Category: Politics

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Beware the echo chamber…

After two years of more of less isolation, perhaps we’ve all fallen into our own personal echo chambers.

It’s not intentional. It’s simply what happens in isolation. There will be those who say we’ve not been isolated because we have the internet and the news, etc. But we have been isolated from people and friends who challenge our beliefs.

It’s the personal interactions, it’s the people we care about, our friends, family, etc. who add balance to our thoughts and opinions. Without those people challenging us, we fall into patterns where it’s far too easy to self validate what we think and as humans do, we assume that we’re right.

COVID has provided a perfect storm in this regard.

No matter how egalitarian we try to be in our news absorption we inevitably develop biases and preferred news sources. It could happen because those sources have pretty people, or entertaining pieces, or that they simply validate what we’re already thinking. Eventually we choose those sources that we’re comfortable with. Then we narrow our focus to only the comfortable.

Without discussion and interaction. Without people we respect and care about pushing back and saying, “Well this report here says thus and such,” it’s easy to create an echo chamber and not notice it.

I’m guilty… Are you?

That’s not about laying blame. None of us should feel threatened by this realization. It’s just a sign post that says, “Hey there, we need to do better.” None of us are perfect, but we all should at least aspire to keep walking that path and get as close as possible.

The problem with echo chambers is they feed division. Everyone walks around with their own entrenched beliefs and they defend them.

How many people have said, or been heard to say, “You are wrong and I don’t want to be friends anymore,”? Isn’t that the same as a dating profile saying “Republicans don’t contact me,”

That’s not healing, that’s not being open minded. It’s in the discussion of even closely held beliefs that validation, or error is uncovered. Sometimes neither validation or error is uncovered but the discussion provides enlightenment.

The enlightenment I’m talking about is understanding what drives the core belief. For example. Just because someone was tried for a crime and there was nothing uncovered in a trial that was legally actionable. It doesn’t mean there was nothing there in the first place. It may mean that someone was skating along the boundaries of the law and they were clever enough or lucky enough to stay just out of reach.

Al Capone is a good example. For years the FBI and other law enforcement knew Capone was in charge of a massive criminal organization. They could never actually pin anything on him directly. They didn’t have sufficient evidence and no matter how many times they arrested Capone, the case always fell apart. Until the IRS got involved. Then it was a whole new ball game.

Maybe, a way forward for all of us, is to have those uncomfortable discussions. But both parties really need to listen.

That’s the hard part, listening and divorcing yourself from your beliefs for a time. That way, you can get into the head of the other person thereby understanding the factual or not so factual underpinning of why they believe a certain way about something.

It doesn’t matter if you agree or not with their belief. What matters is that we all acknowledge that no-one is an idiot for thinking in a way we don’t agree with. It’s just that we each put “facts” together in some kind of order that makes it possible to cope with the world around us.

I’ve written in these pages that I personally think something was amiss in the most recent election. For that matter I could make a case that something has been amiss in elections going back decades.

When I’ve said that I thought the most recent election should be investigated. It wasn’t to depose Biden and install Trump. I honestly don’t care about which of the two is president.

I’m not even sure if constitutionally Biden could be removed at this point. I don’t even want to consider the chaos that removing a Biden Administration and installing a Trump Administration would cause. I guess I’m more of a, “Well, we’re here now, we just have to muddle through,” we have to do better next time. I don’t like Biden. I personally think he’s incompetent, but Harris is no better.

I as a voter, don’t like being placed in a situation where I feel that I have to choose the devil or the deep blue sea.

That doesn’t mean that I’m pro Trump. I personally think that he did some things that were beneficial for the country in the near term but I don’t have enough knowledge of politics to be able to project how those near term benefits play out over time. I’m willing to acknowledge that perhaps the folks who were screaming about his policies know, or knew something I missed.

When I say I think we should look at the elections, I’m saying that from a perspective of fixing what’s broken.

How do we change the system to make sure that the next election, everyone feels confident enough in the system that they believe the results represent the will of the electorate? I’d like for everyone to be able to comfortably say, “I didn’t like the result but that’s okay, because the system was fair and it works.“

I’d be willing to bet that average folks on both sides of the political gulf could get behind that. The politicians might not like it all that much, but the people they’re supposed to represent might like it a lot.

It hit me, that folks might not understand the nuance I’m talking about. I’d like to see a disassembly of the voting process to find the bugs and plug them. That would be a big task, and it would take representation from all parties, not just the big two. That’s also why I’m in the near term pro voter ID.

I’m not about preventing someone from casting their vote. I am about preventing someone from casting 20 votes. Yes, it would be inconvenient to have to present ID to obtain a ballot. but the benefit outweighs the inconvenience. God knows, I remember how slow it was to write a check and present ID in the grocery store line.

