Why Obamacare And Its Cousins Always Fail

Dig this.

Republicans refuse to lower healthcare costs. Older Texans that are too young for Medicare will be hit the hardest.

Theresa Hebert is one of the more than 3 million Texans who rely on healthcare subsidies. Without ACA tax credits, her premium will cost $1,000/month. pic.twitter.com/FPwhYLVAQY

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) November 12, 2025

She's fat. She knows she's fat. We know she's fat. We all know she's going to slorp down a lot more medical resources than she would if she took care of herself, but she doesn't. If she paid a much higher percentage of her own health care costs, she might. As long as she gets her treatments for free or almost free, she's not going to be as motivated to get healthy. As a consequence, open your wallets, boys and girls.

And don't get me started about obesity in the black community. 4 out of 5 black women are obese. When I was in Jackson, MS a while back, it was simply stunning to see the enormity, ha ha, of the problem. I went to a mall, trying to find a camo Ole Miss hat and I swear, every single store entrance was effectively single file because of the boxcar-sized black women going in and out of them.

ChatGPT Fiction Gets Better

 Sorry for the long hiatus. I'm back to playing with AI (read: ChatGPT) writing fiction. I've discovered a good shortcut is to pattern characters after well-known actors and actresses. In my Bobby Lee Bond Southern Superspy stories, I'm using Dirk Benedict's Templeton Peck, aka Face, from the old A-Team TV series.

For Bobby Lee's MI6 counterpart, Basil “Baze” Carberry-Smythe, I'm using the old British comic actor, Terry Thomas.

Once I have some candidate templates for the characters, I ask AI to give me some screen tests in the form of scenes. Here's one that just hit the perfect spot for me showing that Terry Thomas was indeed the right man for the job.

(In the supervillain's lair, right at the climax of the story.) Cat pads up, tail twitching with smug malevolence, and presses the enormous glowing button despite Basil’s very clear instruction: “Do. Not. Touch. Anything.”

The lair erupts in catastrophic fireworks, space-borne superlasers scything through the mountain, vaporizing billions in research funding and decades of villainous ambition.

As the shockwave clears, Basil brushes dust from his lapels, checks his cufflinks, and mutters:

“Oh, splendid. The one button we weren’t supposed to press. Marvelous work, feline.”

Or alternately:

“Well, that’s that holiday cancelled. Again.”

Or (peak Terry-Thomas):

“Dash it all, Bobby, must we always bring the cat?”

Followed by, with a sigh and a resigned stroll toward the exit:

“Right then. Anyone for luncheon?”

It doesn't do longform prose very well and it struggles with prolonged dialog, but it's a ton of fun playing with short vignettes. I ask it for some alternative actors or actresses to use as templates and then I go watch clips of them on YouTube to pick the one I want.

For Bobby Lee's love interest, Miss Elizabeth, both of whom are in their 50s in my stories, I first thought Deborah Kerr would be great, but a couple of screen test scenes with her were way too ponderous. Dirk Benedict is light, fun and charming. Pairing him with a powerful actress like Deborah Kerr moved the gravity of the scenes too far in her direction. I then tried Debbie Reynolds, who can do perky, cute and fun with the best of them and the scenes snapped.

Terry Thomas hardly even needed a screen test. We contacted his agent and offered him the part right away.

Screen Tests With Miss Elizabeth

Scene 1 — Grocery Store Introduction

He reaches for the same jar of jam she does.

Miss Elizabeth: Oh! Sorry — go ahead.

Bobby Lee: Ladies first. Though if you insist we duel for it, I’ll need ten minutes to stretch.

Miss Elizabeth (laughs) Do you always negotiate over groceries?

Bobby Lee: Only when my opponent looks like she’s going to win.

Scene 2 — Porch Conversation

He’s repairing something small — a lantern, a drawer, something domestic.

Miss Elizabeth: Where did you learn to do all that?

Bobby Lee: Oh, here and there. Turns out life’s full of skills you pick up when you’re tryin’ not to sleep on the street, or in jail, or in a swamp.

Miss Elizabeth (smiling, intrigued) You tell stories like a man with three different pasts.

Bobby Lee: That’s an optimistic estimate.

Scene 3 — Subtle Flirtation

She notices a scar on his forearm.

Miss Elizabeth: That looks like it hurt.

Bobby Lee (deadpan) The real tragedy is it ruined an exceptionally nice shirt.

Miss Elizabeth: You joke about everything.

Bobby Lee: Not everything. Just everything I don’t feel like explaining.

Those hit Dirk Benedict's style right on the money. Like I said, AI is getting better and better all the time.

Here's a screen test with Terry Thomas and Dirk Benedict.

SCREEN TEST #2 — “The Locked Door Crisis”

Alarms about to trigger; Basil is working a digital bypass. Bobby stands casually.

Basil: Would you please stop looking relaxed? Pressure impairs my concentration.

Bobby Lee: Oh, you’re doing fine. Door’s only, what — thirty seconds from humiliating us?

Basil (panicking slightly): Twenty-two!

Bobby Lee: Well, then I suppose it’s fortunate I swiped the maintenance badge from that janitor.

Basil: You WHAT?!

Bobby Lee: Yep. Wanted to see if you’d get it open in time. Excellent suspense pacing, by the way.

Swipe — door opens. Bobby walks through first.

Basil: You are a deeply irresponsible man.

Bobby Lee: Which is why I test my friends’ excellence. You’re welcome.

Again, it was spot on.

This is getting to be a lot more fun that it was in the past.

The War Was Lost On The Floor Of The Discotheque

The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson summarizes a crucial reason the Germans lost WW II here. If you don't want to watch it, it can be summarized in General Guderian asking the OKW how they planned to knock out Detroit after the Nazis declared war on America.

Similarly, General William Tecumseh Sherman tried in vain to get through to the warhawks in the South before the Civil War.

You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

We are in Chicago for a wedding. Last night, after the reception, we went out to a happening nightspot for drinking and dancing. I haven't been to a place like that in decades, but I'm not a complete novice at this. It was no surprise to see couples engaging in social and partly physical foreplay before going home together for casual sex.

At such times, it's completely obvious that feminism is a crock. The girls were there to be lusted after, wooed and taken home. The guys were there to get laid. It wasn't complicated. There was no equality, just symmetry.

The other thing that hit me, marinating in the Islamic conquest of Europe and the UK as I do, were those two quotes above. Muslimas were home gestating babies. Western women were slithering up to handsome men for sterile sex and a tiny bit of attention.

Returning to VDH, let's ask AI how the Nazis could have survived 1939-1945 and gone on to long-term control of Germany and Europe.

