The Shifting Sands of 2024

 

Friends, something interesting has happened on the road to the White House in 2024.  Previously, almost all polls had shown that, if you added RFK, Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein into the presidential mix, Trump's standing vis-a-vis Biden either stayed the same or improved.  In other words, polls agreed that, the more candidates were in the race, the better Trump's chances of victory.  In the past several days, however, two polls have appeared showing the opposite: Biden benefitting from the addition of the extra candidates.  What gives?  Well, first of all, two polls are less definitive than the dozens of polls that show something different.  We shouldn't get too excited about two polls.  Second, in ALL the relevant polls the national race is essentially a statistical dead heat, with no candidate enjoying a lead outside the margin of error.  Third, we should recall that it simply doesn't matter who wins the national popular vote.  It's who wins the swing states that will determine who will be our next president, and, so far, Trump enjoys a slight edge in almost all the swing states.  So all these provisos may bring you some cheer, BUT there's no denying that recent polls show brighter prospects for Biden, and they complicate our -- well, my -- assumption that a large field of candidates benefits Trump by splitting the anti-Trump vote.  RFK, Jr. may well be an "X" factor that could work in Biden's favor, or at least he may be doing so now.  Why?  Partly because the Dems have vast resources -- including a compliant media and billions of dollars -- with which they can excoriate people like RFK, Jr., and they've done exactly that.  Therefore, the people that have been bombarded with these anti-RFK messages are mostly leftists, and left-leaning independents, and some of them may now be returning to the Biden fold as a result.  Meanwhile, conservatives and Republicans still have a mostly positive view of RFK.  They too may, eventually, desert him in favor of Trump, but, at this stage of the game, RFK may be playing the role of spoiler in a way that actually helps Biden.  This bears watching!  2024 is a funny year.  It's a year in which an historically large number of voters do not want to vote for either of the major party candidates.  Most of these "double haters" may end up falling in line, sooner or later, but their profound doubts about Biden and Trump make the outcome of the 2024 election especially hard to forecast.  And, just to underline this fact, consider that recent national polls have put Kennedy's support as high as 14% and as a low as 2%!  What is one to make of THAT???  Not much, other than this: all polls should be taken with a grain of salt.

https://nypost.com/2024/04/21/us-news/rfk-jrs-candidacy-may-hurt-trump-more-than-biden-in-2024-a-surprising-new-poll-says/

 

https://www.realclearpolling.com/latest-polls 

Biting Off More Than He Can Chew?

 

Friends, Sleepy Joe did it again!  He exaggerated elements of his personal biography, or rather that of his uncle, to ingratiate himself with voters.  Specifically, he suggested that his uncle, whose plane ditched near New Guinea in 1944, was likely eaten by cannibals.  There's no evidence to support this claim.  It does raise an important question about Biden's judgement, though.  You know where I'm going with this...  In this age of cultural sensitivity, is it really appropriate to scapegoat cannibals?  In fact, even calling them "cannibals" is potentially triggering.  Why not label them as the "differently hungry"?  That respects their personhood and their lifestyle choices much more, if you ask me.  But you didn't ask me, so I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about our perennially confused, self-aggrandizing, and deeply untrustworthy Commander-in-Chief...

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/20/white-house-refuses-to-confirm-joe-bidens-suggestion-that-uncle-was-shot-down-eaten-by-cannibals/

Bibi: Biden's Pet?

 

Friends, the much-anticipated Israeli retaliatory strikes against the homeland of Iran have now occurred -- and they were pathetic to behold.  As far as we know, no one was killed, nothing of importance was destroyed, and the world and the Middle East are breathing a sigh of relief, because they believe that the cycle of escalation is complete.  Indeed, Iran itself is downplaying the significance of the Israeli strikes, suggesting that no new round of retaliation is imminent.  So let's review what we know: Iran, directly or indirectly, fostered an unprecedented attack against Israel via its Hamas proxies, killing more than a thousand Israelis and shaking Israeli confidence as never before, or at least not since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.  Then Iran attacked Israel directly with drones and missiles, fired from Iran itself.  And now we have Israel's "bold" response: a raid on Iran so measly that everyone shrugs and says: "Thank heavens that's behind us!"  This is, in my view, an extraordinarily weak Israeli strategy, and one you would not at all expect from the allegedly hardline government of "ultra-conservative" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  What all this tells me is that Israel, for all its might, is by and large a proxy of the United States, and its freedom of action is strictly limited by the need to maintain American support and sponsorship.  Indeed, the Congress is about to authorize over $26 billion in aid to Israel -- but, as always, he who pays the bills makes the rules.  Joe Biden wants a lid kept on this Israeli-Arab-Iranian conflict.  In essence, he wants to staunch the bleeding that's already occurred in progressive ranks because of the acrimony between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian leftists.  Does this weakness from America and Israel invite further aggression from Iran, and possibly from other countries as well?  Probably.  My assumption, though, is that all of that means little to an administration that is determined, above all, to win in November and ward off the cataclysm (in their eyes) that is Donald Trump.  In the short term, this means that Israel and Iran will continue to play geopolitical footsie with each other, but all-out war will have to wait -- at least until the ticking time bomb of Trumpism is defused.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68861607

