Marxist Love

... is an oxymoron. Dig this from Marxism and the Meaning of Materialism from the Socialist Worker website.

Karl Marx was a materialist--more than that, he was a historical materialist. Marxists, in order to establish their credentials in political arguments, frequently claim that they are giving a materialist analysis of a phenomenon. The claim that a materialist analysis is being provided both attests to the Marxist credentials of the argument, and validates the attitudes and actions that follow from that analysis...

Materialism for many people means two things: firstly, an obsession with material things (possessions, conspicuous wealth and consumption), and secondly, a rejection of theism (a belief in God and spirit) and acceptance of the view that the natural world of which we are part is all there is.

Marx's conception of the materialist theory of history has connections to both of these vernacular uses of the term. Marx believed that human beings were part of nature, not beings placed on Earth by God, although a belief in gods or God was itself a product of mankind's specific relationship to--and, indeed, alienation from--the nature of which they were part.

The remainder of the essay describes how to make things and distribute them. Where is love in all of that? Nowhere. Stuff is everything. Money and power are all. It's all about the production of stuff, ownership of stuff and the power to direct what stuff is made and where it goes.

Now here's the payoff.

For Marx, and of course Engels, the oppression of women in capitalism has its roots in the needs of the capitalist system to secure unpaid labor in families in order to maintain and replenish the labor force on whose exploitation the ruling class depends. It is not an intrinsic and essential feature of men that they oppress women. Nor are people identified as women at birth the only people to suffer from the oppression bred into the system by the need for unpaid labor to reproduce labor. For the real material oppression that the system requires then has its ideological expression not only in reactionary, misogynistic, sexist ideas about women compounded by the reification of women's bodies as commodities.

Even a woman's body is a commodity. Everything is a commodity. There is no room for either agape or eros in this, it's all about human ants toiling for the production of stuff under the guidance of wise overseers.

But that's not life, is it? Happiness is not connected to stuff. Once you can provide for yourself and your family and you've got a little left over to visit Dollywood and ride the roller coasters, you're just as happy as Bill Gates.

Materialism isn't love, either, is it? How many men go to work on road crews and have their paychecks deposited in joint accounts so they can oppress their wives and children? Their families aren't commodities, they are the loved ones he serves by giving his life to them. He would get more pleasure if he would smoke weed, watch porn and play video games, but instead he goes to work every day and gives most of his income to others.

Reality is made of love, not stuff. You can see that in the way people live and the choices they make.

If you search on Soviet Poster Woman, you find nothing but images like this. It's all stuff and no love. Is that life?

Do They Ever Listen To Themselves?

This is my last post from Tacoma. Tomorrow, I'll have a real keyboard, so be prepared for some long form bloviating.

Anywho, watching all the veep speculation on the fascist, err, socialist, err, Democrats' side, I'm struck by the banality of it all. 

As the presidential campaigns of each of the Hispanic, black and female candidates collapsed, the pundits wagged their fingers at us and told us we were racist and sexist. That's why those campaigns failed. America wasn't ready for such a leader.

Now we're told that Joe Biden needs to name a woman, black or Hispanic as his veep to improve his chances of winning. 

Yes. It's all starting to make sense. Just a few more hits from this bong and I'll understand... 

Steilacoom Derelict

A derelict dock, that is.

I loves me some derelicts, whether it's houses, barns, cars or, best of all, boats. Here's a derelict dock near our boy's house up here in Washington. Enjoy! 

Quinault Waterfall

We saw this one today. Lovely, no?

Talking To Yourself And Saying Nothing

Yesterday, we visited a furniture consignment shop in Olympia to look at sofas for our son. Realize that Seattle - Tacoma - Olympia is one of the most progressive and woke places in the country. At the store, I saw a local, social justice newspaper. It had all kinds of stories about justice and sexism and racism.

Who were the villains? When nearly everyone around you are woke and aware and have fully-raised consciousnesses, who are you targeting with your vitriol? 

It made me think of our universities which are slightly to the left of Bernie, but still seem to find reasons to protest and be outraged.

Or maybe the political analysts claiming that sexism and racism are alive and well in the Democrats' primaries. 

Meanwhile, right outside the thoroughly woke store, drugged-out homeless people shuffled around in 35 degree weather with no aid given by the progressives all around them.

SeaTac Is A Safe Space, But Is It Safe For Rap?

We're visiting our son in Tacoma for a few days. We flew up from San Diego yesterday.

The flight was nearly empty. That had to be the effect of the Coronavirus. 

By the way, I haven't got a keyboard with me and our boy doesn't have his computer set up, so blogging will be daily, but light. 

Anyway, the first thing we saw getting off the plane was a sign on the wall of the jetway telling us that the airport was a safe space. The police would get involved if you expressed something offensive. 

So if I had my headphones on and I was singing along with some popular rap music, all about N-words, B-words and H-words, would I have been reported to the authorities?

