Coup d'état
14/04/24 07:03
Welcome to another week. I have an oil change appointment this morning, so I hope I don't forget it. Not that I would, mind you. I might get caught up in doing this or that and forget that I had other things scheduled. It wouldn't be the first time. I finally got back out on the road for my daily bike ride yesterday after being off the road due to bike repairs and bad weather. I never push the envelope after being out of the saddle for a week or so because I know myself well enough to know that that sort of thing can end badly if I'm not careful. That said, I rode half my usual route and enjoyed every minute of it. It looks like we have another sunny day on tap today, so I'll be out there again this afternoon, God willing. That extra five or ten degrees that we see over the course of a day can make the difference between riding while wearing gloves and riding without having to need gloves. I think I get a better ride when I'm not laden down with layer after layer of whatever to keep me warm over the ten miles or so that takes me up and down the coastline. That's just me.
I'm getting a little tired of being the only cook in the house. I never signed up to be someone's short-order cook, but that's just how I feel. Then there's the additional guilt that comes along with not preparing a meal and having my better half go to bed hungry. I've shared my feelings on this issue before, but nothing ever changes. I don't know what she's going to do when I'm not around to do it anymore. Maybe she'll find another person to do what I've been doing all these past many years. I suppose she could get take-out more often. Something would have to change. I'm not even that reliable or creative a chef, truth be told. I'll prepare an occasional quiche for our breakfast, which I'll serve with grapefruit when available. I usually make a nice salad for our lunch, and maybe we'll have something like chicken on a skewer or locally caught fish, if it looks good, with some seasonal vegetables for dinner. We have some reliable take-out joints we frequent, but those, too, are getting a little long in the tooth. I'm not sure where we go from here.
Trump is going to lay out his ideas on abortion today. I'm not sure what the format looks like, but it may be similar to the various and sundry presentations that he did in the run-up to the 2016 elections. Those presentations back in the day on everything from national security to laying out who he planned to have in his administration went a long way towards winning the hearts and minds of people who were maybe a little uncomfortable in voting for a guy who spent his last fourteen years hosting a fabulous television show called "The Apprentice." He was up against a media that spent every waking hour casting him as a huckster and a showman. They were all in for Hillary Clinton at the time, so none of it came as a surprise. Trump is a common sense guy, so I expect his policies on abortion will be similarly fashioned. Never mind that he put three of the conservative justices on our highest court who did away with Roe vs. Wade. I don't know what the middle road on the abortion issue looks like, but expect Trump to address the exceptions like rape, incest, and the health of the mother head-on. For now, he may or may not commit to anything beyond those issues.
Today, there is a total eclipse of the sun that is viewable in our state. I could give two shits, quite honestly. I will not be one of the many flat-earthers out there with those stupid cardboard eyeglasses peering up at the sky. I hope that the more sensible of the eclipse worshippers take the appropriate precautions, whatever that looks like. I don't know if everything I've been hearing about fried retinas and the like is just another old wives tale or science that we're to believe. I'm also a little suspicious of these stories I'm hearing about people flocking to states like mine today just to "see" the event. I mean, who does that? Is this some sort of pagan ritual that I'm not familiar with? Are there things that we should or should not be doing on a day like today? Things that we should shy away from just in case? Is this anything like the full-moon nonsense that has people acting silly and, for lack of a better word, weird? It should all be over by 3 in the afternoon. Our next event of this sort doesn't come around for a decade or two, so plan accordingly. Hey, what about my bike ride this afternoon?
There are days like today when I wake up, sit at this here desk, and don't have a clue as to what I'm going to put down on paper. That's probably not a bad place to start. Think of it as a blank slate. Right? I worry sometimes that I'm spending too much time writing about this or that, and it might come across as being obsessive. So, I resist picking up where I left off the previous day when I might have had a lot to say about something like politics. The Trump thing is always good for a paragraph or two. He's also always in the news, so there is always something new to discuss. My bike riding gig is a reliable fallback story when nothing else comes to mind. I'd have more to say about that if I could remember from one day to the next the kinds of things that come to mind during my hour-long jaunts. That's just a fact. I keep telling myself that I need to keep a notepad handy to write down things when they come to mind, but I have yet to do that. In an odd sort of way, I really don't like to be too organized when it comes to writing in this journal. I like the free flow of whatever comes to mind, even if it means talking too much about things that I continue to talk too much about.
What am I hearing about Brazil and its ongoing beef with Elon Musk? Apparently, they are giving him a hard time about what he's doing or not doing to rein in free speech on his platform, X (Formerly Twitter). I don't know that Brazil has banned Musk's social media platform altogether, but they have told him that, if I'm not mistaken, he cannot run his Starlink business in Brazil. What one has to do with the other, I don't know. Imagine for a moment that you are living in or around the Amazon rain forest and, thanks to Musk's Starlink satellites, you now have access to the internet. Now imagine that your government decides that they don't like the internet provider, and they take it all down overnight. Poof. You are in the dark. You no longer have quick and easy access to the outside world. You are cut off from family and friends. Is the Brazilian government cutting off their nose to spite their face? They, too, no longer have access to the other regions of their country. Right? Does any of this have anything to do with the leftist Lula government working with the Biden regime to spank Musk for his so-called transgressions here in the States? This needs some serious sorting. Today, it's Brazil. Tomorrow, it could be coming to a neighborhood near you. America, are you listening?
