others have a hand one way or another in that sordid business? Maybe I've been watching too many Oliver Stone movies. I worry about that sort of thing when it comes to Trump. As I said, honest players do dishonest things in the interest of maintaining the status quo. Money and influence make an even more compelling case to effect change when effecting change is the order of the day. The Democrats have already shown us that they are willing to do anything to get and keep power when they installed a hapless senile old fuck like Joe Biden as president of the United States. Now, keeping senile and demented old Joe in power at all costs is mission-critical for the Democrat party and their deep-state counterparts. Maybe we don't need to worry about Trump since the Democrats believe that he's their ticket to another term for Bumbles. Lots can happen between now and then.
Speaking of Trump, he's scheduled to do a town hall meeting with CNN right here in the state of New Hampshire in a couple of weeks. You heard me right, a town hall with CNN. CNN, the network that Trump has been referring to as fake news since he came down the elevator in 2016. Kaitlin Collins will be the moderator for CNN. I don't know what to make of her as a moderator for this event, so I guess we'll see. Had they used Dana Bash instead, a Trump-to-the-bone hater, I might have worried about things going south from the jump. I think John King might have passed muster as a moderator as well, but he's not in the mix.
Trump will be taking questions from a live audience, so it should be a hoot. Don't think for a moment that CNN isn't going to have a couple of Trump haters planted somewhere in the audience, just waiting for their chance to ask off-color questions like how often do you beat your wife, did you rape E. Jean Carroll in that department store dressing room, etc. That just goes with the territory when you go into the lion's den. Good on Trump, though. FOX wants nothing to do with him, so their ratings will continue to suck even more than they have in the wake of Tucker Carlson's firing. That's more gravy for networks like NewsMax and CNN and more exposure for Trump, for better or worse.
I'm reading about another oil tanker grab this morning in the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians now have possession of another American oil tanker. I think this is the second tanker grab in the last two to three weeks. I don't watch or listen to mainstream news, so I don't know how this is being portrayed, if at all. That's my point. It isn't about the oil tanker. It's about the mainstream media who tell us Americans what they want us to hear. Maybe more to the point, we get the news that the White House wants us to hear, or not hear, whichever the case. It could be that the media doesn't want to create a crisis in the news that would sideline or embarrass their president in the White House. It could be that they don't want the financial markets to overreact and set something in motion that they can't control. That's what a praetorian guard does. The ends always justify the means when it comes to attaining and holding on to the reins of power.
Were Trump in office, the leftists in the media would have round-the-clock coverage since seeing a video of Americans held hostage would be welcome news for the mainstream media since it would serve to diminish Trump's standing in the eyes of the American people. They would be, sad to say, likely praying for harm to come to the Americans being held hostage. What are the chances that Bumbles Biden is working behind the scenes with the Chinese and the Iranians to snatch these tankers in order to drive up the price of oil? The price of oil is dropping like a stone these days due to recessionary forces, i.e., a lack of demand at the pump due to fewer people in the workforce, people who never returned to work in the office following the pandemic, etc. A slack demand for oil also reduces the federal tax dollars collected at the pump at a time when tax collections are down measurably due to a faltering economy. And, we all know how the Climate Change freaks feel about oil. Bumbles has their back at every turn. I'm guessing nothing comes of any of this. Or, if it does, we'll only hear about it if it serves the pleasure of the fool in the Oval Office.
What is this I'm reading about Bumbles sending Pakistan $500 million to English teachers in Pakistan teaching transgender youths. Give me a fucking break. I mean, this is a joke. Right? They're putting this out there as a trial balloon. Right? I thought they tossed gay people off highrises in countries like Pakistan. I want to be careful here since not all gay people are transgender if that makes any sense. Nor, are all transgenders gay. See what I did there? Anyway, what we do in our own country when it comes to this transgender stuff is one thing. It seems we don't even have our own house in order when it comes to trans issues (think Bud Lite), so we ought not to look to export these cultural oddities to other countries where they may not be welcome. Surely there are better uses for American tax dollars in our own country. States are passing laws left and right to stop the madness associated with gender identity issues and the mutilation of our children before they reach the age of consent. Bumbles and the radical trans activists who surround him should take note.
