Apparently, Donald Trump is going to be arrested tomorrow in connection with his alleged indictment by a New York Grand Jury. There are many wild theories about this, but in reality, very few people have seen the actual indictment. The information we are getting either comes from leaks by people connected with the prosecutor, or speculation by Trump’s own legal counsel. Since it is illegal to leak information from supposedly secret Grand Jury proceedings, one must question the validity of such information. In addition, one could publish a library with “leaks” about impending prosecutions of Donald Trump that never happened. If all the walls allegedly closing in on Donald Trump actually existed, we would have more than enough to secure our southern border.

Regardless of how this particular case turns out, this is guaranteed to not end well. Based on history, Democrats will never stop attacking Trump until he is dead. The least likely outcome, regardless of reality, is the usual suspects in the MSM giving Donald Trump a fair hearing. Some of them are literally gloating as if he has already been convicted and is behind bars. It is nauseating and beyond pathetic.

We are now close to the point where one has to wonder which is worse, Trump being convicted or having the charges dropped. Even if Trump were to be put on trial, and to be acquitted, it would not matter to many of his detractors. They hate him with a passion that will never go away, as long as they are still alive. But one wonders if they understand the damage this will do to the country.

These charges were not brought by the DOJ, at least not openly, they tried that and failed miserably. They are being presented by a highly partisan local prosecutor. Someone who literally campaigned on a promise to indict Trump. That is great, if you are from that part of New York and you also hate Trump. But few have stopped to consider the real significance of this. Any future President is now subject to criminal prosecution by a local prosecutor once they leave office. At a minimum, this results in an incredible amount of time and money spent mounting a legal defense. That is one reason neither Bill Clinton, Barack Obama nor even Joe Biden is openly celebrating. They know there is a long list of Republican prosecutors more than capable of doing the same thing to them. If even some of the rumors are accurate, they would have a lot more to fear than Donald Trump. Perhaps the most shocking thing about this is what Donald Trump is not accused of doing. In fact, considering his massive personal wealth and world-wide network of high value properties, it is amazing that there are not a lot more charges relating abuse of power for personal financial gain. Trump was a billionaire before he became President and, if anything, he left office with less wealth than when he took arrived. Clinton, Obama, and Biden all came to Washington poor, and left with massive wealth. That should be obvious, even to Trump hating leftists, but there is no sign they grasp the concept.

The most important cost of all is lack of respect for the office of President of the United States. It used to be that even if people did not like the person holding this office, they still respected the office. That respect is long gone. Some of this started with the irresponsible behavior by Bill Clinton. It is hard to imagine the chief of state for any other democracy on earth surviving such a scandal. But Clinton survived solely because Democrats decided it was just about sex, so it didn’t matter. Then when Clinton was replaced by George W. Bush, they spent the next eight years disrespecting him. Bush didn’t come close to giving them grounds for impeachment, but this was not for lack of trying. Then when Trump became President, Democrats went on a mission to find some excuse to impeach him. This was clearly motivated by the refusal of Democrats to accept the reality that Bill Clinton had brought this impeachment on himself. Democrats focused only on the fact that Republicans had voted to impeach a Democratic President and they never forgave them for that.

Well now Democrats are digging an even deep hole. By prosecuting Trump, when he is running for election as a candidate for President of the United States, they have touched the third rail of politics. It was bad enough to see the weaponization of the DOJ and the FBI, but now we are seeing the weaponization of partisan local prosecutors who feel incentivized to investigate and prosecute a candidate for President of the United States, without regard to the consequences. This cannot be allowed to continue, or we will find it nearly impossible to get qualified candidates to run for public office. The only candidates will be those we least want, those who have zero concern regarding possible violations of the law. Real criminals just ignore the law.

I cannot predict this. It just may make Donald Trump unbeatable in the 2024 election. But it also might drive him out of the race, solely because people are sick and tired of the daily Donald Trump legal drama parade. At some point, wise people want a President who is capable of being President without the constant distractions by insane shrieking maniacs who simple refuse to see him through anything other than the blind red lens of pure hatred. This says more about them than every one else, but at some point, whether fair or not a lot of people just want this play to end. Even a great performer, who cannot be heard over the unrelenting noise from those in opposition finds it impossible to perform. In far too many cases, they just give up and leave the stage.

It would be great if this week was the beginning of the end of this nonsense, one way or the other, but unfortunately that is not likely. Instead, this is almost certain to drag on and on and on until it just becomes too unbearable to watch. We can only hope that wiser heads in both parties understand this and gain insight from Don’s early light. We are better than this, or at least we need to be better than this or be prepared for unimaginably bad consequences.

