I bought a bag of air today.
The company that made it was kind enough to put some potato chips in it.
*.*
Fact: Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Worst morning breath ever!
*.*
Husband: "Honey, last night I heard you complaining about me in your sleep."
Wife: "Oh, that was just your imagination."
Husband: "My imagination? How so?"
Wife: "That I was asleep."
*.*
I could be a morning person.
If morning happened around noon.
After coffee.
*.*
How are (insert racism) and tornadoes the same?
It only takes one to ruin a good neighborhood.
Quote of the Times;
A speaker at a DNC “Black Caucus” meeting said the quiet part out loud; “We got 70 days to act right… After 70 days, we can go back to acting crazy,” the DNC speaker said.
Link of the Times;
Why We've Suspended VDARE:
https://vdare.com/
Issue of the Times;
Globalists Are Trying To Escalate The Ukraine War Into WWIII Before the US Election by Brandon Smith
The purpose of NATO involvement in the Ukraine War has, to me, always appeared obvious. Ukraine has nothing to do with the interests of the western public, nothing to do with the security of Europe and nothing to do with the economic advancement of the United States. Yet, NATO and the globalists have been politically interfering in the region since at least 2014 and preparing the ground for an eventual war with Russia.
To be clear, I don’t favor Russia any more than I favor Ukraine. The Kremlin has long had its own ties to the globalists, as I have outlined in numerous articles. How deep those ties go is up for debate – Maybe the honeymoon is over and Russia is truly done trying to get a seat at the globalist table. What I do know is that western elites want a world war and they have done everything in their power to start one.
Look at it this way: What if you were to make a list of all the covert and overt NATO operations in Ukraine and then flipped script? What if Russia was pursuing all the same agendas of destabilization, control and arms proliferation in Mexico (as the Soviets did in Cuba in the 1960s)? If the US invaded Mexico preemptively it would be completely understandable.
Whether or not Putin is acting in the best interests of Russia doesn’t really matter. The war was inevitable anyway because NATO made sure it was impossible to avoid. But what purpose does such a proxy war serve? Well, it doesn’t serve much purpose at all…unless the goal is to instigate a wider world war between the East and the West. In that scenario the globalists benefit greatly.
They get a scapegoat for the economic collapse they’ve already set in motion. They multiply the global fear factor and make the public desperate for the political elites to step in and solve all their problems. And, they can get rid of their domestic enemies (conservatives and patriots) by accusing them of “working with Russia” to undermine the war effort if they dare to rebel against unconstitutional mandates.
Beyond that, they also get an opportunity to send young men (who might rebel) off to the meat grinder in Ukraine so that there’s no new generation of freedom fighters to deal with. World War III is a win-win-win for the Davos crowd, as long as it doesn’t go full-on nuclear holocaust and wipe out their carefully crafted surveillance states.
But how do they turn the proxy war into a world war without looking like the bad guys? That’s the trick, isn’t it?
The proxy (in this case, Ukraine) would have to take actions that provoke Russia into an explosive outburst. Russia would have to utilize tactics or weaponry that puts a vast number of civilians at risk, requiring greater NATO involvement and perhaps even UN intervention. They need Russia to level a major city containing hundreds of thousands of civilians. They need Russia to drop MOABs or nukes. They need a dramatic war crime; otherwise, the western public is not going to support boots on the ground or agree to a military draft.
Popular support for monetary and military aid in Ukraine is waning quickly and Ukraine knows they are about to lose. The Kursk offensive looks like an act of desperation triggered by this reality.
The Kursk region has almost no modern strategic value. It’s a rural agricultural area with a limited industrial base. It does have natural gas pipelines that send energy to Europe, but that doesn’t help Ukraine. They’re already in trouble with Germany for blowing up the Nordstream pipeline. There is also a nuclear power plant in the area but it’s too far away for Ukraine’s troops to seize it (They could try to destroy it with drones and cause a nuclear incident, but this would have to be done covertly without Ukraine taking direct credit).
Mainstream strategists argue that the Kursk operation was designed to force Russia to move crack troops away from the Donbas front where they are making impressive gains. This would allegedly slow down Russia’s attrition based offensive and change the direction of the war. But if that was the plan, it failed miserably.
Ukraine’s troops in Kursk have reportedly been contained. Using NATO-style maneuver tactics to invade Kursk has also done nothing to slow Russia’s advance as they are now primed to take the key city of Toretsk. They are also approaching Pokrovsk (the main staging ground for Ukraine’s forces in the east). These areas are heavily defended with long term entrenchments, but Russia is rolling right through them. The lines beyond these cities are thin or non-existent. Ukraine would immediately be forced to negotiate a cease fire.
Russia also launched the largest missile and drone strikes of the war in fifteen Ukrainian oblasts, causing even greater disruptions to utilities. This proves two things: The Russian military has NOT been diminished or crippled and they still have ample long range ordnance, despite what NATO officials originally claimed
There’s a reason why Kursk was so lightly defended by Russia – It’s not worth anything to Ukraine in terms of winning the war. That said, I would like to offer an alternative theory on why Ukraine made such a move…
The moment Ukraine crossed onto Russian soil the media and political narrative changed. The word today is that the Kremlin’s “red lines” are meaningless and that Ukraine has proven that Putin is “all talk” when it comes to nuclear weapons and metropolitan strikes. The discussion has turned to the use of US and European long range missiles deep into Russian territory. The Ukrainian government (with NATO behind it) is demanding that US and European officials allow them access to the big-boy toys.
Again, the Biden Administration has to at least appear resistant to this idea. They know if they openly give the green light to offensive ATACM strikes on Russian soil beyond the front that they will be seen as stepping over the line of logistical “support” into the realm of direct warfare with the Russians. Yes, I’m well aware that NATO intel and “advisers” have been on the ground in Ukraine since before the war began. The point is, it’s not official policy because the public would not accept it.
Long range strikes into Russia, I believe, will set in motion more Russian strikes on major cities in the west of Ukraine where the majority of the population lives. These areas have gone largely untouched during the duration of the war. Putin, despite what the media claims, has been careful to limit the targeting of larger civilian centers. That will end if NATO missiles hit Russian cities.
Kursk may have been an attempt to embarrass Russia into wild strikes on civilian targets, thereby giving NATO a reason to intervene. That’s one theory. Another theory is that the Kursk operation is designed to convince western policy makers and the public that there will be no nuclear repercussions; that Putin is all bluster and Ukraine should be given more advanced tools to bomb Moscow.
This narrative is largely promoted by the Atlantic Council, a globalist think-tank with ties to the World Economic Forum and the “Three Seas Initiative.” The Atlantic Council directly advises the Ukrainian government on all aspect of the war, including strategy through their Eurasian Center. They also advise NATO through their Scowcroft Center. As their website notes:
“The Eurasia Center has worked tirelessly to respond to the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, using our well-respected and high-visibility platform and leveraging relationships in government, civil society, and the media to have great impact. The Eurasia Center offers recommendations directly to the U.S. administration and Congress, senior Ukrainian officials, European leadership, international media, and civil society. The Center tracks the military and political situation within Ukraine and advocates for stronger, faster measures to stall and mitigate the damage of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.”
I would argue that the Atlantic Council is the primary globalist “influencer” in the Ukraine war – The source for the majority of strategic decisions and propaganda. Their support of the ‘Three Seas Initiative” since 2014 has been the driving force in the effort to bring Ukraine into the EU and NATO (the primary reason why the war started in the first place).
Lindsay Graham, a Neo-Con and rabid proponent of using Ukraine as a proxy to ignite a war with Russia, has been participating in Atlantic Council projects since at least 2010.
It’s the Atlantic Council and their media contacts, in my opinion, that are pushing for large scale missile strikes into Russia. They are also the source for the claim that Putin’s red lines are a fake out. They state on their website:
“Ukraine’s offensive is now posing serious questions about the credibility of Russia’s saber-rattling and the rationality behind the West’s abundance of caution. After all, the Ukrainian army’s current invasion of Russia is surely the reddest of all red lines. If Russia was at all serious about a possible nuclear escalation, this would be the moment to make good on its many threats. In fact, Putin has responded by seeking to downplay the invasion while pretending that everything is still going according to plan.”
This is the same propaganda that has been spreading into most establishment media platforms in recent weeks. (As a side note, the Atlantic Council was also heavily involved in the funding of covid mandate and vaccine propaganda during the pandemic scare).
The idea that ballistic volleys into Russia using NATO supplied missiles won’t result in Putin using MOABs or nukes is truly insane. Keep in mind, long range strikes into Russia will do nothing to change the conditions on the ground in the Donbas
Even if the globalists can’t convince western populations to give the thumbs up for ballistic attacks on Russia using weapons paid for with our tax dollars, the powers-that-be have a contingency plan. Ukraine has recently announced that they have developed their OWN long range ballistic missile, and those weapons supposedly don’t fall under the supervision of the US and Europe.
Eventually these kinds of strikes will lead to a Russian response that will appear brutal; and western warhawks will squeeze that event for all it’s worth. They’ll run with it straight to the Pentagon and demand a plan for US military conscription. If this is the agenda then they’ll need to make it happen BEFORE the elections in November.
Donald Trump is looking increasingly likely to be the winner of the presidential race. I have long held that the globalists will wrap up an economic collapse or a world war and throw it in Trump’s lap. They already tried to do the same thing with the covid pandemic and the inflationary crisis.
The timing of the Kursk offensive and the call for missile strikes on Russia is not a coincidence. Trump claims that his intention is to end the Ukraine war as quickly as possible once he enters office. This will likely mean a leveraged peace settlement that will involve Ukraine giving up the Donbas region to Russia. If Trump is sincere, then there are many elites in the Atlantic Council, the WEF and NATO that will not be happy.
They need to escalate the war into something bigger, something that can’t be undone. Right now, the war can be ended – All it takes is some diplomacy and forcing Ukraine to understand that they’re not going to get the Donbas or Crimea back no matter how many lives they sacrifice. But if there are massive civilian casualties on either side, the situation becomes irreversible. I suspect this is what the globalists want.