I heard Hugh Hewitt talking about David Cameron, the Secretary of State in the British government, coming to the United States to visit with Trump. When I first heard the story, I thought to myself this is a good thing. Cameron and others of his ilk from various countries are coming to get a little face time with the man who will more than likely be our 47th President of the United States. It was also a huge slap in the face to the Bidenistas, who have no choice but to sit back and watch it all go down in Mar-a-Lago. Joe Biden doesn't know what day of the week it is, and his handlers probably don't even tell him about Cameron's visit. Nobody gives a flying fuck about the demented clown eating his oatmeal in the back room on the second floor of the West Wing without so much as a care in the world. What I'm finding out, thanks to Hugh, is that Cameron is here to sell Trump on funding the war in Ukraine. I'm talking about the bill for the $60 billion that Speaker Johnson refuses to bring to the floor for a vote. Knowing Trump as I do and his malleability on issues depending on who is massaging his ego at any given time, I have some advice for The Donald. Don't fucking do it. Do not give Johnson any reason to think that funding Ukraine is acceptable. Here is what you tell Cameron: Not another fucking penny for the grifters and oligarchs in Ukraine.
I'm hearing a lot of rumors these days about Congressmen being bought off to leave the Republican party so the Democrats can take back the House of Representatives. There are some other examples I've heard of other people being offered money not to run in certain races. I believe Kari Lake said that she was offered money not to run for the Senate in the state of Arizona. What the hell is this? It feels sleazy and illegal to me. It's precisely what you'd expect the Democrats to engage in. What did I read this morning about RFK Jr's VP pick and efforts by the lefties to have her leave the race because they know she'll draw support from the progressive left? These Marxists with deep pockets are a threat to democracy, yet they accuse conservatives of the same. She's too rich, so they can't buy her off. Instead, they tell her that by running on the Kennedy ticket, it's more likely than not that they will tip the race to Trump. It's a bridge too far, dearie! She seems like a woman who can make up her own mind, so I hope she sticks to her guns and stays in the race. She knew what she was getting into. Both the Kennedy and Trump camps are of one mind when it comes to this election: They cannot allow Biden to either steal or win the election.
I think I'm going to pass on my favorite Springtime dessert later this month. In late April every year, I typically have strawberry shortcake with gobs of strawberries and whipped cream. I've been doing my best lately to stay away from sugar and other things that they say aren't good for you. I know how well I'm doing when I can walk by the pastry section of any particular store without putting one or more things in my cart. Here's another good example: I have two boxes of cereal on top of my refrigerator. One is a box of Raisin Bran, which I picked up during a shopping trip to Whole Foods. I stopped eating it after my first bowlful. It was just too sugary. The other box of cereal is a box of Shredded Wheat. I looked again yesterday after avoiding sugary stuff for the better part of a month and noticed that the Raisin Bran had 15 grams of sugar per serving. The Shredded Wheat had zero grams of sugar. It's true what they say about these sugary products. The more you consume them, the more you want to consume them. It's a vicious cycle. It's also not just sugar. It's white bread and pizza crust. It's the whole carb thing. You go from eating a slice or two to eating half a pizza at a time. I'm a little more sensible when it comes to avoiding the bad stuff these days, and I want to continue in that vein for the foreseeable future. Hence, there will be no strawberry shortcake this year. It's just easier to say "no."
I'm bored to tears over anything and everything having to do with abortion. It's just not my cup of tea. It's not the hill I want to die on. I do get annoyed, however, when I see Democrats trying to run this issue up the flagpole as the most important issue in the history of our Republic. It's all about rallying women to get to the polls where they think they're advancing the interests of the American public by voting for the same scumbags that have been destroying our country and our culture for God only knows how long. I don't know what it's going to take to get the Republicans on the right side of this issue. Does a "right" side of this issue even exist? As a people, we seem to be incapable of answering that question with any degree of clarity. You believe what you believe. They believe what they believe. As long as the Democrats frame the issue as a woman's issue, aka reproductive rights, that position seems to give them the upper hand. It's a cudgel that will take them to the promise land in politics if harnessed and wielded properly. That lesson is not lost on the Democrats.
