Thursday, March 26, 2026

"Democrats Need a Better Affordability Agenda"

So I guess "abundance" didn't catch on?
Well, "abundance," "affordability"...I don't so much see how either is a policy...unless they are implemented by e.g. lowering taxes and reducing regulation...which I don't see the Dems doing. They're likely to get rid of tariffs...because Trump... But otherwise...what?
   Well, as the authors say: they probably think subsidies, price controls, and all that shit will do it...but I don't. Currently, anyway.
   The authors suggest restraining debt (not a Dem priority since The Big Dog was in town) which I'm for, and zoning reform (which I'm against, but is sane). Some other stuff. Better than rent control and upping the minimum wage... The former is stupid and the latter a mixed bag at the very best.
   BUT: we can't do this whole have-a-nation thing without a sane Democrat party. And almost, like, literally, like, anything would be better than Woketarianism. Jeez, soft socialism would probably be better than Woketarianism. I'd rather they switched their attention to economic matters...even if they're wrong about them.
   I'm not asking them to agree with me...I'm asking them to be sane.
   So that we at least have to think about which party to vote for.

posted by Winston Smith at 8:12 AM 0 Comments

Matt Taibbi: Go Outside

Yeah, I can't recommend this enough. (The course of action, not so much the post, really.) I try to go trail running with my dogs about as much as possible, which ends up being about every other day in the Spring. Quoth Emerson: "In the woods we return to reason and faith."...
   Not to ruin the main message, but this is too much to pass up:
...This aspect of the Trump experience is wild. The man was twice elected on a negative mandate, i.e. just don’t suck as much as the other guy (neither were guys, but still). My house has a “Literally” jar, into which my sons pay a dollar every time they use the oft-unnecessary word, but here it’s appropriate: Trump could literally have sat on his ass and done nothing for four years, and he’d have left office to parades. Americans would pay a cost equivalent to the Apollo missions for history’s biggest Live Model Cam sub collection, if it could keep the president from starting this kind of conflict. His exact mandate was “Not this!” He did it. In every situation where all he has to do to win is not do something, Trump does the thing. It’s uncanny.
I disagree. I mean, Taibbi is right about the "negative mandate" in the sense that: Trump was elected--or at least I voted for him--because, though kinda crazy, he's significantly less insane than the other guys. They completely lost it over the past decade...and the recent return to power of VA Dems proves that they haven't gotten any of it back... 
   But I disagree with the other part: that he could have just done nothing. Do nothing and the crazy guys win. He had to roll back their lunatic policies--which he's done, at least in a sense. We really needed him to get Congress to do its job...but that seems out of the question anymore... Sadly, everything done by EO can be undone by EO...
   Also: he's never exactly going to go out with parades--and he certainly won't if he doesn't roll back the blue team's successes. You know how he's going to go out as well as I do: knowing that the left will never let him--nor his family--rest. They will come after him with lawfare and seek to ruin them economically. They're already openly admitting that they plan to come after him, people in his administration, ICE agents, and his supporters as soon as they're back in power. The cult will never rest until he's dead...and probably not even then. And maybe not until you're dead...
   But anyhoo, two points:
   [1] Yeah, though I'm not really sure what to think...and though it seems to me that we may have had no good options...I'd rather he had not taken us to war. (And, of course, I'm one of those Dinosaurs that think that Congress should have to declare wars...) (And I've not become any more sanguine about all this since Trump said that it was Hegseth who really pushed for it... Dear God...)
   But more importantly:
   [2] Get away from the interwebs.com and out into the woods. Not just outside. But into the woods.