News of the Times;
Globalists using migrants as Mercenary Armies:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-08-19-globalists-using-migrants-mercenary-armies-against-west.html
Massachusetts immigration courts seeing record number of deportations:
https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/massachusetts-immigration-courts-seeing-record-number-deportations/7TM2U5PVFZEEBEZPU6E5JRJIHA/
US Taxpayers Paid $150 Billion In 1 Year For Migrants:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-taxpayers-paid-150-billion-1-year-migrants
“We are here to stab white people,”:
https://barenakedislam.com/2024/08/21/we-are-here-to-stab-white-people-shout-gang-of-muslim-invaders-in-small-french-town/
Police on high alert after Mexico issues warning:
https://lawenforcementtoday.com/el-paso-on-high-alert
Laugh While They Stab an English Man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYCAjG1tGKc
He was employed to care for people:
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/employed-care-people-instead-raped-29384493
Brutal Venezuelan gang violence spills into quiet suburb:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/25/us-news/denver-tren-de-aragua-gang-violence-spills-over-into-aurora-colorado/
The disturbing truth Kamala Harris does not want you knowing:
https://www.wnd.com/2024/08/revealed-the-truth-kamala-harris-does-not-want-you-knowing-about-her-reign-as-border-czar/
Vermont Supreme Court Sacrifices Children to Big Pharma:
https://brownstone.org/articles/vermont-supreme-court-sacrifices-children-to-big-pharma/
Britain’s Kursk Invasion Backfires:
https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/britains-kursk-invasion-backfires
Former New York Police Officer Who Raped 13-year-old Girl:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/total-injustice-former-new-york-police-officer-who/
Great grandma gets stiffer J6 sentence than Ray Epps:
https://www.wnd.com/2024/08/great-grandma-gets-stiffer-j6-sentence-than-ray-epps/
Teen girls arrested for allegedly killing 93-year-old:
https://www.fox10tv.com/video/2024/08/17/teen-girls-arrested-allegedly-killing-93-year-old/?outputType=amp
Prehistoric Warfare on the Great Plains:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYpVaElCGLc
Obvious?
Bagram?
I got a tattoo of a gigantic bruise on my left ankle in case anyone ever asks me to go hiking.
Or help them move.
*.*
Scientists in China say they have been able to create artificial weather.
The weird thing is, an hour later, you feel like another thunderstorm.
*.*
I tried to get into a trendy New York nightclub last night.
The doorman said to me, "Sorry sir, you've had too many."
Confused, I replied, "What, drinks?"
"No, sir, birthdays!"
*.*
My wife accused me of spending too much time online.
Which is funny, when did I get a wife?
*.*
Me being rude: Shut the hell up.
Me being polite: Please shut the hell up.
Quote of the Times;
The Inquisition prosecuted 421 people per year for the crime of pretending to be something they were not in order to feign loyalty to the Spanish crown; just last year, the British crown prosecuted 419,000 people in England and Wales alone, many of them for simply expressing their opinion about the migrant invasion of their country. - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Congress Members Should Not Be Dual Citizens:
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64605
Issue of the Times;
The Biden-Harris Afghanistan Bugout 3 Years On by Austin Bay
August 2024 marks the third anniversary of the Biden-Harris administration's most consequential international policy action: the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.
Why Biden-Harris? Vice President Kamala Harris has said on several occasions she was "in the room" -- meaning in the decision loop -- when Joe Biden ordered a withdrawal based on the calendar and not on battlefield conditions. "Completely out by 9/11" is a sound bite, a political bumper sticker. It isn't clear-headed senior leader strategic guidance for a military withdrawal from a complex war zone.
The Trump administration planned to withdraw, but in order to support the pro-U.S. Afghan government, the U.S. would keep the huge Bagram airbase as a logistical hub and intelligence post. But Joe Biden nixed Bagram and decided to withdraw via Kabul's inadequate airport.
Why? Ineptitude? Dementia?
In late May, The Washington Post reported that retired Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the senior commanding general during the 2021 withdrawal, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee "he was so troubled by the administration's 'lack of understanding of the risk' that he privately warned a Marine Corps commander charged with planning for a possible evacuation to prepare for 'really adverse conditions.'"
As the Afghan debacle unfolded, the world's most vicious actors -- Russia, China, Iran and its proxies -- saw American senior leaders posture, flounder and then abandon its Afghan allies (and an undetermined number of U.S. citizens) to Taliban revenge.
Here's the telling Biden quote, one that bears repeating: Biden knew early on his bungled withdrawal had become a catastrophe. On Aug. 31, 2021, Reuters published the transcript of a July 23 telephone call between Biden and Afghanistan's then-President Ashraf Ghani. Biden told Ghani that "... the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren't going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there's a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture."
"Whether it is true or not." That's jaw-dropping. The lives of U.S. citizens, U.S. soldiers and U.S. allies were at stake. But a good story for the press and public in the next news cycle guided White House decision-making.
Biden wanted to project a picture, not project American power. Ghani got the picture -- and he fled.
Around the globe, the thugs concluded the weak White House gave them a strategic opportunity. Their moment had arrived. The czars, commissars, ayatollahs and cartelistas concluded Biden-Harris America would talk but wouldn't fight -- and if pushed, preferred to run.
Yes, run. Remember Biden told Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy he should flee. The gutsy Zelenskyy told Biden he didn't need a ride, he needed ammo.
The buzz phrase is "loss of deterrence." Biden's 2021 Afghanistan debacle damaged U.S. credibility and encouraged adventurism and aggression by terrorists and authoritarian states.
The Biden-Harris Afghan bugout seeded two hot wars with nuclear warfare potential -- Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Iran war involving four Iranian proxy armies. Russian and Islamist proxies are involved in several guerrilla conflicts in Africa. Venezuela's dictatorship, which has Iranian ties, has threatened to invade neighboring Guyana. China threatens to invade Taiwan while waging a slow but expanding war in the Philippines' maritime exclusive economic zone.
Here's a compounding factor: A large cadre of Free World elite academic, media and political personalities don't believe the vicious actors really mean what they say, even when the thugs back hard talk with paid mobs, assassination, guns and bombs.
Afghanistan in 2024: Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are using Taliban Afghanistan as a base to train and reconstitute their forces.
In April, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie (former CENTCOM commander) told ABC News the Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) was operating "unabated" in Afghanistan and the U.S. had "almost no ability to strike" (the terrorists).
So, the U.S. can't project sufficient power. What a sorry picture.
News of the Times;
Girling the Boy Scouts:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/girling-the-boy-scouts
German police to ‘secretly’ search homes:
https://www.rt.com/news/602629-germany-police-secret-searches/
Beloved dad shot dead by neighbor after daughter ‘touched the mulch’:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/beloved-dad-shot-dead-by-neighbor-after-daughter-touched-mulch/
Justice Gorsuch on the Administrative State:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/justice-gorsuch-on-the-administrative-state.php
Planned Parenthood Employees Joking and Laughing:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/pure-evil-newly-released-undercover-video-exposes-planned/
Brits Are Being Arrested:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/08/08/brits-are-being-arrested-for-social-media-posts-now-n3792879
Israel's Path of Peril:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/israels-path-of-peril
Chinese megaconstellation launch creates field of space debris:
https://spacenews.com/chinese-megaconstellation-launch-creates-field-of-space-debris/
Singapore’s Birth Rate Plunges:
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/devastating-crisis-singapores-birth
UK doctors ordered to ask men if they’re pregnant:
https://www.rt.com/news/602449-uk-doctors-men-pregnant/
African Immigrant Trucker Who Killed Three Motorcyclists:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/african-immigrant-trucker-who-killed-three-motorcyclists-while/
Disney World Wrongful Death Suit:
https://www.tmz.com/2024/08/14/disney-wrongful-death-streaming-loophole/#continued
nitter.poast.org:
https://nitter.poast.org/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1822771460236042358
Popular YouTuber ‘Pretty Pastel Please’ Dies Suddenly:
https://slaynews.com/news/popular-youtuber-pretty-pastel-please-dies-suddenly-myocarditis-30/
NASA watchdog finds quality control problems with Boeing:
https://spacenews.com/nasa-watchdog-finds-quality-control-problems-with-boeing-sls-work/
Or help them move.
*.*
Scientists in China say they have been able to create artificial weather.
The weird thing is, an hour later, you feel like another thunderstorm.
*.*
I tried to get into a trendy New York nightclub last night.
The doorman said to me, "Sorry sir, you've had too many."
Confused, I replied, "What, drinks?"
"No, sir, birthdays!"
*.*
My wife accused me of spending too much time online.
Which is funny, when did I get a wife?
*.*
Me being rude: Shut the hell up.
Me being polite: Please shut the hell up.
Quote of the Times;
The Inquisition prosecuted 421 people per year for the crime of pretending to be something they were not in order to feign loyalty to the Spanish crown; just last year, the British crown prosecuted 419,000 people in England and Wales alone, many of them for simply expressing their opinion about the migrant invasion of their country. - Vox Day
Link of the Times;
Congress Members Should Not Be Dual Citizens:
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64605
Issue of the Times;
The Biden-Harris Afghanistan Bugout 3 Years On by Austin Bay
August 2024 marks the third anniversary of the Biden-Harris administration's most consequential international policy action: the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.
Why Biden-Harris? Vice President Kamala Harris has said on several occasions she was "in the room" -- meaning in the decision loop -- when Joe Biden ordered a withdrawal based on the calendar and not on battlefield conditions. "Completely out by 9/11" is a sound bite, a political bumper sticker. It isn't clear-headed senior leader strategic guidance for a military withdrawal from a complex war zone.
The Trump administration planned to withdraw, but in order to support the pro-U.S. Afghan government, the U.S. would keep the huge Bagram airbase as a logistical hub and intelligence post. But Joe Biden nixed Bagram and decided to withdraw via Kabul's inadequate airport.
Why? Ineptitude? Dementia?
In late May, The Washington Post reported that retired Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the senior commanding general during the 2021 withdrawal, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee "he was so troubled by the administration's 'lack of understanding of the risk' that he privately warned a Marine Corps commander charged with planning for a possible evacuation to prepare for 'really adverse conditions.'"
As the Afghan debacle unfolded, the world's most vicious actors -- Russia, China, Iran and its proxies -- saw American senior leaders posture, flounder and then abandon its Afghan allies (and an undetermined number of U.S. citizens) to Taliban revenge.
Here's the telling Biden quote, one that bears repeating: Biden knew early on his bungled withdrawal had become a catastrophe. On Aug. 31, 2021, Reuters published the transcript of a July 23 telephone call between Biden and Afghanistan's then-President Ashraf Ghani. Biden told Ghani that "... the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren't going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there's a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture."
"Whether it is true or not." That's jaw-dropping. The lives of U.S. citizens, U.S. soldiers and U.S. allies were at stake. But a good story for the press and public in the next news cycle guided White House decision-making.
Biden wanted to project a picture, not project American power. Ghani got the picture -- and he fled.
Around the globe, the thugs concluded the weak White House gave them a strategic opportunity. Their moment had arrived. The czars, commissars, ayatollahs and cartelistas concluded Biden-Harris America would talk but wouldn't fight -- and if pushed, preferred to run.
Yes, run. Remember Biden told Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy he should flee. The gutsy Zelenskyy told Biden he didn't need a ride, he needed ammo.
The buzz phrase is "loss of deterrence." Biden's 2021 Afghanistan debacle damaged U.S. credibility and encouraged adventurism and aggression by terrorists and authoritarian states.