TDM

Well, for better or worse, a New York Grand Jury has indicted Donald Trump. This does not mean he will be convicted of anything. It certainly doesn’t mean he will ever spend 10 seconds in jail. What it does mean is that Democrats plan on making hay on this and painting Donald Trump as convicted felon, without regard to the facts or evidence.

While some Democrats and the usual suspects in the MSM are openly celebrating, wiser heads realize this is the ultimate two-headed sword. Those celebrating assume the facts are all on their side. That is obviously not true. They also assume that everyone agrees with them. That isn’t close to being true. The reality, which could be absolutely devasting to a lot of people still celebrating is that this just may the ultimate bridge too far.

Donald Trump was impeached, by a Democratic controlled congress, twice, with no success. The first time it was for suggesting that Joe Biden and his family might have some questionable transactions in Ukraine. Few considered what would happen if it turned out that Trump was right and as a result this could be the ultimate whistleblower situation.

The other was in regard to January 6^th, and few Americans buy this as a Trump inspired insurrection. In addition, impeaching him about 12 hours before he was scheduled to leave office made zero sense then and makes zero sense now.  The more we learn about January 6^th, the more obvious that a lot of people were lying.

Now Trump is being indicted for something, we are not sure what. If it is misuse of campaign funds, then Hillary Clinton should be lawyering up as we speak. I suspect that they are lot of rich men, who have paid large sums to stop people from talking about their personal lives. It would be naïve to think Trump is the only one who would even consider something like this. We can be absolutely certain that there are a lot of James O’Keefe’s out there who will be strongly incentivized to do their own investigation. Once again, we are reminded that people in glass houses should not throw stones.

Perhaps the person who should be most terrified is Joe Biden. Republicans already have grounds to impeach him, and prosecutors have more than enough evidence already to indict Hunter Biden. Any indictment of Hunter Biden will by definition include “the big guy.” Republicans have resisted the urge to impeach Joe because they don’t want to stoop to the Nancy Pelosi level. They also wanted to focus on doing a good job so they can take total control of congress in 2024. In addition, no sane person wants to risk replacing Joe with Kamala. However, the Republican base is likely to demand this, and Republicans may no longer have a choice. In effect, by doing this Democrats have not only declared war on Donald Trump, but they have also declared war on the Republican Party. At a minimum a lot of people, including people like me, are going to send a very strong message to Republicans in congress. Democrats have been at war with us, but we have not been at war with them. That needs to change, and it needs to change now. If Republicans in congress fail to get the message they risk being replaced by younger, more determined individuals who will arrive with a mission and an agenda.

I suspect this indictment of Donald Trump will feel very familiar to the way the entire country felt about Pearl Harbor. Many Republicans are all too aware of the obvious problems with Donald Trump, but that is no excuse for the never ending self-righteous continuous assault on him by people who are not exactly pillars of virtue themselves. Ironically, with this misguided step they may have elevated Trump to living martyr status and he is going from someone who would have actually been easy to beat into someone who now represents a symbol bigger even than his own enormous ego. Far from stopping Trump, this is more likely to save him. And if he is somehow forced out of this race, he will be replaced by someone younger, smarter, and stronger and that could be the absolute worst-case scenario for Democrats.

In addition, while Democrats literally have no bench, which is why, incredibly, Joe Biden is still considered the best option to defeat Donald Trump. But Republicans don’t have that problem. There are a lot of very qualified and determined individuals in the Republican Party, none of whom are currently announced candidates, really, willing, and able to accept the challenge.

This is a reminder that before you replace someone, you better know who or what will replace him. Joe Biden is absolutely horrible, but if you are standing next to him, looking for a better option on the horizon, you might have better luck standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert looking for non-existent water.

One area of concern is that this has made a lot of people angry and not all of them will respond rationally. That includes the democrats and their deluded followers in the MSM too self-absorbed in their viral hatred of Donald Trump to notice the stormy whether just over the horizon.

TDM

There is an old saying: “with friends like this, who needs enemies?” Today this may be replaced with another saying: “With enemies like this, who needs friends?” I suspect that very few establishment Republicans wanted Donald Trump to be the nominee in 2024. While Trump certainly has a lot of die-hard supporters, he also has a lot of people who are more than a little tired of his act. While he was definitely the leading candidate, he did not have the support of a majority of Republicans. Trump was counting on getting several opponents, so he could split the anti-Trump vote. There is only one potential candidate who truly terrified Trump and that is Ron DeSantis. While DeSantis was doing the kinds of things that candidates do before they become candidates, he had not officially announced his plans. I always suspected that left to his own devices, Trump was almost certain to self-destruct. DeSantis was wisely planning on staying out of the way until that happened.