So you thought we'd seen the last of the spy balloons when Bumbles allowed those spy balloons from China to traverse our country a few months back. Bumbles ordered it shot down over the Atlantic after it had done its job, and never another word was heard about if they recovered it, what they found when they recovered it, or anything else of the sort. Now, they tell us that there is another spy balloon flying over Hawaii of unknown origin and capability. Don't believe a fucking minute of it. They know exactly where it came from, and, if I'm right about this, they know the precise mission that it's on. It's also possible that Bumbles and his clowns in our defense establishment floated the sucker so they can shoot it out of the sky and look like tough guys for being so "decisive." They know that Americans know that we have satellites in orbit that track these sorts of activities, so why do they lie to our faces about this shit. And, after the last embarrassing international kerfuffle with the Chinese spy balloon, why would our military even think twice about shooting that fucker out of the sky? They wouldn't, unless Bumbles told them to stand down. Can you say "compromised"?
Speaking of being compromised, Congress issued a couple of subpoenas yesterday to the FBI to produce a particular document that proves that Joe Biden was engaged in a pay-for-play arrangement with a foreign country. Now we're talking. Biden, according to the document in question, took money in exchange for his influencing policy in our country. That's treason, no matter how you slice it. This subpoena came out of a whistleblowers account of what transpired when Biden was Vice President. It involves Ukraine somehow. The whistleblower may have knowledge of the specific form that Congress is looking to subpoena because he or she may have completed the form. I'm surprised that someone doesn't have something more current, although the Biden bank records Congress has received to date paint a perhaps even more devastating pay-for-play gambit since it involves up to 12 Biden family members in the alleged chicanery. It's a bombshell of an allegation, although you'd never know it from listening to the mainstream media. They're not even covering it. It's crickets.
You know things are getting bad when even FOX goes out of their way not to report news like this. I tuned into Neil Cavuto on FOX while on my bike ride yesterday, just as this story was breaking in my Twitter feed. The news hit the wires maybe an hour before I went on my ride, so I thought I might get the scoop from FOX. Cavuto must have gotten word from the top that he was to avoid the story like the plague. Do you know that Cavuto went with a 4-hour-old story about a shooter in Atlanta who was still on the loose after shooting five people in a hospital waiting room? Not only did he go with the story from the start, but he spent the entire hour on the story. Shootings in our cities are somewhat commonplace these days, so harping on this story seemed, well, over the top if you want my honest opinion. It had everything to do with avoiding the Biden story and very little to do with the shooter on the loose. Why would FOX be so interested in not covering the Biden story? Is it because the story might give oxygen to the effort to bring Biden down? What, are they in bed with CNN these days? I'm not so sure I'm wrong about this.
The other story in the news yesterday, along with the Biden corruption story, was the drone attack on Putin and the Kremlin. FOX and Cavuto could have easily spent the hour talking about that, but they did not. Again, I think it was FOX's feeble attempt to hide the breaking news about Biden. If you had any suspicions about FOX going over to the other side, now you have your proof. That isn't to say that they won't be forced to cover both the drone attack story and the Biden corruption story because I think they will. As of this morning, just twenty fours hours later, Russia is holding the United States responsible for the attempt on Putin's life. I guess we're inextricably linked to any and all activities carried out by the Ukrainians, and that includes attempts, misguided or as futile as they turn out to be, on Russian lives and Russian infrastructure. We are in a proxy war with Russia, so I'm not sure their allegations are unfounded. Russian warships have been seen in recent days mapping out oceanic undersea cables, which could if destroyed, disrupt global communications. This has a Nordstream 2 feel to it, if I'm right about this. What's good for the goose?
Meanwhile, the little grifter in his camouflage tee shirt, Zelensky, is running around Europe doing God only knows what. At this point, it looks like Putin has put a target on his back after the failed assassination attempt. It's game-on, as they say in the business. You should have heard the turds on the telly last night making the case that it's okay to try and assassinate Putin because he invaded Ukraine, but the rules of war don't allow for reciprocal action by Putin. I don't think Putin sees it that way, and it sounds like the wanted posters are already up on every street corner in and around the Kremlin. Could the untimely death of either of these two men at the hands of one or the other change the trajectory of the conflict in Ukraine? I'm thinking that's entirely possible. It does make you wonder if Putin knows the whereabouts of his nemesis at any given point in time. Do you think it's possible that Zelensky is working on behalf of China as he bleeds the West of resources so China will have an easier time of it when the time comes to bring Taiwan back under the CCP umbrella? Just thinking out loud here.