The Biden-Harris Afghan bugout seeded two hot wars with nuclear warfare potential -- Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Iran war involving four Iranian proxy armies. Russian and Islamist proxies are involved in several guerrilla conflicts in Africa. Venezuela's dictatorship, which has Iranian ties, has threatened to invade neighboring Guyana. China threatens to invade Taiwan while waging a slow but expanding war in the Philippines' maritime exclusive economic zone.
Here's a compounding factor: A large cadre of Free World elite academic, media and political personalities don't believe the vicious actors really mean what they say, even when the thugs back hard talk with paid mobs, assassination, guns and bombs.
Afghanistan in 2024: Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are using Taliban Afghanistan as a base to train and reconstitute their forces.
In April, retired Gen. Frank McKenzie (former CENTCOM commander) told ABC News the Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) was operating "unabated" in Afghanistan and the U.S. had "almost no ability to strike" (the terrorists).
So, the U.S. can't project sufficient power. What a sorry picture.
News of the Times;
Girling the Boy Scouts:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/girling-the-boy-scouts
German police to ‘secretly’ search homes:
https://www.rt.com/news/602629-germany-police-secret-searches/
Beloved dad shot dead by neighbor after daughter ‘touched the mulch’:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/beloved-dad-shot-dead-by-neighbor-after-daughter-touched-mulch/
Justice Gorsuch on the Administrative State:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/justice-gorsuch-on-the-administrative-state.php
Planned Parenthood Employees Joking and Laughing:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/pure-evil-newly-released-undercover-video-exposes-planned/
Brits Are Being Arrested:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/08/08/brits-are-being-arrested-for-social-media-posts-now-n3792879
Israel's Path of Peril:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/israels-path-of-peril
Chinese megaconstellation launch creates field of space debris:
https://spacenews.com/chinese-megaconstellation-launch-creates-field-of-space-debris/
Singapore’s Birth Rate Plunges:
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/devastating-crisis-singapores-birth
UK doctors ordered to ask men if they’re pregnant:
https://www.rt.com/news/602449-uk-doctors-men-pregnant/
African Immigrant Trucker Who Killed Three Motorcyclists:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/african-immigrant-trucker-who-killed-three-motorcyclists-while/
Disney World Wrongful Death Suit:
https://www.tmz.com/2024/08/14/disney-wrongful-death-streaming-loophole/#continued
nitter.poast.org:
https://nitter.poast.org/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1822771460236042358
Popular YouTuber ‘Pretty Pastel Please’ Dies Suddenly:
https://slaynews.com/news/popular-youtuber-pretty-pastel-please-dies-suddenly-myocarditis-30/
NASA watchdog finds quality control problems with Boeing:
https://spacenews.com/nasa-watchdog-finds-quality-control-problems-with-boeing-sls-work/
Place?
I'm not lazy.
I'm just highly motivated to not do anything.
*.*
Instead of calling it the John, I call my bathroom the Jim.
That way I can say I go to the Jim every morning.
*.*
Oneliners:
The older I get, the tighter companies are putting lids on their jars.
No matter how old you are, an empty wrapping paper tube is still a light saber.
There's a word for people like you and that word is "leave."
I wonder whether I can trust doctors with dead plants in the waiting room.
I just assume I do everything wrong since I don't have a wife to confirm it.
If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.
Somewhere, a smart Lasik surgeon has an office full of brochures that are all slightly out of focus.
I hate to call them "one night stands"; I prefer the term "auditions"
People are making Rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow.
I run entirely on caffeine, vodka, and inappropriate thoughts.
*.*
In North Carolina, a man won a $1.1-million lottery jackpot two days before his birthday.
If I was a friend, I'd definitely be taking back my gift.
*.*
You can steal my jokes whenever you want, but just remember that I lick every single one before I send them.
Quote of the Times;
"Democracy too is a religion. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses." – H.L. Mencken
Link of the Times;
New Video Appears to Show DC Police Units Planting a J6 Pipe Bomb:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/08/16/new-video-appears-to-show-dc-police-units-planting-a-j6-pipe-bomb/
Issue of the Times;
The Triumph of Red States by Joel Kotkin
Forget the presidential election. The real contest about the future direction of the country has already taken place, and it’s the red states that are clearly winning.
What we are witnessing is not so much a national ideological triumph, in the manner of the Reagan era, but a grassroots shift in economic, social, and, ultimately, political power from one set of regions to another. This continues a pattern congruent with American history since the first settlements pushed out from the Atlantic coast, expanding all the way to the Pacific. Even today the wealthiest states, not adjusted for costs, remain perched on the Northeastern or Pacific coastlines.
Today’s shift is not a repeat of “manifest destiny” associated with the old adage “go west, young man,” but more like a call back to the South, and even some places in the country’s vast center. These areas are still catching up with those areas that flourished in the last half of the twentieth century. But over the past four decades, income and job growth in places like Texas and Florida were 50 percent or more above New York and California.
In recent years, the gap between regions has narrowed. Texas, Nevada, Florida, and Arkansas experienced the nation’s highest personal income growth; in contrast, ultra-blue California ranked last, followed closely by Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. Sunbelt states dominate the list of fastest job creators while California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Oregon rank toward the bottom. Overall, in the past decade, the six fastest growing Southern states—Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee—added more to the national GDP than the Northeast, the traditional economic powerhouse.
Follow the Carbon
In an era where the media and investors obsess over the latest craze, be it bitcoin or artificial intelligence, the states that have done best also tend to retain energy-dependent industries, such as agriculture, resource extraction, and increasingly manufacturing. The movement of some lower-tech manufacturing like textiles was largely based on low wages and employer-friendly labor law, but the current shift has as much to do with regulatory policies common in blue states.
Until the recent wave of climate-related regulations, much heavy industry and high-tech manufacturing remained in states like California and New York. But the ascendancy of draconian climate regulation has had a strong impact on blue collar jobs, a traditional source of upward mobility. The best areas for industry, notes Site Selection Magazine, are in the Southeast and Utah, while California has lost almost 800,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990 according to the Census of Employment and Wages. Oil and gas, once a major industry in the state, is now slated for extinction, while construction and logistics growth have been slower than in competitor states.
A half century ago, California and New York were industrial dynamos, along with the Upper Midwest. Over the past decade, Orlando, Austin, and Las Vegas have led the charge while manufacturing has declined steeply in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. New industrial growth is taking place primarily in the South and Southeast, and in red states like Indiana and Ohio, including the preponderance of new EV and battery plants. For example, the supply chain shortage has made producing silicon chips—a California invention—a priority; yet virtually all the new planned semiconductor facilities, employing thousands of workers, are being built in Texas, Arizona, and Oregon.
Erosion in Elite Sectors
Until recently, liberal pundits, and some on the Right as well, dismissed the loss of such industries as irrelevant. The new economy, people like New York Times’s Neil Irwin insisted, would be in the biggest, bluest cities. “We’re living in a world where a small number of superstar companies choose to locate in a handful of superstar cities where they have the best chance of recruiting superstar employees,” he wrote in 2019.
To be sure, for decades jobs in technology, finance, and business services gravitated to places like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, and Chicago. Yet a recent analysis by Zen Business reports that Texas and Florida are now the country’s high-growth hotspots and are also attracting the most tech workers. The erosion of California’s lead in tech and other advanced industry jobs has been going on since at least 2005, as more jobs in advanced industries gravitate to lower tax states, largely in the South and Intermountain West, according to recent research from Chapman University and UC Irvine.
For the first time since the last century, when Massachusetts seemed a serious threat, Silicon Valley has a serious and capable challenger in Texas. The Lone Star State has been less hit by recent layoffs. Some tech linchpins have already moved their headquarters to Texas, including HP Enterprises, Oracle, and perhaps most crucially, Tesla. Many other firms like Apple, Airbnb, Amgen, Uber, and Space X are expanding largely outside of the Golden State. These trends are accelerating, notes a recent Hoover Institution study.
The increasing shift to working from home could further accelerate this outflow. Roughly 50 percent of all Silicon Valley jobs, notes a recent University of Chicago study, can be done at home. Although the Bay Area and parts of Southern California are wonderful places to live, the housing market is out of reach even for well-off people. Some 40 percent of Bay Area tech workers say they would like to move to a less expensive region, which suggests locations outside of California. In a recent survey, three-quarters of high-tech venture funders and founders predicted the same for their workforces.
A similar dispersion is occurring in business services. For most of American history, the financial sector was based solidly on the East Coast, notably New York, with powerful firms also based in San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. But business services—a key sector for urban growth particularly—is increasingly headed primarily to red state capitals, led by Austin, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, and Charlotte.
Just as the tech industry is dispersing to new centers like Austin, Phoenix, Nashville, and Atlanta, so too is finance. Since the pandemic, Texas and Florida have seen their finance industries grow ten times as fast as their New York counterparts. The biggest push is in Dallas-Fort Worth, which recently dethroned Chicago as the number two U.S. financial center and has started to raise capital to build a new stock exchange backed by key players.
The Great Migration
Losses of industries and companies are devastating enough, but the biggest crisis facing blue states and regions is demographic. In the past decade, five Southern states—Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, along with Arizona in the West—exceeded growth in all of the other (44) states and the District of Columbia, notes demographer Wendell Cox. This pattern has accelerated since 2020, with Southern states gaining 1.7 million people, while the other three Census regions (the Northeast, Midwest, and West) all had net domestic migration losses. In 2023, Southern states accounted for 87 percent of all U.S. population growth.
In contrast, New York, New Jersey, and California are all losing net migrants, often to these same states. Since 2020, the Census Bureau estimates, New York has lost 884,000 residents to other states. As a percentage of its 2022 population, New York’s net domestic migration loss of 1.1 percent last year was larger than any state’s, exceeded only by California’s net outflow. Between 2022 and 2023, New Jersey lost 0.5 percent of its population, eighth among the states in net migration loss.
One clear trend has been the migration of wealthy individuals, the very people who fund the expansive blue welfare state. This was a slow pattern but gained momentum after 2019. Last year, affluent migrants took almost $24 billion out of California, $14 billion out of New York, and almost $10 billion out of Illinois. Those funds ended up primarily in Florida and Texas, as well as Tennessee and the Carolinas.
Even before the pandemic, affluent young professionals were heading to less expensive and congested cities in search of homes in places they could afford. Over the past decade, the strongest lures for Millennials were not New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, all of which suffered net losses in this group according to Brookings, but instead, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston. Last year, the biggest upsurge in new business formation took place in the Deep South, Texas, and the Desert Southwest, while New York and the West Coast economies lagged.
California, once the ultimate magnet for the young and ambitious, now suffers the worst attraction rate in the country and, according to an analysis of IRS data, is hemorrhaging families. Looking ahead to 2060, the state’s Department of Finance predicts no population growth and a reduction of 1.7 million for L.A. County, the state’s largest county.