I’d like to see the next election, be clean. I’d like for there to be no margin for a candidate to do what Trump did this last election. We should remember that before Trump, there was Al Gore claiming the election irregularities.

Folks call it “The Big Lie”. I call it a warning sign. How about we figure out a way to eliminate the possibility of “The Big Lie” altogether? That seems like a worth while enterprise doesn’t it?

I’m amazed how many people have Trump living in their heads rent free. I’d prefer to push him into history and deal with what is in front of us. Yes, I acknowledge that Trump is living in my head rent free too. I try very hard to only let him have a cheap studio apartment with a leaky toilet. It’s hard to do because there’s so much media attention still focused on him.

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Time to take a deep breath – Did Biden say we’re putting troops in Ukraine?

In remarks to the 82nd Airborne Biden did his usual rambling type of speech. It’s Here if you’d like to read it for yourself. I personally find that reading his speeches, like listening to them, makes my dang head hurt.

You’ve been warned…

The part of the speech that made my blood run cold was this:

And — so, you know, with the Ukrainian people — Ukrainian people have a lot of backbone. They have a lot of guts. And I’m sure you’re observing it. And I don’t mean just their military, which is — we’ve been training since back when they — Russia moved into the — in the southeast — southeast Ukraine — but also the average citizen. Look at how they’re stepping up. Look at how they’re stepping up.

And you’re going to see when you’re there. And you — some — some of you have been there. You’re going to see — you’re going to see women, young people standing — standing the middle of — in front of a damn tank, just saying, “I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground.” They’re incredible. But they take a lot of inspiration from us.

Remarks by President Biden During Visit with Service Members of the 82nd Airborne Division. March 25, 2022

Did President Biden just say to the world, including President Putin that the United States was going to deploy troops?

Wasn’t that one of the things that Putin said was going to trigger a vigorous, Possibly nuclear Russian response?

I’m used to idiotic saber rattling. But DAMN!

If you’ve poked the bear and managed to not get eaten, it’s probably not a good idea to poke the bear again.

Thus far the Russian / Ukraine war has been largely an affair between two affiliated countries. Ukraine was, after all part of the old USSR. The tipping point for Putin, (if there is a geopolitical one,) appears to have something to do with the possibility of Ukraine becoming a NATO nation.

I doubt seriously that NATO would accept Ukraine, but that’s a different issue. Putin on the other hand has reason to prevent Ukraine becoming part of NATO.

NATO troops sitting that close to Moscow would give Putin endless headaches and he would likely perceive it as an ongoing threat. It’s a little too close to home. I go so far as to say Putin is telling the world, “Not in MY backyard!”

The long history between Russia and Ukraine is too intricate and soaked with too much blood for me to begin to understand the underlying issues between them. That’s the job of political historians and I’m so not qualified.

I have begun to think that Zelenskyy and Putin may well be cut from the same cloth.

I don’t know if there can be a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the two countries. That’s for diplomats from Ukraine and Russia to work out, Send some decent and savvy ambassadors to assist in brokering a deal, but keep Biden himself 10,000 miles away.

Who knows? It might be something as simple as Ukraine saying they won’t join NATO.

I feel compassion for the Ukrainian people that have been conscripted, killed, displaced, and had their lives and homes destroyed.

I however, don’t think that it’s smart in any way for The President of the United States to add fuel to the fire.

I’m not ready for World War III. I haven’t finished building my hyperdrive!

Joking aside, we need a strong cogent statesman. We do not need a President that isn’t respected, (or perhaps feared,) by the leaders of the world.

There are reports that the Saudis aren’t taking calls from Biden, and other reports that suggest General Miley is not having his calls returned by his counterparts in Moscow.

It bodes ill that two former superpowers heavily armed with nuclear weapons aren’t talking with each other.

We can only hope at this point that Biden did not mean what he said in his remarks to the 82nd, and that the world leaders assume it was a doddering senile old fool speaking.

Who knows, it might be the one time when Biden’s apparent state of mind does some good.

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Its Baaaack…

Hunter Biden’s laptop is back in the news.

Apparently, The New York Times walked back its claims that Hunter’s laptop was a Russian hoax. The Times is now saying the laptop and the information it contained is authentic.

Politico also ran a similar story that the laptop in question was part of a disinformation campaign. I don’t think they have retracted their stories yet.

NewsGuard claimed that there was no way the information could be verified. They, however were talking about the New York Times original article.

I’ll admit, there are intelligence organizations that could have spent the time to put together something as intricate as the email chains contained on that laptop. They could have put together a bunch of the videos and pictures too. They could have forged the text messages easily.