If the Nazis had avoided war altogether, Germany might have secured long-term dominance in Europe through economic and political power rather than conquest. By 1939, Hitler had already erased most of the Versailles Treaty’s limitations—rebuilding the military, reoccupying the Rhineland, annexing Austria, and absorbing the Sudetenland—without provoking a major conflict. Had he stopped there, Germany would have stood as the preeminent power on the continent, surrounded by war-weary and cautious nations unwilling to challenge him. With continued economic expansion and subtle political influence in Eastern and Central Europe, Berlin could have built a German-led sphere of prosperity and dependence, achieving much of its imperial vision without the crippling cost of total war.

Once Germany invaded Poland and dragged Europe into conflict, however, its fate was sealed the moment the United States entered the war. Nazi Germany could never match the combined industrial and manpower might of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. By 1944, America alone was producing more tanks, planes, and ships than all the Axis powers combined, while supplying its allies at the same time. Germany’s only real chance for survival lay in not fighting that war at all—cementing its gains peacefully and letting time, diplomacy, and economic gravity make it the unchallenged master of Europe.

Islam was not a problem for the West until they allowed mass Islamic immigration, effectively kicking off the current civilizational war. They were there and we were here and without intimate contact, there would be no conflict. Once the populations mixed on European and British home soil, it was on like the break of dawn.

If your opponent can out-produce you by factors of 4 or more, your best bet is to never get into a scrap with them in the first place. If you want the discotheque and the hookups, you better not be importing Muslims.

X Is The Last, Best Hope For Freedom

First, here's the context.

FRANCE: In Paris, verses from the Quran are now being broadcast on loudspeakers in subway stations.

But if Christians tried the same in Muslim countries, they’d be imprisoned or even killed.

Why is this tolerated? pic.twitter.com/8UpLodRXqf

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) November 5, 2025

Make no mistake, the Catholic Church has been instrumental in importing the colonizers. In an attempt to generate a good meme for this, I asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok for this.

Generate a photorealistic image of a simpering Catholic bishop standing in front of a huge crowd of Muslim men praying on prayer mats, blocking a city street.

ChatGPT and Gemini refused with this kind of error message.

I can’t generate that image — it targets specific religious groups in a disrespectful way.

Mind you, neither has had a problem in the past doing the simpering bishop or other such religious figures. It's only when you bring Islam into the picture that the two AI systems sniff haughtily and look over their pince-nezes at you disapprovingly.

Grok, meanwhile, gave me the perfect image.

Ms. Mamdani For The Win!

It hardly matters whether it's politics or the Church or what have you, the great feminization of America continues apace. This is the perfect encapsulation of the moment wherein we are ruled at all levels by AWFLs. It's all love and caring and empathy and not judging and kindness all the time.

"We will prove that there is no problem to large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about."

Those are terrifying words. pic.twitter.com/EY0qypP3Qy

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) November 5, 2025

And here's more.

This is the most important, most dire, most dangerous thing in the country right now.

To ignore this, is to ignore all future election outcomes.

Suicidal empathy of young women, whose emotions are preyed upon by the Democratic Party is what is causing this.

Open. Your. Eyes.

— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) November 5, 2025

Here's a nice topper for the cake.

Over 100 languages are spoken in our great city and it’s actually a pretty amazing part of being an American.

If you are humiliated by America and the diversity that powers our nation’s Nobel Prizes, Olympic Gold Medals, and breakthrough innovations and culture, that’s on you. https://t.co/Fgl5FlVnf5

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2025

Whatever.

None of this is going to work. It's all going to end in tears.

Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens And Andrew Tate

 ... need to be nuked from orbit and after that, the rubble (or glass) needs to bounce and just keep bouncing until there aren't two atoms left sticking together. Republican leaders who don't do that are fair game for all of the classic progressive ad hominems such as racist, sexist, homophobe, etc.

I thought Fuentes was a hideous man, but Ben's recent thorough review of him and Tucker's slightly veiled embrace of him made me realize just how irredeemably evil he is. Dig this video. Feel free to start around the 3:15 mark.

I've been a fan of Tucker for about a decade. I was a fan of Candace from the very beginning. Both have gone totally insane. Along with Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, they've become the Four Horsemen of the Hatepocalypse. They are exactly what the Democrats accuse us of being.

This shouldn't be hard. It would be simplicity itself for politicians like JD Vance to beat these four like piñatas. There wouldn't be much of an electoral downside to it, either. Like Bill Clinton whacking Sister Souljah upside the head, in the long run it would make JD look powerful, principled and willing to make the hard choice to estrange part of his base. Like Clinton's decision to take on a popular black woman, the concern about these swine and their followers would prove to be overblown.

Ted Cruz gets it.

Right wing honks are always reluctant to the point of paralysis to call out vile lunatics on the right, but what they need to do is recall the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The Synod Perfectly Encapsulates The Left

In our parish, we are participating in the second round of the synodal process which is being hyped by Catholic leadership. It's like dying, only without the good parts.

The synodal process is just that - a process. We have been told not to set goals or look for outcomes, but participate in the process of listening and understanding. To illustrate this, we've been given a 20-page booklet with helpful guidance and real-world examples. Ohioan will recognize this immediately as symptomatic of the very worst of the strategic planning teams we ever had the misfortune to join at work.

In one of these examples, a priest in our diocese wrote about a decision he and some leading members of the parish made to use parish buildings to house "migrants," i.e. illegals. He then talked about the synodal process where some members of his parish objected.

Our parish, xxx, initiated a migrant shelter in October of 2023. The question that was quickly coming to us as we are using a much-needed community space, is "how long are we going to do this?" My fellow priests and I felt, after a few months and some good advice, that we needed to give this shelter a full year to see the ups and downs of migrant cycles in order to make a good discernment. We are hoping that this year of discernment includes a variety of voices. While I will probably give more credibility to the voices of those who are more involved in the shelter, one of my brothers points out that we also need to listen to the voices of those who are not so crazy about the idea, or those who feel like we are putting too much of our attention in the shelter to the neglect of some other programs.

Emphasis mine. You see, he is going to listen, undoubtedly with a condescending and smarmy smile on his face, to those "who are not so crazy about the idea" and then he's going to do exactly what he wants because he's already gamed the system by giving greater weight to the pro-migrant crowd.

Welcome to the synodal process! God is love!

We had a planning meeting to discuss how we will do our own synodality synodaling and got an earful of just this kind of thing. An AWFL brought up the migrants in our session, insisting that we make them a big part of our topics for synodishness. Trying to be helpful, she had been taking notes on just who in the parish had shown bigotry recently and just how they had been doing it. It was lovely and full of love and lovingly served the God of love.