Trump still attacked DeSantis, but the more he took cheap shots at DeSantis, the more he elevated DeSantis. I do think, strongly, that if Trump had been the nominee, because he slapped any hint of a challenge off the playing field, he would have been at serious risk of getting trounced in the general election. Of course, that depends on Democrats picking someone other than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Democrats may think that Biden is the only Democrat capable of beating Trump, but if they really believe that, what does it say about the leadership in the Democratic Party. Few would argue that Trump is the only Republican who can beat Biden. There are many Republicans more than capable of doing that. But never forget that Biden can beat Biden.

When you think about this, it is the ultimate lose-lose for the country. But one should never underestimate the extent of Trump-Derangement-Syndrome (TRS) in the Democratic Party. There are clearly a lot of people who hate him so much that they will do anything and everything to defeat him. Trump is brilliants at generating enthusiastic support and even more enthusiastic opposition. That brings us to the point where this prosecutor in New York is determined to indict Trump, for something, regarding the payoff of Stormy Daniels. This has apparently reached the point where even Trump is expecting to be arrested. But the problem is that paying off Stormy Daniels, even if true, is not actually much of a crime. One would shudder to think of the number of similar individuals who were paid handsomely for not spilling the beans on a powerful person. Bill Clinton allegedly gave $850,000 to Paula Jones. Hillary funded the Russian Collusion myth. One would have to be naïve to think that the Trump-Stormy Daniles story is unique. The filthy rich frequently resort to cash payments in situation like this. It is ugly. It is despicable. But hardly the crime of the century.

One the other hand, mobilizing the Prosecutors Office in New York to try and prevent Republicans from choosing Donald Trump to be their candidate just may be much closer to the crime of the century. The problem is that this is just so obvious that it cannot be ignored. I doubt seriously that even die-hard Democrats don’t understand the political nature of this prosecution. They just use their intense hatred of Donald Trump to justify ignoring the reality of this.

Trump has openly called for nationwide protests, but he is not exactly proposing violent protests. Instead, he wants to see millions of people get up from their seats and scream at the top of their lungs demanding that the endless persecution and now prosecution of Donald Trump stop. In the name of God, STOP! These clowns are too blinded by Trump-Derangement-Syndrome to realize that this just may propel Trump right back into the White House. Not because people are so thrilled at the thought of President Trump, but rather that if is the is quality of people desperate to destroy him, then he must be someone very very special indeed. In other words, by launching the ultimate cheap attack against him, they just may have elevated him to the ultimate martyr status. “Indeed, with enemies like this, who needs friends?”

Perhaps they can find some jury in New York composed of people who hate Trump enough to ignore the facts and vote to convict him. Even if there is a trial and Trump in convicted, at some point a court is extremely likely to overturn any conviction. This is still just a misdemeanor and there is a long list of Democrats who have been caught doing worse, much worse. In the meantime, what are they going to do? Try to keep him in jail, without bail, for this? Please! This is absolutely insane.

Let’s face it, Trump is a narcissist who cannot resist the urge to brag about himself. He also can’t resist taking cheap shots at anyone who dares attack him. That is just the way he is. While he is a far better communicator then his detractors understand, he is an extremely polarizing person. If he were to trash DeSantis into submission, which is far from guaranteed, he would pay a terrible price for that. Under that scenario, even with a candidate as pathetic as Joe Biden, Trump could actually lose a national election.

But now it is no longer Trump against DeSantis, it is the world against Trump, meaning the world of the MSM, the Democratic Party and the same prosecutors who want to defund police and let violent criminals out of jail without bail. Trump could not choose a better fight if he really wants to be President of the United States, and there is no doubt that this is exactly what he wants.

As I write this, I am stunned that these prosecutors and their supporters in the DNC are this stupid. I am not sure even the MSM is this stupid. We can be sure that the double-secret probationary committee trying to control much of what happens in Washington D.C. is literally on the verge of hysteria tonight. “They came, they saw, and they squandered, because they missed the most important rule of politics: “when your opponent is self-destructing, don’t get in the way.”