I heard someone say yesterday that it was the first day in our history when every bank stock in America was down. Can you say, contagion? Even the big boys like JP Morgan and Bank of America were down by the close of the market at 4 pm Eastern time. This is despite the assurances from everyone from Bumbles Biden to Jerome Powell that our banking institutions are strong and dependable. Don't get me wrong. Just because a handful of regional banks have collapsed in the last few weeks doesn't mean we're going to hell in a handbasket. The bigger banks have stepped in at the last minute and bought up these banks on the brink at fire sale prices. Maybe that's the point. Maybe that's been the game plan all along. That didn't stop Powell from raising rates in his announcement last week, so we're probably not out of the woods yet. Well, the regional banks aren't out of the woods yet, to be more specific. Does this have anything to do with our government's efforts behind the scenes to digitize our currency? I don't know, but I'll be damned if I want the government to know how I make my money and how I spend my money. Nor do I want them freezing my assets because they don't like my politics. Is there anyone who thinks that can't happen?
If it's true that Bumbles Biden handed off the Artificial Intelligence (AI) issue to his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to deal with, then we are truly in some deep shit. The leaders in AI, like Microsoft and Google, met at the White House yesterday, and Harris sat in on said meetings. That should scare the living hell out of anyone paying attention. I don't think anyone thinks that she has the bandwidth or the attention span to absorb what these people have to say on the topic of AI. The head of AI at Google stepped down last week and is now devoting his efforts full-time to warning the public about the dangers of the technology. He was probably not at this particular meeting, but that is neither here nor there.
Did you see the headline in the news the other day about companies who were not hiring any more employees until they could fully see how AI might otherwise do those same jobs? I mean, holy jumping Jesus. This damn horse is out of the barn for better or worse, and I don't think anyone, including VP Harris, can do anything to stop it. You can bet your sweet rear end that our enemies are going full bore in the race to the AI finish line, whatever that means and whatever that looks like. I suppose there are just as many ways to use this technology for good as there are for bad. Can it cure cancer? If not, why not? I actually googled a few things yesterday because I'm interested in seeing what AI tools like Chat GBT can do for me. I know I'm just scratching the surface, but you have to start somewhere. Right?
We're two or three days out now from the breaking news about that balloon flying over Hawaii, and it's fucking crickets in the news. That's what I mean when I say that Biden's praetorian guard, the mainstream media, covers what it deems to be good news for the Democrats in office and Biden more specifically, and it suppresses everything that it deems to be bad news that could damage Biden's prospects for a second term. Were it in the news, there would most certainly be a hue and cry from Americans about spy balloons and Biden's feckless bending over for his masters in Beijing. I suppose the balloon is doing what spy balloons do as we Americans go about our business being none the wiser because we have such short attention spans. The damn thing is probably hovering up my every stroke at this here keyboard as I sit here this morning wondering how my day is going to play out. Don't think for a minute that the Bidenistas aren't taking full advantage of the 24-hour news cycle that we live in to both inundate us with minutia and, maybe more importantly, distract us from the things we should be concerning ourselves with.
Apple reported reasonably good earnings after the Market close last night, so maybe we'll see some green shoots today. We've not seen any meaningful corrections as of late due to the problems in the banking sector, so maybe that tells us something about the resiliency of the market in the face of the enormous headwinds that surround us. I thought the financials were the proverbial canary in the coal mine when it comes to the financial markets. I guess it's true until it isn't. Apple makes up some ridiculous percentage of both the S&P and the NASDAQ, so that may well explain why we've not seen any corrections in the overall indices. I look at Apple, and I see a company in decline. They make some great products, but when is the last time they manufactured anything even close to being considered innovative? Steve Jobs has to be rolling over in his grave at just how boring and creatively stunted the company that he created has become. Throw in the fact that their supply chains run through Beijing and that exponentially increases Apple's risks to external events. I think some comeuppance is in order. Overdue, even.