posted by Winston Smith at 6:36 AM 0 Comments

Here's a somewhat interesting pair of posts from RCP:
I read the Meyerson piece first. Obviously I was a bit suspicious, but I tried to be more objective than I'm naturally inclined to be.
This para didn't do anything to assuage my suspicions, though:
There’s a clear reason why the trucking workforce relies on immigrants: The jobs are arduous and low-paying. The average yearly take-home pay of those L.A. port truckers, according to a survey by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, is a munificent $28,000, which comes complete with no benefits whatever. In 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) put the median income of all long-haul truckers at $53,000 for those who were employees and $45,000 for those who were independent contractors (often mislabeled as such by their employers—Amazon and FedEx most particularly—as a means to save those employers money), but both groups had to work well more than 40 hours a week to make that much.
This reminded me of the NYT's (?) famous headline, roughly: Prison populations continue to climb despite reduction in crime...
   Not to put to fine a point on it, but: it seems likely that TAP is confusing cause and effect: the availability of cheap legal and illegal immigrant labor is likely to have suppressed pay. Or: there's a feedback loop, with each factor affecting the other.
   But anyway, the TAP post seems predicated on the assumption that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are just implementing their mythical hatred of immigrants in yet another handy way. While I was reading it, it became--or seemed to become--overwhelmingly obvious that crucial parts of the story were being suppressed. In particular, it didn't even try to state the administration's argument. The motive was represented as hatred--the only reason conservatives ever need...
   Anyway, the Spear piece seems much more rational to me--but, then, all this lines up with my prejudices...so grain of salt and all that...

posted by Winston Smith at 6:15 AM 0 Comments

MO v. Biden Strikes a Blow Against the Biden Administration's Censorship-Industrial Complex

I don't believe I've ever had occasion to say such a thing before, but:

posted by Winston Smith at 5:41 AM 0 Comments

Noah Rothman: The Tide Turns for Ukraine

posted by Winston Smith at 5:39 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Garret Z. McGuire (D-Fairfax): You Don't Need a Gun to Defend Yourself Against Mass Shooters! You Can Just Die Or Whatever

posted by Winston Smith at 7:28 PM 0 Comments

Debate to Showcase Civil Political Discussion: Conservative Shouted Down by Leftist Audience-Member

The PC/PoMo left in yet another nutshell.

posted by Winston Smith at 7:15 PM 0 Comments

Surprise! Bill Galston Thinks Orange Man Bad

ok, whatever.
I'm not the biggest fan of this war, either...but it's always the same crap from these people.
A tiny bit of actual thought might have prompted him to consider the possibility that it's not obviously better to persuade the public to support you instead of allowing them to make up their own minds.
I, too, wish the administration had made its case more clearly.
And I'm not saying that Galston's numbers are wrong.
And I'm not saying that the war is obviously the right course of action.
I'm just complaining about kneejerk Orange-Man-Badism...

posted by Winston Smith at 9:56 AM 0 Comments

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Museum to "Decolonize" the Bard

It's the same bullshit over and over and over with these people...only the trendy terminology changes. But the goal--"the revolution"...the destruction of Western Civilization...stays the same. "Multiculturalism," "postmodernism," "decolonization" and the rest...whatever differences there may be to the "scholar-activists" who discuss this crap in an at-least-somewhat academic way...the real aim of the popularized and practical manifestations of these things is always "the revolution"...  The same can be said about DEI, which aims largely at hiring faculty likely to advance leftist ideas. Look, nobody's out there using DEI to hire black libertarians...

posted by Winston Smith at 9:50 AM 0 Comments

Lawyer Among Those Arrested in Violent Attack on Hebrew-Speaking Diners in San Jose

Lock the bastards up.

posted by Winston Smith at 8:55 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Washington Gun Law: Virginia's Disastrous Legislative Session

posted by Winston Smith at 10:24 PM 0 Comments

Whelp, Hubert's Out at Carolina

DTH link

He was probably gone before I even made my "keep him" post.

I disagree with the decision, but not all that strongly.

posted by Winston Smith at 9:11 PM 0 Comments

Keep Hubert

Incidentally, since I haven't made this clear: I say we keep Hubert.

posted by Winston Smith at 9:00 PM 0 Comments

Douglas Feith: *Imminence* is the Wrong Standard with Respect to Iran

[1] I know nothing about Just War Theory beyond what everybody knows. Jonny Quest knows more about it...but she's asleep...so she's no help.
[2] The imminence condition is the one that's most questionable in the case of Iran, obviously.
[3] Feith...well...do take the source of the argument into account...though the strength of his arguments is by far the more important thing.
[4] He argues: the right standard is (un)acceptable risk rather than imminent threat. 
   Well, could be. But we should be skeptical of new standards seemingly proposed ad hoc. But, again, this isn't my area and I know no more about it than anybody else. I have no doubt that the (un)acceptable risk standard has been debated before. Hell, it was probably part of the public debate re: Gulf War Episode II: The Phantom Menace... But I don't remember it.
Anyway, what's really relevant here is:  the link