The day before they released the latest inflation numbers, the stock market headed south mid-afternoon after tweets here and there suggesting that someone had leaked the numbers a day ahead of the actual report. How does this even happen? Whoever leaked the data wasn't wrong. The inflation numbers came in hotter than expected. I thought all along that the Fed would cook the numbers to put lipstick on the pig that is inflation and pave the way for a second Biden term. Well, not so much. Are the latest inflation readings the silver bullet that takes out the entire Biden Administration? Or does the Fed have another plan to boost chances for a second term for the aging and demented fool sitting in our White House? And what the hell is Biden doing commenting on interest rate cuts? It was almost like he thought the latest inflation numbers would give the Fed the reason they were looking for in order to cut interest rates. Was Biden telegraphing that a cut is in the works? Were Biden's comments a nod of sorts to the Fed that they need to get cuts out the door and fast? Never mind that interest rate cuts would be like throwing jet fuel on an inflation fire that is already burning too hot. I don't know about you, but I could use a mean tweet about right now.
I heard that Biden held a press conference on the White House lawn yesterday. Anyone with half a brain knows that Biden's idea of a press conference involves calling on reporters who were preselected to take questions. It gets worse. Biden actually reads his responses from a script that someone has placed on the rostrum. He wears those stupid aviator shades of his so that people in the audience can't see that he's reading from the notes. I don't know who the fuck he thinks he's fooling. And the compliant media plays along with the charade like the clapping and complicit seals that they are. Nightly newscasts replay cuts of Biden's speech in order to perpetuate the myth that Biden is a fully engaged and multi-tasking president doing the business of the presidency. It's a cluster fuck on the American public of monumental proportions. Nothing could be further from the truth. People around the world know we have a completely demented, corrupt, and infirm president at the helm, and they are likely incredulous that this could be happening to the greatest democracy on the face of the earth. Not to worry. The right-minded citizenry of our country wonders the same thing. It's like, when is this nightmare going to end? Spoiler alert: Not soon enough.
I had this really weird thought the other day. I wondered if everything that the Republican Congress has been doing to expose the criminality of the Biden Crime Family has really been an effort to take the influence-peddling issue off the table as a blackmailable issue for the countries that have been paying off the Bidens for decades. In other words, if Republicans put all the known Biden and Biden-related transgressions out there for the American public to see, and the end result is that nobody gives a fuck, then what possible leverage do the Chinese or Russians have were they to threaten Biden to do something that he doesn't want to do?
Don't get me wrong. Biden is allegedly a wholly owned asset of the Chinese Communist Party thanks to their "investments" in the Biden Family Trust going back decades. He would no sooner turn a blind eye to their requests than he would submit his letter of resignation as president of the United States. The very same countries that have been paying he and his family off for decades, if we're to believe Congressman Comer and his investigators, still have a role to play in upcoming elections if they are to more fully reap the rewards to which they think they are entitled. This was never about impeaching Joe Biden. It was always about protecting him from nefarious bad actors around the world who would wish to blackmail him. Never mind that he is the most corrupt president in the history of our Republic. We protect our own.
This FISA thing in Congress is a joke. They say that unless Congress passes this FISA bill, we'll no longer be able to spy on those bad actors around the world that would do us harm. Who the fuck do they think they're kidding? Bill or no bill, our government is going to spy on whoever and whatever they want to spy on. Is there anyone that our government hasn't spied on? That's a rhetorical question. I also don't know what the bill has to do with domestic spying, if anything, but you can bet your sweet arse that they can pretty much spy on you, me, or anyone else in our country at any time without fear of retribution.
Hell, they spied relentlessly on the Trump campaign when he ran for president in 2016, and they did it at the request of the sitting president at the time. I'm referring to the goat herder from Kenya. Look at it this way: If you have a cell phone, a computer, a Bluetooth device like an Alexa, or maybe a refrigerator with an internet connection, they are spying on you. They listen to your conversations, they track your physical movements, they know who you associate with, and they know every purchase you make, wherever and whenever you make it. If you've ever signed on to a genealogical website and given your DNA, they've got that, too. The websites have likely sold your DNA data to the Chinese government. If that isn't enough to keep you up at night, I don't know what is.
There he goes again. Biden has been bitch-slapped by the Supreme Court for trying to erase student debt at the expense of the American taxpayer. The courts were very clear: The President of the United States does now have the authority to do any such thing. Yet, I'm reading every other day that he's forgiving yet another tranche of student debt. It's a stark ploy to buy votes, plain and simple. Here's what I don't get. Just because some buffoon in the White House comes along and tells you that you don't need to repay your educational loans, it doesn't mean that you need to vote for the fool who forgave your debt with the stroke of a pen. It's especially true with the loser that we have sitting in our White House at the moment. Young people are moving away from Bumbles Biden and the Democrat party in record numbers for a variety of reasons and no amount of loan forgiveness is going to change that. I'm delighted to see that the Republicans are taking Biden to court again on this issue, but I'm not hopeful that anything is going to stop Biden and his handlers from continuing their unlawful and relentless attempts to flout the laws in order to boost their chances at the polls this coming November. This is who they are. This is what they do.