There is a coronation taking place across the pond today, and it's sucking the oxygen out of the 24/7 news cycle. I mean, who gives a flying fuck about a coronation of a king? For what it's worth, I'd like to see the dismantling of the Monarchy. I'd like to see the estates that are now in the hands of the Royal family either turned into museums or given over to the homeless and their ilk. You can sell them to the latest up-and-coming pop stars for all I care. If there's a British Black Lives Matter organization, maybe they could use a palace or two to remind their brethren that reparations work, and they are living examples of same. Let the King and his extended brood go get real jobs like everyone else. Who the fuck has waiters and footmen these days anyway? Someone to dress the Royals and prepare their meals while people are living in the streets of London and begging for their next meal? The Days of Lords and their Serfs seem like something out of a storybook for children, so I'll be ignoring the lot of it today as best I can. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
Do you suppose Chat GBT might write me a script that I can use to negotiate the upcoming renewal of my services from Sirius Radio? It's the same schtick year in and year out. We call them up at renewal time and threaten to cancel our services, and after a certain amount of cajoling and caterwauling, they relent and offer the usual 75% discount just to keep us in good stead. I figure they'll be on to us sooner or later, and then where will we be? Does anyone pay full price for their services? Maybe it's precisely the people who pay the full price that allows those of us not wanting or willing to pay full price off the hook. Is my apprehension misplaced? What would I do if they ignored my pleas? Now that I've had the pleasure of their services all these past years, would I really tell them to screw? It seems like it was just yesterday that we were having this very same discussion here in our household with the fam last year. Do we keep it? Do we let it go? Who wants to do the negotiating? Let's git er done!
Have you seen that story about the black Michael Jackson impersonator getting choked out on the floor of the NY subway by the ex-marine? The black fellow succumbed to the chokehold and died shortly thereafter in a NYC hospital. I don't know what led up to the impersonator being taken down and put in a chokehold, but I suspect he was threatening the people in the subway car, and one thing led to another in short order. The black fellow had a long history of mental illness and an equally impressive rap sheet, as rap sheets go. The ex-marine had an equally impressive background, and he was doing, well, he was doing what you might expect a marine to do under the circumstances. You know what they say, once a marine, always a marine. I truly wish that the black fellow hadn't died. I wish that the ex-marine didn't have to live the rest of his life wondering how things might have turned out had he applied just a little less pressure to the man's carotid artery. Sometimes, just sometimes, no one wins.
I don't know what to make of this reparations thing that California has going. I don't know who qualifies and who doesn't, but it has something to do with blacks with a historical tie to the slave trade. I'm shooting from the hip here, so don't hold me to any of it. The latest is that the so-called eligible recipients are now not satisfied with the one-something million dollars per person that is currently under consideration. Who can blame them for wanting more when the ink isn't even dry on any one or more of the proposals? They aren't taking this sitting down, to be sure. Most of them probably already have the money, or most of it anyway, already spent before any one or more of them have two nickels to rub together. That creates a mighty strong incentive to do whatever you can to up the ante in advance of any decisions by the people writing the checks. If that means rioting, looting, or calling in that ambulance chaser, Benjamin Crump, or the Crumpster as they refer to him in Harlem, then that is what you do. No stone need go unturned when and where the righteous dare to tread.
I'll end this week's blog with a couple of thoughts about the killings in the mall in Texas yesterday. What was this mass killing all about? The cops killed the killer, so I'm guessing we'll get the version that they want us to get. So it doesn't get lost in the shuffle, I'll say it loud, and I'll say it now: Rest in peace, y'all. I'm pretty sure the shooter was Hispanic, so that strikes me as unusual. Were his victims Hispanic? Can we draw any conclusions from the people that he gunned down in cold blood as to what motives he might have had for doing what he did? Nothing can justify what he did, for sure, but we can take lessons from these shootings if that makes any sense. Maybe it was Cartel related. You don't want to not pay your dues to the Cartel that brought you here from that shithole south of the border that you used to call home. Maybe he had a bone to pick with recent arrivals who took his job, impregnated his daughter, stole his F-150, or otherwise irked him until he broke. I can't make sense of any of it.