posted by Winston Smith at 9:13 AM 0 Comments

Monday, March 23, 2026

Tucker Carlson's Retarded

Tucker's just reverting to form.
He was an idiot...then he hit a brief window during which he was right about a fair bit of stuff...but that was during the heyday of Woketarianism. It was such a target-rich environment that anybody who wasn't an outright woke moonbat could get hits. And now he's an idiot again.
Which really means: he's an idiot, but not idiotic enough to miss targets that even a blind man can hit.
To summarize his current view:
Churchill: bad.
Hitler and Sharia law: good.

posted by Winston Smith at 10:07 PM 0 Comments

Jim Geraghty: The Democratic Party Becomes Its Fringe

"Virginia just goes to show that there are no moderate Democrats [anymore]"

And they don't even mention the lunatic anti-Second-Amendment bills...

posted by Winston Smith at 8:42 PM 0 Comments

"Not a Done Deal: Dems Start to Sweat Over VA's Redistricting Referendum"

Spanberger has to decide whether to sign the vast array of anti-Second-Amendment bills passed by Dems in the General Assembly...and she has to make the decision about a week before 4/21, the official day to vote on the gerrymandering referendum.
    Numbers apparently look good right now...but the blue team has a huge financial advantage.
   link
   VOTE!

posted by Winston Smith at 8:27 PM 0 Comments

Alex Hollings: Heavily Upgraded Raptor 2.0 Breaks Cover in Testing

Interesting factoid: the Raptor predates the iPod...


posted by Winston Smith at 8:17 PM 0 Comments

Criminal Illegal Alien Murders Loyola Student

That thing that never happens just happened again.

posted by Winston Smith at 7:02 PM 0 Comments

National Review: No On VA Redistricting

posted by Winston Smith at 8:45 AM 0 Comments

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Islam is Coming for your Dog. Also, Your Culture

Look, I don't really know enough about Islam or Muslims to have a very fine-grained view about the question of their compatibility with Western culture and liberalism (in the broad sense). Here's something I do know, however: liberals (in the narrow sense), progressives, and far-leftists simply refuse to honestly discuss or even consider the issue. Their automatic response to anyone who raises the question is: that's racist. Which is pretty much their response, in one form or another, to anyone raising any issue that might call their dogmas into question.
   So, among other conclusions we can draw: the opinions of people on the left don't matter here. And won't matter unless/until they start considering and discussing such questions seriously--e.g. admitting that it is at least a possibility that some groups of people, religions, etc. might be, to at least some extent, inconsistent with our culture and/or our political system.
   The left's standard responses--that's racist, you're racist, that's x-phobic, blah blah blah--are basically equivalent to: stop thinking about it and simply accept and implement our possibly-catastrophic dogmas. Chop of your kids genitals, give up your First- and Second-Amendment rights, open the borders, admit hoardes of apparently-hostile foreigners...oh and, give us your dogs...
   The answer to all those things is, of course: no.
   Sorry, I meant: HELL NO.
   Until the left stops refusing to think, we simply can't take their positions seriously. Maybe, some day, they'll start, y'know, actually thinking about things again. And then maybe they'll convince us... But we won't know until that day rolls around...if it ever does...
   Anyway, I like this guy:

posted by Winston Smith at 1:10 PM 0 Comments

"Bridging the Red-Blue Divide, One Concrete Deed at a Time"

I'm skeptical, but we certainly need things like this.
I don't see how anything will help much unless/until the Dems move back to at least the vague vicinity of the center, though.

posted by Winston Smith at 10:27 AM 0 Comments

Nick Shirley's Reporting on Hospice Fraud in L.A. Pushes MSM to Reluctantly Acknowledge the Story

Nick Shirley Reporting Timeline:
MN Child Care Fraud:
Phase 1: a conservative kid with a camera reveals massive (mostly Somali) child-care fraud in MN.
Phase 2: Progressives defend the fraud and attack the reporter.
Phase 3: The evidence is so appalling that even the MSM has to acknowledge it.
L.A. Hospice Fraud:
Phase 1: Same conservative kid reveals massive hospice fraud in Los Angeles
Phase 2: Progressives defend the fraud and attack the reporter.
Phase 3: The evidence is so appalling that even the MSM has to investigate it. <-- You are here