Someone needs to get on the stick and do a little investigating up there in the state of Maine. I want to know why Chinese nationals are permitted to run massive marijuana operations throughout the State of Maine without fear of being shut down by governmental agencies in the state. Both you and I know that the state of Maine has gone public with a couple of closures, if for no other reason than to give the appearance of doing something. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that the Chinese are padding the bank account of the Governor in the state? This is what the Chinese do. They bribe their way into countries, states, organizations, and local governments in order to get local officials to do their bidding.
China has perfected the art of blackmail, and there is no sweeter incentive than the promise of wealth beyond your means. When was the last time you heard Governor Mills even comment on the scourge of Chinese nationals invading the state she presides over? We're probably wasting our time thinking that she is keeping any of her ill-gotten gains in a local bank account. Those monies are stashed overseas and out of sight of prying eyes. I'd like to think that the good people of Maine might rise up and push back against the graft and people like Governor Mills, who allegedly sell their very souls for untold millions and at the expense of their fellow Mainers. This seems to be a pattern in blue states these days. The corruption is too deep. The citizenry is too complacent. Now and forever more, likely a lost cause. Think Massachusetts or California.
The world is on pins and needles now, and it's only a matter of time before Iran retaliates against Israel for their bombing of Iran's consulate in Syria, which resulted in the death of a half dozen or more high-level Iranian commandos. Israel has promised to retaliate by targeting key facilities in Iran. The United States has moved more military equipment into the region to assist Israel in defending against missile attacks coming from Iran. None of this helped the American stock market yesterday. The major indices dropped to or below their respective 50-day moving averages for the first time in months.
Iran has been attacking Israel for years with proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas but never directly. It would represent an escalation of untold consequences in the Middle East at a time when Israel already has its hands full with an ongoing war against Hamas and Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, the Houthis in Yemen, who are actively trying to choke off supplies to Israel by attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea. Who knows where this all goes in the coming days? We have seen nothing but tragedy and turmoil when and where it comes to America's foreign policy since Biden took office, so I'm not hopeful that any of this will turn out well. I do believe in an eye for an eye, so Iran is entitled to their pound of flesh, whatever that looks like.
I'm already tired of the Trump trial bullshit in New York City, and the trial hasn't even yet begun. Let's call it what it is: It's a coup d'état . Barring any last-minute changes, the trial starts next Monday. This is the Left's wet dream of a trial that finally delivers the conviction that the Left has been yammering for for years ever since Trump came down the escalator in 2015 to announce that he was running for president. They'll stop at nothing to put him behind bars in order to further humiliate him and his family and to take him out of the running for the election in the Fall against demented Joe Biden. You know, the bumbling fool of a president who can't complete a sentence without reading from a cue card or a teleprompter. The very same guy who has run our country into the ground domestically and who has put a target on the backs of our citizens around the world.
I don't know if I'll be able to withstand even a moment of our country's media taking victory laps day in and day out after their reporters emerge from the courthouse each day with their breathless and dishonest renditions of the day's hearing. Trump's verdict, guilty on all counts, will likely be the verdict heard around the world. The media can then add "convict" to their list of deliberate and dishonest descriptors when reading their talking points about Trump. This is a very sad time in the history of our country, and nothing better captures the sickness and depravity of our politics than what we're about to witness in the City of New York under a magnificent skyline built over the past few decades by the man sitting in judgment. A once-proud New Yorker, I might add. No more.
Geez. Iran finally launched their attack on Israel, and it was, in my humble opinion, much ado about nothing. It hardly warranted taking our stock market down a few notches on Friday. I'm guessing it comes back with a fury on Monday. The so-called attack almost seemed performative. That is to say, it looked to be well-planned and coordinated with everyone involved. Most of the drones and missiles were shot down by allied forces or Israel. I think Israel is estimating that 99% of the missiles and rockets launched from Iran never reached their targets. Israeli media was pretty exuberant this morning in their reporting. I'm just reading all of this on X (Twitter) so maybe we take it with a grain of salt? Iran's attack was in response to Israel's bombing of Iran's consulate in Damascus, which killed a half dozen high-level Iranian commanders. It's also notable that none of the drones or missiles fired from Iran targeted civilian populations. Does this seem like a commensurate response to you? Israel is now contemplating a response to Iran's attacks, but it seems to me that the tit-for-tat should end here if they are to avoid a larger conflict in the region. If anyone has come up short, it's Iran. I have to believe that they have yet to get what they consider to be their "revenge." Rain check, anyone?
These Ukrainians I see on Twitter are something else. They really get a hair across their collective arses when they see Israel getting all the attention that they think they should be getting instead. I saw one tweet last night bemoaning the fact that the world was on full alert before Iran had even fired their first missile, while Russia's full-out and ongoing bombing of Ukraine's civilian populations received hardly a mention in the media. Never mind that a Republican congress has held up the United States's funding for Ukraine for several months now. We've given Ukraine more money than they deserve, and they can't account for half of it if you want to know the truth. Now they whine like an abandoned child when the United States tells them to fuck off and get to the negotiating table to settle matters with Vlad. That's the message coming from Republicans. The Democrats are more than willing to continue to send good money after bad to that shithole of a country. They can't allow Russia to win the war, don't you know? It would be the end of Western civilization as we know it. They'll go after the Baltic States next. It's fucking nonsense. Stop this money laundering scheme and stop it now.
