Yes, it’s been a while. After the first two weeks of October off, the workload was crushing. Our first cold Saturday, all practice paperwork and phone calls made, patients discharged, the gas logs are sputtering (sorry, Western Europe, thank Brandon’s handlers and NATO) and after watching Ole Miss go limp against Alabama, the Khaleesi and I are settling in to see if the perennially underperforming Longhorns can shake off their inbred mediocrity against the unbeaten Frogs (my money is on the Horned, not Horns).
Tonight's bourbon selection is Noble Oak…moderately priced, relatively smooth. Just three fingers, chasing some keto hot chocolate, as I’m loaded up on drugs for my change-of-weather head cold.
Let’s jump into it, shall we? So much has happened since my last post, but really, has anything changed? Russia continues to wait for the ground to freeze, while Western Europe begins to. Midterms have come and almost gone, the Red Wave more like a Red Mirage. Arizona just declared for Kelly, who interestingly wants to forget the past, a lot like Brown's Emily Oster and the “Pandemic Amnesty” she literally wailed for in her recent Atlantic piece.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mark-kelly-ap-blake-masters-joe-biden-donald-trump-b2223913.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/
The balance of power in the Senate now resides in Nevada and Georgia, pending a runoff election December 6 (could Walker’s campaign have been more mismanaged?), and something like 23 House seats are up for grabs.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/votes-remain-long-count-key-midterm-races/story?id=92998570
Anyone want to wager how many of those contested races go Republican? Yeah, me neither. But even if they do, what really changes? Right, nothing. Even when Republicans have held both houses and 1600 Pennsylvania, very little has changed. The GOP very quickly isolates and ostracizes firebrands and potential agents of change. Note to J D Vance: You gon’ learn, boy. The Senate Majority Leader, the “Honorable” Low-T Turkey Neck Mitch McConnell, makes sure this message is hammered home to whomever might upset the apple cart
I know they were imperfect candidates (the favorite GOP kind, like Mehmet Oz), but anyone declaring for political office is, until proven otherwise, a narcissistic sociopath. People who vote GOP tend to be repulsed by the world of politics, and thus do not seek office. This has been described this quite eloquently by Freidrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom
https://mises.org/library/worst-top
Mitch ultimately wants nothing to change. The money stream is too rich. Why? Well, his wife, of course, a much trumpeted diversity/patronage hire as Secretary of Labor under Dubya (the Bush family has been nothing but a pox on this country, but that’s a post for another day). Mitch went soft on the CCP a long time ago
https://thenewamerican.com/are-mitch-mcconnell-and-his-wife-financially-tied-to-communist-china/
Her family builds ships for the CCP in Shanghai. She's Taiwanese, you say? That doesn’t matter considering the sums of money involved. As an an aside, see this 60 Minutes Australia piece on Taiwan for a current update on things there ( I only include it because it is timely)….
https://youtu.be/hGOpZeU7GA8
Money drives it all. Honor, patriotism, courage….those are long-dead letters in American politics. And the Democrats have understood it and worked it much better than their zombie GOP brethren in the Uniparty. A lot of evidence suggests that JFK was killed for it
https://www.fff.org/2022/02/22/why-they-hated-kennedy-and-why-they-killed-him/
Befriending the Soviets was a bit much for me, but it was preferable to nuclear war, but what did I know, I was only two years old, drooling on the carpet. Who killed him? Personally, I think it was a jealous admirer of Marilyn, or something like that
You can view the collapse of FTX, as an example, to illustrate how filthy the cesspool of our so-called government has become. I’ve never fully understood how cryptocurrency was any different from the fiat currency in my bank account. One keystroke and it's gone. Poof.
https://nypost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/nypost.com/2022/09/22/jamie-dimon-calls-bitcoin-a-decentralized-ponzi-scheme/amp/
Why is FTX relevant? WELL, how about this?
How do we know this?
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors?cycle=2022
If you go through the Open Secrets site, just $235,200 of that nearly $40million went to GOP candidates. How much of Soros’ $128million do you think went GOP? FTX gets even more interesting when you look at its ties to Ukraine.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/14/ukraine-partners-with-ftx-everstake-to-launch-new-crypto-donation-website/
Seems pretty relevant to contemporary geopolitical events, does it not? Politics is war, and, as von Clausewitz put it
There are few true warriors willing to challenge the narrative in the GOP. Embarrassingly for the genetic males in the party ( I believe it important to make that distinction), the most prominent are two women, Boebert (currently in a tight undeclared race in increasingly blue Colorado) and Taylor-Greene. They are most prominent because they are the most targeted, due to their unwavering female support of the Mango Caeser. The power structure of the MSM/DNC/GOP doesn’t like their kind, and they’re basically on their own. Leviathan doesn’t cotton to renegades. Look what it did to General Patton when he started mouthing off about heading for Moscow in 1945
Ultimately, it will just be a rearranging of the deck chairs, now on Titanic America, as we lurch and hurtle toward our destiny of financial collapse and/or nuclear war, whichever comes first. A double whammy is not out of the question, either.
Well, the Longhorns came through, collapsing at home to the Frogs, 10-17. Consistency provides some comfort, does it not? A lot of folks in the power structure seem to feel that way.
Tempus fugit. Stay frosty, prepare and get your mind right. It’s coming.
Only thing I didn't get done before the freeze is getting a woodstove IN the house.
I really hope I'm not doing an install without electricity during a blizzard. I'm prepared for it, I can do it, but that doesn't mean I want the challenge.
Hell, that's the reason I quit snuff on Labor Day, after almost 30 years of use I didn't want to go through withdrawals during a potential 2- or 3-way shooting match with supply deliveries halted.
A large part of me is somewhat pleased to see the GOP implode in the midterms, rather than a few more years of gridlock. Should the House stay blue I expect to see the whole collapse accelerate and at my age my number of effective years is limited.