Animal’s Daily Trump Arrest? News

Before we get into this, check out the latest installment of Breaking Out over at Glibertarians!

I’m writing this pretty early in Alaska time because I have to leave this morning for some appointments in town, so I haven’t seen any news on the possible arrest of President Donald Trump yet today.  But here are some links, and my thoughts.

Elon Musk predicts Trump will win in a landslide if he is prosecuted.

MAGA voters agree with Musk.  Of course they do!  Could you belabor the obvious any harder, NBC?

Trump calls for protests.

Speaker McCarthy responds.

Trump’s lawyers issue statement.

Then again, maybe not.

Hillary did the same thing, and nothing happened.  This should come as no surprise.

The legacy media just can’t quit Trump.

Surprise new witness!

As of this moment (about 4AM Alaska time) I haven’t heard any news of any warrant issued for President Trump’s arrest.  Maybe someone will have a sudden rush of brains to the head and forgo this shove into banana-republic status, which is exactly what this politically driven persecution is.  But it’s early, and President Trump is still, at this writing, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nod to run for the Imperial Mansion.  We’ll see what happens next!

Goodbye, Blue Monday

Goodbye, Blue Monday!

Thanks as always to Whores and Ale, Pirate’s Cove, The Daley Gator, The Other McCain, Flappr and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!

Programming note:  I’ll have a few things to say about this tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, have a look at this:

What.  An.  Asshole.

I’m fond of the “shoe on the other foot” method of analyzing things like this.  I haven’t seen much out of the legacy media on Biden’s senile ramblings about the Irish – but imagine the reaction if Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis had uttered these exact words.

Look also at the legacy media’s lack of reaction over things like this.  Then imagine if the same charges were leveled at Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley.

You can, of course, apply this test to any number of stories featuring any number of prominent political figures – and use it in conversation, as well.  It can be something of an eye-opener to anyone who is amenable to evaluating actual data.

Rule Five Mexican Drug Cartels Friday

A while back, over at the New English Review, Roger L. Simon (a writer I admire and often, but not always, agree with) wrote about the possibility of turning the U.S. military loose on Mexican drug cartels.  Unsurprisingly, I have some thoughts.  Excerpts, with those thoughts, follow.

If Putin attacks Poland or other NATO members, I reserve the right to change my view, but for now, call me a Ukraine war skeptic. That we are making the world safe for democracy is risible. More likely, it’s a kleptocracy.

Most importantly, no American lives have been threatened by this border conflagration that I can see.

But if you’re worried about American lives, we have a genuine ruthless enemy on our own soil that is murdering our people on a literally unprecedented scale —the Mexican drug cartels.

They do this, as has been widely known for some time, in cahoots with the communist Chinese who send fentanyl—which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin— in raw form to the cartels, which repackage it in colored pills attractive to children or used to lace other, supposedly less dangerous, drugs.

I’m with the author so far.  The border is a festering sore, Mexico is a failed narco-state, and if we leave things as they are it’s just going to get worse.  But then:

At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, former President Donald Trump reiterated that he will shut down the border, presumably finishing the wall, and increase the number of border personnel in various divisions.

New candidate Vivek Ramaswamy went him one better, advocating, at his CPAC speech and elsewhere, that the U.S. military should be called upon to annihilate the cartels.

Ramaswamy is implying that the cartels are basically at war with us, certainly arguable, and should be treated as a military adversary, on our soil and Mexico’s.

I have some questions.  It’s one thing for a civilian politician to advocate for sending American troops into a situation where they will be killing people and breaking things – that is their job, after all – but this instance we are asking them to operate in a foreign country that, almost certainly doesn’t want them there.  There’s a word for that, and the word is “invasion.”

Is Mr. Ramaswamy advocating for an invasion of Mexico?  If so, what’s the exit strategy?  What are the rules of engagement?  How to we identify the bad guys who, one must assume, we are trying not to arrest but to terminate with extreme prejudice?  What will the force structure look like?  Will we send armor and close air support into Mexico? Will we remove the current (failed) government of Mexico and set up something in its place?  Mexico, I would point out, is not Japan; the occupation and reorganization of Japan after World War II largely succeeded because of the culture of respect for and obedience to authority, and because the Emperor supported the reorganization.  Mexico?  Not so much.  Or will we just annex Mexico, give it territorial status, appoint a (military?) governor, and move on from there?

It’s not a matter of military prowess.  The cartels have some modern tech, but what can they do if we identify a compound and send over a couple of B-52s to rain their own particular brand of hell on them?  And I’d love to see a bunch of cartel gun-hands stand up against the 82nd Airborne.  Even as degraded as our military is today, they can handle a bunch of armed thugs – in a straight-up fight, but I doubt the cartels would play it that way.

I’m not terribly surprised to see Lindsey Graham backing the idea – for now.