I'm getting a little tired of being the only cook in the house. I never signed up to be someone's short-order cook, but that's just how I feel. Then there's the additional guilt that comes along with not preparing a meal and having my better half go to bed hungry. I've shared my feelings on this issue before, but nothing ever changes. I don't know what she's going to do when I'm not around to do it anymore. Maybe she'll find another person to do what I've been doing all these past many years. I suppose she could get take-out more often. Something would have to change. I'm not even that reliable or creative a chef, truth be told. I'll prepare an occasional quiche for our breakfast, which I'll serve with grapefruit when available. I usually make a nice salad for our lunch, and maybe we'll have something like chicken on a skewer or locally caught fish, if it looks good, with some seasonal vegetables for dinner. We have some reliable take-out joints we frequent, but those, too, are getting a little long in the tooth. I'm not sure where we go from here.
Trump is going to lay out his ideas on abortion today. I'm not sure what the format looks like, but it may be similar to the various and sundry presentations that he did in the run-up to the 2016 elections. Those presentations back in the day on everything from national security to laying out who he planned to have in his administration went a long way towards winning the hearts and minds of people who were maybe a little uncomfortable in voting for a guy who spent his last fourteen years hosting a fabulous television show called "The Apprentice." He was up against a media that spent every waking hour casting him as a huckster and a showman. They were all in for Hillary Clinton at the time, so none of it came as a surprise. Trump is a common sense guy, so I expect his policies on abortion will be similarly fashioned. Never mind that he put three of the conservative justices on our highest court who did away with Roe vs. Wade. I don't know what the middle road on the abortion issue looks like, but expect Trump to address the exceptions like rape, incest, and the health of the mother head-on. For now, he may or may not commit to anything beyond those issues.
Today, there is a total eclipse of the sun that is viewable in our state. I could give two shits, quite honestly. I will not be one of the many flat-earthers out there with those stupid cardboard eyeglasses peering up at the sky. I hope that the more sensible of the eclipse worshippers take the appropriate precautions, whatever that looks like. I don't know if everything I've been hearing about fried retinas and the like is just another old wives tale or science that we're to believe. I'm also a little suspicious of these stories I'm hearing about people flocking to states like mine today just to "see" the event. I mean, who does that? Is this some sort of pagan ritual that I'm not familiar with? Are there things that we should or should not be doing on a day like today? Things that we should shy away from just in case? Is this anything like the full-moon nonsense that has people acting silly and, for lack of a better word, weird? It should all be over by 3 in the afternoon. Our next event of this sort doesn't come around for a decade or two, so plan accordingly. Hey, what about my bike ride this afternoon?
There are days like today when I wake up, sit at this here desk, and don't have a clue as to what I'm going to put down on paper. That's probably not a bad place to start. Think of it as a blank slate. Right? I worry sometimes that I'm spending too much time writing about this or that, and it might come across as being obsessive. So, I resist picking up where I left off the previous day when I might have had a lot to say about something like politics. The Trump thing is always good for a paragraph or two. He's also always in the news, so there is always something new to discuss. My bike riding gig is a reliable fallback story when nothing else comes to mind. I'd have more to say about that if I could remember from one day to the next the kinds of things that come to mind during my hour-long jaunts. That's just a fact. I keep telling myself that I need to keep a notepad handy to write down things when they come to mind, but I have yet to do that. In an odd sort of way, I really don't like to be too organized when it comes to writing in this journal. I like the free flow of whatever comes to mind, even if it means talking too much about things that I continue to talk too much about.
What am I hearing about Brazil and its ongoing beef with Elon Musk? Apparently, they are giving him a hard time about what he's doing or not doing to rein in free speech on his platform, X (Formerly Twitter). I don't know that Brazil has banned Musk's social media platform altogether, but they have told him that, if I'm not mistaken, he cannot run his Starlink business in Brazil. What one has to do with the other, I don't know. Imagine for a moment that you are living in or around the Amazon rain forest and, thanks to Musk's Starlink satellites, you now have access to the internet. Now imagine that your government decides that they don't like the internet provider, and they take it all down overnight. Poof. You are in the dark. You no longer have quick and easy access to the outside world. You are cut off from family and friends. Is the Brazilian government cutting off their nose to spite their face? They, too, no longer have access to the other regions of their country. Right? Does any of this have anything to do with the leftist Lula government working with the Biden regime to spank Musk for his so-called transgressions here in the States? This needs some serious sorting. Today, it's Brazil. Tomorrow, it could be coming to a neighborhood near you. America, are you listening?
