Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show expands upon one of my favorite recent themes: the wilting approval ratings for "President" Biden and how this portends major problems for the Dem agenda in Congress, and thus for Dem momentum in general. Infrastructure is the thin edge of wedge, in my view, indicating a broader trend of Democratic/progressive impotence.
Brian and I also cover such themes as Cuomo's braggadocio in the face of ongoing assaults on his character (emanating mostly from his own party), calls for the resignation of John Kerry as climate generalissimo, and why so many young American are Bidenists.
When we get around to "This Day in History", Brian and I talk about the ouster of Charles De Gaulle in 1969, British reversals in the Mediterranean theater in 1941 and 1942, the significance of the Yalta Conference, FDR's New Deal and the ever-expanding federal government, the complicated legacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Muhammad Ali and the draft.
Listen in right now! Now now now!
https://wlea.net/newsmaker-april-28-2021-dr-nick-waddy/
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In other news, this one is a must-read. It's about the dilemma of how to confront the culture of masking, when individual action seems so futile, and collective action is so hard to organize in the absence of individual commitment and courage. It really makes you think.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/26/america-its-time-to-unmask/
It's common knowledge that Americans have been fleeing mostly blue states for decades, moving to mostly red states where taxes are lower, regulations are less onerous, and job opportunities are more plentiful. You'd think there would be a lesson in that for Democrats, right? Nope. Well, a few of them might be contemplating razor wire to keep New Yorkers and Californians from scarpering, but other than that they've got nothing.
TIPP is a mainstream polling outfit, so its prognostications are inherently...untrustworthy, but be that as it may they've released this data about how few Americans trust, well, them, and I tend to believe it! Generally, though, Americans' skepticism about the "news" is a good thing, because if they bought the bill of goods that the New York Times was selling them there would be no hope for the USA!!! These days, if you want "just the facts" you have to go looking for them yourself.
https://tippinsights.com/trust-in-traditional-media-sinks-precipitously-in-april/
Was the 2020 election fraudulent? This is a much more difficult question to answer than you might think, because there are many ways to "cheat" in an election. It's also fair to say that no election is perfectly fair, and no election is totally bogus (let's face it: millions of the Soviet citizens who "voted" for Stalin or Stalinism actually meant it). In 2020, in any case, the Dems and progressives certainly manipulated the news and social media to promote Joe Biden and to hurt Donald Trump. Was that "fair"? I sure don't think so. They also manipulated the voting process, violating laws about voting integrity in order to maximize the number of ballots cast by mail for Joe Biden. Was that "fair"? I certainly don't think it was. Now, did they dial in to Dominion's home office with their 80s-era modems and rejigger the election results? I doubt it. Did they fabricate ballots in key urban and suburban counties, pulling them out of suitcases if need be? I doubt that too, only because no definitive proof has emerged and no one has bragged about it or confessed. At the end of the day, the election was tainted by flaws, at the very least, and given how close the results were in key states it's entirely plausible that our current reigning "president" was chosen not by the people, but by the elites and the election bureaucrats who gamed the system to ensure his victory. Witness this intriguing article, which shows how different the signature rejection rates can be from one election to another. What we've never seen is ballot or signature rejection rates by county or by local jurisdiction. That would be interesting, no? We simply can't allow election workers to decide, by how strictly or loosely they enforce election laws, how wins and who loses our elections. This is a problem we Republicans need to get on top of.
Finally, for those of you looking to escape blue tyranny and move to the heartland, there are more and more incentives to do so. Small towns want remote workers, in particular. Could one of these wholesome hangouts be right for you???
Yalta Conference? Wasn't that where the U.S. and Great Britain signed over half of Europe to Stalin as a gift from the allies, and most of all because "Uncle Joe" was a nice guy?
ReplyDeleteIt was probably also a reward for The wonderful Kremlin mob getting rid of all those "pesky Poles" at the Katyn Forest recreation and liquidation park. Thanks Churchill! Thanks FDR!
Dr. Nick,
ReplyDeleteIn the future, please refer to JB as King Joseph 1, and Duke of Delaware.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: I agree with your view that FDR had little choice at Yalta. Churchill was now a junior partner. The courtly FDR knew he was dealing with a sociopath in the hellish Stalin; he was no fool. All that Uncle Joe stuff was powerful PR . nonsense. It was the heroic Russian people, whose intense love of their country drove them to destroy the Nazi monster, who were to be admired! How could FDR have bade them abandon the E. European buffer they had gained? The history of the 1920s fostered in the Russians no love for Poland or, later, Hungary. And Germany? Well! FDR expected he would have to throw his Europe vets into the cauldron of the Pacific. He could not risk war with monstrous Stalin.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack:A very interesting aspect of the war in the Med was the Royal Navy vs the Italian Navy. Mussolini had attempted to build his Navy into a force capable of dominating the Med ala his Roman model. They DID build a creditable surface force with some good modern battleships and cruisers. BUT! They had not British grit! The Brits are the greatest sailors ever and their navy has a glorious tradition. Also, they had carriers; the Italians thought they did not need them because they bordered the Med. Those damned Brits sank or damaged several of their major ships in port using close to WWI technology biplanes. After that, the Italians ran scared, as was proven in several subsequent surface engagements. In one, HMS Warspite, an improved WWI battleship, hit the Italian flagship at very extreme range and the timid Italian Admiral turned his whole force around. Brit submarines, unnoted elsewhere, played perfect hell with Italian and later Nazi efforts to supply their forces in N. Africa.