TDM

The best defense when faced with a serious criminal charge is delay of game. This is not exactly new. Most people know that Mary Surratt and David Herold, Lewis Powell, George Altzerodt were all hanged for their part in the Lincoln Assassination. Many people know that Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who treated John Wilkes Booth’s left fibula following the assassination was imprisoned at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. This prison was on a small island about 70 miles west of Key West. It is now a national park, if you want to pay for the expensive ferry or plane ride necessary to get there.

But John Surratt, who at a minimum was guilty of conspiring to kidnap Abraham Lincoln was not convicted of anything. John Surratt wisely escaped to Canada, otherwise he almost certainly would have been hung too. He booked passage to England. He later made it to Alexandria, Egypt where he was finally captured in November 1866. He was brought to trial in Maryland in 1867. The result was a hung jury, 8 jurors voted to acquit and 4 voted to convict. Since this took so long, even though Surratt admitted to the plot to kidnap Lincoln, the statute of limitations had run and he was released from jail, free as a bird. He finally died in 1916 when he was 72 years old.

This is the exact strategy used by the Clinton’s and now Hunter Biden to avoid justice. They run from any investigation until years have passed, and then say, “that is just old, discredited news.” Sadly, for the Clintons, this worked brilliantly. If people like Gerald Rivera have their way, it will work for Hunter too.

But there is a different. With regard to John Surratt, his co-conspirators were all conveniently dead and there was no direct evidence against him. There, are also, well, rumors of convenient strange suicides miraculously affecting people who had inconvenient information regarding the Clintons.

The opposite is true with Hunter Biden. No one had died, and there is actually a mountain of evidence. Unlike the illusionary walls always closing in on Donald Trump, the wall closing in on Hunter Biden are all too real. If recent news reports are accurate, the first attempt at a serious investigation is finding a lot more evidence. In the case of Hunter, pretending the facts were not actually facts and that none of this mattered only works for people like Don Lemon and Gerald Rivera. The reality is that if Donald Trump, Jr. had done 1/100^th of what we know Hunter Biden did, he would be making friends with people like Alex Murdaugh in prison.

This time, I don’t think the delay of game is going to work. This time, justice delayed is not always justice denied. Thanks to advances in forensic science, people who thought they got away with it, found out that was not true, the hard way. Just ask Roy Charles Waller, the NorCal Rapist who got away with this for decades. He was convicted in 2020 and has a relatively mild sentence of 897 years.

He was done in because some relative(s) decided to play the genealogy game and sent their DNA in to be analyzed. While none of these people were ever suspects, they helped police zero in on Mr. Waller.

Hence the problem for Hunter and probably Joe, today is that there are all those bank records and emails that were not available in 1866. In addition, Joe has the problem of being so awful at being President that few people in either party want to see this pathetic clown show continue. While John Surratt continued to have friends, in the former confederacy, there is little evidence that anyone is terribly excited about claiming Hunter Biden as a friend.

That doesn’t mean the stall game was not tried. It was tried recently by Geraldo. He should have known better because he tangled with Molly Hemingway.

Geraldo: “Hunter Biden has been investigated for almost five years. Aside from fact he’s a junkie dirtbag nothing remotely criminal has been uncovered. Put up or shut up.”

Molly: “Setting aside the gun crimes, prostitution crimes, drug crimes, tax crimes, bribery receipts, foreign agent shenanigans, money laundering, pay-for-pay, and kid glove treatment from the corrupt and politicized FBI and DOJ, this was a really astute observation.”

This probably make Geraldo long for the time when he opened the secret bricked up room, allegedly connected to Al Capone, on national TV, and found…empty beer bottles and trash.

The problem with the modern-day version of the stall game is that it is too easy to end up smelling like crap.

TDM

1. A survey today shows that 60% of people don’t buy the climate change hysteria and consider it to be a weird new form of religion based on little else other than political ambition without regard to actual science. This is remarkable when almost every MSM broadcast about any rotten weather report blames it on climate change. The bottom line is that a whole lot of people are just not buying this nonsense anymore. This time the Hunter moon is likely to be photographed from his back side in a cozy jail cell. Kinda similar to the pictures he stupidly left behind on his lap top.

I must admit that I am confused. Why does climate change, which used to be called global warming, is always accompanied about things that happen as a result of global warming? The answer is easy. Five minutes of research shows that there is little evidence of significant global warming, which is why global warming was changed to climate change, which is harder to dispute.

This allows the usual suspects to blame everything on climate change without bothering to consider any facts or evidence. The most recent evidence of this is the blaming of the current conditions in California on climate change, meaning global warming, to explain why all that warm rain has been building up enormous amounts of snow in the mountains. It allows people to argue with a straight face that these storms are more severe because of climate change, meaning global warming, even though the northern Pacific is not actually warmer it is colder. Warmer is when you have an El Nino. We have a La Nina, which is when the water is colder. Should be obvious, but obviously, isn’t.

