Friends, you remember the presidential election of 2020? It seemed like a big deal at the time. Well, today I share with you an article that demonstrates with compelling evidence just how different the political landscape is now, compared to the same point in the 2020 cycle. To make a long story short, Trump was consistently at a polling disadvantage throughout the 2020 campaign. In this cycle, by contrast, he's often been even, and now he's ahead. So, yes, 2024 may be a repeat of 2020, in terms of the candidates headlining it, but the dynamics have shifted significantly, and it behooves the dastardly Dems to figure that out and find some way to respond. Plan A -- to stifle the Trump campaign with adversarial prosecutions -- doesn't seem to be working so well. Ergo, we have to ask, what will the Dems and the Deep State try next? John Nolte claims they might be building up to...assassination! Well, that would be a refreshingly direct approach, but I'm not sure it's their style. Then again, I may be out of touch. The radicalization and polarization of American politics is a progressive condition, after all... Give it a week, or a month, or a year, and we could end up virtually anywhere.
In other news, the much-ballyhooed DeSantis vs. Newsom debate is almost here! The Wall Street Journal has given us a preview -- which is actually more of a retrospective on the records of these two men as governors. It doesn't make for reassuring reading if you're a Newsom supporter... But hey, results are overrated. What Californians want most is to be fed plenty of red meat, i.e. righteous indignation in the form of Trump hatred, "anti-racism", climate activism, and the like. And they're getting exactly what they voted for, time and time again.
Finally, here's an intriguing article about "zombie schools", i.e. public schools that are still open for business despite the fact that virtually no students are left to attend them. This is partly because of declining birth rates, and partly because of the flight of many students (and their parents) from underperforming school districts. What's the solution, according to the Dems? Throw even more money at the worst schools, of course!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: The unrelenting personal antipathy of the antiamerican left toward DJT and its intensive demonstration, prove once again two salient facts: they see DJT and Trump nation as the prospective death of their fanatic push to force "fundamental transformation" to totalitarianism on an unwilling America and they see ANY way of stopping his insolent resistance to their unimpeachable "justice" to be, well, justified. Should he win they would reach a critical mass of insane outrage.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Couldn' t get the WSJ article. Personally I expect lots of self righteous sneering ,scornful grinning, laughing and interrupting from Newsom as he reflexively and mechanically recites the antiamerican left liturgical "isms" assumed to be deal breakers upon very accusation. I'd predict a lawerly demeanor from DeSantis and hope he will take the openings Gov. Hirsute will presumptuously give him, to quietly render the Kalifornian's pronunciamentos reductio ad absurdum.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO DR. WADDY AND JACK
ReplyDeleteThe DeSantis vs Newsom debate is a huge mistake! The only person who will gain from this is Newsom. Self-righteous and egotistical Hannity arranged this, and one wonders why. Probably to show how brilliant and wonderful Hannity is. In any event, all three men have egos so huge, that if they got any bigger, all three of them would inflate and fly away into outer space, never to be heard from or seen again. Too bad that won't happen. A waste of time and money except for peacock Newsom who has his eye on The White House.
RAY TO DR. WADDY AND JACK
ReplyDeleteOff subject I know, but you problem have heard that Henry Kissinger just passed into eternity at 100. I'm certainly not celebrating this event, although I was no fan of him or Nixon. For all the good things they probably did for our country, officially recognizing Communist China was not one of them. What really bothers me about this even more, is the fact that they did this behind the backs of The American people as if to say, "don't worry dummies we will take care of this...." Kissinger flew over there to start negotiations in secret, by way of Pakistan airlines by the way. Goodbye Mr. Kissinger. Now God can decide if you did the right thing.
RAY TO DR. WADDY AND JACK
ReplyDeleteFirst sentence of my Kissinger diatribe should read "but you probably have heard".