 

Speaking of that impending aid to Israel, House Speaker Mike Johnson is cooperating with Democrats to formulate a process whereby Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan can all receive billions of (borrowed) U.S. dollars, and in return absolutely nothing will be done to fix the crisis at our southern border.  In other words, Johnson is turning his back on GOP border hawks and making common cause with Democrats, all so that the hawks can get their treasured (and frivolously expensive) aid package for our client states overseas.  I object to the cost, I object to the strategic vision underlying those costs, and I object to Speaker Johnson's decision to knuckle under to the Democrats.  As usual, though, the D.C. establishment gets what the D.C. establishment wants -- and that's almost as true with a Republican-controlled House as it would be with Nancy Pelosi back in charge.  Oy!

https://rollcall.com/2024/04/19/rule-for-emergency-aid-bill-adopted-with-democratic-support/

Cracks in the Wall

 

Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show covers a ton of ground, as per usual.  I will admit, however, that this week my analysis was only 98.5% awesome.  That's because I've been feverishly exploring the beautiful country of Peru, and -- trust me -- being a tourist really takes it out of you.  I was probably not at the top of my analytical game.  Of course, even half a Waddy is worth ten or more ordinary commentators, so you'll still be honored and blessed to listen in to what I have to say...

In terms of current events, Brian and I cover: whether a true journalist can refuse to talk to newsmakers with whom they disagree ideologically, international and domestic migration and their long-term political impacts, the "uniparty" and interventionist foreign policy, the prospects for Mike Johnson's survival as House Speaker, the salience of January 6th in the upcoming presidential election, whether Donald Trump can get a fair trial in New York City (or anywhere else), and the significance of the recent Iranian attacks on the Israeli homeland.

In our segment on This Day in History, we ponder the refusal of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to disavow Christopher Columbus and Columbus Day, the strange misadventures of Columbus himself, and the incredible bravery and unprecedented effectiveness of "Solidarity" as an opposition movement in communist Poland.

https://wlea.net/newsmaker-april-17-2024-dr-nick-waddy/

 

***

 

In other news, the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has died a quick death in the Senate, where Democrats, who control the chamber, dismissed the charges and refused to proceed with a trial.  This naturally comes as no surprise.  Expect many more (political) impeachments in the years to come, and many more (political) refusals to act on impeachments or to remove the relevant officials from their positions.  These days, all you really need to know, on questions of impeachment, is: which party controls the House, which party controls the Senate, and whether the party in power in the Senate can muster a two-thirds majority.  In the absence of that last condition, we can safely assume that more or less every federal official and officeholder will be able to keep his or her job and evade responsibility for even the most heinous of offenses.

 

https://nypost.com/2024/04/17/us-news/senate-moves-to-scrap-impeachment-trial-of-homeland-security-secretary-mayorkas/ 

Finally, the social and philosophical and even the spiritual implications of Elon Musk's "Neuralink" project demand our full attention.  Like it or not, we appear to be entering a new phase in the history of humanity when the capacities of the brain will be enhanced by linking it directly to computers.  In the short term, this can and will be a godsend for people with disabilities, and in the long term the hybridization of man and computer could change the nature of humanity itself -- possibly for the better, and possibly for the worse.  

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240416-why-elon-musks-neuralink-brain-implant-reframes-our-ideas-of-self-identity

American Justice: Blind, Deaf, and Dumb?

 

Friends, increasingly, from the perspective of progressives, the very purpose of our system of justice is to treat conservatives differently from the Children of Light.  We, conservatives, are a cancer on the body politic, and the job of prosecutors, apparently, is to attack and destroy that cancer, by any means necessary.