I heard Hugh Hewitt talking about David Cameron, the Secretary of State in the British government, coming to the United States to visit with Trump. When I first heard the story, I thought to myself this is a good thing. Cameron and others of his ilk from various countries are coming to get a little face time with the man who will more than likely be our 47th President of the United States. It was also a huge slap in the face to the Bidenistas, who have no choice but to sit back and watch it all go down in Mar-a-Lago. Joe Biden doesn't know what day of the week it is, and his handlers probably don't even tell him about Cameron's visit. Nobody gives a flying fuck about the demented clown eating his oatmeal in the back room on the second floor of the West Wing without so much as a care in the world. What I'm finding out, thanks to Hugh, is that Cameron is here to sell Trump on funding the war in Ukraine. I'm talking about the bill for the $60 billion that Speaker Johnson refuses to bring to the floor for a vote. Knowing Trump as I do and his malleability on issues depending on who is massaging his ego at any given time, I have some advice for The Donald. Don't fucking do it. Do not give Johnson any reason to think that funding Ukraine is acceptable. Here is what you tell Cameron: Not another fucking penny for the grifters and oligarchs in Ukraine.
I'm hearing a lot of rumors these days about Congressmen being bought off to leave the Republican party so the Democrats can take back the House of Representatives. There are some other examples I've heard of other people being offered money not to run in certain races. I believe Kari Lake said that she was offered money not to run for the Senate in the state of Arizona. What the hell is this? It feels sleazy and illegal to me. It's precisely what you'd expect the Democrats to engage in. What did I read this morning about RFK Jr's VP pick and efforts by the lefties to have her leave the race because they know she'll draw support from the progressive left? These Marxists with deep pockets are a threat to democracy, yet they accuse conservatives of the same. She's too rich, so they can't buy her off. Instead, they tell her that by running on the Kennedy ticket, it's more likely than not that they will tip the race to Trump. It's a bridge too far, dearie! She seems like a woman who can make up her own mind, so I hope she sticks to her guns and stays in the race. She knew what she was getting into. Both the Kennedy and Trump camps are of one mind when it comes to this election: They cannot allow Biden to either steal or win the election.
I think I'm going to pass on my favorite Springtime dessert later this month. In late April every year, I typically have strawberry shortcake with gobs of strawberries and whipped cream. I've been doing my best lately to stay away from sugar and other things that they say aren't good for you. I know how well I'm doing when I can walk by the pastry section of any particular store without putting one or more things in my cart. Here's another good example: I have two boxes of cereal on top of my refrigerator. One is a box of Raisin Bran, which I picked up during a shopping trip to Whole Foods. I stopped eating it after my first bowlful. It was just too sugary. The other box of cereal is a box of Shredded Wheat. I looked again yesterday after avoiding sugary stuff for the better part of a month and noticed that the Raisin Bran had 15 grams of sugar per serving. The Shredded Wheat had zero grams of sugar. It's true what they say about these sugary products. The more you consume them, the more you want to consume them. It's a vicious cycle. It's also not just sugar. It's white bread and pizza crust. It's the whole carb thing. You go from eating a slice or two to eating half a pizza at a time. I'm a little more sensible when it comes to avoiding the bad stuff these days, and I want to continue in that vein for the foreseeable future. Hence, there will be no strawberry shortcake this year. It's just easier to say "no."
I'm bored to tears over anything and everything having to do with abortion. It's just not my cup of tea. It's not the hill I want to die on. I do get annoyed, however, when I see Democrats trying to run this issue up the flagpole as the most important issue in the history of our Republic. It's all about rallying women to get to the polls where they think they're advancing the interests of the American public by voting for the same scumbags that have been destroying our country and our culture for God only knows how long. I don't know what it's going to take to get the Republicans on the right side of this issue. Does a "right" side of this issue even exist? As a people, we seem to be incapable of answering that question with any degree of clarity. You believe what you believe. They believe what they believe. As long as the Democrats frame the issue as a woman's issue, aka reproductive rights, that position seems to give them the upper hand. It's a cudgel that will take them to the promise land in politics if harnessed and wielded properly. That lesson is not lost on the Democrats.
The day before they released the latest inflation numbers, the stock market headed south mid-afternoon after tweets here and there suggesting that someone had leaked the numbers a day ahead of the actual report. How does this even happen? Whoever leaked the data wasn't wrong. The inflation numbers came in hotter than expected. I thought all along that the Fed would cook the numbers to put lipstick on the pig that is inflation and pave the way for a second Biden term. Well, not so much. Are the latest inflation readings the silver bullet that takes out the entire Biden Administration? Or does the Fed have another plan to boost chances for a second term for the aging and demented fool sitting in our White House? And what the hell is Biden doing commenting on interest rate cuts? It was almost like he thought the latest inflation numbers would give the Fed the reason they were looking for in order to cut interest rates. Was Biden telegraphing that a cut is in the works? Were Biden's comments a nod of sorts to the Fed that they need to get cuts out the door and fast? Never mind that interest rate cuts would be like throwing jet fuel on an inflation fire that is already burning too hot. I don't know about you, but I could use a mean tweet about right now.