ReplyDeleteJack,
ReplyDeleteI have a different perspective on the matter of FDR, Stalin, and the fate of Eastern Europe. Patton was essentially correct when he said that our casus belli was Poland, and that if Poland was allowed to remain under Soviet control then we had failed and the war was for naught (he was proven correct when over 1/2 a century of Cold War politics later we finally saw the conclusion of the Second World War when the Soviets fell apart). Those "heroic Russians" were the slaves of Communism, driven to acts of barbaric savagery against the Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Ukrainians, etc, by the propaganda of their masters. We were better supplied, had better artillery, air support, and our infantry were at least comparably skilled, even if the Soviets had us outnumbered in Tanks.
We'd have crushed them, and we should have. FDR was a fool and his reign and the glowing memory of it remains one of history's great jokes.
The Germans were the last best chance Europe had at dignity, once the fever of Nazism had run its course as it inevitably would have. As it stands, Europe will move from becoming diminished, to irrelevant, to a backwater in our lifetime, if things continue on their present course.
-Lee
Ray, you're right that Yalta put the rubber stamp on the Russkies' conquest of half of Europe...but my point in the broadcast was that the Stalinization of half of Europe was arguably a done deal by then. Only by pushing east could we have reversed it, and politically that was inconceivable. Sure, FDR was naive and blinkered, but by 1945 our options were limited. We picked our poison, and we picked Stalin.
ReplyDelete"Duke of Delaware"??? That moniker is beneath the dignity of Sleepy Joe... I call him "King-Emperor of Wokery!"
Jack, I'm pleased you agree with my analysis of Yalta. You think FDR saw Stalin for the monster that he was? I'm intrigued. Have you seen any evidence to that effect?
Jack, I've read that what the Italians should have done was mount a fleet offensive in the Med before Taranto. If they had followed that advice, and been backed by massive Italian and German air power, an early Axis conquest of the Med could have ensued.
Lee makes some powerful arguments! I noted above that we "picked our poison" in WWII. In essence, we decided globe-straddling communism was a price worth paying to sock it to those lousy Germans. I agree with Lee that, Nazism aside, the Germans really are more civilized than the Russians. More to the point, fascism is at least as plausible and humane as communism -- probably more so. All that said, a better strategy in WWII might have been to eschew the demand for "unconditional surrender" from Germany, incentivize the German Army to remove Hitler, and seek a negotiated peace that left the Germans in possession of Eastern, but not Western, Europe. Just a thought.
Dr. Waddy and Lee;A very interesting exchange! Do I know of direct evidence that FDR knew Stalin was a sociopath (let alone the hellish thing he was)? Its a fair question and fair implied criticism of my assertion should I not answer it adequately. No, I am not aware of direct evidence (and I will be doing more reading about Yalta presently).Ishould have said "Stalin was so monstrous that even the courtly FDR must have had a visceral sense of consummate primal evil in the man. Surely Stalin's excesses were not all unknown to American intelligence.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy and Lee from Jack: FDR may well have reasoned: " This man will fight if we threaten his hold on E.Europe and he has no misgivings about losing millions in a war with us. " Lee, I never considered the possibility we could have driven the Red Army out of E. Europe. At the time of Yalta we didn't have the bomb.Also, I have read that FDR hoped for Soviet assistance against Japan. Poland was England and France's casus belli, not ours. They were finally fed up with Hitler's cynical nickle and diming and had they made some other country in the path of the Wehrmacht the trip wire than it would have been the pretense. Would we have fought Germany had not Hitler atypically stuck by his agreement with Japan?
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: An immediate Italian naval offensive in the Med at a time when the Brits were in real danger of Nazi invasion, against which they might, in extremis,have had to engage the whole fleet(imagine the RAF defeated and the fleet sans air cover engaging the invaders; the losses!). Still: I think the Italian armed forces as a whole, possibly since the presumptuous and pompous Mussolini did not inspire them, demonstrated throughout the war a distinct lack of motivation. Also, I think some opponents, when going up against the Brits at sea, "felt" themselves defeated already. The Italian Navy lacked a victorious tradition and experience in WWI fleet action. Also, at that time, Hitler apparently thought he could rely on his Italian ally and may not have been willing to divert forces from those arrayed against England to an allout offensive in the Med, the strategic importance of which might not yet have been apparent to him. I mean: conquer Britain and there goes the canal. yah!