Bonus Bit: I joked with some of our boys that I was going to represent Dixie up here in Washington with a selection of t-shirts, but I didn't have the courage to wear one with the Rebel flag on it. If I had, would I have been allowed off the plane? 

This is the least offensive thing I could find for sale at Dixie Republic. Would it have been considered unsafe?

A Cone Of Yellow Flowers

This is blooming over on our side yard. I don't know what it is, but the geometry of it fascinates me. The top view is so dense with yellow flowers that it seems like a solid mass. I left the photos large, so they might be worth a click.

Enjoy!

Dogs Do What Dogs Do

... until dogs die.

Our older Aussie-Cocker mix, Bodie, aka Bodie the Wonder Dog, is 11 years old now. He's a 40# dog, which means he's about 65 years old.

Bodie recently injured his right rear leg to the point where he couldn't put any weight on it. We took him to the vet, but x-rays didn't reveal any ligament damage, so he was given rest and medicine. In a week or so, he was almost back to normal, albeit with a slight limp.

Bodie needed exercise, so we took him to a local schoolyard on Sunday. I had thought he'd take it easy if his leg still hurt. He didn't. The girls ran and played like the tiny loons they are, so he ran and played, too. It was all going fine until the very end. As we headed for the exit, Bodie jogged towards me, screamed in pain and then stopped, pulling up his leg. I thought for sure he had blown out his knee. I kicked myself for being a fool and taking him to a place where he could run.

I brought him to the vet yesterday and an exam showed he still didn't have any serious tendon or ligament damage. The doctor was able to manipulate the leg without Bodie showing any sign of pain. His joints didn't slide around the way they do when the ligaments are ruptured, either. Weird.

Weirder still to me is how Bodie simply refuses to stop being, well, himself. When someone is near our house, he hops, 3-legged, to the gate and barks. He follows me all over the house, going up and down the stairs. Only very rarely does he stay laying down. For the most part, he's up and about despite the injury.

I guess dogs will be dogs until they die. All that walking and hopping isn't helping him heal, but he won't stop it, even when I tell him to lie down.

On the plus side, he's back on rest and medicine and he seems to be getting incrementally better. The vet couldn't figure out what it was, thinking it might be a torn meniscus that we couldn't see with an x-ray or diagnose with manipulation. I think he's doing better that he was on Sunday; he appears to be putting a little weight on the leg now.

Meanwhile, Bodie is Bodie doing what Bodie has always done. Me, I'd use the opportunity to lay in bed and catch up on EPL games on demand. I guess I'm not a dog.

Leah, Bodie and Lily taking a hike with us before Bodie's injury.

Coming To A Hospital Near You

... all the staff in full-body protective suits.

While the Coronavirus itself might not be all that bad, the stress an epidemic would place on our healthcare workers would be. I didn't think about it until Wretchard The Cat tweeted it, but exposure to the Coronavirus could take out whole groups of emergency room personnel. If they become carriers, they can't work on patients who might not yet have the disease.

And just like that the UC health system loses more than a hundred personnel.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) March 2, 2020

OTOH

1. If Coronavirus isn't such a big deal, why take any more precautions against it than you would against the flu or pneumonia?
2. It seems to really whack the elderly. What will happen in countries like Japan were so much of the population is elderly?
3. Will this take care of a large part of LA's and SF's homeless problem? What's it going to be like picking up a couple hundred dead bodies off the street every day for a month? Pretty horrible, I'd say.

Systemic Social Justicism

Wife kitteh has a phrase she likes to use to describe the damage done by broken homes. She calls it the father wound. Here's a personal story that describes it in detail. Here's a tidbit.

Roland Warren, past president of the National Fatherhood Initiative says, “Kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad. And if a father is unwilling or unable to fill that hole, it can leave a wound that is not easily healed.” Kids with a hole in their soul grow up to be adults whose lives become chaotic and dysfunctional.

Stats covering how the decline of marriage has caused all kinds of harm are easy to find, so I won't repeat them here. Instead, I want to offer a kinder and more subtle approach to dealing with the social justice folks who came to our Mardi Gras party, if I ever decided to engage with them. Here's part of what I wrote in my ragefest post a few days ago.

To my friends, I'd say, "On your way home, you can listen to NPR and their airy-fairy stories about acceptance and open-mindedness. You can fold your hands and look up to heaven and talk about how you're fighting hate. You can smile when you see trans kids and perverts in the library and say that love wins. But right here, right now, between me and you, I just want you to know what you've done. You did this to (my transgendered friend who thinks she's a man). You're killing her, slowly torturing her to death while I watch her go mad in slow motion, day by day."

Instead, let's suggest that the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) in the modern civil rights movement are encouraging and enabling self-destructive behavior so they're seen as compassionate. Moving the matter to the racial side of the SJWs, they claim that America is profoundly racist and it's systemic racism that keeps blacks down.