Next up:
Conservative investigative reporters prove that Dems in CA are paying bums and drunks to register and vote for Democrat causes.

posted by Winston Smith at 10:21 AM 0 Comments

Turley: Russiagategate: Buried, but Not Dead

Russiagategate, the Democrat conspiracy to convince Americans that Russiagate, Trump's fictional conspiracy with the Rooskies, was true, has never been fully investigated and aired. As Turley notes, it's got the wrong political valence. The Democrat hoax about Trump was total hogwash...but the press and all the other right people wanted it to be true. It was false--but politically correct... So it not only dragged on long beyond the point at which it had become obvious bullshit--which, to my mind, was late 2017--it still lives today in the minds of many on the blue team, trapped in that echo chamber.
   And don't forget: the MSM gave itself more than one Pulitzer Prize for its participation in Russiagategate. Not just propagandistic regurgitation of blue-team talking-points...but it's actual participation in the hoax...
   As Turley notes, this may well be the biggest political dirty trick in American History.
   But it has exactly the wrong political valence...so.,.. The media blared Russiagate from the rooftops (well...it owns transmitters and printing presses and websites...it doesn't have to resort to mere rooftops...), relentlessly amplifying the meager, near-non-existent evidence for the hoax. but it dismisses the copious evidence for Russiagategate when it bothers to mention it at all. One of its greatest powers is its control over the volume dial on public discussion--stories it likes: crank it up to 11. Stories it doesn't: all the way down.
   Anyway, Russiagate was one of the main things that slapped some sense into me about mainstream American politics as 2017 wore on. I've always been an inveterate enemy of political correctness--before it even came to be known as woketarianism--but I was still a Democrat, still on the blue team, still blind to the deceptions of the MSM... So, hey, at least Russiagate helped redpill me...

posted by Winston Smith at 10:05 AM 0 Comments

Robert Mueller RIP

.

posted by Winston Smith at 9:24 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, March 21, 2026

RIP Nicholas Brendon

Damn.

posted by Winston Smith at 9:55 PM 0 Comments

Palmetto State Armory Increasing Production and Prioritizing Orders Going to VA

I think I know where I'm getting my next AR...
IMO SCOTUS is going to slap the left down hard on these gun bans...but I'm not taking any chances.

posted by Winston Smith at 9:30 PM 0 Comments

Nick Freitas on the Lying OD Dems

Honestly, you guys do really, really suck.

posted by Winston Smith at 7:57 PM 0 Comments

Friday, March 20, 2026

Something's Rotten in Fulton County

What the heck is going on in Fulton County, GA re: the 2020 election?
The blue team's laughable nonsense about the 2020 election being "the most secure election ever"...or whatever the hell their talking-point was...has always been, well, laughable nonsense. If you rely on mail-in ballots, you decrease the security of the election. And if you indiscriminately mail out ballots...well...that's just nuts.
But I've never believed the Trumpistas' side of the story, either. That is, I've never believed that the preponderance of the evidence indicated that the election was stolen.
But this lunacy in Fulton County...what the heck, man?
The most likely explanation is the PJ Media...hardly the most reliable source...got confused about something.

posted by Winston Smith at 8:40 PM 0 Comments

AJW: Antifa Terrorists Finally Held Accountable

A little taste of the madness that spans the left. From trantifa to their scumbag lawyers to the lame-ass stupidity of Democracy Now...and I'm sure you could find similar shit on NPR and much of the rest of the lamestream media...
   I share AJW's outrage at the scumbag little rat-roach of a lawyer lying his way through an account of the terrorist attack on the Houston ICE facility, calling it a "noise demonstration" and pretending that they were just, y'know, setting off some innocent fireworks on the Fourth of July...and, y'know, shooting cops in the neck... The crack-brained Democracy Now crone just eats that shit right up...

posted by Winston Smith at 5:58 PM 0 Comments

What the Left Has in Store for Trump Supporters When They Win Again

Leftists themselves are saying this openly: they are planning a campaign of retribution. 

posted by Winston Smith at 2:10 PM 0 Comments

Trump Betrayal on Illegal "Immigration"?