RAY TO DR. WADDY AND JACK
ReplyDeleteHave the DemoNISTAS considered staging a left-wing military coup? If not, they certainly should consider it in order to save the country from the TrumpALISTAS. Why not. This is done (or used to be done) in South America frequently, and in many cases it worked for at least 20 years in some countries down there. We could wake up next year, and turn on our TVs, and there would be Biden in some newly designed military type uniform just for him, surrounded by Generals and Admirals. It would be announced that Trump had just been arrested by a People's Militia. Just thinking out loud, but it's certainly something our lefties should consider. Known Trump supporters would be executed by firing squads at sports stadiums all over the nation. Others would be dumped out of planes at night over the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. Aw shit! That ain't never gonna happen here.
I agree! "Insane outrage" would characterize the leftist reaction if Trump were to win, and that insanity could easily express itself as delusion/denial, i.e. a refusal to accept that any such thing had occurred. Maybe the Russians did it?
ReplyDeleteRay, I expect you're right that Newsom will be the big beneficiary of tomorrow night's debate. DeSantis is currently running too far behind to be taken very seriously. Biden may be the biggest loser, though. Lefties will be reminded of his limitations, and Newsom's comparative suavity.
Ray, I figured you would be heartbroken at Kissinger's passing... I don't have strong feelings either way. Certainly Kissinger was a globalist, and I'm not. Kissinger and his ilk played the long game in using the carrot and the stick with the Soviets and Chicoms, and, at the end of the day, you really can't say that the outcome of the Cold War was unsatisfactory, can you? Give a little credit where credit is due, I say...
Ray, I strongly suspect the Dems HAVE considered a coup, although they could probably arrange the cancellation of an election, or the detention of Trump, with slightly more subtlety. For instance, they could foment, or concoct, another "insurrection" by Trumpists -- then they could drop the hammer all day long, and the media and probably most Americans will thank them for it. I guess what I'm saying is that the Dems are likely smart enough to burn down the Reichstag before they burn down everything else...
From Ray
DeleteI always credit the end of the Cold War to Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans, and particularly Poland with the Solidarity Movement. People like the Romanians were also so fed up (an understatement), that they dragged their dictator out of his palace and shot him, literally. In other words, neither the then Soviet Union or the U.S. had control of that, although they think they did. People tend to forget that the East Germans, Czechs, and Hungarians had uprisings against the Soviet Union over the yers, which were brutally suppressed. That certainly was in the memory of those peoples, strongly. Anyway, you already know that.
From Ray
DeleteAt the end of the day, you and I would probably make passable Secretaries of State.
With that said, Kissinger was ALWAYS a European, and he never lost that accent, as you recall. Also his specialty area as an academic was Europe. His dissertation, if my memory serves me correctly, was on post-Napoleonic Europe. Maybe a good man for European diplomacy as an under-Secretary, but in charge of everything as the head man, was a fucking disaster.
He wrote a book on China, but he probably had all sorts of research assistants running around gathering material, and then he edited everything to show what an "Old China Hand" he was. Such Bullshit NEVER ends.
At the end of the day, that pompous asshole probably knew even less about China than a Yangtse River patrol Sailor or a China Marine, seriously.
From Ray
DeleteWhile I'M ON A ROLL HERE! Ha!
Just to show how inane most politics is, remember Kennedy's speech at the Berlin Wall, about he is a Berliner too. BULLSHIT! When was that rich kid about to become a Berliner. People cheered. For what? Remember, Reagan's "tear down this wall Mr. Gorbachov". Really! As if the entire Iron Curtain would crumble at his words. More jelly beans anyone? Better yet was Nancy Reagan with her "famous" speech "Just Say No" to drugs. Very nice and true, but did that no brainer do anything for drug traffic, which is worse than ever today. You already know the answer. The drug cartels certainly do.
From Ray
DeleteI am looking forward to YOUR comments on the aftermath of the DeSantis vs Newsom debate.