Immigrants are following the same pattern, migrating not to traditional gateway cities like New York or Los Angeles, but to places like Dallas, Miami, and even small towns in the Midwest. The foreign-born population of Los Angeles declined over the past decade while, according to Brookings, the most recent stream is settling down primarily in Texas and other Sunbelt locales. Much of the same is happening with minorities in general; migration among Asians, blacks, and Latinos has been fastest to red states, where for the most part, they enjoy higher rates of homeownership and higher real incomes
These trends suggest America’s demographic future will be largely red. According to demographer Lyman Stone, birth rates are also higher in red states such as Texas, Arkansas, Utah, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Over time this constitutes what he labels “the conservative fertility advantage.” In contrast, the lowest fertility rates are found in deep blue states like California, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington.
The Governance Crisis
Conservative and libertarian economists explain these shifts largely as a function of tax rates. Though taxes are certainly a factor, blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts long thrived with higher tax rates than states like Florida and Texas, much less than laggards like Mississippi and Alabama. California and other blue states, such as New York, benefited in the postwar era from investments in physical infrastructure and education. But in recent decades, the other states have caught up while California’s government, in one recent study, was ranked least efficient. States like Washington, Texas, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, and Florida are duplicating “many of the great things about California,” according to Christopher Lloyd, President of the Site Selection Guild, which tracks investment flows. “The development model has turned on its head,” Lloyd suggests. “These states have learned from California. There seems to be a failure there to recognize things have changed and tech people are much more mobile.”
More serious still, as the competition was upping its game, many blue states have shifted away from growth-oriented strategies to environmental or “social justice” goals. Today, taxpayers in blue states are not rewarded with improved roads and bridges and efficient education systems, but the bill for some of the most outrageous failures—like the Second Avenue Subway, the California Bullet Train, and Boston’s Big Dig. In California, with the highest gas taxes in the country, taxpayers fume about some of the nation’s worst roads.
Education represents an even more dire failure. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card”—California 4th graders scored lower in mathematics proficiency than those in 29 other states/jurisdictions, with only 30 percent at or above the NAEP standard. In contrast, 41 percent of Florida’s 4th graders and 38 percent of 4th graders in Texas—states that pay far less per student—scored at or above the level of proficiency in math, significantly better than their California counterparts.
Such failures are endemic across Blue America. In Chicago, many schools have not produced a single student who has achieved expected proficiency in standardized tests. New York’s once respected public school systems have also declined precipitously, while the shift toward indoctrination over basic skills in many blue states, notably California, does not bode well for the future workforce. And now the rot is headed even to the elite level, as the scandal about unqualified medical students, selected by race, has undermined the reputation of UCLA’s once highly regarded but now embarrassingly woke medical school.
The Political Future
The blue states are not mandated to embrace headlong decline. Yet, so long as they remain in thrall to a deadly combination of public employee unions and progressive ideology, they will continue to be replaced by conservative-run cities and states. The effects of this shift will not only be felt by New York and Los Angeles, but also well-positioned cities like Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Denver.
Today, many blue states—notably California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Maryland—suffer deep structural deficits that will likely require a massive bailout from D.C. for their pensions and persistent deficits. But they may lack the political power to engineer a fiscal rescue. In 2020, migration changes helped Texas gain two congressional seats, while Florida and several other red states each gained one. Meanwhile New York, California, and Illinois all lost seats. If current trends continue, the South in 2030 will have 30 more seats than it did in the 1970s.
Do the blue states have an answer to their current political decline? To fix their current woes would require more centrist Democrats—following the lead of Keir Starmer in Britain—who could reverse some of the most destructive progressive policies. The Democratic stronghold of San Francisco, with similar efforts underway in Los Angeles and Oakland, are already trying a new strategy of cleaning up the core and reeling in spending. It is increasingly clear, notes some Democratic analysts, that the party cannot compete nationally if it bows to the activist Left.
Some blue state politicos are reassessing some of the most radical progressives. California’s Gavin Newsom now is ready to oppose progressives on issues like keeping the state’s last nuclear plant alive, cutting welfare funding, and even sending the National Guard to the state’s southern border. He also stands for now against a proposed wealth tax that could further accelerate the already devastating flow of affluent people out of the state.
If reinvigorated, blue states still enjoy physical legacies like the ports of Los Angeles and New York, the residual brainpower in the universities, and existing tech firms, critical for the startup economy, as well as unmatched cultural and media assets. Simply put, things too evolved for Dallas to ever offer the cultural and entertainment values of New York, nor can Florida weather come close to the perfection that Californians, particularly on the coast, enjoy.
There’s always the chance that the red states will undermine their political gains by pushing positions—such as bans on abortion—that will lead to some hesitancy on the part of younger people to move to their states. A return to cultural values of the nineteenth century has little appeal. But none of this will matter much if blue states can’t walk back progressive ideas and follow more traditional liberal approaches again. No matter how much sanity can reassert itself, the shift of power and wealth is already in place, but it’s just a question of the scale of this power shift and how it shapes American reality in the future.
News of the Times;
US admits it spread disinformation about Covid vaccine:
https://www.rt.com/news/601714-pentagon-admits-vaccine-disinformation/
The twisted psychology of Covid mask-wearing:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-08-14-psychology-of-covid-mask-wearing-democrats-liberals.html
Harris campaign mandates COVID-19 vaccine for employees:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/harris-campaign-mandates-covid-19-vaccine-employees
AP Publishes Hilarious Headline:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/08/13/ap-publishes-hilarious-headline-news-outlets-were-leaked-insider-material-from-the-trump-campaign-they-chose-not-to-print-it/
Excessive Internet Use Disrupts Key Parts Of The Teenage Brain:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/excessive-internet-use-disrupts-key-parts-teenage-brain
Automakers Sold Drivers' Data for Shockingly Low Amounts of Money:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61711288/automakers-sold-customer-data-for-small-profits/
Gun Control Industry Shoving Their Cash at the Kamala Harris Campaign:
https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/2024/07/29/gun-control-industry-shoving-their-cash-at-the-kamala-harris-campaign/
Meet the Trans-Identifying Male Felons:
https://archive.is/2cK8I#selection-687.0-687.77
Bidenflation Finally Takes a Bite Out of McDonald's:
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/07/30/bidenflation-finally-takes-a-bite-out-of-mcdonalds-n4931180
Charges against pro-Hamas rioters have routinely been dropped nationwide:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/charges-against-pro-hamas-rioters-have-routinely-been-dropped-nationwide/
Biden's Illegal Alien Flight Program Halted:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/08/02/bidens-illegal-alien-flight-program-halted-due-to-rampant-fraud-n2642897
Army chaplain taken to hospital following stabbing:
https://gript.ie/army-chaplain-taken-to-hospital-following-stabbing-outside-galway-barracks/
CNN value collapses to near ZERO:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-08-12-cnn-value-collapses-zero-warner-bros-writedown.html
Teachers’ Minn. pension fund under Tim Walz ‘cooking the books’:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/10/us-news/teachers-minn-pension-fund-under-tim-walz-cooking-the-books-by-vastly-underreporting-madoff-miracle/
Secret Service Agent Abandoned Post at North Carolina Trump Event to Nurse Her Baby:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/report-secret-service-agent-abandoned-post-north-carolina/
I'm just highly motivated to not do anything.
*.*
Instead of calling it the John, I call my bathroom the Jim.
That way I can say I go to the Jim every morning.
*.*
Oneliners:
The older I get, the tighter companies are putting lids on their jars.
No matter how old you are, an empty wrapping paper tube is still a light saber.
There's a word for people like you and that word is "leave."
I wonder whether I can trust doctors with dead plants in the waiting room.
I just assume I do everything wrong since I don't have a wife to confirm it.
If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.
Somewhere, a smart Lasik surgeon has an office full of brochures that are all slightly out of focus.
I hate to call them "one night stands"; I prefer the term "auditions"
People are making Rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow.
I run entirely on caffeine, vodka, and inappropriate thoughts.
*.*
In North Carolina, a man won a $1.1-million lottery jackpot two days before his birthday.
If I was a friend, I'd definitely be taking back my gift.
*.*
You can steal my jokes whenever you want, but just remember that I lick every single one before I send them.
Quote of the Times;
"Democracy too is a religion. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses." – H.L. Mencken
Link of the Times;
New Video Appears to Show DC Police Units Planting a J6 Pipe Bomb:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/08/16/new-video-appears-to-show-dc-police-units-planting-a-j6-pipe-bomb/
Issue of the Times;
The Triumph of Red States by Joel Kotkin
Forget the presidential election. The real contest about the future direction of the country has already taken place, and it’s the red states that are clearly winning.
What we are witnessing is not so much a national ideological triumph, in the manner of the Reagan era, but a grassroots shift in economic, social, and, ultimately, political power from one set of regions to another. This continues a pattern congruent with American history since the first settlements pushed out from the Atlantic coast, expanding all the way to the Pacific. Even today the wealthiest states, not adjusted for costs, remain perched on the Northeastern or Pacific coastlines.
Today’s shift is not a repeat of “manifest destiny” associated with the old adage “go west, young man,” but more like a call back to the South, and even some places in the country’s vast center. These areas are still catching up with those areas that flourished in the last half of the twentieth century. But over the past four decades, income and job growth in places like Texas and Florida were 50 percent or more above New York and California.
In recent years, the gap between regions has narrowed. Texas, Nevada, Florida, and Arkansas experienced the nation’s highest personal income growth; in contrast, ultra-blue California ranked last, followed closely by Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. Sunbelt states dominate the list of fastest job creators while California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Oregon rank toward the bottom. Overall, in the past decade, the six fastest growing Southern states—Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee—added more to the national GDP than the Northeast, the traditional economic powerhouse.
Follow the Carbon
In an era where the media and investors obsess over the latest craze, be it bitcoin or artificial intelligence, the states that have done best also tend to retain energy-dependent industries, such as agriculture, resource extraction, and increasingly manufacturing. The movement of some lower-tech manufacturing like textiles was largely based on low wages and employer-friendly labor law, but the current shift has as much to do with regulatory policies common in blue states.
Until the recent wave of climate-related regulations, much heavy industry and high-tech manufacturing remained in states like California and New York. But the ascendancy of draconian climate regulation has had a strong impact on blue collar jobs, a traditional source of upward mobility. The best areas for industry, notes Site Selection Magazine, are in the Southeast and Utah, while California has lost almost 800,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990 according to the Census of Employment and Wages. Oil and gas, once a major industry in the state, is now slated for extinction, while construction and logistics growth have been slower than in competitor states.
A half century ago, California and New York were industrial dynamos, along with the Upper Midwest. Over the past decade, Orlando, Austin, and Las Vegas have led the charge while manufacturing has declined steeply in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. New industrial growth is taking place primarily in the South and Southeast, and in red states like Indiana and Ohio, including the preponderance of new EV and battery plants. For example, the supply chain shortage has made producing silicon chips—a California invention—a priority; yet virtually all the new planned semiconductor facilities, employing thousands of workers, are being built in Texas, Arizona, and Oregon.