The question I always asked about it was why? Why would Russia expend such significant resources to paint a known drug addict, even if he was the son of a presidential candidate, in a negative light?

If the Russians were behind Trump then it would make sense that they’d try to keep Trump in office. That being said, the general thought pre-election was that Trump was going to win.

Unless the Russians knew something that the general public didn’t. Was it that the Russians were worried Biden was going to win?

That makes no sense. If the Russians were interfering in our election process, and they were backing Trump then it would have been pretty much a “Lock” Trump would win.

On the other hand, If the Russians were not significantly involved with Trump but instead wanted to return to the Obama/Biden era where they could engage in their expansionistic goals, then again it makes no sense for them to have expended the resources. Had the laptop been taken seriously pre-election it could have derailed the Biden campaign and undermined the Russian expansionism.

Then there’s the data on the laptop itself. The email threads I was able to read before the data disappeared were boringly routine. Yes, the emails were talking about the business of making connections with the “Movers & Shakers” of various governments but once you get past the shock of that, it was boring routine scheduling and money transfers.

The videos were shocking, but the male in the videos (whether it was Hunter or not,) was very consistent in his voice patterns. His speech had the proper accent for someone from the northeast. Moreover, the sounds he made during sex were consistent.

Let’s be frank, we all know that during sex, we make sounds that are pretty unique to us. Ask your spouse, and you’ll find that there’s a certain pattern to your breathing, a slight guttural vocalization, a particular sound that you only make pre-orgasm. If your spouse is paying attention, they’ll use those cues to get you there, or back off so that the fun continues.

The male in the videos that I saw demonstrated the same patterns over and over again. This doesn’t prove it was Hunter, but it does suggest that it was the same guy. I can’t say too much about the women in the videos, there were many, and rarely did two videos have the same woman or girl.

If you want an example, watch some porn. Choose one particular performer, watch several movies they’re in, and listen. You’ll see what I mean. It’s more prominent with males in porn because “The Money Shot” is often repeated from different angles.

All of this led me to believe that the laptop was in fact authentic. It’s no one thing, it’s the intricacy and consistency.

On my laptop, I do things the same way. I have habits and patterns that are like a fingerprint. The way data is laid out is recognizable to me. I can grab an unlabeled data storage device and know it’s mine just by the way information is stored.

It’s my opinion the volume of information on the laptop, and its associated consistency couldn’t have been created by a hundred Russian agents. It looked more like one person over time.

I’m not saying that a disinformation campaign is impossible, I suggest that it is unlikely.

If we believe that the laptop is in fact Hunter’s. Then it opens a nasty can of worms. Was Hunter brokering access to his father, The Vice President, during the Obama years? If this is true then do we have a Sitting President who is compromised?

That was the fear during the Trump administration. Isn’t that possibility what triggered the first impeachment proceeding? Do we have a smoking gun so to speak that points to graft, corruption, pay for play, and all the things of which Trump was accused?

Is it possible that Congress had all the “right” crimes but the wrong man?

It’s unlikely that anything will be done about it at this point. Biden is one year into his term, Congress took almost three years to impeach Trump and. they were fast walking the process. Congress will no doubt drag their feet in any impeachment proceedings for Biden. I’d bet that we won’t know the full impact of Hunter’s laptop for at least 8 years.

By then the laptop will just be a minor footnote in history.

The question is this;

If this laptop had belonged to Eric Trump would it have been swept under the carpet?

The question is rhetorical. We all know that it would have been front page world wide.

The larger question is;

Why? Why do we allow this difference? A crime is a crime. That is supposed to be absolute, not money, leader, or party dependent. The FBI has had the laptop for almost 2 years, yet there have been no arrests and very few subpoenas.

Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. She’s supposed to represent the best of equal justice under the law. She’s not supposed to see race, or wealth, or power, or anything at all, except was the law broken.

Our Justice system is supposed to enforce the law absolutely. Exceptions may be made in extreme circumstances, (such as self defense), but exceptions should never become the rule.

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I was soooo excited to hear the SOTU Address

I could hardly wait to hear the pearls of wisdom from His Royal Majesty, The Imperial President Biden.

I wanted to see who would tear up their copy of the SOTU speech this year. I was hoping it would be a Republican and then we could see the dirty traitorous racist bastard roughed up and hauled away by The Nobel, Efficient, Capital Police.

I was hoping that we’d see angry “peasants” throwing themselves against the fence and razor wire surrounding the Capital. We might have seen The National Guard opening fire on them ensuring the majesty of our democracy.

