Tag: Politics

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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.

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I read the “News” today… I Feel like I’m in a time warp.

Everything I read was reminiscent of the Obama Years.

Perhaps this time around is a little more chaotic but nothing has changed.

Reading the news was a bit like watching a soap opera. You can skip days or weeks, but when you do get around to watching, you haven’t missed much, if anything at all.

I did happen to notice that Kamala Harris is notably absent and has been for at least a week or two.

President Biden is still bloviating on about the Russian / Ukraine issues, While the President of the Ukraine has been quoted as saying the issue is resolving.

Justin Trudeau is being heckled in Parliament and openly laughed at. I’d guess his career is at an end. Doesn’t Canada have a no confidence vote?

Ah well, the soap opera goes on, and nothing changes, except the price of goods and fuel. They keep going up.

I’m as disinterested in the “News” and politics as I was during the Obama years. The nut jobs have full control of the asylum and the midterms can’t come soon enough.

Maybe this time we can get some people in office that actually do their jobs. I’m not holding my breath or anything but I’d love to see a bunch of non-politicians swept into office. You know, folks that had businesses and employees and actually produced something.

That is, of course, until they were forced out of business by mandates and lockdowns.

It seems to me those are the people who have the time, the knowledge, logic, and will, to stand up to the establishment powers and say, “NO!”

Maybe, they’d be able to set things back on course by applying their business acumen and common sense.

The one thing I’m certain of, is that all of the career politicians of any political stripe need to get THE BOOT.

I’m probably just whistling past the graveyard. There are a lot more people caught up in their individual divisiveness and specialized causes than there are people who look at the larger picture. I’m fairly sure that whoever is elected in the midterms will just be more of the same old crap.

Well, back to ignoring the news for a week or so unless something really interesting captures my attention.

I’m over the soap opera.

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DHS may Not be our Friend

A New York Post article dated Feb 9, 2022 and another article in Law Enforcement Today talk about a DHS Bulletin describing the current heightened state of alert regarding threats to the nation.

There was a similar article yesterday in Breitbart. I’m not linking to that one. Some of these articles engaged in hyperbole suggesting that the DHS said If you question the Government you might be a terrorist. At least one article referred to Secretary Mayorkas press conference where he may have misstated or overstated the DHS Bulletin.

Titles like:

“We are all terror threats? DHS says “mistrust of US government” means you may be a terrorist“

While not incorrect, may lead a casual reader to incorrect conclusions.

The DHS Bulletin is uh, concerning, in one regard. I think it is worthy of noting the line that seems to have generated the attention.

“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”

To anyone raised in the 1960’s or 1970’s that line would raise eyebrows.

In those decades it was commonplace for the younger generation to apply the thinking, Question Everything, Don’t trust the MAN (meaning government), Trust no-one over 30.

These were turbulent decades. Mounting evidence that the American People had been lied to about many things peaked with the Watergate Scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation.

For many, the revelations were heart breaking. Up to that time, it was sort of accepted as truth that our government was operating in the best interests of the people.

If someone in authority told a citizen to keep quiet about something in the interest of National Security, the citizen would do as asked. There was faith on the part of that citizen that they didn’t know all the facts, and that the Authorities knew the bigger picture and were in a position to invoke National Security interest. The citizen gladly did their patriotic duty.

After revelations about Agent Orange, Nixon’s resignation, revelations about DDT, scandals about vaccinations that went horribly wrong, government medical experimentation in Tuskegee, the unsafe effects of above and below ground nuclear weapons testing, and a long litany of scandals regarding Government Approved projects, our faith in government was, in my opinion broken.

As it turned out, those people asking questions, those who didn’t trust “The Man,” actually had a point.

These were the conspiracy “nut jobs” of the time. They had local meetings, and mimeographed, (if you don’t know that term, look it up. Acetone fumes in an enclosed space could get you high as a kite,) newsletters they passed out. The Information Age as we know it today didn’t exist. Agents from the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DIA were always infiltrating these conspiracy groups, just to keep an eye on them and learn what they knew.

You see us “Boomers” have heard statements like this before. What followed these statements often involved intimidation, threats, and arrests.

Senator Joe McCarthys famous line, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party,” still echoed from 1954. The Hollywood black lists were still in full force in the ’60s and ’70s.

Involvement with some groups could get you labeled a “possible subversive” and that label could impact your employment options for years. It didn’t have to be true, all you needed was the label in a file that would show up on a background check. The FBI had files on anyone remotely associated with so called subversive organizations.

I once lived with a roommate who’d been involved with some three letter organization. For two solid years all of my mail was delivered opened and hastily stuffed back into the envelope.

It wasn’t until much later in my life that I found out I’d been carefully watched during those years as a possible security threat. This information came to me as part of an in-depth security check I’d agreed to for a particular employment situation.

That was the day, I wondered if I’d finally “Sold Out”, and was becoming “The Man”.

At the time I was well over 30 so I figured it was high time. The Job was a good one, the money was great, and I wasn’t building weapons.

Over the last 5 to 10 years I’ve concluded that in an ironic way, I’ve been building weapons for most of my career. The exception was during the time I worked for an actual defense contractor. The irony of that is also not lost on me.

The weapons I built weren’t conceived as weapons. They were mechanisms that were built with the altruistic goal of freeing information. I thought if information flowed freely that it couldn’t be controlled. The despots, elitists, and powerful couldn’t hide their misdeeds from the public as they’d done in the past.

I never imagined the way that such information flow and devices could be weaponized. I never imagined that anyone would want to monitor the communications of an entire nation. Although there was the example of the old USSR doing it. That should have been a “Spoiler Alert”.