At that point, I and the others who didn't want to see the synodification devolve into house-to-house fighting in the parish had a choice to make. We could either push back or we could remain quiet and see if it would blow over. One woman asked if she could hear the names and the crimes. The AWFL refused to do so in a most synodalicious way. Personally, I couldn't think of a way to push back that didn't end in shouting, so I kept quiet.

In retrospect, this perfectly encapsulates almost all interactions with progressives. They are full of love and you are a bigot. From that starting point, you are supposed to engage in dialog.

On the plus side, the rest of the country isn't as stupid as San Diego. We are the only diocese dumb enough to engage in Round 2 of Synodalizing. In fact, here in the diocese of San Diego, as I understand it, more than half the parishes have simply refused to participate. It's no wonder. The thing is doomed to end in shouting and tears. After all, there are just so many bigots out there and they are all so full of hate.

Synodality in action.

God Speaks To Me In Prayer

 ... for real, I am sure of it. But those conversations, I believe, are limited to those things about which I have direct, personal knowledge.

A good friend of mine, we'll call him Andy, recently fell while hiking a local, canyon trail. The trails can be uneven and steep. My friend is in his mid-60s. He braced himself with his hands and when he fell, he badly injured both shoulders, possibly damaging his rotator cuffs. He's been in pain since then.

Andy's life is defined by active service for others. He is the ultimate handyman having worked as a mechanic for decades and, through enforced frugality, having repaired, rebuilt or constructed everything in his house and his children's houses. He, with family help, recently did a moderately-sized remodel of his own house, doing almost all of the work himself.

Andy cannot watch a movie all the way through because he wants to be working on something instead. He would never watch a sporting event all the way through if not doing so at one of our dinners or parties where the game is the excuse for the get together. His entire being is defined by his productive, physical activity.

The fall and injury took that away from him, at least temporarily. Andy and I don't have a whole lot in common - we can't discuss sports, theology or most of the things on this blog. Still, I see him and his wife a couple of times a week, so we socialize quite a bit. I like Andy and enjoy his company.

During my morning prayer recently, I thought about him as I spoke my thoughts out loud to God*. I believe that God or the Holy Spirit or Jesus or whatever pointed out to me that Andy is going through excruciating, psychological pain right now. Andy, being Andy, doesn't show it, perhaps not even to himself. What I needed to do was use my gifts as an ENFJ and draw out his feelings and thoughts about his injury, his recovery and his inability to do the things he normally does. I needed to give him a place to talk about it.

I needed to love Andy in the way he needed to be loved.

I believe this was divine because, at the time, my thoughts were consumed with my ongoing war with the bottle, the presence of the pit bull puppy and the way it was wrecking my life, the lack of the Alabama river house and any number of other self-pitying introspections. There is nothing more important than me, you understand. What I heard was gentle, loving, compassionate, true and perfectly suited to my nature and gifts. It was oriented towards someone other than me.

The next time I saw him, the interaction was only brief, I asked him about how he was doing and he brightened visibly as he told me how he was feeling. He was still in a good deal of pain and it prevented him from doing things. He liked having someone who understood and listened.

Bingo.

Going back to the recent theme on this blog where I rage against the Eccliastical machine, I don't believe the Holy Spirit would tell me to vote for JD Vance when he responded to me in prayer. I don't know JD personally and while I may think he'd make an excellent president, he very well may be a self-serving crook in ways I can't see. It would be a form of insider trading for the Holy Spirit to give me divine guidance to direct my voting.

Similarly, the Holy Spirit isn't guiding the Catholic bishops or the Pope, for that matter, to support open borders and the "migrants." Those issues are hopelessly complicated with winners and losers no human can hope to estimate. For the Holy Spirit to give such guidance would be to imply that Heaven has run the numbers and they come out squarely on the side of mass migration. The bishops, being fallible humans of no particular skill in macroeconomics, cultural assimilation, political science, environmental studies, etc, certainly couldn't run those numbers themselves.

To believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding our prelates to support mass migration is to believe that the Holy Spirit is engaging in insider trading at the highest levels.

As Aquinas said, to love is to will the good of the other. In the case of mass migration, the "other" is absolutely everyone. Even AI run on supercomputers would have no hope of working out those equations reliably. The question of what is "the good of the other" in this case is hopelessly complicated.

While I have direct, first-hand experience of divine guidance and intervention in my life, I simply cannot believe that Heaven is handing us the answers to questions as cosmically difficult as that.

Yeah, I don't think it works this way.

* - I've learned to follow Andrew Klavan's dictum - when you pray, speak out loud because it forces you to speak in complete sentences and think clearly about what you're saying. I also follow the teaching of many, many Catholic teachers who say that prayer is conversation with God.

Jesus Is A Muslim

One more in my series on this kind of thing and then I promise I'll stop.

That graphic is from an article in America magazine, or something similarly airheaded, where the US Catholic bishops make the case for supporting mass migration.

The primary outcome after 15 years of mass migration has been a dramatic increase in the populations and power of Muslims across Europe and North America. As a predictable result, girls are being raped, Jews are being persecuted and churches are being desecrated or burned. The locals are getting a bit restive as well.

Volley of bottles against Gardai at CityWest earlier pic.twitter.com/IZrfqFIMYp

— Aris Roussinos (@arisroussinos) October 21, 2025

From the article at that link:

Fearing a riot, the Irish authorities yesterday evening shut down the Luas tram line from central Dublin to the suburban village of Saggart, southwest of the city centre. It didn’t work. Many hundreds — perhaps a thousand — angry protestors had gathered outside the gates of the Citywest IPAS (asylum) centre, hurling missiles and abuse at the Gardai public order unit blocking them from forcing their way up the long and wooded drive to the hotel.

The day before, an African asylum seeker had been charged with the sexual assault of a 10-year old Irish girl on the grounds of the Citywest centre, a 2,500-bed hotel recently acquired at vast expense by the Irish government, against fierce local opposition in the 4,500-strong community. The suspect, who needed an Arabic translator, was issued with a deportation order this spring and hadn’t yet been removed; the victim, in the care of Ireland’s scandal-hit Tusla child protection agency, found her chaotic personal circumstances publicised by the state in a manner many on social media saw as tantamount to victim-blaming. Outside the IPAS centre, the toxic combination had fired up both locals and protestors from across the country, who now had very little time for Ireland’s main political parties, or the police forces standing between them and the hotel they wished to storm.

An African Muslim "migrant" raped a 10-year-old Irish girl and those crazy, unpredictable Irish got their Irish up.

Jesus, being omniscient, must have predicted this on the way to the sports betting site where he was picking up his winnings from betting heavily on Georgia this weekend. Since the Catholic Church has played a significant role in the mass migration crisis by loudly supporting the migrants and since the bishops claim to be informed by the Holy Spirit through prayer and since they also claim that Jesus is present in the whole thing, we can safely assume that all is going according to God's plan.