Erosion in Elite Sectors
Until recently, liberal pundits, and some on the Right as well, dismissed the loss of such industries as irrelevant. The new economy, people like New York Times’s Neil Irwin insisted, would be in the biggest, bluest cities. “We’re living in a world where a small number of superstar companies choose to locate in a handful of superstar cities where they have the best chance of recruiting superstar employees,” he wrote in 2019.
To be sure, for decades jobs in technology, finance, and business services gravitated to places like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, and Chicago. Yet a recent analysis by Zen Business reports that Texas and Florida are now the country’s high-growth hotspots and are also attracting the most tech workers. The erosion of California’s lead in tech and other advanced industry jobs has been going on since at least 2005, as more jobs in advanced industries gravitate to lower tax states, largely in the South and Intermountain West, according to recent research from Chapman University and UC Irvine.
For the first time since the last century, when Massachusetts seemed a serious threat, Silicon Valley has a serious and capable challenger in Texas. The Lone Star State has been less hit by recent layoffs. Some tech linchpins have already moved their headquarters to Texas, including HP Enterprises, Oracle, and perhaps most crucially, Tesla. Many other firms like Apple, Airbnb, Amgen, Uber, and Space X are expanding largely outside of the Golden State. These trends are accelerating, notes a recent Hoover Institution study.
The increasing shift to working from home could further accelerate this outflow. Roughly 50 percent of all Silicon Valley jobs, notes a recent University of Chicago study, can be done at home. Although the Bay Area and parts of Southern California are wonderful places to live, the housing market is out of reach even for well-off people. Some 40 percent of Bay Area tech workers say they would like to move to a less expensive region, which suggests locations outside of California. In a recent survey, three-quarters of high-tech venture funders and founders predicted the same for their workforces.
A similar dispersion is occurring in business services. For most of American history, the financial sector was based solidly on the East Coast, notably New York, with powerful firms also based in San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. But business services—a key sector for urban growth particularly—is increasingly headed primarily to red state capitals, led by Austin, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, and Charlotte.
Just as the tech industry is dispersing to new centers like Austin, Phoenix, Nashville, and Atlanta, so too is finance. Since the pandemic, Texas and Florida have seen their finance industries grow ten times as fast as their New York counterparts. The biggest push is in Dallas-Fort Worth, which recently dethroned Chicago as the number two U.S. financial center and has started to raise capital to build a new stock exchange backed by key players.
The Great Migration
Losses of industries and companies are devastating enough, but the biggest crisis facing blue states and regions is demographic. In the past decade, five Southern states—Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, along with Arizona in the West—exceeded growth in all of the other (44) states and the District of Columbia, notes demographer Wendell Cox. This pattern has accelerated since 2020, with Southern states gaining 1.7 million people, while the other three Census regions (the Northeast, Midwest, and West) all had net domestic migration losses. In 2023, Southern states accounted for 87 percent of all U.S. population growth.
In contrast, New York, New Jersey, and California are all losing net migrants, often to these same states. Since 2020, the Census Bureau estimates, New York has lost 884,000 residents to other states. As a percentage of its 2022 population, New York’s net domestic migration loss of 1.1 percent last year was larger than any state’s, exceeded only by California’s net outflow. Between 2022 and 2023, New Jersey lost 0.5 percent of its population, eighth among the states in net migration loss.
One clear trend has been the migration of wealthy individuals, the very people who fund the expansive blue welfare state. This was a slow pattern but gained momentum after 2019. Last year, affluent migrants took almost $24 billion out of California, $14 billion out of New York, and almost $10 billion out of Illinois. Those funds ended up primarily in Florida and Texas, as well as Tennessee and the Carolinas.
Even before the pandemic, affluent young professionals were heading to less expensive and congested cities in search of homes in places they could afford. Over the past decade, the strongest lures for Millennials were not New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, all of which suffered net losses in this group according to Brookings, but instead, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston. Last year, the biggest upsurge in new business formation took place in the Deep South, Texas, and the Desert Southwest, while New York and the West Coast economies lagged.
California, once the ultimate magnet for the young and ambitious, now suffers the worst attraction rate in the country and, according to an analysis of IRS data, is hemorrhaging families. Looking ahead to 2060, the state’s Department of Finance predicts no population growth and a reduction of 1.7 million for L.A. County, the state’s largest county.
Immigrants are following the same pattern, migrating not to traditional gateway cities like New York or Los Angeles, but to places like Dallas, Miami, and even small towns in the Midwest. The foreign-born population of Los Angeles declined over the past decade while, according to Brookings, the most recent stream is settling down primarily in Texas and other Sunbelt locales. Much of the same is happening with minorities in general; migration among Asians, blacks, and Latinos has been fastest to red states, where for the most part, they enjoy higher rates of homeownership and higher real incomes
These trends suggest America’s demographic future will be largely red. According to demographer Lyman Stone, birth rates are also higher in red states such as Texas, Arkansas, Utah, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Over time this constitutes what he labels “the conservative fertility advantage.” In contrast, the lowest fertility rates are found in deep blue states like California, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington.
The Governance Crisis
Conservative and libertarian economists explain these shifts largely as a function of tax rates. Though taxes are certainly a factor, blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts long thrived with higher tax rates than states like Florida and Texas, much less than laggards like Mississippi and Alabama. California and other blue states, such as New York, benefited in the postwar era from investments in physical infrastructure and education. But in recent decades, the other states have caught up while California’s government, in one recent study, was ranked least efficient. States like Washington, Texas, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, and Florida are duplicating “many of the great things about California,” according to Christopher Lloyd, President of the Site Selection Guild, which tracks investment flows. “The development model has turned on its head,” Lloyd suggests. “These states have learned from California. There seems to be a failure there to recognize things have changed and tech people are much more mobile.”
More serious still, as the competition was upping its game, many blue states have shifted away from growth-oriented strategies to environmental or “social justice” goals. Today, taxpayers in blue states are not rewarded with improved roads and bridges and efficient education systems, but the bill for some of the most outrageous failures—like the Second Avenue Subway, the California Bullet Train, and Boston’s Big Dig. In California, with the highest gas taxes in the country, taxpayers fume about some of the nation’s worst roads.
Education represents an even more dire failure. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card”—California 4th graders scored lower in mathematics proficiency than those in 29 other states/jurisdictions, with only 30 percent at or above the NAEP standard. In contrast, 41 percent of Florida’s 4th graders and 38 percent of 4th graders in Texas—states that pay far less per student—scored at or above the level of proficiency in math, significantly better than their California counterparts.
Such failures are endemic across Blue America. In Chicago, many schools have not produced a single student who has achieved expected proficiency in standardized tests. New York’s once respected public school systems have also declined precipitously, while the shift toward indoctrination over basic skills in many blue states, notably California, does not bode well for the future workforce. And now the rot is headed even to the elite level, as the scandal about unqualified medical students, selected by race, has undermined the reputation of UCLA’s once highly regarded but now embarrassingly woke medical school.
The Political Future
The blue states are not mandated to embrace headlong decline. Yet, so long as they remain in thrall to a deadly combination of public employee unions and progressive ideology, they will continue to be replaced by conservative-run cities and states. The effects of this shift will not only be felt by New York and Los Angeles, but also well-positioned cities like Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Denver.
Today, many blue states—notably California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Maryland—suffer deep structural deficits that will likely require a massive bailout from D.C. for their pensions and persistent deficits. But they may lack the political power to engineer a fiscal rescue. In 2020, migration changes helped Texas gain two congressional seats, while Florida and several other red states each gained one. Meanwhile New York, California, and Illinois all lost seats. If current trends continue, the South in 2030 will have 30 more seats than it did in the 1970s.
Do the blue states have an answer to their current political decline? To fix their current woes would require more centrist Democrats—following the lead of Keir Starmer in Britain—who could reverse some of the most destructive progressive policies. The Democratic stronghold of San Francisco, with similar efforts underway in Los Angeles and Oakland, are already trying a new strategy of cleaning up the core and reeling in spending. It is increasingly clear, notes some Democratic analysts, that the party cannot compete nationally if it bows to the activist Left.
Some blue state politicos are reassessing some of the most radical progressives. California’s Gavin Newsom now is ready to oppose progressives on issues like keeping the state’s last nuclear plant alive, cutting welfare funding, and even sending the National Guard to the state’s southern border. He also stands for now against a proposed wealth tax that could further accelerate the already devastating flow of affluent people out of the state.
If reinvigorated, blue states still enjoy physical legacies like the ports of Los Angeles and New York, the residual brainpower in the universities, and existing tech firms, critical for the startup economy, as well as unmatched cultural and media assets. Simply put, things too evolved for Dallas to ever offer the cultural and entertainment values of New York, nor can Florida weather come close to the perfection that Californians, particularly on the coast, enjoy.
There’s always the chance that the red states will undermine their political gains by pushing positions—such as bans on abortion—that will lead to some hesitancy on the part of younger people to move to their states. A return to cultural values of the nineteenth century has little appeal. But none of this will matter much if blue states can’t walk back progressive ideas and follow more traditional liberal approaches again. No matter how much sanity can reassert itself, the shift of power and wealth is already in place, but it’s just a question of the scale of this power shift and how it shapes American reality in the future.
News of the Times;
US admits it spread disinformation about Covid vaccine:
https://www.rt.com/news/601714-pentagon-admits-vaccine-disinformation/
The twisted psychology of Covid mask-wearing:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-08-14-psychology-of-covid-mask-wearing-democrats-liberals.html
Harris campaign mandates COVID-19 vaccine for employees:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/harris-campaign-mandates-covid-19-vaccine-employees
AP Publishes Hilarious Headline:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/08/13/ap-publishes-hilarious-headline-news-outlets-were-leaked-insider-material-from-the-trump-campaign-they-chose-not-to-print-it/
Excessive Internet Use Disrupts Key Parts Of The Teenage Brain:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/excessive-internet-use-disrupts-key-parts-teenage-brain
Automakers Sold Drivers' Data for Shockingly Low Amounts of Money:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61711288/automakers-sold-customer-data-for-small-profits/
Gun Control Industry Shoving Their Cash at the Kamala Harris Campaign:
https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/2024/07/29/gun-control-industry-shoving-their-cash-at-the-kamala-harris-campaign/
Meet the Trans-Identifying Male Felons:
https://archive.is/2cK8I#selection-687.0-687.77
Bidenflation Finally Takes a Bite Out of McDonald's:
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/07/30/bidenflation-finally-takes-a-bite-out-of-mcdonalds-n4931180
Charges against pro-Hamas rioters have routinely been dropped nationwide:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/charges-against-pro-hamas-rioters-have-routinely-been-dropped-nationwide/
Biden's Illegal Alien Flight Program Halted:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/08/02/bidens-illegal-alien-flight-program-halted-due-to-rampant-fraud-n2642897
Army chaplain taken to hospital following stabbing:
https://gript.ie/army-chaplain-taken-to-hospital-following-stabbing-outside-galway-barracks/
CNN value collapses to near ZERO:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-08-12-cnn-value-collapses-zero-warner-bros-writedown.html
Teachers’ Minn. pension fund under Tim Walz ‘cooking the books’:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/10/us-news/teachers-minn-pension-fund-under-tim-walz-cooking-the-books-by-vastly-underreporting-madoff-miracle/
Secret Service Agent Abandoned Post at North Carolina Trump Event to Nurse Her Baby:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/report-secret-service-agent-abandoned-post-north-carolina/
Hollow?