I heard that Biden held a press conference on the White House lawn yesterday. Anyone with half a brain knows that Biden's idea of a press conference involves calling on reporters who were preselected to take questions. It gets worse. Biden actually reads his responses from a script that someone has placed on the rostrum. He wears those stupid aviator shades of his so that people in the audience can't see that he's reading from the notes. I don't know who the fuck he thinks he's fooling. And the compliant media plays along with the charade like the clapping and complicit seals that they are. Nightly newscasts replay cuts of Biden's speech in order to perpetuate the myth that Biden is a fully engaged and multi-tasking president doing the business of the presidency. It's a cluster fuck on the American public of monumental proportions. Nothing could be further from the truth. People around the world know we have a completely demented, corrupt, and infirm president at the helm, and they are likely incredulous that this could be happening to the greatest democracy on the face of the earth. Not to worry. The right-minded citizenry of our country wonders the same thing. It's like, when is this nightmare going to end? Spoiler alert: Not soon enough.
I had this really weird thought the other day. I wondered if everything that the Republican Congress has been doing to expose the criminality of the Biden Crime Family has really been an effort to take the influence-peddling issue off the table as a blackmailable issue for the countries that have been paying off the Bidens for decades. In other words, if Republicans put all the known Biden and Biden-related transgressions out there for the American public to see, and the end result is that nobody gives a fuck, then what possible leverage do the Chinese or Russians have were they to threaten Biden to do something that he doesn't want to do?
Don't get me wrong. Biden is allegedly a wholly owned asset of the Chinese Communist Party thanks to their "investments" in the Biden Family Trust going back decades. He would no sooner turn a blind eye to their requests than he would submit his letter of resignation as president of the United States. The very same countries that have been paying he and his family off for decades, if we're to believe Congressman Comer and his investigators, still have a role to play in upcoming elections if they are to more fully reap the rewards to which they think they are entitled. This was never about impeaching Joe Biden. It was always about protecting him from nefarious bad actors around the world who would wish to blackmail him. Never mind that he is the most corrupt president in the history of our Republic. We protect our own.
This FISA thing in Congress is a joke. They say that unless Congress passes this FISA bill, we'll no longer be able to spy on those bad actors around the world that would do us harm. Who the fuck do they think they're kidding? Bill or no bill, our government is going to spy on whoever and whatever they want to spy on. Is there anyone that our government hasn't spied on? That's a rhetorical question. I also don't know what the bill has to do with domestic spying, if anything, but you can bet your sweet arse that they can pretty much spy on you, me, or anyone else in our country at any time without fear of retribution.
Hell, they spied relentlessly on the Trump campaign when he ran for president in 2016, and they did it at the request of the sitting president at the time. I'm referring to the goat herder from Kenya. Look at it this way: If you have a cell phone, a computer, a Bluetooth device like an Alexa, or maybe a refrigerator with an internet connection, they are spying on you. They listen to your conversations, they track your physical movements, they know who you associate with, and they know every purchase you make, wherever and whenever you make it. If you've ever signed on to a genealogical website and given your DNA, they've got that, too. The websites have likely sold your DNA data to the Chinese government. If that isn't enough to keep you up at night, I don't know what is.
There he goes again. Biden has been bitch-slapped by the Supreme Court for trying to erase student debt at the expense of the American taxpayer. The courts were very clear: The President of the United States does now have the authority to do any such thing. Yet, I'm reading every other day that he's forgiving yet another tranche of student debt. It's a stark ploy to buy votes, plain and simple. Here's what I don't get. Just because some buffoon in the White House comes along and tells you that you don't need to repay your educational loans, it doesn't mean that you need to vote for the fool who forgave your debt with the stroke of a pen. It's especially true with the loser that we have sitting in our White House at the moment. Young people are moving away from Bumbles Biden and the Democrat party in record numbers for a variety of reasons and no amount of loan forgiveness is going to change that. I'm delighted to see that the Republicans are taking Biden to court again on this issue, but I'm not hopeful that anything is going to stop Biden and his handlers from continuing their unlawful and relentless attempts to flout the laws in order to boost their chances at the polls this coming November. This is who they are. This is what they do.
Someone needs to get on the stick and do a little investigating up there in the state of Maine. I want to know why Chinese nationals are permitted to run massive marijuana operations throughout the State of Maine without fear of being shut down by governmental agencies in the state. Both you and I know that the state of Maine has gone public with a couple of closures, if for no other reason than to give the appearance of doing something. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that the Chinese are padding the bank account of the Governor in the state? This is what the Chinese do. They bribe their way into countries, states, organizations, and local governments in order to get local officials to do their bidding.