Personally, the only conclusion I can reach as I look at demographic predictions that show many European countries becoming majority Muslim in a few decades and political polls showing that NYC will soon have a Muslim communist mayor, is that Jesus has switched sides and now plays for Team Islam.

Prove me wrong, bishops.

Jesus Does Not Like The Jews

We know this from modern Catholic teaching, summarized here.

1. Our prelates are convinced they are being guided by the Holy Spirit.
2. The Holy Spirit has told them to support open borders and welcome all migrants.
3. Muslims are a good chunk of those migrants.
4. Those Muslim migrants have now become a majority in several locations. Birmingham, England, for example, where Jews were recently forbidden from attending a soccer match.
5. In many Muslim-heavy locations, Jews are persecuted and sometimes killed.
6. The Holy Spirit, being omniscient, knew this would happen, as did anyone with even the faintest familiarity with Islam.
7. Ergo, the Holy Spirit does not like Jews.
8. As we say in the Nicene Creed every week, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are consubstantial.
9. Ergo, Jesus does not like the Jews, either.

Man, Jesus' home life with his Jewish Mother Mary must have been wild.

In The UK, No Jews Is Good Jews

This is unreal.

I welcome the news that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans will not be permitted to watch the match at Aston Villa! Well done to all those that signed our petition! pic.twitter.com/cRDtdDc7ad

— Ayoub Khan MP (@AyoubKhanMP) October 16, 2025

Birmingham Islamic preacher, Astar Rashid, told his followers that the Muslims of Birmingham “should show no mercy” to the football fans from Tel Aviv.

And the British police just announced that it is not capable of protecting the Jewish fans.

The UK has a big problem pic.twitter.com/dFVoC0eD1F

— The Uri (@uricohenisrael) October 16, 2025

It's For Their Own Good

 ... that we should repeal the 19th Amendment.

Here's something I hadn't considered: women are much more liberal than men. Liberal governments are the ones who have opened their countries' borders to the "migrants." Now the migrants are raping women like mad. Women continue to vote for those same liberals.

Women are voting to be raped.

Women's risk of being gang-raped in Europe would be reduced to just ~25% of the current level if there had been no Muslim / African mass immigration.

The Muslim / African mass immigration has made Europe less safe for women to an extreme degree. pic.twitter.com/y8kJKEUVaV

— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) October 13, 2025

Here's a reasonable explanation, one that jives with my own experiences and the deep-dive I did into writing romantic fiction with AI. I don't agree with the over-broad generalization, but the sense of the thing seems true.

For women, it's better to risk getting raped than to be seen as lacking empathy.

That sounds insane, but it fits the facts.

They Aren't Smart Enough To Want Anarchy

Continuing with my model of primitives instead of progressives, let's look at this excellent blog post about the decay in Chicago.

A driving reason for me to start (my business elsewhere) was because I saw that Chicago was on the brink of a financial precipice. I knew the politicians were full of themselves when they touted the “diversity of the economy”. Chicago was and is driven by financial services. Chicago has lost insurance, banking, investment banking, and other major verticals in finance. It has accounting, and it has trading...

I was early in this realization. An old friend who has passed away, Dan Rahill, and I went to lunch. Two CEOs laid out the math on city/county/state budgets, pensions, and everything else. A career bureaucrat stood up at that lunch and said any reform was against the Constitution.

Dan and I quickly realized that either we grow the economic opportunity, or we move.

He goes on to discuss how he left and doesn't miss Chicago because those remaining are angry with Trump's efforts at deporting illegals and the ICE raids. After a few anecdotes, he summarizes the situation as follows.

There are some truths about immigration and illegal aliens.

1. You cannot have open borders with a welfare state. It’s impossible.
2. It is lawful to deport illegal aliens. They aren’t here legally, and it is the federal government’s role to do it. There is no such thing as a sanctuary state or city. Asserting such is not any different than assertions by the old Confederacy that they were above federal law.
3. When there is no law, and there is no will to enforce the law, or there is only a selective will to enforce some laws, anarchy will reign. Totalitarians love anarchy. It’s what Lenin brought to Russia to take control. It is the playbook of Saul Alinsky. Anarchy begets totalitarianism.

1 is spot on. 2 is a poor reading of the legality of secession in 1861, but it's close enough for our purposes. 3 may be correct, but it's irrelevant. Anarchy might lead to totalitarianism but in a place where the residents can choose to flee, it will be warring tribes living in mud huts and squalor, not a modern city. Who cares who rules the place at that point?

Dig this from South Africa.

As the primitives gain more and more power, money and skilled people flee both Chicago and South Africa. The ones who are leaving, just like my friends who have left California, are the builders and producers. The ones staying behind are the primitives. Thus, the spiral downward continues.

Lots of people on the right keep going on about totalitarianism, anarcho-socialism and the plots of the Globalists. It hardly matters whether or not the primitives wrecking the place have some grand plan or not. They're tearing those places to bits.

It's not really a blog post without a dig at the primitives who run our Church, is it?

The bit about open borders and a welfare state being incompatible touched a nerve. We receive regular earfuls about Catholic social teaching (read: lots of welfare) and support of the "migrants" from our leaders in the Church. Sigh.

Primitives, Not Progressives

I think I've had my formulations wrong all this time. I keep talking about progressives and suchlike, but that's not really who they are. Instead, they are primitives. Allow me to explain.

Ben Shapiro published a book recently called Lions and Scavengers. In short, lions build and protect while scavengers, well, scavenge. I like Ben, but the book feels like it was rushed and his model doesn't work for me. For one thing, lions don't build anything. Further, the people who get me all worked up, the Catholic hierarchy, are only somewhat scavengers. It dawned on me just recently that a better descriptor is primitives.

Primitives have no idea how civilization works, how it is maintained or how it was created. These are the South Africans who have torn out power lines to get at the copper which they sell for scrap metal. These are also the Catholic bishops who call for more and more "migrants" to be brought into America from places like South Africa.

The South Africans are tearing South Africa to bits and the bishops can't see that bringing them here will only lead to America being torn to bits. They are both primitives because civilization is utterly alien to them save for how it will be consumed to provide sustenance for today.

Dig this time-lapse video of a major construction project.

Now listen to this Aboriginal talk about meeting white people for the first time.

Now check out this summary of the Palestinians going at each other like animals now that there is a power vacuum in Gaza following Hamas getting stomped by the Israelis.

Internal clashes erupt in the Gaza Strip as Hamas tries to reassert control after the ceasefire:

Following the implementation of the ceasefire, tensions have risen across Gaza between Hamas forces and several powerful families.