Witness the Trump "hush money" trial in New York City, which even many liberals regard as a legal travesty.  Getting a New York prosecutor to target Public Enemy Number One, DJT, however, isn't exactly a stretch.  Careers can be made by assailing unpopular figures like Trump.  What's more, finding an NYC jury that isn't primed and ready to convict Trump will be enormously difficult, as the article below makes clear.  Complicating Trump's legal situation is the fact that America's best and brightest lawyers don't want to represent him.  From their perspective, there is, as it turns out, such a thing as bad publicity, and the "reputational damage" they would suffer from being associated with Beelzebub would be devastating.  Plus, he's Trump, so he's obviously guilty from the start, so there's that.  All in all, I'm not optimistic that the hush money trial will be anything but a farce, and I suspect the best that Trump can hope for is a mistrial, or a conviction that quickly becomes mired in the appeals process.  Will any of this alter the landscape of the 2024 presidential election?  That seems doubtful.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68832369

 

Continuing the theme of bias in prosecution, the Supreme Court is considering whether a law designed to prevent the destruction of corporate documents can be used to throw January 6th protestors in the slammer.  You'll love the conclusion of this piece.  The federal prosecutor is asked, essentially, whether anyone else has ever been charged with "obstruction of an official proceeding" based on participation in a public protest.  The prosecutor says, apparently in all seriousness, that to her knowledge no such thing had ever occurred before January 6th, 2021.  Oh really???  Gimme a break.  Leftists disrupt the operations of government constantly, and much more often than conservatives do (I'm looking at you, Jamaal Bowman) -- and of course NEVER are they subject to the same scorched earth tactics of adversarial prosecution as a consequence.  Let's hope that SCOTUS will do the right thing and slap these prosecutors down.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-casts-doubt-obstruction-161548743.html 

 

Finally, poor Mike Johnson is between a rock and a hard place.  The GOP establishment wants him and his caucus to maintain a low profile, so as not to impede Trump's path to victory in November, and they also want him to shower America's allies, like Israel and Ukraine, with cash.  Many grassroots conservatives and more ideological Republican Congressmen, though, want to go after Biden, keep pushing for border security reforms, and stop pouring money down the Russia-Ukraine drain.  What's a Speaker to do?  Frankly, whatever he does, a lot of Republicans will be mad.  The GOP just doesn't have a functional majority in the House, and Johnson would be lucky to survive in the job of Speaker all the way to January, as a consequence.

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/16/house-dissatisfaction-with-johnson-explodes-over-foreign-aid-insanity-that-neglects-southern-border/ 

Coming Apart At The Seams?

 

Friends, remember when Donald Trump was president and we didn't get involved in a single new war or overseas intervention?  Oh, those were happy days!  Well, now Ukraine is an inferno, and Iran has launched unprecedented airstrikes against Israel, and the world is holding its breath hoping that things don't deteriorate even further.  The worst case scenario, as described in this article, is that Israel would retaliate against Iran, and then Iran would try to close the Persian Gulf to tanker traffic, and possibly even try to drag U.S. forces into the conflict.  There's little prospect that Iran could win a war against Israel, much less the United States, but it could do terrible damage to the region and to the world economy all the same.  One has to ask the question: why, when the Biden Administration is dangling the possibility of normalized relations, is Iran pursuing such an aggressive approach towards Israel, which is, let's face it, a U.S. proxy and the unofficial 51st state?  What's Iran's endgame here?  Presumably, Russia and Iran's willingness to challenge states backed by the U.S. indicates, at a minimum, a lack of regard for the deterrent threat posed by the Biden regime and its trans-infused, ultra-woke military forces.  No doubt Biden and Co. will find some way of blaming this international chaos on Trump...but it'll take some creative thinking, no?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68812094

Is This The End?

 

Friends, even the BBC is speculating that Ukraine could lose its war against Russia in 2024, if a Russian summer offensive obliterates Ukrainian morale, which is already at a low ebb.  The BBC, of course, and the Western establishment, would like to dump even more money into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in a last ditch effort to save Zelensky's bacon, but it's not clear that any such surge in arms shipments would be effective -- and there appears to be little political will in the West to throw good money after bad, regardless.  It's looking more and more like the West has led the poor people of Ukraine into a trap.  Of course, the hawks have already fine-tuned their excuses in case the war goes from bad to worse: they'll blame Trump and Republicans for being too stingy with military aid!  One thing is for sure: the brainiacs who brought you the war in Ukraine will never take responsibility for their mistakes, and they'll never be held to account, either.  In fact, they'll probably immediately start looking for the next overseas conflict where they can apply their genius for meddling.  Oy!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68778338

 

In other news, FISA, meaning warrantless surveillance, often of Americans, is back for two more years, and the House Republicans, who **nominally** control that body, are a big part of the reason why.  Gee, I wonder if this power will be misused by career bureaucrats in the Deep State, determined to settle ideological scores and demonize their critics?  Nah.  That could never happen.  Not in America!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/04/12/house-passes-fisa-spying-surveillance-law/73299753007/

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/12/eighty-six-house-republicans-warrantless-surveillance-americans/ 

Impeach Me If You Can!