The whole world would then see how strong our leaders were, as bulldozers scooped up the bodies and dumped them in a mass grave.

I was hoping for there to at least be some random arrests on the streets outside the Capital were the arrestees were detained without charge, denied their right to counsel, and imprisoned without due process.

After examples like that, the world would know that our leaders are fearless, behind guards, fences and walls, and they know how to control undesirable elements in our society.

Alas, it didn’t happen.

I suppose The Most Glorious Biden’s government is spread thin chasing down all the people who visited Washington DC during Jan 2021.

Happily, many of those racist, white supremacist, bastards, are rotting in prison. Perhaps there wasn’t enough room for more criminal scum?

Please pardon my venomous sarcasm!

I’ve always hated politics! I hate even more that I feel like I’ve been watching a 50 car pile up in slow motion for the past 20 years, and can’t look away.

By now, even the most ardent lover of Joe Biden must be having some buyer’s remorse. His polling numbers would seem to support that assertion.

Yeah, I’ve been aware of a creeping problem in politics for at least the past 20 years.

I voted my conscience, not my party for all of that time. I voted for the candidate, Local, Statewide, and National, that I thought would do the best job. Party be damned.

Ultimately, I thought that the individual candidate and their purported beliefs and history mattered more than their party affiliation. I naively believed that common sense and the inherent decency of the human being would prevail.

I was apparently wrong.

As an American, I understood that we would sometimes have hard times, and sometimes we’d be riding high. I didn’t have a problem tightening my belt for the betterment of my fellow Americans. It wasn’t easy, but it was a duty I shouldered right along with the rest of society because I saw that the government was taking action to correct the problem(s) and those corrections took time. After all, you can’t instantly turn an aircraft carrier, or a cruise ship. I still believed in the system.

However, unlike the frog in a slowly heating pot of water. I’m aware that we’re being boiled alive.

None of my core beliefs fit anymore.

I really wanted to believe The Biden Administration would address the raging issues facing Americans. I wanted to believe that they’d heard the people.

President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington as Vice President Kamala Harris and House speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., look on. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)

Instead all we got from the SOTU address was what they thought we wanted to hear. Not an actual concrete plan to change course.

I’ll leave the fact checking to the political analysts, (Or Twitter).

A few things did pop out at me. Just a few days ago, there was an article, (I think from CNN) that said Biden admitted that sanctions against Russia wouldn’t help.

Now, in the SOTU, we’re being told that sanctions are hurting Russia? But we and the EU are still buying oil from Russia?

Part of Biden’s speech sounded like it came from the Republican platform. “Buy American”, “Open Schools”, “Build the economy from the bottom up”, “Immigration Reform”, “Rework the Tax System”, “ReFund the Police”. That last one was probably the most astounding.

Biden did mention that our divisiveness needed to end. He said we are all Americans and need to unify. I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. He followed up with more rhetoric about gun control.

He went on to conflate voter integrity laws with voter suppression. Again that was expected.

Most of the speech felt like pandering.

It felt like Biden was saying words but there was no intent behind them. Once again we heard about Beau Biden. It seems like every time Joe Biden speaks, he invokes Saint Beau.

For all his screwups, I feel kinda bad for Hunter. His Dad always speaks about Beau with a sense of deep loss, when Joe Biden speaks about Hunter it’s almost as an afterthought. Hunter must feel like, “Dad wishes I’d died and Beau lived,” perhaps that is why Hunter appears to be so self destructive.

At some point I tuned out. Biden’s SOTU address was exactly what I’d expected. A whole lot of rhetoric and hyperbole but not a lot of substance.

I’d hoped that he (or his handlers) would have addressed a few very specific points and then provided specific corrective actions.

Something like;

“Fuel prices are high and that’s hurting Americans across the board. High fuel prices affect people at the pumps and increase the cost of goods being moved to market, adding to inflation.

To address this:
First I’m releasing our strategic reserves. That won’t last forever but will buy us time.
Second I’m authorizing a ramp up of domestic oil production. Fuel prices won’t fall instantly but as our production goes up and we replenish the strategic oil reserves I expect the prices to start dropping.
Third We will reduce our oil purchases from Russia. This will move us toward energy independence and simultaneously apply more pressure to Russia to stop their war in Ukraine.

This is not a short term fix, I ask all America to be patient. I call upon those companies with workers who can work remotely to delay bringing workers back into the office. That will help offset fuel demand and possibly reduce carbon emissions during this transition. If we work together, we’ll come through just fine.”

A simple statement like that would have been commanding and shown leadership. It would have shown there was a plan and even if that plan didn’t work, Americans would have accepted it, and tried to make it work.

Similar statements on just a few key issues would have made all the difference to me, and my opinion of Biden’s leadership.