The fiercest fighting occurred in the north, where… pic.twitter.com/8Un5rIv1MB

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) October 12, 2025

There is simply no chance in the world that either the Aboriginals or the Palestinians could build that apartment complex on their own. If you go backwards in time a bit so that both the Abos* and Pallies cannot rely on anything invented by the Europeans, it becomes crystal clear that neither would be able to build anything even remotely like that.

Primitives are like that. They are, well, primitive. If you import a bunch of them or create a ton of them in your universities or generate them from legalizing drugs, they will drag you down to their level. They cannot do anything else because they do not know how to maintain, much less build.

This is what makes the open-border crowd primitives. They are actively overloading the system to the point where everything will get pulled to bits. Because they are primitive, they don't understand what is required to maintain civilization and, in childlike innocence, think it will always be there.

An intellectual with a fancy degree wearing a suit (or Roman collar!) can be just as primitive as the Abo woman in the video above. When you consume what others have built, when you devour your fixed assets to feed yourself today, when it is easy to project the fruits of your behavior into the future and see mud huts instead of skyscrapers, you are a primitive.

Primitives do this:

It is childlike naivete to think that cash will continue to flow from the government forever like this. It is childlike naivete to speak of empathy and compassion for the migrants who will accelerate the process of fiscal collapse. It is childlike naivete to think that Abos, Pallies or South American peasants will contribute anything unique and irreplaceable to construction projects like the one above in excess of what they will drain from the rest of us.

It is the same childlike ignorance that leads the South Africans to tear apart their infrastructure for scrap.

It is primitive.

Bonus Content

Watch this and think in terms of the value of the fixed assets involved. Any repairs of this destruction must be paid out of existing funds which will not be available for normal maintenance or improvements. In short, the "migrants" are pulling Italy to bits. The Catholic bishops, being primitives, cannot comprehend that.

Milan is a jungle without rules. We all know why. pic.twitter.com/H9V7FjvWij

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) October 12, 2025

* - If you think I'm going to keep typing "Aboriginals" and "Palestinians" over and over again, you're crazy.

Tomato Chemistry

 For years, I've nuked our raised beds with every kind of fertilizer imaginable. In December or January, I pull last year's tomato plant carcasses out of the bed and then whack it with raw DOW chemical, some LGBTQWERTY organic nutrients and then some PETA-approved, sustainable animal fertilizers. Cumulatively, I use about triple the fertilizer I should.

In January, February and March come the San Diego rains. It's not much for normal humans, but for us, it's a decent amount of water. It turns my fertilizer blitz into a charming tea for the plants, read: Roma tomatoes. This has worked forever. This year, it failed. All we got was monster tomato plants with plenty of fruit that never ripened.

Preparing for my garden in Alabama, I bought this soil test kit. 

Testing the Nitrogen.

Here's what I discovered.

Tomatoes want a pH of about 6 and a moderate amount of Nitrogen. They want a lot of Phosphorus and Potassium. I had:

• pH = 8. No surprise, San Diego is known for hard, alkaline water.
• Nitrogen: High. Probably not a problem.
• Phosphorus: High. Excellent!
• Potassium: Low. Oof!

It turns out that the high pH combined with the low Potassium was fatal. The high pH inhibits Potassium intake in general and there wasn't a whole lot of the K to ingest anyway.

Next time, we're testing the soil before we plant.

If The Jews Are Packing

 ... then it might be time for you to check to see if your luggage is in working order.

Dig this.

France entering ‘new phase’ in antisemitism. 400% increase in applications to move to Israel from France last year. 52% of French Jews considering leaving the country.

Number #1 threat: radical Islam. https://t.co/eLvHyR2SMA

— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) October 7, 2025

Also, this.

My own family arrived here at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Like many Jews from Eastern Europe, they were fleeing the mass murders perpetrated by the Russian state. That journey brought them to Scotland, where they built new lives and laid down roots. I grew up in Glasgow, deeply proud to be British. I learned the kings and queens of the British Isles by heart and was captivated by the story of Mary, Queen of Scots. I absorbed the customs, values, and culture. I was always a proud Jew who understood my connection to Israel, but I also cherished being British.

This was my home. Today, I am preparing to leave it.

It has not been an easy decision. For years I clung to the belief that, despite the rise in hostility to the Jewish community, we could still build lives here. I had watched from abroad during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, when Jew-hate poisoned the party and seeped into wider politics. 

And then there's this.

This morning as I sat in a London synagogue for Yom Kippur services, a friend sitting next to me said “I reckon Jews have about 10 years left in this country.”

I said I disagreed, and that it’s not as bad as it seems.

About 20 minutes later, the service was suddenly… https://t.co/yJ6DY5Hcex

— Ashley Rindsberg (@AshleyRindsberg) October 2, 2025

Despite what right-wing antisemite loons might say, and I'm looking at you, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Jews are civilization's canaries in the coal mine. If they don't feel safe, then it's a good bet you're not going to feel safe soon.

Looking back through history, you can take your pick of pogroms and see that they never preceded times of peace and prosperity. How could they? Jews are a boon to any society.

It's no secret that Jewish culture strongly values education and hard work. It's why, contra Hitler, they succeed wherever they go. And who doesn't want more of that?

If you've created an environment where that is not valued to the point where the Jews are looking for the exits, it's a strong indicator that things are about to go sideways for everyone.

Super Special Yiddish Bonus Content

Add New York City to the list of places you might want to avoid in the future.

BREAKING: A crowd of Islamists in NYC waving Hamas flags declare that they will presumably carry out attacks in the US.

"We did not act enough! We will show up, stronger than we did the first October 7th!"

pic.twitter.com/FAqejwAekY

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 8, 2025

Well, That Didn't Take Long

 I wasn't going to write about France again, but they, well, they did a France.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu abruptly resigned on Monday morning, just three weeks after his appointment, preempting what appeared to be an inevitable ousting. Lecornu was expected to unveil his policy agenda before the National Assembly on Tuesday, but both the Socialist Party and the National Rally had warned that without a drastic policy shift, they would trigger a no-confidence vote. French bonds and stocks slumped on the emerging political crisis. 

President Emmanuel Macron's office issued a one-sentence statement, confirming that Macron had accepted the resignation of Lecornu. This comes amid turmoil over the composition of his cabinet, a coalition of centrists and conservatives. 

Lecornu told reporters his resignation was primarily due to the inability to compromise across the political spectrum: "I was ready to compromise, but each political party wanted the other political party to adopt its entire program."

Three whole weeks? What an amateur. Let Bruno Le Maire show you how professionals do it.