I was laboring under the illusion that the American Government would never do it. I wanted to trust in the government once more. Then came the allegation that the Obama Administration was in fact monitoring cellphone communications and archiving virtually all of them, with the help of the NSA.

Shortly after, we found that your cellphone even without GPS, was trackable and that our Government had built software that could locate your phone in a given area, building a record of your daily movements, then putting those movements on a map.

Did the government need to know where you stopped for coffee every morning on the way to work? This was ostensibly to assist in fighting terrorism and dated back to the Patriot Act, signed into law by Bush. The very people and entities I was hoping to stop, took our good intentions, innocence, and idealism, and fashioned horrible weapons. Weapons not to be used in time of war against a common enemy, but weapons to be used against their own citizens.

Oppenheimer was right. We should not question if we can do a thing, but rather should we do a thing.

It’s been said that a modern cellphone with GPS is the NSA, CIA, and FBI’s, wet dream. Everyone carrying around a tracking device that can be tuned into easily and efficiently with a few strokes on a keyboard providing an individual’s location within a few meters is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares on its own. Add to that corporations willingness to censor contrary points of view, backed by calls from government officials to sanction such censorship is terrifying.

One could read…

“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”

… as a call for the Government to begin active censorship of all unapproved narrative. Coming as it does from the DHS, this chills me to the bone.

In that light, I ask when does the DHS rename itself “This Ministry of Truth”?

As a “Boomer,” admittedly I’m on the tail end of that designation, I’ve been astounded by the breathtaking compliance and lack of questioning on the part of the American People over the past two years.

If as the hyperbolic headlines suggest, those who question the government may be considered terrorists.

I ask, what the hell happened? How did the lessons of McCarthyism get forgotten? How did the lessons of the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s get memory holed? How is it possible, with information flowing freely and unrestricted, that we’re at this point?

Does this mean that now, in my 6th decade, I’m suddenly a seditionist, a terrorist, a criminal?

What would be my crimes?

Asking questions?
Thinking for myself?
Having a lifelong aversion to a government that I justifiably never fully trusted?
Speaking out against actions, I think unjust?
Calling out politicians or others that I think should answer the people, but who do not?

If these are crimes, then this blog site contains abundant evidence of my guilt. Should I put my affairs in order in anticipation of the knock on my door and eventual “Suicide” from a shot to the back of my head?

I doubt I’m worth a bullet to these people. After all I don’t have Joe Rogan’s following. No, they’ll break the door down at 4 am and seize all my electronics, they’ll try to silence me and others like me by denying us access to the information network.

The question is, would that silence us, or just radicalize us further?

I wonder how much an old manual typewriter and hand cranked mimeograph machine cost these days. Can you even buy Acetone anymore? I’d bet without checking, Acetone is on the list of controlled substances.

No matter, those of us of a certain age still remember our organic chemistry. Who knows? Maybe someone even remembers the recipe.

Truth and Freedom ring like a bell. A truth, spoken or read, resonates in individuals that encounter it.

That resonance spreads and builds to questions. Those questions demand answers and cannot be denied forever.

This seems to be the one thing that totalitarian states always forget.

Truth sets the innocent free, and damns the guilty.

Let’s hope that the DHS bulletin simply contains a poorly worded statement.

In the event that our government is moving in a totalitarian direction, it’s time for us all to speak out, demanding that our concerns are heard and acted upon.

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Winter Olympics… Yawn!

Is anyone paying attention to this farce?

The Winter Olympics have never been high on my personal list of events. The Olympics in general have become boring for me over the past 20 years.

I’m turned off by the hype, I’m turned off by the politics and while I respect the training that the competitors put in, it’s not an event that captures my attention or takes up any of my time.

This year’s Winter Olympics is literally less important to me than scratching my balls.

I personally think that the US Olympic team should not have gone in the first place. There’s just too much controversy around China now. It’s so off my radar I couldn’t even tell you what US network is providing coverage of the games.

While many Americans are trying to avoid Chinese products, and those same Americans are asking what it’s going to take for us to bring our manufacturing home; The Olympic Games are showcasing China.

There was one news report last week, suggesting the Olympic Team use burner phones instead of taking their cellphones with them to China.

If there is that kind of concern about Chinese spying, perhaps we have no business sending young athletes to a place where their naïveté could get them into trouble in the first place.

Let’s not forget that COVID is still of great concern to the Chinese government.

I fully expect an athlete from some country to accidentally break a CCP rule and have it turn into an overblown international incident. Then we’ll get to watch some Chinese minister shake his finger at the offending country.

Given the situation with Antony Blinken, I’m almost positive it will be an American athlete because the CCP couldn’t pass up that opportunity.

I’m hoping that the American viewership will be dismal to the point our athletes just say, “fuck it, what’s the point,” and come home. It’s unfair to the athletes to be sure, but the overarching issue is why is anyone paying attention to a grandiose propaganda event that benefits no-one but the CCP?

Before you think me a hypocrite, I’m keenly aware that I’m typing this post on a device that says, “Designed in California, Made In China.” Well, this is either the last computer that I buy, or the next computer will say, “Designed and manufactured in the USA.”

I’m not trying to be a “Crazy” nationalist… (Although, apparently it’s okay for other countries to be nationalistic.) I’m simply saying that if I have a choice, I’d prefer to buy American.

After all, aren’t we all supposed to be social justice warriors? Aren’t we supposed to be concerned about the enslavement of people? Anyone heard of the Uyghurs?

Just Sayin…