 

Friends, the latest Newsmaker Show featuring Yours Truly and Brian O'Neil focuses on several important stories that those "other" talk shows can't or won't take on.  We go where others fear to tread!

For instance, Brian and I discuss the (specious) reasoning behind the initial U.S./NATO decision to pursue Ukrainian membership in the alliance, and to pump billions in military and economic aid into the failed state to ensure that our new Eastern European pets did as they were told.  We also cover whether a turning point has been reached in terms of Americans' perceptions of leftist lunacy, the hard-left bias at National Public Radio, Democrats' and progressives' MASSIVE cash advantage in 2024, the salience of abortion as an issue in the presidential election, the secret flights, funded by taxpayers, that are exacerbating our problem with illegal immigration, the possibility that climate change extremism could be enforced by the courts, my views of the 4-day work week, and the question of whether the U.S. Senate will do its constitutional duty and go through the motions of a trial of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached by the House.

When we discuss "This Day in History", Brian and I ponder the significance and legacy of the Titanic disaster, the lessons that Germans took from the Anschluss between Germany and Austria, and the Victorian impulse for humanitarianism that led to modern institutions like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Hey, if you could stop beating your horse long enough to listen in, it would really warm my heart!

https://wlea.net/newsmaker-april-10-2024-dr-nick-waddy/

 

***

 

In other news, how many progressives are as dumb and self-righteous as Whoopi Goldberg?  The answer appears to be...way too many!  Actually, to be fair, Whoopi isn't dumb as in lacking in intelligence.  She's simply so consumed by hatred and disdain that she skips the part of critical thinking that involves giving even people who think and feel differently than you do the benefit of the doubt, and presuming that they might be people as opposed to demons who crawled up out of hell.  Anyway, the alarming truth is that many leftists believe their own nonsensical claims that Republicans want to bring back slavery, execute gays, take away women's right to vote or ability to work or opportunity to use birth control, etc etc.  These aren't the kind of assertions you make when you study the data about what Republicans think, of course, and they aren't the sort of claims that you make when you know actual, flesh-and-blood Republicans, either.  No, this type of hyperbolic invective is what happens when you crawl down a progressive rabbit hole and decide to stay in it for life.  Whoopi's remarks are reprehensible, but let's face it: Whoopi herself and people like her are more to be pitied than despised.  Living on a daily basis with that much hate in your heart, and that much ignorance rattling around in your brain, can't be fun.

 

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/04/10/whoopi-goldberg-republicans-want-to-bring-slavery-back/ 

Bottoms Up!

 

Friends, much like the lucky passengers on board the Poseidon, it behooves us to make merry and raise a glass...in this case, so we can toast 200,000 page views at WaddyIsRight!!!  Hooray!  How many of those views were from bots isn't important.  Bots are people, too!  I wish to express my sincere thanks to all of you who have paid attention to my ramblings, and especially to those of you who have actually rambled back from time to time.  Here's to 200,000 more views, and to the veritable oceans of additional digital ink that we will spill -- together -- in pursuit of Truth, Justice, and the American Way!

When Even Your Special Sauce Can't Save You...

 

Friends, we live in dark times -- times so dark that even the fast food industry has become politicized.  I mean, what could be controversial about pigging out?  A lot, apparently, if your business model includes marketing to Israelis and/or Palestinians.  My heart goes out to Ronald McDonald, who, given his sensitive nature, must be devastated by this uproar.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68740617 

What country will be the first to pull the plug on Twitter, a.k.a. "X"?  Since Elon Musk has decided to defy the global establishment, economic warfare against X was always inevitable, and it's already taken a heavy toll, but political persecution is probably equally assured.  The EU has talked about curbing X, because it dares to allow right-wingers (like me, for instance) to speak and be heard.  It's looking like Brazil might be the first major country to axe Twitter, though.  That's because Brazil is ruled by a socialist president and an even more socialist judiciary.  It will be fascinating to see whether other countries follow Brazil's lead, and whether Elon Musk and his new digital plaything can stand up to this wide-ranging campaign of intimidation.  My prediction is that, sooner or later, Musk himself will crack.  He's got a lot to lose...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv2ygp5pdqlo

 

Finally, we've talked before about the demographic, financial, and cultural challenges afflicting U.S. higher ed.  It looks like those challenges are about to intensify.  If Biden is reelected, expect a massive federal bailout of academia in the years ahead.  If Trump wins, look for school closures, belt-tightening, and maybe even some superficial concessions to ideological diversity -- higher ed's least favorite form of diversity!

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/the-demographic-cliff-is-coming-colleges-must-be-prepared/ar-BB1lcOGB