This helps explain why all this climate change, meaning global warming, has resulted in remarkable things like record snowfall and Emerald Bay freezing completely over for the first time in decades.

Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay Freezes For First Time In Decades (msn.com)

It is always amazing to see someone argue, with a straight face, that climate change, meaning global warming, causes things to get colder. Of course, if things get warmer, that is always proof of climate change, meaning global warming.

If you are confused, it is because you are getting this information from people who are confused. But then these are the same people who think that the government spending more money is the secret to lowering inflation. These are the same people who praise Democrats and Joe Biden, without regard to the facts or evidence and propose criminal sentences for Donald Trump based on wild rumors and conspiracy theories without regard to facts or evidence. The bottom line is that if you just ignore facts and evidence, you can easily convince yourself of anything, for a while.

But at some point, reality raises its ugly head. Like now, in California. There is snow, a lot of snow, possibly a record amount of snow. All of that snow is guaranteed to melt. When it melts, it is going to create major problems. This is because much of California is actually shaped like a very large bowl, surrounded by high mountains. When the snow melts, the water predictably fills up the bowl. There snow is already there. The only question is how fast it melts and how much of the bowl gets filled up.

The Los Angeles Times, famous for getting most things wrong, actually nailed this one:

Editorial: Restore California’s floodplains to capture more stormwater, protect human life (msn.com)

A quick look at a satellite photo of the snow-covered Sierra makes it plain: No number of dams can hold all that water back, no number of reservoirs can lock it up.

Yup. The water is already here, and it is going to all melt and fill that bowl. The results will soon become obvious to everyone, including the usual suspects reporting on TV. They are almost certain to blame this on climate change, meaning global warming, and wonder how anyone could possibly argue against that conclusion. None of them are likely to realize they are all wet. How cool is that?

TDM

Margaret Thatcher once said:

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Quote by Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventual…” (goodreads.com)

Today there are signs that our economy is at great risk of a nearly complete meltdown. The shocking failure of Signature Bank, just two days after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank is having a serious impact on other major banks:

What Happened To Signature Bank? The Latest Bank Failure Marks Third Largest In History (msn.com)

Dodge Frank was enacted under the Obama administration and modified as the result of bi-partisan legislation during the Trump administration.

Trump signs Dodd-Frank rollback | The Hill

“The final compromise leaves most of Dodd-Frank in place but provides a major boost for some of the largest U.S. banks. The measure releases of regional banks from tighter regulation by raising the threshold for closer Fed oversight from $50 billion to $250 billion in assets.

Banks below the new threshold will no longer be automatically subject to annual Fed stress tests and capital buffers meant to protect large firms are from severe financial crises.

Those banks are also no longer required to from submit for Fed approval a “living will” that outlines how a bank’s assets could be liquidated upon the firm’s failure without causing a widespread meltdown.

The bill includes several provisions to scrap rules for community banks and credit unions. Firms that hold 500 or fewer mortgages a year will no longer have to report some home loan data to federal regulators under anti-discrimination laws.”

We can predict that Democrats will blame the changes in Dodd-Frank for this disaster, without regard to the facts. But the reality is that regulation increases costs and that impacts small banks and business operations disproportionately. Adding additional regulations, which clearly did not work, on smaller banks who are doing fine seems extremely unlikely to fix anything.

The real lesson here is that the more the government tries to regulate anything, the worse the results. In addition, Democrats have a serious problem because while people with deposits equal to $250,000 are already protected by the FDIC, by definition changing that has a disproportion impact on the super-rich. Instead of taxing the rich, Biden is moving to protect the rich at the expense of the middle class. While CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC will failure to understand this, a lot of people are less likely to be confused.

Unfortunately, this is just further evidence of how much damage has been done to our economy by putting someone like Joe Biden in the White House and then pretending his repeated disasters are actually thinly disguised major victories. The situation we are in right now is very close to the worst-case scenario. We have an 80-year-old senile President, who has made us the laughingstock of the world, making huge mistakes many of which are the direct result of reversing policies implemented by Donald Trump. The only person less qualified to be President of the United States is Kamala Harris.

Perhaps it is time to ask which is worse, what we have now, or reversing the results of the 2020 election? Sometimes the unthinkable is a better option than the current thinking. The left bank only results in a lot of people left behind.

TDM

Joshua 6:1-20 (NIV)

“When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so, everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.” 