The reason I’m not convinced by this plan is simple.  Let’s assume Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination next year, and then the Presidency, and is lucky enough to gain a friendly Congress that will authorize all this.  So we invade Mexico – because that’s what we’re talking about – and, halfway through our drive  to the Guatemalan border, halfway through the occupation of Mexico City and the establishment of what will honestly be a puppet government, the balance of power flips and a new Democrat Congress, egged on by President Gavin Newsom, defunds the operation.  Then the President orders the campaign to stop, withdraws the troops, recalls the air support and abandons the mission.

If anyone thinks that can’t happen, I’d ask you to look at what happened in Afghanistan, not all that long ago.  Think hard on what the results of our catastrophic abandonment of Afghanistan were – and picture that on our southern border.

If we were to do anything like this, we’d have to be in it to win it, and that means a long, brutal haul with tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of people dead.  And I have precisely zero faith in the Imperial government to stick it out.

Animal’s Daily Air Traffic Control News

John Stossel has some interesting information on the state of air traffic control in the United States, especially as compared to other nations.  Make sure you read the whole thing, but here are my thoughts:

Asked if America’s air traffic control system is out of date, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg paused a long time before answering, “The system is continuously being upgraded.”

It’s important to note here that “Pothole Pete” Buttigieg is probably the perfect example of a Biden(‘s handlers) Administration official:  Incompetent, not very bright, manifestly a diversity hire.

“This is your government at work,” says Diana Furchtgott-Roth in my latest video. Furchtgott-Roth worked for the Transportation Department during the Trump administration.

I yell at her. “Air traffic control was in your department. You could have fixed it. You should have fixed it!”

She smiles and explains that although she had control of $1 billion, she wasn’t allowed to move those funds to where they were needed.

Government managers must fund projects pushed by politicians, like “Justice40,” meant to fix “underinvestment in disadvantaged communities.”

Of course.  Why try to make anything more modern, more efficient when there are fortunes to be made through graft?

“Sounds like they mean well,” I say.

“It sounds a lot better to talk about social justice,” answers Furchtgott-Roth. “Nuts and bolts like computer hardware for air traffic control gets left behind.”

Computer hardware isn’t left behind in Canada. They got rid of “flight control with paper strips” years ago. That’s because Canada turned air traffic control over to a private company. They switched to an electronic system.

It’s not just Canada that did it. Dozens of countries have privatized or partially privatized.

Computer screens have replaced not-always-clear windows in many air traffic control centers. Controllers don’t use binoculars anymore because high-definition cameras let them see much more, especially at night.

A Government Accountability Office study found that in countries that privatized, there are fewer delays and costs are lower.

So why doesn’t America privatize?

Money.  As Stossel points out:

Because our politicians get money from labor unions, who “advocate for keeping the same people in the same jobs,” says Furchtgott-Roth.

That’s the main thing right there.  And it’s another great argument for doing away with public-sector unions.  This, True Believers, is yet another (they are legion) example of why public-sector unions are a fundamental conflict of interest and should be proscribed by law:  They negotiate their contracts with the same politicians whose campaigns they bankroll, and then meet with those politicians (again, whose campaigns they bankroll) to influence policy.

It’s about graft; it’s always about graft.

Animal’s Hump Day News

Happy Hump Day!

This should come as no surprise.  Excerpt:

As Democrat-run cities across America continue to descend into criminal chaos, the nation’s largest city is hemorrhaging police officers.

In an exclusive story last week, The New York Post published data that shows New York City (NYC) police officers are resigning from their duties at a shocking rate. Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch called it a “staffing emergency” that is “approaching the point of no return.”

The statistics show a 117% increase in retiring officers since 2021.

New York is returning to the 1970s-style shitholery.  Chicago is now a free-fire zone.  Los Angeles and San Francisco are not only allowing, but encouraging bums to shoot up, sleep and poop on the public walkways.  It’s no wonder the constabulary are heading for greener pastures.  And I think we all know how this is likely to end.

And so…

On To the Links!

Wrongthink is now illegal in Britain.

Trump on playing the Dem’s game.  It’s not the worst idea he’s ever had.

National treasure Dr. Victor Davis Hanson on the consequences of eliminating consequences.  Also, March Madness.  Read ’em both!

Why are Chinese billionaires disappearing?

They should give this guy a flying lesson.  If he learns to fly before he hits the ground, great.

Yeah, he’s running.

President Biden(‘s handlers) declare war on business.  Nothing new there, really.

Ook ook!

Duck!

Duck!

Goose!

Seriously, as long as there are local streams full of salmon and trout,  moose in the woods and grouse in the spruce stands, I’m not eating any lab-grown meat.

Eww.  Eww.

Hennepin County, MN actually steals from grandmothers.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Unconstitutional taxes are unconstitutional.