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: The salient accomplishment of the Vietnam "antiwar" movement, was, despite the idealistic beliefs of SOME of its adherents (assuredly not the Marxists), to provide decisive aid and comfort to the Communist enemy. The Vietnamese communists have hailed this support, saying it sustained them. As a Vietnam vet I resent how the, on balance, disingenuous "peaceniks" wasted our effort which was well justified by proven co mmunist murderousness. But: Ali's case was decided in his favor by a unanimous Scotus and that is a pretty solid endorsement. Besides, I do not think any black men should have been drafted and sent to the war. They did not enjoy equal and full protection of the laws and should not have been held to such a serious obligation of full citizenship at that time.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Re: Ali's loss of his title: Since this may well have involved for him considerable personal and economic loss it probably was incumbent upon him to bring civil law action for relief from a massive tort, upon those agencies which conferred the title. I do not know if he did so.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy and Lee: Re. " heroic Russians" Stalin made a cynical and d obvious switch in his exortations post his emotional breakdown at the thought of his own destruction (he may havebeen loathe to return to the hell from which he had crept on his brief furlough) to an appeal, sans Marxist baloney, to Russian love of country. Compare the resolute response of the Russian soldier to that signal lack of enthusiasm for absurd Marxist industrial and agricultural mandates.Russian cruelty toward Germans defies all humane reasoning but the unimaginable excesses of murderousness casually performed by the Nazis in Europe may well have exceeded the limit of human endurance. Again, Poland did invade Russia in the 1920's andwas probably not bound by principle or dismissal of the Polish past (eg WWI). Too, Hungary was a nominal Nazi ally.
ReplyDeleteJack, fair enough -- FDR must have known of some of Stalin's crimes. One suspects that historians who want to prove FDR was a Stalinophile, or a Stalinophobe, can find plenty of documentary evidence to prove their respective cases. That's history for you: full of ambiguity!
ReplyDeleteI agree, Jack, that Poland wasn't ANYONE's casus belli. It was a pretext, at best. And that's a good point that in 1945 we were much more keen to goad the Russkies into attacking Japan than we were to liberate the Poles.
Jack, you're naturally correct that neither the Italians nor the Germans had the imagination to follow my advice and concentrate on the Med in the summer of 1940 rather than Britain itself, or Egypt (in the case of the Italians). You're also right that the Italians performed poorly on most WWII battlefields, but the Brits weren't exactly going from strength to strength in '40 and '41, so who knows but that they could have been finished off in a peripheral (to them) theater...
Jack, surely by 1967 black Americans DID enjoy equal rights (de jure) and so to exclude them from the draft would have been to perpetuate the idea that they were less than full Americans, no?
Why exactly did the Soviet soldier fight (sometimes) so fanatically? Patriotism? Vengeance? Fear? Fatalism? It was a witches' brew of all of these, I suspect, and frankly the effectiveness of the Red Army soldier may have been exaggerated anyway. Look at the mountains of them who fell on the way to Berlin... Quite a few were more drunk than heroic.
Dr. Waddy fom Jack: That's a very legitimate point about dejure full citizenship but I woul d suggest it took a combination of statutory and case law and enforcement ,under the 14th
ReplyDeleteAmendment ,not yet completed by 1967 , to provide defacto full citizenship. I DO think it completed now. It may have been too much to ask , since Dr. King was by then opposing the war but blacks might have dispelled an image of 2nd class citizenship by enlisting enmasse should they have been freed of the draft. Again, you may well be right about the Russian soldier but witness Stalingrad: what an unimaginably hellish experience. Then again, I just read about Russian depredation in blameless Manchuria after they wrested it from the Japanese. No doubt vodka or whatever helped fuel Russian atrocity. Stalin did cynically invoke a Mother Russia for whom he had theretofore demonstrated murderous contempt, in rallying against the Nazi onslaught. Did he strike a profound patriotic chord? Solznenitsyn doubted it. He cited the myriads of USSR subjects who joined the Nazis in a truly desperate attempt to throw off Stalin. Many but not all were Ukrainian. I dunno; I think I have seen in Russian history an ability to endure almost incredible hardship. Some historians think it may be because of their annual struggle with harrowing Russian winter.
Dr.Waddy from Jack:The Soviet so!dier ( I know there were many iN the Red Army from the "Republics", still, Russians pro bably dominated the upper ranks) maywell have !ost VERY many (reportedly a Russian commander, maybe Zhukov himself, casually admitted to Ike, " we send infantry right over minefields".) The ability to endure such as that MAY suggest the constancy of the Red Army soldier. I'm glad we have never faced tbem.