China has perfected the art of blackmail, and there is no sweeter incentive than the promise of wealth beyond your means. When was the last time you heard Governor Mills even comment on the scourge of Chinese nationals invading the state she presides over? We're probably wasting our time thinking that she is keeping any of her ill-gotten gains in a local bank account. Those monies are stashed overseas and out of sight of prying eyes. I'd like to think that the good people of Maine might rise up and push back against the graft and people like Governor Mills, who allegedly sell their very souls for untold millions and at the expense of their fellow Mainers. This seems to be a pattern in blue states these days. The corruption is too deep. The citizenry is too complacent. Now and forever more, likely a lost cause. Think Massachusetts or California.
The world is on pins and needles now, and it's only a matter of time before Iran retaliates against Israel for their bombing of Iran's consulate in Syria, which resulted in the death of a half dozen or more high-level Iranian commandos. Israel has promised to retaliate by targeting key facilities in Iran. The United States has moved more military equipment into the region to assist Israel in defending against missile attacks coming from Iran. None of this helped the American stock market yesterday. The major indices dropped to or below their respective 50-day moving averages for the first time in months.
Iran has been attacking Israel for years with proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas but never directly. It would represent an escalation of untold consequences in the Middle East at a time when Israel already has its hands full with an ongoing war against Hamas and Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, the Houthis in Yemen, who are actively trying to choke off supplies to Israel by attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea. Who knows where this all goes in the coming days? We have seen nothing but tragedy and turmoil when and where it comes to America's foreign policy since Biden took office, so I'm not hopeful that any of this will turn out well. I do believe in an eye for an eye, so Iran is entitled to their pound of flesh, whatever that looks like.
I'm already tired of the Trump trial bullshit in New York City, and the trial hasn't even yet begun. Let's call it what it is: It's a coup d'état . Barring any last-minute changes, the trial starts next Monday. This is the Left's wet dream of a trial that finally delivers the conviction that the Left has been yammering for for years ever since Trump came down the escalator in 2015 to announce that he was running for president. They'll stop at nothing to put him behind bars in order to further humiliate him and his family and to take him out of the running for the election in the Fall against demented Joe Biden. You know, the bumbling fool of a president who can't complete a sentence without reading from a cue card or a teleprompter. The very same guy who has run our country into the ground domestically and who has put a target on the backs of our citizens around the world.
I don't know if I'll be able to withstand even a moment of our country's media taking victory laps day in and day out after their reporters emerge from the courthouse each day with their breathless and dishonest renditions of the day's hearing. Trump's verdict, guilty on all counts, will likely be the verdict heard around the world. The media can then add "convict" to their list of deliberate and dishonest descriptors when reading their talking points about Trump. This is a very sad time in the history of our country, and nothing better captures the sickness and depravity of our politics than what we're about to witness in the City of New York under a magnificent skyline built over the past few decades by the man sitting in judgment. A once-proud New Yorker, I might add. No more.
Geez. Iran finally launched their attack on Israel, and it was, in my humble opinion, much ado about nothing. It hardly warranted taking our stock market down a few notches on Friday. I'm guessing it comes back with a fury on Monday. The so-called attack almost seemed performative. That is to say, it looked to be well-planned and coordinated with everyone involved. Most of the drones and missiles were shot down by allied forces or Israel. I think Israel is estimating that 99% of the missiles and rockets launched from Iran never reached their targets. Israeli media was pretty exuberant this morning in their reporting. I'm just reading all of this on X (Twitter) so maybe we take it with a grain of salt? Iran's attack was in response to Israel's bombing of Iran's consulate in Damascus, which killed a half dozen high-level Iranian commanders. It's also notable that none of the drones or missiles fired from Iran targeted civilian populations. Does this seem like a commensurate response to you? Israel is now contemplating a response to Iran's attacks, but it seems to me that the tit-for-tat should end here if they are to avoid a larger conflict in the region. If anyone has come up short, it's Iran. I have to believe that they have yet to get what they consider to be their "revenge." Rain check, anyone?
These Ukrainians I see on Twitter are something else. They really get a hair across their collective arses when they see Israel getting all the attention that they think they should be getting instead. I saw one tweet last night bemoaning the fact that the world was on full alert before Iran had even fired their first missile, while Russia's full-out and ongoing bombing of Ukraine's civilian populations received hardly a mention in the media. Never mind that a Republican congress has held up the United States's funding for Ukraine for several months now. We've given Ukraine more money than they deserve, and they can't account for half of it if you want to know the truth. Now they whine like an abandoned child when the United States tells them to fuck off and get to the negotiating table to settle matters with Vlad. That's the message coming from Republicans. The Democrats are more than willing to continue to send good money after bad to that shithole of a country. They can't allow Russia to win the war, don't you know? It would be the end of Western civilization as we know it. They'll go after the Baltic States next. It's fucking nonsense. Stop this money laundering scheme and stop it now.