Horrible day on Wall Street.
I tried to call my broker, he had changed his number!
*.*
Demi Moore has teamed up with digestive health company Wonderbelly to promote the normalization of flatulence.
No, I'm not pulling your finger.
*.*
PYONGYANG — Olympic fever swept over the Hermit Kingdom faster than a winter famine this year as the nation celebrated the astonishing accomplishments of the North Korean Olympic Team in Paris. To date, the team, composed exclusively of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, has reportedly been awarded “all the gold medals,” according to state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun.
“The divine athleticism of our Dear Leader has shocked the war mongering West, who reek of gun powder and Gatorade, and brought honor and glory to the people of True Korea,” said Kim Il-guk, President of the DPRK’s Olympic Committee and Concentration Camp Manager for Families of Losing Athletes. “I saw it with my own eyes.”
He then went into great detail about how, despite a torrential downpour and bolts of “heavenly lightning that cowed everyone else,” the North Korean leader executed flawless, gazelle-like leaps during the 110- and 400-meter hurdles.
*.*
Top 5 Possible Slogans for the Upcoming Democratic Convention:
"Ignore What We Said Earlier. We're going with this one!"
"We're The Party Without Those Two."
"Done Watching the Olympics' Disaster, Check This Out!"
"Anyone Know We're Even Doing This?"
"It's Pronounced KAM-uh-luh"
*.*
I sat quietly with my own thoughts today.
Remind me never to do that again.
Quote of the Times;
Americans and Afrikaners are “colonizers” on “stolen land” despite 400+ years of presence in America and South Africa. But the Rwandan immigrant who murdered British children is “Native Welsh”. - @Klaus_Arminius
Link of the Times;
Candace Owens: ‘Blackmail Ring Has Been Running the World’:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/candace-owens-blackmail-ring-has-been-running-the-world/
Issue of the Times;
The Hollow Kingdom by Christopher F. Rufo
A dispatch from London on the brink of chaos.
I have spent the past week in London. The city’s transformation, which I had followed only abstractly in the newspapers, has prompted a visceral shock.
“I haven’t been to London since I was a student,” I told a group of British journalists. “What the hell happened?”
“The fact that you would ask such a question,” one responded, “is an act of racism.” The others laughed.
The unstated premise of the joke was that everyone knows what the hell happened—mass immigration—but no one is allowed to speak about it. The statistics reveal the general trend. Since my last visit nearly two decades ago, the White British population of London has declined from 60 percent to 37 percent. Meantime, the Muslim population of London has nearly doubled, and migrants from South Asia and Africa have entrenched themselves throughout the city.
Anglos have been a minority for more than a decade. What I’ve observed in the city this week has amazed me. Women’s eyes peering through the slit of black niqabs. A procession of sub-Saharan Africans traversing Westminster Bridge, waving the flags of their homelands and demanding reparations. Street corners that could be confused for Peshawar or Islamabad. Districts in which one could pass an entire day with barely a glimpse of an Englishman.
These are facts. There is nothing inherently racist or antiracist about them. The question is one of perspective. England’s progressives would have one believe that these snapshots represent the triumph of diversity. But this position appears increasingly untenable.
For good reason. England, unlike the United States, does not have a long history of assimilating others. And many of the country’s migrants—in particular, the large Muslim population—are among the most difficult populations to integrate.
From a critical perspective, the history of mass migration in Britain is a history of civil tension, punctuated by violence: riots, terrorism, murder, rape. Events of this week have brought this suppressed conflict to the surface once again.
The day after my conversation with the British journalists, England broke out in another round of riots. A first-generation Rwandan teenager had stabbed three young girls to death, prompting British nationalists and Muslim counter-protesters into the streets. The resulting clashes led to significant property damage and nearly 400 arrests. The country’s left-wing prime minister, Keir Starmer, has signaled his support for suppressing the nationalists.
A question lies buried under these events: What makes a nation? And what is the relationship between its content and its form?
It’s easy to understand why migrants from Somalia or Pakistan would select England as their destination. The political, economic, and cultural form of their home countries is a disaster. In England, by contrast, these migrants are able to secure an income, often including public benefits, and enjoy the fruits of a developed, modern, peaceful country.
The predominant theory among Western elites is that the content of mass migration—the particular people, and the culture they bring—is irrelevant. All groups are equal. Individuals are interchangeable. To think otherwise is to engage in bigotry.
This logic has a whiff of liberalism, but only in the most reductive, naïve sense. The truth is that, even if we believe in the principle that all men are created equal, this does not mean that all cultures are equal or interchangeable—far from it. The structure of a civilization is a delicate thing. Changing its citizens will, over time, change its form.
This process is underway in London. The buildings, avenues, and palaces look the same as before; there is still a parliament, a king, and the pound. But the central city feels hollowed out. The old connection between citizen and nation has been altered. The old bonds of culture have been frayed.
The situation in London recalls the Ship of Theseus, a thought experiment that asks whether, if every part of a ship is replaced, it is the same ship in the end. The answer, in our case, is a confident “no.” England without the Englishman would no longer be England. The form—parliamentary democracy, economic growth, liberal culture—might hold for a time, but eventually, it would give way, too.
News of the Times;
Historian unearths solid evidence:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/671084
Zelensky Bombs Zaporozhye Nuke Plant:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-81124-desperate-for-escalation
Here's the Headline 14 Years After:
https://twitchy.com/dougp/2024/07/20/heres-the-headline-just-15-years-after-dems-hailed-affordable-care-act-passage-n2398588
UK judge upholds ban on puberty blockers:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/3102612/uk-judge-upholds-ban-puberty-blockers-for-gender-dysphoria-children/
Harris Campaign Busted Spoofing News Outlets In Headline-Altering Ad Scheme:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/harris-campaign-busted-spoofing-news-outlets-headline-altering-ad-scheme
Tests confirm humans tramped around North America more than 20,000 years ago:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/10/05/tests-confirm-humans-tramped-around-north-america-more-than-20-000-years-ago/
Journalist Who Criticized Aaron Rodgers for His Views on COVID-19 Vaccines:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/journalist-who-criticized-aaron-rodgers-his-repeated-conspiracy/
Gina Carano Lawsuit Initial Judgment Reveals:
https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/gina-carano-lawsuit-initial-judgment
Brendan Depa who severely beat teacher over Nintendo Switch sentenced to five years:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/07/us-news/hulking-florida-teen-brendan-depa-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-for-attacking-teacher-over-nintendo-switch/
Dr John Money and the sinister origins of gender ideology:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/05/dr-john-money-and-the-sinister-origins-of-gender-ideology/
"Millions" Wasted On Electric School Busses:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/millions-wasted-electric-school-busses-maryland-pivots-back-diesel
Christians arrested in Paris for riding bus protesting Olympics:
https://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-arrested-in-paris-for-bus-protesting-olympic-ceremony.html
Tim Walz Was Dead Wrong:
https://reason.com/2024/08/08/tim-walz-was-dead-wrong-about-misinformation-and-free-speech/
Caught On Camera Allegedly Attempting To Meet 13 Year Old Boy:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bronx-ada-resigns-after-being-caught-camera-allegedly-attempting-meet-13-year-old-boy
Brits Are Being Arrested for Social Media Posts Now:
https://www.lucianne.com/2024/08/09/brits_are_being_arrested_for_social_media_posts_now_133612.html
I tried to call my broker, he had changed his number!
*.*
Demi Moore has teamed up with digestive health company Wonderbelly to promote the normalization of flatulence.
No, I'm not pulling your finger.
*.*
PYONGYANG — Olympic fever swept over the Hermit Kingdom faster than a winter famine this year as the nation celebrated the astonishing accomplishments of the North Korean Olympic Team in Paris. To date, the team, composed exclusively of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, has reportedly been awarded “all the gold medals,” according to state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun.
“The divine athleticism of our Dear Leader has shocked the war mongering West, who reek of gun powder and Gatorade, and brought honor and glory to the people of True Korea,” said Kim Il-guk, President of the DPRK’s Olympic Committee and Concentration Camp Manager for Families of Losing Athletes. “I saw it with my own eyes.”
He then went into great detail about how, despite a torrential downpour and bolts of “heavenly lightning that cowed everyone else,” the North Korean leader executed flawless, gazelle-like leaps during the 110- and 400-meter hurdles.
*.*
Top 5 Possible Slogans for the Upcoming Democratic Convention:
"Ignore What We Said Earlier. We're going with this one!"
"We're The Party Without Those Two."
"Done Watching the Olympics' Disaster, Check This Out!"
"Anyone Know We're Even Doing This?"
"It's Pronounced KAM-uh-luh"
*.*
I sat quietly with my own thoughts today.
Remind me never to do that again.
Quote of the Times;
Americans and Afrikaners are “colonizers” on “stolen land” despite 400+ years of presence in America and South Africa. But the Rwandan immigrant who murdered British children is “Native Welsh”. - @Klaus_Arminius
Link of the Times;
Candace Owens: ‘Blackmail Ring Has Been Running the World’:
https://vigilantnews.com/post/candace-owens-blackmail-ring-has-been-running-the-world/
Issue of the Times;
The Hollow Kingdom by Christopher F. Rufo
A dispatch from London on the brink of chaos.
I have spent the past week in London. The city’s transformation, which I had followed only abstractly in the newspapers, has prompted a visceral shock.
“I haven’t been to London since I was a student,” I told a group of British journalists. “What the hell happened?”
“The fact that you would ask such a question,” one responded, “is an act of racism.” The others laughed.
The unstated premise of the joke was that everyone knows what the hell happened—mass immigration—but no one is allowed to speak about it. The statistics reveal the general trend. Since my last visit nearly two decades ago, the White British population of London has declined from 60 percent to 37 percent. Meantime, the Muslim population of London has nearly doubled, and migrants from South Asia and Africa have entrenched themselves throughout the city.