The people in Jericho paid a very high price for expecting the city walls to protect them from the Israelites. Today we have the modern equivalent of the story, only this time it is the “walls” closing in on Donald Trump, “again.” One would think that supposedly smart people who had been proven so very wrong previously predicting legal walls closing in on Donald Trump would show some restraint, but these clowns never learn. They keep trusting the same people who have proven themselves untrustworthy time and time again. Once again, it is becoming clear that no legal walls are closing in on Donald Trump this time either. Once again, the walls keep tumbling down.

In some cases the illusionary walls closing in on Donald Trump have already collapsed in the most spectacular ways. For example, the attorney representing Stormy Daniels is now in prison, and she was ordered to pay Donald Trump’s legal fees. This is so obvious that even the New York Times noticed, but Anderson Cooper is still struggling to understand. There are numerous links to the following interview of Maggie Haberman by Anderson Cooper:

WATCH: Maggie Haberman Throws Gallons of Cold Water on Trump Indictment News (mediaite.com)

The reality is that the walls closing in on Donald Trump exist primarily in the deluded minds of people who hate him with such passion that it blinds their ability to see reality. The beat goes on and even CBS this morning reported that Trump is likely to be indicted. These walls will do even less to protect the usual suspects from Trump than the walls of Jericho designed to protect its inhabitants from the Israelites.

There are other walls coming down, including the wall hiding the truth about January 6^th from the American public. Despite the delusional reporting by the MSM and the irrational rants of the January 6^th committee, very few people are buying the myth that January 6^th was really an armed insurrection, the greatest threat to democracy since the civil war. The reality is that most of the people protesting in Washington were no threat to anyone and they honestly believed there were serious problems regarding the 2020 election because those problems are actually pretty darn obvious. There were a handful of people who did violate the law. At least some of them appear to have been egged on by people who suspiciously look like plants. One person allegedly connected to Antifa admitted this, on video, but he was ignored by the FBI and the MSM.

Unsurprisingly the only media outlet that reported objectively on this was the New York Post.  You can read the story here, published on January 15, 2021 but totally ignored by the rest of the MSM:

Who is John Sullivan, accused provocateur charged in Capitol riot? (nypost.com)

Mr. Sullivans video is evidence of a lot of things, mostly about himself, but is hardly evidence of an armed organized insurrection.

But now Republicans control the House, they have access to 41,000 hours of video and that is being released to the American public. The only thing certain is that the video used by the January 6^th committee, focused almost solely on creating legal walls to trap Donald Trump was selectively edited and soon a lot of people will hear and see the “other side of the story.” Another legal wall closing in on Donald Trump is on the verge of collapse.

Ironically, Maggie Hagerman did get something right. Those who attack Donald Trump risk elevating him to a higher status than he would get otherwise.

The walls of Jericho tell us something else. Poorly designed walls are destined to fall down. It is only a matter of time. And when that happens, the resulting sound is often heard round the world. I honestly believe that if his enemies were not so blinded by hatred, they would easily see that Trump himself is prone to self-destruction. His best campaign staff is composed of those devoted full-time to tearing him down. Perhaps if they just shut up, people who pay more attention to what Trump does and says and that wall of silence just might be the most effective wall of all. That, of course, is the least likely outcome.

TDM

Several years ago, while traveling on Bart to an Oakland Raiders game, I noticed something very sobering. There was a long, long, long line of railroad tank cars, most of which looked pretty ancient, sitting there waiting to be loaded up with gas or oil and transported. That was when I realize that these tank cars were traveling through cities and towns all over the country and to me, and my hunch was most people were unaware of the potential disaster traveling through their town. At a minimum, at least to me, this looked like a really bad accident waiting to happen.

This is one reason it seemed obvious that projects like the Keystone Pipeline were a far better solution to move such highly inflammable material safely. While there is probably no way to completely eliminate the risk, a pipeline sure seems like a better option.

Now we have had that horrible train accident in East Palestine, Ohio. To me this looks like another Camp LeJeune case just waiting to develop. I personally expect liability claims from this incident to last years if not decades. If I lived near there, I would probably move, regardless of the personal expense. While staying there I would avoid being outdoors anywhere near the site and would probably only drink bottled water. But the real question is why this train was even allowed anywhere near this town. In this case the derailment appears to have been caused by an overheated bearing on an axle, but there are a lot of other things that could cause something similar. Trains can derail for a lot of reasons, including sabotage. If you have ever traveled any distance on a train, you quickly notice that they sway and bounce a lot. That is true even if the rails are relatively new and in good condition. One has to wonder how many railroad tracks in use today meet that standard.