Some on the right have been saying that Trump was about to betray us on this crucial issue.
Sadly, it looks like they may be right.
I've never thought that emphasizing the phrase "mass deportation" was a good idea.
Mass deportation, however, is, in fact a good thing.
And the only way to preserve the existence of the nation--once the other side has decided to facilitate invasion by foreigners--i.e. mass illegal immigration.
Progressive-left Dems now know that (a) they can open the borders and allow foreign nationals to flood the nation whenever they hold the Presidency, and (b) they can prevent deportations in their centers of power by shrieking and screeching and impeding law enforcement.
So they can let in everybody and prevent the vast majority of them from being deported.
That's sufficient to destroy the USA within a generation or two.
Even if we can formally keep the nation in one piece, by importing people who will eventually vote for their catastrophic policies, the Dems are basically guaranteeing the transformation of the nation into their leftist dystopia.

Perhaps Trump has just decided that we have to change our emphasis and our rhetoric to eventually win this battle. But even that is extremely bad news. And I fear it's worse than that.

posted by Winston Smith at 1:47 PM 0 Comments

"How Iran Sees the War"

I don't know what to think of this.
Not that I really deserve an opinion.

posted by Winston Smith at 12:41 PM 0 Comments

Prediction: Dems are Going to Win the VA Gerrymandering Battle

The anti-gerrymandering position is only slightly more popular than the pro- position. And the Dems are just absolutely kicking the red team's ass on this. They've produced a bunch of slick and misleading tv ads, for one thing, and the weak response I've seen is...well...weak. We got a fake "newspaper" in the mail the other day. The fake name of the fake newspaper was "The Virginia Independent." The lead story was thinly-veiled pro-gerrymandering propaganda, and the rest of the thing was thinly-veiled propaganda for other Dem policies and proposals (e.g. the "assault weapons" ban). The yard sign battle...well...I can't really tell. My neighborhood is packed with leftist yard signs, so it's not a random sample. There's one sad yard sign that reads "Vote No April 21st" (as if April 21st were on the ballot...) at an intersection about a mile away...
The OD is SOL.

posted by Winston Smith at 11:51 AM 0 Comments

The Left is a Parasitic Borg that Loots the Treasury on Behalf of an Army of Democrat NGOs

Sure starting to look that way...  I'm perfectly willing to accept that this may be wrong...but the idea absolutely, positively must be taken seriously.

Also, I think he meant that there's no countervailing force anywhere in red America...

(Incidentally, the left should obviously be red...and the normals should be blue...)

posted by Winston Smith at 10:33 AM 0 Comments

MSM Continues to Pretend that Male "Trans" Shooters are Women; Canada Bans Ads with Accurate Definition of Woman

link
The left knows it can win the battle--or at least gain significant ground--by relentlessly repeating the lies.
Adding in their other tactics--e.g. shrieking and "cancelling" and whining about danger and whatnot are helpful...but maybe not necessary.
Big Nonbinary Sibling is very, very good at this.

posted by Winston Smith at 10:10 AM 0 Comments

TWZ: Former CENTCOM Commander on the Situation in the Strait of Hormuz

link
One bit that seems right to me, FWIW:
Well, we’ve had a pretty adversarial discussion going on, particularly with our European allies for at least the last 12 to 14 months with them. We haven’t really sent a positive signal. And the whole thing about Greenland and getting everybody fired up over that, and pushing that kind of thing, I think really gave some pause to them.
And of course, you know, there’s continuous rhetoric coming from across the administration towards this, and in the lead up to this, we apparently didn’t do any kind of consultation with any of our partners that we expected would be impacted by this, or whose resources we thought we would need.
Trump has been a disaster in this respect, seems to me.
And I was behind him when he kicked NATO in the ass re: building up their military to agreed-upon levels. I think they needed that. Not that it matters what I think.
But in the second term, he's just been bullying everybody.
I suspect it's some kind of extension of his approach to domestic policy, where he's realized that we are fighting for the survival of the nation against an insidious and implacable opponent. The cult has its tentacles deeply embedded everywhere. And it is ruthless. And so, unfortunately, we have to be...well...at least more ruthless than we've been to this point...
But he's gotta stop acting like a crazy person to our foreign allies.

posted by Winston Smith at 9:46 AM 0 Comments