Anglos have been a minority for more than a decade. What I’ve observed in the city this week has amazed me. Women’s eyes peering through the slit of black niqabs. A procession of sub-Saharan Africans traversing Westminster Bridge, waving the flags of their homelands and demanding reparations. Street corners that could be confused for Peshawar or Islamabad. Districts in which one could pass an entire day with barely a glimpse of an Englishman.
These are facts. There is nothing inherently racist or antiracist about them. The question is one of perspective. England’s progressives would have one believe that these snapshots represent the triumph of diversity. But this position appears increasingly untenable.
For good reason. England, unlike the United States, does not have a long history of assimilating others. And many of the country’s migrants—in particular, the large Muslim population—are among the most difficult populations to integrate.
From a critical perspective, the history of mass migration in Britain is a history of civil tension, punctuated by violence: riots, terrorism, murder, rape. Events of this week have brought this suppressed conflict to the surface once again.
The day after my conversation with the British journalists, England broke out in another round of riots. A first-generation Rwandan teenager had stabbed three young girls to death, prompting British nationalists and Muslim counter-protesters into the streets. The resulting clashes led to significant property damage and nearly 400 arrests. The country’s left-wing prime minister, Keir Starmer, has signaled his support for suppressing the nationalists.
A question lies buried under these events: What makes a nation? And what is the relationship between its content and its form?
It’s easy to understand why migrants from Somalia or Pakistan would select England as their destination. The political, economic, and cultural form of their home countries is a disaster. In England, by contrast, these migrants are able to secure an income, often including public benefits, and enjoy the fruits of a developed, modern, peaceful country.
The predominant theory among Western elites is that the content of mass migration—the particular people, and the culture they bring—is irrelevant. All groups are equal. Individuals are interchangeable. To think otherwise is to engage in bigotry.
This logic has a whiff of liberalism, but only in the most reductive, naïve sense. The truth is that, even if we believe in the principle that all men are created equal, this does not mean that all cultures are equal or interchangeable—far from it. The structure of a civilization is a delicate thing. Changing its citizens will, over time, change its form.
This process is underway in London. The buildings, avenues, and palaces look the same as before; there is still a parliament, a king, and the pound. But the central city feels hollowed out. The old connection between citizen and nation has been altered. The old bonds of culture have been frayed.
The situation in London recalls the Ship of Theseus, a thought experiment that asks whether, if every part of a ship is replaced, it is the same ship in the end. The answer, in our case, is a confident “no.” England without the Englishman would no longer be England. The form—parliamentary democracy, economic growth, liberal culture—might hold for a time, but eventually, it would give way, too.
News of the Times;
Historian unearths solid evidence:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/671084
Zelensky Bombs Zaporozhye Nuke Plant:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-81124-desperate-for-escalation
Here's the Headline 14 Years After:
https://twitchy.com/dougp/2024/07/20/heres-the-headline-just-15-years-after-dems-hailed-affordable-care-act-passage-n2398588
UK judge upholds ban on puberty blockers:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/3102612/uk-judge-upholds-ban-puberty-blockers-for-gender-dysphoria-children/
Harris Campaign Busted Spoofing News Outlets In Headline-Altering Ad Scheme:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/harris-campaign-busted-spoofing-news-outlets-headline-altering-ad-scheme
Tests confirm humans tramped around North America more than 20,000 years ago:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/10/05/tests-confirm-humans-tramped-around-north-america-more-than-20-000-years-ago/
Journalist Who Criticized Aaron Rodgers for His Views on COVID-19 Vaccines:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/journalist-who-criticized-aaron-rodgers-his-repeated-conspiracy/
Gina Carano Lawsuit Initial Judgment Reveals:
https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/gina-carano-lawsuit-initial-judgment
Brendan Depa who severely beat teacher over Nintendo Switch sentenced to five years:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/07/us-news/hulking-florida-teen-brendan-depa-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-for-attacking-teacher-over-nintendo-switch/
Dr John Money and the sinister origins of gender ideology:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/05/dr-john-money-and-the-sinister-origins-of-gender-ideology/
"Millions" Wasted On Electric School Busses:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/millions-wasted-electric-school-busses-maryland-pivots-back-diesel
Christians arrested in Paris for riding bus protesting Olympics:
https://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-arrested-in-paris-for-bus-protesting-olympic-ceremony.html
Tim Walz Was Dead Wrong:
https://reason.com/2024/08/08/tim-walz-was-dead-wrong-about-misinformation-and-free-speech/
Caught On Camera Allegedly Attempting To Meet 13 Year Old Boy:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bronx-ada-resigns-after-being-caught-camera-allegedly-attempting-meet-13-year-old-boy
Brits Are Being Arrested for Social Media Posts Now:
https://www.lucianne.com/2024/08/09/brits_are_being_arrested_for_social_media_posts_now_133612.html
Striving?
The top six foods that make your fart are beans, corn, bell peppers, cauliflower, cabbage and milk.
Or, as my co-workers like to call it, "Lunch!"
*.*
According to GQ magazine, 28% of men do gamble at least once a year without telling their wives.
What are the odds?
Oh and don't tell my wife I asked...
*.*
The Department of Defense has run out of funding after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin blew roughly $300 billion at a Las Vegas blackjack table, sources confirmed today.
“This is not the time to cast judgment, because everyone makes mistakes,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. “The Department of Defense has come back from worst and we all need to just tighten our belts for a little bit and hold out for new funding.”
According to defense officials, a slightly irritated Austin was found at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas awaiting his 3 a.m. Frontier Airlines flight.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never thought it would be a good idea to split 10s,” the secretary remarked sternly. “Sometimes the best way to learn is to just jump off the deep end and figure it out, and I’m now a better man for it so it’s probably best we just move on and forget it ever happened."
When asked why he would use DOD funds instead of personal funds, he explained to reporters: “My credit card is a Citi card, so I accidentally used my [Government Travel Card] instead, a silly mistake that service members make all the time.”
*.*
When you think about it, if you have an actual "House of Dragons," wouldn't that be really hard to keep clean?
*.*
I just ate what I thought was a feta cheese crumble from my salad off my shirt.
Turns out it was deodorant.
How's your day going?
Quote of the Times;
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." - Yogi Berra
Link of the Times;
Enraged Butler Cop On Bodycam Says He Told Secret Service To Cover Warehouse:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-fking-told-them-enraged-butler-cop-bodycam-says-he-told-secret-service-cover-warehouse
Issue of the Times;
The End of Israel by The Zman https://thezman.com/wordpress/
One of the myths of the 20th century that is slowly starting to wither away is the one about Israel just striving to exist. Since the wars of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the narrative has been that Israel is this plucky democracy fighting for its existence in the midst of savage not-democracies. The line, “Israel has a right to exist” has been the company slogan for Israel Inc. for close to fifty years now. Over the last year this official narrative, like so many others, has started to collapse.
It is clear at this point that Israel is not the victim of aggression, but the primary instigator of conflict in the region. The assassination of the Gaza leader in Tehran, on its face, is an unjustified act of war. Ismail Haniyeh was not just the lead negotiator for Gaza, but the most dovish of the Palestinian leaders with regards to making a deal with the Israeli government. The only reason to kill him was to foreclose further negotiations over Gaza and to bait the Iranians into war.
The Israelis, the Zionist and their supporters in the West will claim that there can be no peace as long as Hamas exists, so they are acting in self-defense when they assassinate the people on the other side of the peacemaking table. They also argue that there can be no peace as long as Iran exists as an Iranian state, so they are acting in self-defense when they attack Iran. Currently, they are arguing for Israel to pre-emptively attack Iran before Iran retaliates.
What we are seeing is an evolution of that myth from the 20th century. The original myth was that Israel just wanted to exist and it was the Arab world that refused to acknowledge Israeli’s right to exist. All the Arabs needed to do was not make war on Israel and there would be peace in the region. Now, the narrative is that Israel must make war on the region in order to secure peace. We have gone from supporting the plucky underdog to backing the savage master.
It is similar to an observation by Christopher Caldwell regarding the programs that sprouted from the civil rights revolution. It was first argued that these programs must be supported because their beneficiaries are too weak. Now it is argued that these programs must be supported because they are too strong. We see this with Israel. Fifty years ago, the Washington political class supported Israel because she was weak. Now they support Israel because the Israel lobby is too strong.
The thing is though, regimes in serious trouble often go on the offensive thinking it will lead to some breakthrough or change the situation in some way. Armies that are beaten will often stage one last great offensive. Ideological regimes will crack down on dissent, like we are seeing in the West. The Israel lobby is proudly intervening in American elections, because it fears support is faltering. Israel seeks war with Iran, because is it very unstable domestically.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/missouri-cori-bush-primary-bell-aipac-israel
There is no question that the ground has shifted over the last year with regards to support for Israel in the West, particularly America. In the United States, where it matters most, unconditional support for Israel is now limited to old white conservatives, primarily located in the Bible belt. Everyone else ranges from Israel fatigue to outright hostility to Israel. The actuarial tables tell us that support for Israel among American is in a death spiral that cannot be arrested.
This coincides with the decline of the American empire, especially in the Middle East, where decades of intervention have exhausted the military and exhausted the American people’s patience with the topic. The days of the American empire dictating policy to the region are drawing to a close. This is why Israel is desperate to start a regional war with the Iranians. They think it will bring their patron back into the region, even though it is clear that this is highly unrealistic.
On the domestic side, an area that gets little attention, Israel has some profoundly serious internal divisions. This post by Alastair Crooke describes some of it.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/08/05/the-1948-irgun-re-born/
The current Israeli government is caught in a vice. One jaw is the reality of the situation with regards to Israel and the Arabs and the other jaw is that “an eschatological Right-wing cult now holds the majority in cabinet – and wields a vigilante militia ready to attack the military establishment, and the Israeli state.”
The ideological cross currents within Israel reflect the demographic collapse that has been underway for a couple of generations. The once dominant Ashkenazi Jews, these are the Jews of the diaspora, are now in steep decline largely due to their low fertility rates and the relative high fertility rates of the other groups, particularly the ultra-orthodox and the Mizrahi Jews. These are the Jews who never left the Middle East, and who hold an expansive view of greater Israel.
The result of all of this is a hyper-aggressive Israel that is seeking a big war with all of its local enemies and a hyper-aggressive Israel lobby in the United States that is aggressively interfering in elections. One result is the collapse of the old narrative where Israel is the plucky democracy in a world of antagonistic not-democracies. In its place is a new narrative where Israel is instigating the final conflagration to settle all of these outstanding issues for good.
What all of this tells us is that Israel is in deep trouble. The underlying reason for it is the country was born in war. Countries that are the creation of war tend to end in war because they must always seek war. For Israel, “normal” is the endless state of emergency, the constant fear of another attack. This dovetailed well with the diaspora fear of you know who jumping out of the history books. It has evolved to the point where Project Israel cannot exist in peace, so it must seek war.