ReplyDeleteJack, the Russians are tough -- no doubt about that! How could it be otherwise? They're also a mixed bag, though, and it's true many of them fought WITH the Germans, or would have, if given half the chance. Stalin was smart to fall back on Russian patriotism and elementary demonization of the enemy. It was the best set of cards he had to play.
ReplyDeleteI too am glad we never faced the Russkies on the battlefield. If we couldn't deal with a few VC, we surely wouldn't have held up well on the Eastern Front!!!
Dr.Waddy from Jack: We smashed the VC for as long we remained, in the Tet offensive. That left the NVA, which was unable to drive us out; they were freed from the need to do so only by the American "woke" of '67-75, who, were "shocked, shocked!" whenthe Boat People embarked on their luxury cruises.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Most of us grew up once we assented to learn both the rewards and responsibilities of the middle class life we so disdained (I mean, I like the Monkees but "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was a disgraceful screed). But some of the unreconstructed found refuge in professions with some places for far leftist dreamers: academia, the MSM and the Dem party, where their onerous influence continues today, unto the third generation and advances the inordinate, onerous,America hating influence of the '60s boomer rump.
ReplyDeleteJack -- oh, I well know how we were undefeated in the field in South Vietnam. Only America could, and can, defeat America.
ReplyDeleteJack, that our national honor and common sense experienced a setback with the Boomers is something to which you and I can easily assent. Do you see any reason for hope in subsequent generations, or is the plague of degeneration progressive and irreversible?
Dr.Waddy from Jack: We boomers may have had a unique experience. We had a '30s and '40s style childhood culture, sans the Depression and WW II. That meant we had a real childhood, free of drugs, premature knowledge of sex and parent disdaining politically correct indoctrination in the schools. Coupled with '50s prosperity, it was probably the best time ever to be a kid.Leave it to Beaver WAS realistic, as far as it went; Disney told stories rather than teaching political lessons; cartoons were innocent and funny.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: To top it off we had access to college in theretofore unimaginable and our parents were thrilled by it. But in college we were introduced to the downside of American life and history and in our unconquerable naivete and egged on by long dormant campus Marxists who saw in us once in a lifetime opportunity for dissembling, far too many of us were summarily convinced that our country and culture deserved cleansing and complete "transformation". "Don't criticize what you can't understand (Marx talk perhaps?) your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. . .please get out of the new world if you can't lend a hand" ( but don't forget to pay our tuition first).
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: I see little parallel in that experience to those of succeeding generations. Our disgraceful ingratitude would be a hard thing to reprise. No doubt the too numerous radical part of our far too selfsatisfied generation did terrible and perhaps yet complete wrong to our country.
ReplyDeleteJack, by that logic, subsequent generations, without the benefit of an idyllic childhood but subject to even worse bouts of indoctrination, would be destined to be even less common sensical and decent, no?
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Dylan and those inspired by him should have spent one hour in WWII combat or in a Depression era soup kitchen or a concentration camp. Maybe they would have learned some respect! The nerve of saying what he said in"The times, they are achangin'"to veterans of The Bulge and Tarawa! The crust! Generations succeeding us Boomers are more worldly and probably wiser but at the cost of the genuine childhoods we enjoyed.The onerous influence of those of us who succumbed, notwithstanding the solid, responsible lives nonetheless built by so many of us, may well have lasting regretable consequences, even conceivably unto the destruction of America. How could we explain to someone who passed in 1963 the coarsening of our culture obvious in one evening of present day TV?
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: I posted the directly above before I received your reply. Ithink the (now) generations succeeding ours are less naive than we were and, ironically, that may be due to the cynicism adoptedfrom some Boomer parents, even grandparents. Current youth is possessed of a worldliness unimaginable to most of we boomers if we recall it honestly. In 1966 a friend of mine sidled up to me and whispered "I'm high on grass". Today: "do tell!" Ithought I did see in the college kids of the'80s and '90s some return to the pre '60s idea that college was a time for phonebooth stuffing and and yes, intellectual exercise despite the fact that after all, most students are untempered by experience and likely to misinterpret intellectual revelation. Perhaps they were reacting to their silly radical parents.But radicalism has resurfaced with a vengeance on campus
ReplyDeleteand is perhaps a detached reaction of boomer grandchildren to their "compromised" parents. The Boomer's inordinate influence was due only to the gargantuan size of our generation, the
product of our parents' joy at having survived the war. This dynamic no longer obtains but the Boomer's corrosive legacy apparently does and perhaps to yet existentially destructive effect!
Jack, that's a good point that younger Americans are possessed of an overpowering cynicism. The disrespect for authority that was so grating in the Boomers may be, ironically, our only hope now! We need the whippersnappers to question their program of indoctrination. We need them to resent their thought masters. We need to encourage them to smirk and roll their eyes. It's a start...
ReplyDelete