The correct answer is “who gives a shit?”

This Week’s Idiots:

Salon’s Amanda Marcotte (Repeat Offender Alert) is an idiot.

Vox’s Andrew Prokop is an idiot.

The Nation’s John Nichols (Repeat Offender Alert) is an idiot.

The Nation’s Chris Lehmann is an idiot.  Sensing yet another pattern.

Paul Krugman (Repeat Offender Alert) remains a cheap partisan hack, and an idiot.  And this week Krugman doubles down on stupid.

The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan is an idiot.

What an ungrateful prick.  Seriously, fuck that guy.

The New York Times’ Zeynep Tufekci is an idiot.  Seriously, just give it up with the masks already.  I’ll bet this asshole wears a mask while driving alone in his own car.

MSNBC’s Sarah Posner is an idiot.

The Hill’s Bob Lord is an idiot.

This Week’s Cultural Edification:

Stairway to Heaven is a great rock & roll tune.  It’s not the best Led Zeppelin tune; personally I think Kashmir and The Immigrant Song are better.  But Stairway to Heaven is nevertheless a great tune, an immortal piece of rock & roll, and it will certainly outlive all of the original members of Led Zeppelin.

But one of the things that makes Stairway so much fun is the number of bands that have covered it, and the great variety in those covers.  My favorite – which will probably surprise none of you who have been reading these virtual pages – was Frank Zappa’s treatment from the 1991 live album The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life.  Here, then, is that cover; enjoy!

Animal’s Daily 2024 News

Before we get started, check out the latest in my series Breaking Out over at Glibertarians.  Also, if you aren’t checking out the Glibs’ morning and afternoon links posts – you should be!

Now then:  This just in (well, Sunday, actually) from RedState’s Bonchie:  The Democrat 2024 civil war is heating up.  Excerpt:

The Democratic Party has found itself in a precarious position as its long-running internal civil war continues to spill out into the open.

For all the talk of GOP troubles regarding its presidential primary, Democrats find themselves stuck between a senile old man who may not be able to physically run, and the heir apparent, who just so happens to be one of the most unlikable, untalented politicians in history. That’s left party power brokers with basically one option: Continue to play “Weekend at Bernie’s” with Joe Biden no matter what the cost.

They can’t let Harris be the nominee, and they know it. That’s led to a lot of consternation being shared in the press about the vice president’s trouble. Now, some are trying to clean up that mess, and it’s not going well at all.

According to CNN, Harris is not even returning Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s calls at this point.

This all is pretty funny, and would be funnier if it wasn’t so sad.  The great bit is this, though, in an excerpt from the CNN story linked in the excerpt:

But the Warren moment is infuriating many in Harris’s circle: To them, it’s the latest in a long string of snubs to a vice president whom they say has never gotten the respect or support she deserves.

Here’s what CNN gets wrong:  Kamala Harris is (or should be) getting precisely the respect she deserves, which is, none.  She is a poster child for failing upwards.  She rose to political prominence in California on Willy Brown’s penis, furthered her fame by shtupping Montel Williams, and was appointed Joe Biden’s running mate because she has brown skin and a vagina; no other qualifications were required.

And now the Dems are stuck with her.  I’d say she’s the ultimate diversity hire, but the field there is pretty crowded.  I will say this:  the 2024 election is going to be very, very interesting.

Goodbye, Blue Monday

Goodbye, Blue Monday!

Thanks as always to The Other McCain, Pirate’s Cove, The Daley Gator, Whores and Ale, Flappr and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!  As always, if I’ve missed your linkage, let me know in the comments and I’ll add you to the weekly call-out.

OK, it’s not the SMOD (Sweet Meteor of Death) but there is a chance that the swimming-pool sized asteroid 2023DW will hit Earth – in 2046.  Excerpt:

An asteroid about the size of an Olympic swimming pool currently has a 1-in-625 chance of impacting Earth on February 14, 2046, according to a risk list managed by the European Space Agency’s Near Earth Objects Coordination Centre, which monitors space rocks that might be potentially hazardous to Earth.

Though this is a relatively high risk of an impact, it is far more likely that this asteroid, known as 2023DW, will miss our planet on Valentine’s Day that year. The asteroid was discovered just a little over a week ago, on February 27, and scientists are still working out key details about its size, shape, and orbital characteristics that will determine if the rock is a real threat.

“We’ve been tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW that has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2046,” said NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which detects and monitors asteroids and other space objects, in a tweet on Tuesday. 

Science!

I find this kind of thing mildly interesting, but can’t really muster up too much angst over the possibility.  For one thing, I’ll be 85.  For another thing, a space-rock this size could do a lot of damage, but the damage would be local.  In spite of what you see in schlock soft sci-fi films like Armageddon (essentially a two-hour Aerosmith music video) and Deep Impact, the odds are overwhelming that this rock, if it does hit Earth, will land in the ocean or in some uninhabited or lightly inhabited area.  The odds of it wiping, say, Portland off the map are, well, astronomically small.