I suspect this is going to be a major wakeup call for a lot of people. Perhaps it is time we all ask exactly what is traveling on those railroad tracks. Trains started operating in the mid-1800s, in some cases before the civil war. However, with the invention of the automobile, the interstate highway system, and the use of trucks to transport goods, in some cases rail lines were literally abandoned without sufficient consideration as to their value. For example, Los Angeles had a vast network of electric railway lines. There were over 1,000 miles of track. But these tracks were abandoned and destroyed, and the last segment of the system was abandoned in 1961. Now, even with a daily traffic nightmare, it would be impossible to rebuild that system any time soon.

Map details LA’s Red Car streetcar lines – Curbed LA

In any event it is time for serious people to evaluate the risk vs reward particularly when considering the transport of hazardous materials. We’ve been warned, the question is will anyone listen.

One thing is certain, there is probably no one less qualified than Pete Buttigieg to lead the way forward. In addition, we need honest reporting from people totally unlike Jake Tapper, who asked the NTSB representative a question based on Democratic talking points and specifically Buttigieg’s failed attempt to blame this, predictably, on Donald Trump. He should have been public embarrassed at the response to his incredibly stupid question, but that would require him to have the ability to even recognize the error.

NTSB Chair Shuts Down Pete Buttigieg’s Pathetic Blaming of Donald Trump for Train Derailment – RedState

Yes, there are legitimate questions. A lot of people should be demanding answers. But to really fix this, if possible, this should involve the minimal number of elected public officials from either party.

One wonders if the Chinese don’t have the best solution, just transport everything by balloon. What could possibly go wrong.

Hindenburg disaster – Wikipedia

TDM

For the record, I am not a huge Tucker Carlson fan. But sometimes the loudest criticism of him is when he is actually right. For example, every time we get a hurricane, someone from CNN, MSNBC etc., will explain that this is proof of global warming. Anyone who dares hint at anything different is a dreaded “climate change denier.” Tucker was guilty of touching the third rail of climate change politics. But, if you do even a little research on hurricanes it soon becomes obvious that really big hurricanes have been hitting Florida for over 100 years, this runs in cycles, and there is no discernible increase in the number or severity of these storms. They do cause more damage now, because there are a lot more people and structures available for destruction.

You can see this for yourself, just drive from Miami to Key West. You will see that there once was a rail road, but a hurricane destroyed it. That happened on Labor Day, 1935. It was a huge category 5. It took seven years to build that railroad right of way, and four hours for the hurricane to destroy it.

And by the way, the weather temperature charts developed by NOAA show NO global warming over the past eight years. But you will never hear that from the MSM. In addition, they keep talking about this massive ice shelf in Antarctica that will melt and rained sea level by 500 ft. Ok, not quite that much, but a lot. Well perhaps you remember iceberg A68a, which broke off Antarctica in 2017. It was 100 miles long and 30 miles wide. That has now melted almost completely and is stuck near South Georgia Island. But this huge melting iceshelf didn’t raise sea level, at all. Why? Because, duh, it was already melting before, which is why it broke off. It did add fresh water, which resulted in more fish and the penguins rejoiced, but that is another story:

An Extraordinary Iceberg Is Gone, but Not Forgotten – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Note that the NYT article ignored the fact that this had zero impact on sea level. But this should be obvious. You can test this yourself. Just put some ice in a glass of water. Measure the height of the water. Now let the ice melt. Then measure the height of the water. It is exactly the same:

buoyancy – Why does ice melting not change the water level in a container? – Physics Stack Exchange

Archimedes’ principle states that the weight of water displaced will equal the upward buoyancy force provided by that water. Hmmm. The Archimedes principle. That would be the Greek mathematician who lived in Syracuse, Sicily, around 3 BCE. Of course, that does not provide nearly enough time for the people in the MSM to notice. Actually, this is misleading because a melting iceberg does replace salt water with fresh water. So, if all the ice in the world melted, that would raise sea level world wide by a whopping 4 to 6 centimeters. Horror of horrors.

In an even greater miracle, Kevin McCarthy, that Kevin McCarthy just gave about 51,000 hours of video from January 6^th, 2021, to Tucker Carlson. Tucker and his team are pouring through this, and the results are likely to be very humiliating for Democrats. There is a REASON they didn’t want the public to see these videos. Keep tuned because this could easily become must see television. Now Tucker Carlson is guaranteed to selectively edit this material, but of course, the January 6^th committee already had two years to do that. We can be absolutely certain that every minute of video that supported the Insurrection theory, has been reported already. It is what we did not see that is likely to change people’s minds.