France's former finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, who was appointed head of the Ministry of the Armed Forces on Sunday, announced his resignation less than 24 hours after taking the job, amid ongoing political turmoil that rattled stocks and bonds in Paris on Monday. 

Surrendering in less than 24 hours. Now that's some prime-grade Frenching right there.

Not to worry. The migrants will add stability to the whole thing, right Catholic prelates?

Islamists caused nothing but complete chaos in Paris.

What has Europe done to itself? pic.twitter.com/2j1FZdnLgG

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 6, 2025

Professor David Betz, please call your office.

Oh, wait, there he is now.

Why are other police standing around gormlessly while this scruffy looking bully of a cop assaults a girl, steals her property, and handles the national flag like a dishrag? https://t.co/uF4G37a6At

— David Betz (@DavidBe31099196) September 29, 2025

Triggering Civil War In England And France

David Betz has made the rounds discussing why he thinks that sectarian civil war in Europe will happen in the next 5 years. Here's one such conversation.

Here's an interesting article from ZeroHedge that applies.

France remains paralyzed even after its latest government reshuffle. Time is running out to consolidate public finances before bond markets turn against Paris.

The office of Prime Minister has become a revolving door. In just three years, President Emmanuel Macron has burned through five governments without visible results. 

The country is trapped in political shock, a deadlock in parliament that appears unbreakable.On September 9, Sébastien Lecornu of Macron’s Renaissance party took the poisoned chalice from his failed predecessor François Bayrou. Like those before him, Bayrou was broken by France’s structural inability to reform. The country sustains one of the most bloated welfare systems in the world, with government expenditure at 57% of GDP. This overextended welfare state acts as a sedative for a migration-driven society that has shifted into full socialist-style management of the economy—and now cannot find a way out.

France buys social peace with ever-larger sums of borrowed money. The strategy leaves deep holes in the public accounts and barely hides the fractures of a fragmented society, where class conflict grows more aggressive and Islamist subcultures flourish. With new borrowing at 5.6% of GDP this year and total debt at 114%, France faces the classic Ponzi dilemma: once old debt can no longer be rolled into new issuance, the entire system collapses.

Unlike the US, the Euro is not the currency the world uses and so there is no real reason to buy French bonds as there is to buy American bonds. If any of the European countries find themselves in a serious fiscal crunch, there will be cuts to their social spending, either from inflation or budgetary necessity.

It hardly matters which. In a population used to survival at the hands of government largesse built upon clouds of borrowing, when that borrowing dissolves, things will get dicey and people will revert to clan and tribal loyalties. The African and Muslim "migrants" will have the advantage here as they are far more familiar with violence and deprivation than the native French and British.

If you think the IMF can bail out these countries, think again. IMF rules say that a country can borrow up to 200% of its quota, which is tied to its economic size and contributions to the IMF. For the UK, that would be about $55B. For France, that would be about $70B. That would cover about 4 months of each country's current borrowing. 

The IMF can't come to the rescue because the amounts both nations need are just too large. 

You can "buy social peace with ... borrowed money" until you can't.

David Betz has predicted it. Will the debt crises be the catalyst for it?

Christian Morality Is About Individuals, Not Groups

 St. Thomas Aquinas has provided us with the best definition of love.

You've got a decent chance of figuring out what "the good" is for an individual if you really get to know them. At least you can make an educated guess. You can also take steps to make sure your actions don't have destructive secondary effects on others.

You've got just about no chance at all of figuring out what "the good" is for the members of a large group and you can just forget about predicting how you might harm people outside the group.

I've discussed in the past how my middle brother died as a homeless addict and alcoholic. If you had exerted yourself to do "good" for him, you would have locked him away in rehab for the rest of his life and given him some vigorous home truths. I have no idea if such an action would be best for any particular homeless person, I just know it's what he needed.

When the progressive prelates in the Catholic Church talk about "uplifting the marginalized," warehousing the homeless like that is not what they mean. As a result, "uplifting the marginalized" would have been counterproductive for my brother.

If Bishop Pham of San Diego goes out to the tomato fields in Central California and gets to know Jose Hernandez, illegal immigrant, he's got a really good shot at helping poor old Jose without kicking the rest of America in the groin. It's a bit murkier when Bishop Pham and the rest of our moral-pornography-besotted bishops talk about the "migrants" as a group, insisting that we deport none of them.

I recently saw some eye-opening education stats from California. Over 70% of black 4th graders in California are not proficient at reading at the basic level. The basic level. Dittos for black 8th graders. That means "See spot run" is about as far as they can get. They can barely communicate in English, there's zero chance they can communicate at all in Spanish.

Thanks to Bishop Pham and his buddies in the Church, the language of construction, housekeeping and landscape maintenance in California is now Spanish. Those functionally illiterate black kids are shut out from the only careers available to provide them productive, successful lives.

Had our bishop focused on Jose, he'd have been fine and we'd all have applauded. Maybe Jose has a wife and children and he's trying to keep the family together while his wife undergoes complicated treatments for her painful dandruff condition. The bishop would have been able to predict the ripple effects from his actions with a degree of accuracy.

When the bishops lecture us about the migrants, they clearly have no idea what they're talking about. They aren't trying to hurt people on purpose, but they've still managed to absolutely stomp all over young blacks' employment prospects. Even now, they have no clue at all what they're doing to the rest of us.

That's not a criticism of their intentions or intellect, it's a consequence of their decision to take Jesus' teachings and extend them from individuals to groups, which is something He never did for reasons that have become all too obvious.

So help Jose and let the polity take care of the migrants.

On Old Men And Cigars

After my tobacco growing experiments yielded a smokable harvest, I decided to find out if my tobacco was any good by taking up pipe smoking. I'd never smoked prior to that and even now, I smoke about twice a month. I recently decided to see what cigars were like.

Recalling that Roger Moore was partial to Monte Cristo cigars, and Roger being my favorite James Bond, I stopped at our local Total Wine and More and picked up one. It was utterly sublime.

At 62, I took up cigar smoking with about the same regularity as my pipe smoking. Monte Cristos are quite expensive, about $25 apiece, so I tried to find similar cigars that were less expensive. A bit of searching both here in San Diego and in Mobile, Alabama yielded a string of smokes that tasted like I was licking the asphalt out in the street. Horrible.

The last one I tried, highly recommended by the cigar guy at the Tinder Box in Mobile, was a Perdomo Lot 23 Nicaraguan. Again, sublime.

My cigar exploration has produced very few hits, so I think I'm done with that and I'll stick to the Perdomos and the Monte Cristos. Combined with a good Old Fashioned, and I make a good one, the experience is exquisite.

The problem with being a novice at cigar smoking when you're 63 is that you didn't make your truly hideous mistakes at 16 and there are lessons you still need to learn the hard way.