How this ends is not clear. The geezers currently running Israel must eventually give way to a new generation, but that new generation is more war-like and vastly less sophisticated about global matters. On the other hand, the Arab world is young and increasingly sophisticated about how the world is changing. Can the Israelis figure out how to live in the new world or will they seek to take the rest of the world with them into the abyss of the dying old world?
News of the Times;
Tim Walz Replaced MN State Flag:
https://nationalfile.com/tim-walz-replaced-mn-state-flag-with-somali-symbolism/
Medicare's Real Contribution:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/medicares-real-contribution-hollowing-out-healthcare
A Swim in the Sewer:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/how_do_you_match_the_disgusting_display_at_the_olympic_opening.html
California’s New Law Lets Schools Keep Secrets:
https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-california-gender-law-newsom
Von der Leyen commission loses Covid vaccine case:
https://www.rt.com/news/601236-eu-hide-details-covid-vaccines/
Wind Farm Operations Shut Down By Feds:
https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/vineyard-wind-reports-turbine-blade-damage-in-offshore-incident
Police report details what led to arrest of former Phoenix Suns player:
https://www.azfamily.com/2024/07/16/police-report-details-what-led-arrest-former-phoenix-suns-player-scottsdale/
TikToker Who Urged Migrants To Invade US Homes:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/illegal-alien-tiktoker-who-urged-migrants-invade-us-homes-reportedly-worked-venezuelas
‘Really, Really Difficult’:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/19/really-really-difficult-bureaucrats-worry-behind-closed-doors-theyll-be-sent-packing-under-trump/amp/
The FBI Set Everything Up:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/fbi-set-everything-up-they-wrote-script-whitmer/
Russia’s New ‘Combat Icebreaker’ Heads For Sea Trials:
https://gcaptain.com/russias-new-combat-icebreaker-heads-for-sea-trials/
The Hundred Years’ War and the English colonisation of France:
https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-hundred-years-war-and-the-english
Nearly Half of German Welfare Payments Goes to Foreign Migrants:
https://modernity.news/2024/07/11/nearly-half-of-german-welfare-payments-goes-to-foreign-migrants/
West Jerusalem has accused the 27-year-old model:
https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/601399-adidas-bella-hadid-israel/
Tim Walz’s Lutheran Church is a Trainwreck of Heresy:
https://protestia.com/2024/08/07/vice-president-pick-tim-walzs-lutheran-church-is-a-trainwreck-of-heresy-and-blasphemy/
Or, as my co-workers like to call it, "Lunch!"
*.*
According to GQ magazine, 28% of men do gamble at least once a year without telling their wives.
What are the odds?
Oh and don't tell my wife I asked...
*.*
The Department of Defense has run out of funding after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin blew roughly $300 billion at a Las Vegas blackjack table, sources confirmed today.
“This is not the time to cast judgment, because everyone makes mistakes,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. “The Department of Defense has come back from worst and we all need to just tighten our belts for a little bit and hold out for new funding.”
According to defense officials, a slightly irritated Austin was found at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas awaiting his 3 a.m. Frontier Airlines flight.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never thought it would be a good idea to split 10s,” the secretary remarked sternly. “Sometimes the best way to learn is to just jump off the deep end and figure it out, and I’m now a better man for it so it’s probably best we just move on and forget it ever happened."
When asked why he would use DOD funds instead of personal funds, he explained to reporters: “My credit card is a Citi card, so I accidentally used my [Government Travel Card] instead, a silly mistake that service members make all the time.”
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When you think about it, if you have an actual "House of Dragons," wouldn't that be really hard to keep clean?
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I just ate what I thought was a feta cheese crumble from my salad off my shirt.
Turns out it was deodorant.
How's your day going?
Quote of the Times;
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." - Yogi Berra
Link of the Times;
Enraged Butler Cop On Bodycam Says He Told Secret Service To Cover Warehouse:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-fking-told-them-enraged-butler-cop-bodycam-says-he-told-secret-service-cover-warehouse
Issue of the Times;
The End of Israel by The Zman https://thezman.com/wordpress/
One of the myths of the 20th century that is slowly starting to wither away is the one about Israel just striving to exist. Since the wars of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the narrative has been that Israel is this plucky democracy fighting for its existence in the midst of savage not-democracies. The line, “Israel has a right to exist” has been the company slogan for Israel Inc. for close to fifty years now. Over the last year this official narrative, like so many others, has started to collapse.
It is clear at this point that Israel is not the victim of aggression, but the primary instigator of conflict in the region. The assassination of the Gaza leader in Tehran, on its face, is an unjustified act of war. Ismail Haniyeh was not just the lead negotiator for Gaza, but the most dovish of the Palestinian leaders with regards to making a deal with the Israeli government. The only reason to kill him was to foreclose further negotiations over Gaza and to bait the Iranians into war.
The Israelis, the Zionist and their supporters in the West will claim that there can be no peace as long as Hamas exists, so they are acting in self-defense when they assassinate the people on the other side of the peacemaking table. They also argue that there can be no peace as long as Iran exists as an Iranian state, so they are acting in self-defense when they attack Iran. Currently, they are arguing for Israel to pre-emptively attack Iran before Iran retaliates.
What we are seeing is an evolution of that myth from the 20th century. The original myth was that Israel just wanted to exist and it was the Arab world that refused to acknowledge Israeli’s right to exist. All the Arabs needed to do was not make war on Israel and there would be peace in the region. Now, the narrative is that Israel must make war on the region in order to secure peace. We have gone from supporting the plucky underdog to backing the savage master.
It is similar to an observation by Christopher Caldwell regarding the programs that sprouted from the civil rights revolution. It was first argued that these programs must be supported because their beneficiaries are too weak. Now it is argued that these programs must be supported because they are too strong. We see this with Israel. Fifty years ago, the Washington political class supported Israel because she was weak. Now they support Israel because the Israel lobby is too strong.
The thing is though, regimes in serious trouble often go on the offensive thinking it will lead to some breakthrough or change the situation in some way. Armies that are beaten will often stage one last great offensive. Ideological regimes will crack down on dissent, like we are seeing in the West. The Israel lobby is proudly intervening in American elections, because it fears support is faltering. Israel seeks war with Iran, because is it very unstable domestically.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/missouri-cori-bush-primary-bell-aipac-israel
There is no question that the ground has shifted over the last year with regards to support for Israel in the West, particularly America. In the United States, where it matters most, unconditional support for Israel is now limited to old white conservatives, primarily located in the Bible belt. Everyone else ranges from Israel fatigue to outright hostility to Israel. The actuarial tables tell us that support for Israel among American is in a death spiral that cannot be arrested.
This coincides with the decline of the American empire, especially in the Middle East, where decades of intervention have exhausted the military and exhausted the American people’s patience with the topic. The days of the American empire dictating policy to the region are drawing to a close. This is why Israel is desperate to start a regional war with the Iranians. They think it will bring their patron back into the region, even though it is clear that this is highly unrealistic.
On the domestic side, an area that gets little attention, Israel has some profoundly serious internal divisions. This post by Alastair Crooke describes some of it.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/08/05/the-1948-irgun-re-born/
The current Israeli government is caught in a vice. One jaw is the reality of the situation with regards to Israel and the Arabs and the other jaw is that “an eschatological Right-wing cult now holds the majority in cabinet – and wields a vigilante militia ready to attack the military establishment, and the Israeli state.”
The ideological cross currents within Israel reflect the demographic collapse that has been underway for a couple of generations. The once dominant Ashkenazi Jews, these are the Jews of the diaspora, are now in steep decline largely due to their low fertility rates and the relative high fertility rates of the other groups, particularly the ultra-orthodox and the Mizrahi Jews. These are the Jews who never left the Middle East, and who hold an expansive view of greater Israel.
The result of all of this is a hyper-aggressive Israel that is seeking a big war with all of its local enemies and a hyper-aggressive Israel lobby in the United States that is aggressively interfering in elections. One result is the collapse of the old narrative where Israel is the plucky democracy in a world of antagonistic not-democracies. In its place is a new narrative where Israel is instigating the final conflagration to settle all of these outstanding issues for good.
What all of this tells us is that Israel is in deep trouble. The underlying reason for it is the country was born in war. Countries that are the creation of war tend to end in war because they must always seek war. For Israel, “normal” is the endless state of emergency, the constant fear of another attack. This dovetailed well with the diaspora fear of you know who jumping out of the history books. It has evolved to the point where Project Israel cannot exist in peace, so it must seek war.
How this ends is not clear. The geezers currently running Israel must eventually give way to a new generation, but that new generation is more war-like and vastly less sophisticated about global matters. On the other hand, the Arab world is young and increasingly sophisticated about how the world is changing. Can the Israelis figure out how to live in the new world or will they seek to take the rest of the world with them into the abyss of the dying old world?
News of the Times;
Tim Walz Replaced MN State Flag:
https://nationalfile.com/tim-walz-replaced-mn-state-flag-with-somali-symbolism/
Medicare's Real Contribution:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/medicares-real-contribution-hollowing-out-healthcare
A Swim in the Sewer:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/how_do_you_match_the_disgusting_display_at_the_olympic_opening.html
California’s New Law Lets Schools Keep Secrets:
https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-california-gender-law-newsom
Von der Leyen commission loses Covid vaccine case:
https://www.rt.com/news/601236-eu-hide-details-covid-vaccines/
Wind Farm Operations Shut Down By Feds:
https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/vineyard-wind-reports-turbine-blade-damage-in-offshore-incident
Police report details what led to arrest of former Phoenix Suns player:
https://www.azfamily.com/2024/07/16/police-report-details-what-led-arrest-former-phoenix-suns-player-scottsdale/
TikToker Who Urged Migrants To Invade US Homes:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/illegal-alien-tiktoker-who-urged-migrants-invade-us-homes-reportedly-worked-venezuelas
‘Really, Really Difficult’:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/19/really-really-difficult-bureaucrats-worry-behind-closed-doors-theyll-be-sent-packing-under-trump/amp/
The FBI Set Everything Up:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/fbi-set-everything-up-they-wrote-script-whitmer/
Russia’s New ‘Combat Icebreaker’ Heads For Sea Trials:
https://gcaptain.com/russias-new-combat-icebreaker-heads-for-sea-trials/
The Hundred Years’ War and the English colonisation of France:
https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-hundred-years-war-and-the-english
Nearly Half of German Welfare Payments Goes to Foreign Migrants:
https://modernity.news/2024/07/11/nearly-half-of-german-welfare-payments-goes-to-foreign-migrants/
West Jerusalem has accused the 27-year-old model:
https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/601399-adidas-bella-hadid-israel/
Tim Walz’s Lutheran Church is a Trainwreck of Heresy:
https://protestia.com/2024/08/07/vice-president-pick-tim-walzs-lutheran-church-is-a-trainwreck-of-heresy-and-blasphemy/
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And someone shot a duck.
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No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.