Still.  There’s a big-ass sky out there with lots of stuff flying around, and we’re not really watching all that much of it.  It makes one wonder, minuscule odds notwithstanding, if there isn’t a SMOD out there with our name on it.

Rule Five Civil War Friday

I’ve talked about the possibility of a second civil war in the United States several times.  But what I haven’t gone into much (aside from taking a look at other people’s guesses) was this:  Who would win?

Here’s the tl;dr version:  In a civil war between Red and Blue, as we understand the terms in American politics today, the Reds would win.  Overwhelmingly, quickly, decisively.  Here’s why.

Demographics

Look at who is having babies.  It’s not the left.  People in red states have more kids, and while that’s not a one hundred percent correlation to “people on the political right have more kids,” it’s a pretty good broad indicator.  Utah is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the state with the highest number of kids per household, with our own Alaska (a tad more surprising) coming in second.  Texas is fourth; New York, forty-second.

Why is this important?  Because a higher birthrate translates into more young men of military age.  If we are to have an armed conflict, this is the single most important demographic, as these are the people who will do the bulk of the fighting, whether in the regular military or in more-or-less organized militias.  While blue states have higher populations, the red states are more adept at sustaining those populations.  But aside from numbers, a state must have the right attitude for victory, and that’s largely cultural.

Culture

Look through the history of humanity, and you won’t see many wars fought over pronouns.  Young men – the demographic described above – are generally more motivated to fight for love of home, hearth, and country than for ‘social justice’ or other nebulous terms.  Denizens of the red states, people on the right of center, are more likely to hold attitudes that would serve well in conflict:  Self-reliance, thrift, courage, mental and physical fortitude.

The rank-and-file military would be key players.  The military leans right, except for some senior officers who are often as much politician as soldier; it’s likely, though, that most ordinary soldiers, especially combat arms soldiers, would side with the right, in many cases even taking their weapons and supplies with them.

Add to that the fact that the left, especially the radical progressive left, tends to badly overestimate the popularity of their policy positions.  The vast majority of the population does not want drag queens wiggling their crotches in front of children, or allowing twelve-year-olds to make decisions to undergo life-changing “gender-affirmation” surgeries and treatments.  The very lunacy of the progressive left will tip a lot of fence-sitters, people who would otherwise support liberal positions like same-sex marriage, into supporting the right if things come to open conflict.  And, finally, two words:  Second Amendment.  The rural/suburban right are far, far more likely to own/use/maintain proficiency with firearms.  Who has the guns can make a huge difference, and in America today, the right has almost all the guns.

Honestly, look at the progressive left’s track record.  Every time they have attempted to run a society, even on a small scale, the result has been abject failure.  Example:  Seattle’s “CHAZ” attempt, where leftist radicals seized control of several blocks of a major city.  Within days, they were out of food; within weeks, the zone had devolved to a dictatorship led by a warlord, backed by a gang of armed thugs.  This is not a formula for the kind of cohesive society that wins wars.

Geography

Examine these maps, based on the 2016 election.  The first is Trumpland; the second, the Clinton Archipelago.

The implications of these maps are enormous.

Look at this from a strategic sense.  By and large, the left is concentrated in a few small geographic areas.  For the most part, these areas are heavily urban, and dependent on the outskirts – red country – for electricity, gasoline, food and clothing, indeed most of the requirements of a modern lifestyle.  It would not be terribly difficult for a military force or even a well-organized militia to shut down imports into even a large city.  The blockage wouldn’t have to be leak-proof, but even preventing fifty percent of a major city’s food and energy imports would have that city melting down within a matter of days.

Indeed, in any hypothetical second civil war in the United States, that’s the main advantage the right would have; penned into their cities, deprived of internet, electricity, and food, the big blue cities would very rapidly destroy themselves; all the right would have to do is wait.

Now, I’m not advocating the idea of a civil war.  The likely result of this, regardless of which side wins, would be deaths in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum, more likely in the millions.  It would mean trillions in economic losses because of the infrastructure loss and the collapse of the big cities, which in all honesty remain great centers of economic activity and innovation.  It would engender hatreds and ill will that will last for generations, and may very well damage the Republic beyond repair.  America as we know it would almost certainly be no more.  This is something nobody should want and an outcome that we should take great pains to avoid.

But if it comes down to it – these are the reasons that the right would win, and quickly.  Agitators on the left, some of whom (I’m looking at you, Anderson Cooper) have been calling for “economic civil war” should take this into account.

Deep thoughts, news of the day, totty and the Manly Arts.