About a week ago, wife kitteh went on a retreat with a friend and, naturally, I threw a stag party. Southern food and Confederate Railroad music was had in great quantities and two of my guests proved to be excellent mixologists. It was a lot of fun until the very end when we brought out smokes.

You are not supposed to inhale cigars. I had heard that, but while smoking my previous cigars, I played with that advice and inhaled a few times. Nothing happened.

I inhaled a complete Perdomo Lot 23 Nicaraguan Churchill. That is one seriously big cigar.

Vomito de gato.

Cigars have a lot more nicotine than cigarettes which is why you only puff them. You get plenty of the stuff through your mouth. No need to take it into your lungs and poison yourself, which is what I did. Blargh.

I don't get a nicotine high. I still don't understand why people smoke cigarettes. I smoke pipes and cigars for the flavor and the experience. Like I said, they go real well with mixed drinks. And so I ended up crawling around on the floor all day Sunday as my body irritably processed the idiotic amount of nicotine I had consumed while not actually enjoying any kind of buzz from it.

I sure wish I had learned that when I was 16.

A happier moment when I'm puffing, not inhaling.

If This Is A Spaniel

 ... then I'm the Queen of France.

That's Buddy. He's probably around 40# by now at 5-6 months old. We were assured he was a spaniel - retriever mix. Doggy DNA testing showed he was exactly what I thought he was when we met him as a puppy at the rescue place - a pit bull.

Fortunately, he's a meek pit bull. Our twin chihuahua sisters dominate him. Thank God for small favors.

The Deeper Meaning Of Charlie Kirk's Death And Memorial

Here are a few clips to get this started.

First, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio summoned his inner Father Mike Schmitz and explained the entire story of salvation history in under 90 seconds.

🙌❤️🔥✝️ pic.twitter.com/W7ZO11CjQ3

— Bree Solstad (@BreeSolstad) September 21, 2025

Second, Vice President J D Vance.

“I’ve been a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public...I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past 2 weeks than I have my ENTIRE time in public life!” -JD Vance We are on the right side of history! #christisking #charliekirkmemorial #ajsrantroom pic.twitter.com/HHRofOTbJA

— AJs RANT Room 🇺🇸 (@AJsRantRoom) September 21, 2025

Next, Erika Kirk.

“I forgive him.” @MrsErikaKirk pic.twitter.com/UWTEpAidol

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) September 21, 2025

Now, President Trump.

TRUMP: "He didn't hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them - that's where I disagreed with Charlie. I HATE my opponent and I DON'T want the best for them."💀😂 pic.twitter.com/9X7N1aLWR8

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 21, 2025

Finally, Andrew Klavan.

No one has said it better than @andrewklavan. Don't get angry and avenge Charlie Kirk. Imitate him instead. Go out to the normal people and seek what's best for them. Preach Christianity which naturally leads to conservatism because liberty is required for virtue. pic.twitter.com/IeyWavPAy5

— K T Cat (@ktcat) September 22, 2025

They are not all the same. There is a line running through them, but they are not the same. The Overton Window has shifted dramatically. 

The dominant question on the right, now broadly permissible as a result of Charlie Kirk’s death, is this: How do we best follow Christ in the realm of politics?

It is incredible to me that such a question is now front and center in the Republican party. It would have been unthinkable even 3 weeks ago. As a believing Catholic, I haven't felt comfortable discussing my faith in public in 20 or 30 years. 

I have a friend who teaches natural family planning at marriage preparation classes. She's no dummy, she can see other Catholics wince when she brings up the topic. She shared with me a little of the embarrassment she feels, even among her fellow Catholics, at the subject. She hesitates to discuss it unless required by the classes.

That's the Overton Window in action. What is permissible speech in public? The Overton Window limits what we will discuss with each other, even in private, even among friends. When JD Vance said he had felt uncomfortable discussing his faith in public, he meant even the speeches he gave at red-meat, MAGA events.

The Secretary of State went full Father Mike Schmitz, not just in public, but in front of a memorial service whose size equaled those of JFK and MLK. When have you ever heard that, in such an enormous venue, from the person fourth in line for the Presidency?

I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched much of it and every speaker got up and talked about their Christian faith. It was the central theme of the day. Not MAGA, not Trump, not the political enemies, not even the murder of Charlie Kirk. While Charlie's assassination was the catalyst, the end product of the reaction was this conversation.

How do we serve God in our politics? How do we gain the courage to speak the truth? How can we be more like Charlie Kirk in our daily lives?

I have no doubt that the regime media will focus on Trump's profession of hate. They absolutely should do that. The President of the United States, at a massive event for a Christian preacher, pled allegiance to hate. But you have to see it in context. If you know anything about Trump, you know he's a showman, full of bluster, speaking in hyperbole all the time. He is the greatest, everything he's ever done is the greatest, all of his achievements are like nothing we've ever seen.

Trump's profession of hate had an undercurrent of regret and doubt. It was an admission, not a call to action. When he talked about Erika's forgiveness, he didn't do what he usually does to people who disagree with him, calling her names or saying she was a failure. No, instead of that, he said that she might be able to convince him he was wrong and he needed to wish the best for everyone, even his enemies.

Amazing. Fantastic. Miraculous.

We don't know where this is going to lead, but we do know that it has utterly changed the conversation we are all having with each other, at least on the right. We are now having the correct conversation, as Andrew Klavan has been asserting for years now. The most important questions are about the Truth and both politics and culture are downstream of that. 

Don't get angry and avenge Charlie Kirk. Imitate him instead.

I'll leave you with this one, staggering quote. Imagine a world where Elon converts and uses his platform, his wealth and his powerful persuasion for Christ.

Marginalized Pornography

Within the very progressive Diocese of San Diego, a common theme from the pulpit is how we must lift up the marginalized. It's driven me bonkers, but it's taken me a while to understand why.

There is no such thing as the marginalized. The term comes from social justice and cultural Marxism academic literature. It implies all that you would suspect given that pedigree. Its root is the verb "to marginalize" and it's freighted with the Marxist concepts of oppressors and oppressed. Oppressors marginalize people. The oppressed are the marginalized.

Further, it carries with it the woke hierarchy of victim groups. When you talk about the marginalized, people know you mean blacks, LGBTQWERTY, women, the homeless and so on. The flip side is that straight, white men and their allies are the ones doing the marginalizing. Everything is about power and systems of oppression.

Just taking the homeless as an example, you can see that the term doesn't make sense. My middle brother was an addict and an alcoholic. He was homeless when he died. To our diocese, he was a member of the marginalized. In reality, that man was in no way, shape or form marginalized by anyone. He was an utter sensualist. There was no immediate pleasure he would not forgo whether that was sex, drugs or booze. He slept with anything that wore a skirt and consumed anything that made him high.