There was no need for Biden to make anything more than a passing statement about the Ukraine conflict. He could acknowledge it and move on. After all, this speech was about the state of our union not necessarily world events. That’s what speeches at the UN are for.

I’ve included a transcript of the speech from Yahoo News, here.

Re-reading the SOTU. I felt like the Biden Administration was going down a laundry list, not of issues, but of special interest groups.

One item I warmed up to was making the VA work toward linking Toxic exposure from burn pits to disease ravaging our troops after they return from war. This is a problem that the VA has swept under the rug for a very long time. It’s not right that our troops should return home only to be driven into poverty by medical bills because the VA denies the problem is related to our improper disposal of known toxic materials.

Generally, this SOTU left me cold and disheartened.

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Where do we go from here?

The headlines are screaming, “Putin invades Ukraine.”

“Putin intends to decapitate the Ukrainian government”

To the second headline… My response was simply, “Duh,” That’s straightforward tactics. Destroy the command and control and the rest is simple.

I’m personally sad about the invasion , I have several friends from Ukraine and I’m sure they’re worried out of their minds. I hate seeing them upset and in limbo regarding their families still in Ukraine.

My question is; What’s Putin’s endgame?

Unlike our President, I think Putin is no fool. There has to be a political or economic reason for his actions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning the action. I just don’t think Putin is a moron. As such, I can’t see Putin invading another country unless he has a clear goal in mind.

That goal could be land, oil, or making sure that he has unimpeded access to the warm water ports along the Black Sea. After all, wasn’t that what the old USSR did?

I said previously in this blog that after Biden’s demonstration of his weakness and mental incapacity, other world leaders would recognize it and take advantage.

Putin’s actions are no surprise, except to the idiots in the Biden administration. Biden handed Putin a gift when his Administration said Russia would invade Ukraine on a specific day.

I pictured Putin laughing his ass off in the Kremlin and telling his Generals, “Oh, let’s wait a little while. We can use this as an opportunity to embarrass the Americans on the world stage. By waiting, we humiliate Biden, and undermine faith in the intelligence communities of the west. This too serves our purpose, and can be used in the future.“

It’s pretty obvious Putin has less respect for Biden than he did for Obama. Anyone remember how quickly Putin stepped over Obama’s, “Line in the sand”? Putin did that for no other reason than to piss on Obama’s parade.

I honestly don’t know what to make of Putin. I know he’s technically a dictator. I know he was part of the old USSR. I know he’s wealthy and that wealth has in part been made in questionable ways. (Funny that we say that as a bad thing about Putin, but look the other way in doddering Joe’s case,)

I know Putin was KGB and that he spent a lot of time in Germany in that role.

That’s about it. Nothing more than you could get from a Google search. Observing Putin over the years, I’ve come to respect him as one respects a strong adversary. Putin is a leopard that doesn’t change his spots when the wind blows. I respect that as well. At least you always know you’re dealing with a leopard.

What drives Putin is a bit harder to follow. He’s not insane like Hitler, he seems to have plans and goals. I’d never play poker or chess with him. Unless, I wanted to get my ass handed to me.

This brings me back to what are Putin’s intentions?

Were I in Putin’s place, I’d be looking to increase my arable land. I’d be working towards complete energy independence. I’d be trying to secure the ability to manufacture a wide variety of technology within my own borders.

If a country has these things in place and the ability to ship goods year round, then they become a world economic player. They also wouldn’t need to bend a knee to any other government or economic consortium.

You know, kind of like China has done.

Who knows, in the next 10 years maybe we’ll be seeing Национальный бренд  on all of our products, instead of Made in China.

Given the chaos the world has descended into. It could simply be that Putin has decided to adopt a “Russia First” agenda.

He may have concluded that financially it makes more sense for Russia to have the ability to isolate from the insanity. That would serve Putin, and the people of Russia.

If a country is dependent on no-one, then it is in the catbird seat when the shit hits the fan. There’d be a considerable bit of Schadenfreude for Russia to have America, Germany, France, England, and other NATO members, with their hats in hand asking for food, and manufactured goods.

The Schadenfreude would be even sweeter if the reason they were asking, was due to shitty economic, energy, immigration, and manufacturing, policies that drove their own countries into the poor house.

Putin is 69, he might even live to see that day.

We can only hope that the moronic Biden Administration takes Putin at his word about interference. Putin effectively castrated Biden, the only thing Putin hasn’t done, is bent Biden over a desk and metaphorically fucked him.

That’s probably on the agenda for next month.

If the timing works out right, maybe Putin could do that, the same day Biden is delivering the State of the Union address.