This is a sign that Kevin McCarthy and the new Republican Party is actually going to start fighting back and they aren’t going to use the Democratic Playbook. Perhaps during the 6,000 vote calls necessary to get McCarthy elected Speaker of the House, he figured that out. So far, the loudest voices in this Republican congress are those who have been ignored for far too long.

Stay tuned because we have never seen anything like this before. Many of us have wondered why Republicans were so pathetic at fighting back. Perhaps they have finally learned something important. Democrats are not their friends, they are not even their friendly foes, they are people who have been at war. They were at war with us, but we were not at war with them. Until now. Grin and Tucker it. This is just the beginning.

TDM

Do you ever wonder if we are somehow caught in a real-life bizarre version of Ground Hog Day. Every day we see pretty the same thing, and we also see the usual suspects either feign ignorance or ignore the obvious. The mental problems with Joe Biden are now so obvious that reporting on them has reached the point of boring replication. The response to the obvious is also sadly predictable. Republicans point and sneer but do nothing. Democrats spin around in a circle with one eye closed hoping to see something else next time around. Then there are the true KoolAid drinkers like the ladies on The View who are absolutely brilliant at drawing the wrong conclusion about nearly everything..

Now add in the ridiculous reality of that huge Chinese Surveillance balloon traveling slowing across the U.S., taking pictures of some of the most secure locations in this country. Joe Biden, upon advice of our military commanders, ordered it shot down only after it had successfully cleared the South Carolina coast. That they discover another one over Alaska. They shoot that down. Oops there is another one, over the Yukon. Canada invites U.S. jets to shoot that down. Then, incredibly, another one, this time over Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. That is shot down too.

But this gets worse. The one shot down over Alaska is smaller and shaped like an octagon. The one over Lake Huron allegedly looks like an oversize grey coffee can. When asked about this, the U.S. Military says they can’t rule out alien sourcing. Are you kidding me? Why on earth is anyone in the MSM even pretending to take this seriously anymore? Today the Biden Administration smugly said these were happening during the Trump administration too, but they weren’t skilled enough to detect them. Really? Is anyone buying this nonsense? Other than Don Lemon on CNN of course.

This reminds me of when a home missionary friend of my father’s visited us in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He told us this weird story about seeing a flying saucer land on a frozen lake in Northern Minnesota while he was out ice fishing. He said in a short period of time a U.S. Air Force truck showed up, blocked off the site, told him to forget what he saw. Then, he watched the flying saucer take off again. He was a very devout Baptist minister, so alcohol consumption was not an explanation, but this was off the charts unbelievable. At the time he told this story, I was about five years old, and this had supposedly happened several years earlier. I often wondered what on earth he was talking about until one day, years later, I saw this link realized this is probably what he saw:

Vought V-173 – Wikipedia

I have always suspected that those numerous UFO sightings were always some kind of double secret aircraft. Now I realize some of them may have been relatively small balloons. I am pretty convinced that if aliens did approach us, it would be with something more sophisticated than these silly objects.

It is increasingly obvious that a whole lot of people are either lying about this or they are hopelessly delusional. The only thing certain is that the least likely explanation regarding anything is that given by the Biden administration. The only explanation with less credibility than something said by a spokesman for the Biden Administration is if the President (save us) himself tries to explain.

But all of this ignores the real problem. We live in a very real and very scary world with countries like North Korean, Russia and China who have nuclear weapons. We live in a world with all too real enemies and all too serious challenges. Combine this with the very real possibility that the President of the United States may have had his son sell influence to the highest bidder, including to people in places like China and Russia. What is it going to take before even Democrats and their fawning buddies in the MSM start to notice?  When will they come to the grim realization that this is putting each and every one of us at risk. This isn’t even close to funny anymore.

But there is hope. Donald Trump is still not President. That is all the Never Trumpers need or even want to know. They consider anything else to be an improvement. Well welcome to the land of anything else. Frankly some of the things Trump has done recently are so narcissistic and outright stupid that they create genuine concern about his fitness for office. But then I turn on my TV, and I see Joe Biden, and the only words that can come close to describing this is “Full Mental Jacket.” This is what happens when you steal an election without regard to who or what replaced Donald Trump as President of the United States and even less regard to the consequences of that decision.

TDM

P.S. What could possibly be worse than this? Easy, she is standing just in back of Joe Biden, watching her husband kiss Dr. Jill on the lips.