Our family tried to "uplift" him many times, but that always ended in theft, betrayal and sometimes violence.

The racially marginalized are equally nonsensical.

Here, the white girl was the oppressor. The black guy who had just stabbed her in the throat was the marginalized. Dittos for the black passengers who walked past her as she bled out on the floor. You can find the full story here if you aren't familiar with this iconic image.

Classifying people as marginalized makes no sense at all. As Solzhenitsyn said, the dividing line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart. We're all complex people. Catholics, perhaps not including our clergy here in San Diego, believe that all people are fallible, sinful creatures that cannot perfect or redeem themselves on their own. That includes whoever it is the clergy think they're describing when they used the term "marginalized."

So what's up with all the talk about the marginalized?

When you use the term "marginalized," you put them in the context of the Marxists' oppressor-victim framework. The discussion from that point on forces anyone disagreeing with you to take up the flag of the oppressor. You are airbrushing away the agency of these people the way lingerie models have their flaws airbrushed away in Photoshop. It's porn.

When our clergy tell us to uplift the marginalized, what are we going to say, "No, I don't want to uplift the marginalized?" You force us to accept your unspoken premise that these people are helpless victims of an unjust system created by people like us who are privileged at their expense. We are the villains and now we must pay back what we owe.

It's all nonsense, it's all moral pornography. Your frisson of onanistic pleasure that comes from helping the less fortunate by your speech alone becomes all the greater because now you are helping, not just people who are in a bad way, but utterly innocent and helpless people who are in a bad way. You can't hope to find anyone who better fits Jesus' reference of "the least among you" than the "marginalized."

It's like an AI version of the perfect lingerie model, a chick crafted by your prompts to have just the right hair, the right skin, the right measurements, the right pose, the right facial expression and the right garments to arouse you to the very heights of ecstasy.

The marginalized do not exist in real life because Marxism is utterly wrong, but they do exist in your head. Each of the social justice progressives has their own internal image of the marginalized, just like porn addicts each have their own distinct fetishes.

A good way to put an end to this kind of talk is to bring up concrete examples. My brother, for one. Just how do you plan on uplifting him when he's just going to rob you to get another hit? How about the black guy on the train in Charlotte? Are you planning on uplifting him as he stands with the white girl's blood dripping from his knife, muttering, "I got that white girl?"

Or maybe these guys in South Africa. For the social justice crew, black South Africans are prime-grade marginalized beef on the hoof. Go ahead and uplift them as they destroy their own infrastructure in the process of stealing a few dollars worth of scrap metal.

South Africa is a lawless place. pic.twitter.com/desMSmi3Bt

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) September 17, 2025

All Bark, No Blog

The puppy is just killing me. It takes up my every morning which is when my creative juices flow. It's getting bigger and easier to manage, but it's still needy and wife kitteh needs her morning sleep.

Sigh.

Having A Psychotic Boss Leads To The Assassination Of Charlie Kirk

I've been pondering this concept for a while and the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk yesterday forced it to the surface.

What is the next logical step after this?

How about the radicalization of the Democrats?

The Democrats get a large percent of their money from small donors which means the base. As their popularity declines, so does their pool of donors. As their popularity declines, their base becomes more and more radical because the squishier ones leave. Their popularity is now at historic lows.

As their popularity decreases, they are forced to spiral in towards their far-left base which means their rhetoric has to become more and more frenzied and hateful to keep the money flowing. Hence "the end of Democracy" and "fascists" and all the rest.

If their starting point was that everyone who disagreed with them was a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, a fascist and more, where else can they go as their base moves farther and farther left?

How do you appeal to psychotics?

Addendum

It is nearly impossible to be a conservative and not understand the left's positions because we marinate in them every day. They permeate our entertainment, schools and news media. We bathe in the water of the left.

It is very common for the progressives to have no idea why conservatives think like they do because people like Charlie Kirk have been edited out of their world. I can't tell you how many news sources and public figures described Charlie as "divisive" and then cherry-picked some of his positions, putting them in the worst light possible. They deliberately removed all neutral reference points. They wanted you to hate him.

As the left spirals down into their base, their base stays whipped into a frenzy of ignorant, self-reinforced hate. That's a recipe for more and more violence.

More than that, Charlie Kirk along with Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and lots of other thought leaders on the right make it a habit to speak in large, public forums and then make sure the progressives in the audience get an unedited, uninterrupted chance to challenge them in the Q&A.

That dialog was precisely what Charlie was doing when they shot him. 

You punish the things you don't want repeated. If you're going to punish free and open conversations about politics, be prepared for the alternative.

One more thing. Ben Shapiro made a typically brilliant observation about Charlie's assassination. This spells the end of open-air presentations like this. From now on, the venues for these things will be enclosed, tightly controlled and necessarily smaller. If you saw photos of Charlie's event yesterday, you'll see why this is a bad thing for all Americans. That crowd was huge.

The 8th Air Force And Islam In Europe

I know this is a detour from my series on Be Nice, Don't Judge in the Diocese of San Diego, but I just got a brain wave on a topic I've been pondering for years.

What will the world be like for us when Europe and Canada become Islamic? Given demographic trends, we're on track for that. 

What if the end result is a 1950s America where we prosper because our competition has been bombed into the Stone Age and we're the only ones with a functional, advanced economy? The analogy isn't perfect as we would share the spoils with Asia in a way we didn't in the 1950s, but the idea might be the same.

Is there a difference between the 8th Air Force and Islam?

Think about this: there isn't a single Muslim country where there are significant manufacturing, software development or investment industries. Quick, name an automobile brand that comes from an Islamic country. You can't because there isn't one.

It's not that they don't have resources, manpower or cash. There are plenty of Islamic countries awash in all three. It must be something cultural. I won't go into it here, but if you have read What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis, it makes sense. Here's the book's blurb from Amazon.

For centuries, the world of Islam was in the forefront of human achievement -- the foremost military and economic power in the world, the leader in the arts and sciences of civilization. Christian Europe was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed. The West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and then in the marketplace.

In this elegantly written volume, Bernard Lewis, a renowned authority an Islamic affairs, examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to make sense of how it had been overtaken, overshadowed, and dominated by the West. In a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil, Lewis shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry, industry, government, education, and culture. He also describes how some Middle Easterners fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, while others asked not "Who did this to us?" but rather "Where did we go wrong?"

A lot of things went right for America in the 1950s. One of the chief among them was the fact that Europe and Japan were skeletons of their former economic selves. Are we headed back to those halcyon days once Britain, France, Germany and Canada become Islamic Republics?

Allahu Akbar, indeed.