Dr. Waddyfrom Jack: Perhaps, if Gov. Hirsute holds forth in this manner, America will take heed; this , and one whole much worse, is what you can expect when you vote for dems at ANY level. That friendly common sense local dem you "know"you can trust ( like our very common sense area did in sending a dem to the House a few years ago)inevitably adds up to Hakeem Jeffries at the White House door. Its hard for those of us who grew up with a loyal national dem party to accept the reality of the antiamerican leftist dominated thing it is now. And it promises to become ever more compromised with "american" totalitarians in the foreseeable future. Many people of good will still cannot countenance that thought.The dem party may suffer much defection by people from erstwhile dems shocked beyond measure by the now open vicious antisemitism that left tolerates in its midst. Similarly, let the politically correct Governor Kalifornia recklessly hazards stand exemplary before America as the enabler of incipient far left totalitarianism he certainly is ( his recent counterintuitive gestures toward the center notwithstandng) and let us resolve to keep him in lala land.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy and Ray et al from Jack: In '66 I took Soviet and East European Politics and one of the assigned readings was a book by Kissinger in part on nuclear war. He was apparently satirized as the character Groteschele in the book Fail Safe in which he proposed an astonishing solution to the fictional nuclear foulup described in the book. Just sayin. . .
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
ReplyDeleteThanks for jiggling my memory. I think there was a movie "Fail Safe" based on the book?
Ray from Jack: Affirmative!
ReplyDeleteRay from Jack: I think the end of the Cold War was assured by two main factors: yes, the epic courage of Poland, manifested in Solidarity and culminating in the Saintly Polish Pope's arrival in his country before multitudes of the unreconstructed faithful while presumptuous marxist automatons stood by and visibly trembled. Second but not secondary, President Reagan's firm resolve to drive the Soviets to despair with a military buildup in response to which they could never hope to pay for let alone equal.
ReplyDeleteRay, you have outdone yourself! I love it!
ReplyDeleteI personally disagree about the Eastern Europeans playing such a pivotal role in the end of the Cold War. Yes, they were plucky and kept up a (largely) passive resistance for many years. The active resistance was ineffectual, because Soviet tanks were always a compelling answer to it. They would have been again in 1989, had Gorbachev been willing to deploy them. No, I think the Cold War was "won" inside the heads of the Soviet elite, which is to say that as soon as they decided it wasn't worth the bother, the USSR was toast.
Of course, you're right that a lot of political rhetoric is empty and intentionally deceptive, but even the hollowest pontifications can have real world impacts. I am increasingly persuaded that, in politics and therefore in a sense in life itself, the truth and reality don't matter. It's what you can get people to believe that counts, because that determines public opinion and your own scope for action, as a politician. Was any U.S. president willing to go down with the West Berliners as Soviet tanks steamrolled them? Heck, no. But our commitment to our NATO partners was just believable enough that the Soviets never tested it. And so...checkmate!
Jack, I agree that, for all his charm, Newsom would be a disaster in (national) office, and would precipitate the even more rapid decline of this country, a la California itself. And, as you say, ANY Dem president would gradually tip the judicial scales, such that the democratic and legislative processes eventually became redundant anyway, since neo-Marxist judges would decide everything by fiat. No thanks!
I saw the movie Fail Safe, and if the implication of the book is that Kissinger was the sort of guy who would, in the national interest, trade one of our cities for one of theirs...I could see it! And, I must say, it might still still be preferable to the alternative.
Hmm. My view would be that the Pope and Ronald Reagan could writhe in saintliness all they liked, but unless the Soviets blinked, and at just the right time, it would have been for nothing. The Russkies would still be stroking their ICBMs and looking at us cross-eyed if they hadn't beaten themselves, in my view.
Dr. Waddy fromJack: As I recall , in the book the character some think based on Kissinger advises the President not to try to stop the attack and predicts the Soviets will surrender following it. I think the purpose was to excoriate perceived "egg headed"intellectuals separated from reality.
ReplyDeleteGotcha. In the movie, as a I recall, we accidentally nuke Moscow, and the Soviets decide to even the score by nuking New York. The president's dilemma is, in part, the fact that his wife was then visiting NYC, and, to be true to his "deal" with the Soviets, he has to sacrifice her.
ReplyDeleteDr. WaddyfromJack: Me too.
ReplyDelete