With an illegitimacy rate around 75%, there are whole black neighborhoods where everyone has father wounds. Further, given voting statistics, if those neighborhoods are big enough, the city, the system is run by SJWs. That means that SJWs are the system.

As horrible as the SJWs are with their fake piety and sanctimonious preening, can anyone really say that they are worse than pervasive father wounds among the residents? That's what you're saying when you blame systemic racism. SJWs are worse than the father wound.

Nah. Even I wouldn't say that. I would say that excusing destructive behavior, be it women overdosing on testosterone or making babies outside of marriage is a force multiplier, but the force itself is the mental illness for the trannies and the father wounds for the black communities.

There. That's a good summary.

Social Justice is a force multiplier for poor life decisions.

Imagine SJWs as A-10s for the illegitimacy infantry.

Quantity Has A Quality All Its Own

... or so Josef Stalin allegedly said when he sent masses of inferior troops against the German Wehrmacht in WW II. He won.

In Syria, Turkey and the Russian-backed Syrian government are going at it hammer and tongs. Refugees are once more pouring from Syria into Turkey. The Turkish government has decided to open the floodgates and let them through into the EU.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says 18,000 migrants have crossed Turkish borders into Europe after the country "opened the doors" for them to travel. The number is expected to hit 25,000 to 30,000 in the coming days, he said. Turkey could no longer deal with the amount of people fleeing Syria's civil war, he added. Greece says it has blocked thousands of migrants from entering "illegally" from Turkey. Greek authorities fired tear gas to attempt to disperse the crowds.

As Henry Longfellow might have written, 10,000 if by land, 20,000 if by sea.

The Greek Army has 90,000 men. They have tanks and artillery as well, but those only count if you're willing to use them. 90,000 isn't a lot of men. My bet is that they have no defense-in-depth prepared and if the refugees get past the thin Greek line at the border, they're loose into the EU with nothing but the local cops to slow them down.

Coronavirus Exposure

Luckily for the EU, the refugees are noted for their medical sophistication and are fully immunized against Coronavirus. (Note to self: Double check this fact when you get the time.)

Also, the EU's socialized medicine industry is a regular factory of technologies, vaccines and cures. They won't have to fret in panicky fear, waiting for the greedy, racist Americans to find solutions to the Coronavirus pandemic. (Note to self: Check this one out, too.)

Finally, since diversity makes you stronger, the lack of border controls inside the EU will cause this wave of refugees to be a net plus for Europeans. The Coronavirus won't stand a chance against a Europe fortified with even more diversityness.

Coronavirus Solution: Quarantine Nancy Pelosi And CNN On A Container Ship

At the gym today, one of the TVs was showing CNN. Horrible, I know, but it's true. Luckily, the sound was off, but I could see CNN reporters walking down some congressional hallway with Nancy Pelosi, interviewing her.

Why? She has nothing interesting to say at all. "Orange man bad!" would be a simple summation.

Instead, check out this short video (hat tip: Ohioan at Heart) from the Medical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. His take is that the Coronavirus is just a bad cold.

Here's another bit of information that ought to dampen your fears. Best tidbit:

Coronavirus is a familiar illness, and not as bad as others. It is from the SARS family — and less deadly. As Ha’aretz noted, “the mortality rate from the current disease ranges from 0.5 to 2 percent, and is significantly lower than the mortality rate from the 2002 SARS outbreak (9.5 percent) and much lower than the 2012 SARS outbreak (34.4 percent). It may even be close to the mortality rate from an ordinary flu outbreak in the United States.”

Here's a good point from Scott Adams, considering the fact that most Coronavirus infections are unreported.

Can someone explain how we estimate the death rate for Coronavirus without knowing the denominator?

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 28, 2020

Finally, the best article I've seen yet on the economic impacts of the virus is this one about container shipping. In short, the actions being taken to stop the spread of the virus are inserting random delays into the global shipping network which will cause all kinds of temporary problems.

1. Chinese manufacturing facilities didn't open after Chinese New Year. A lag followed by a lag which "created massive shortfall in Chinese exports and, therefore, a drop in container demand."
2. Sailings were canceled, which caused "staggering" demand shortfall for containers.
3. "Blank sailings" lead to more blank sailings back to Asia creating 3 - 10 weeks' more lag time.
4. Pre-Chinese New Year peak of delivered cargo results in excess containers building up in places "such as Europe and North America." Repatriating containers takes time and money.

But by all means, let's hear what Nancy Pelosi has to say. That's an excellent use of our time.

Here, deep thinker Pelosi is pondering the effects of the coronavirus on her next botox injections.

Status Photo

This is a pretty accurate summary of my status right now.

Too much partying, too much prepping, too many responsibilities, not enough sleep. It's all good, though. Catch you on the flip side, all.

Bonus Link: 5 reasons to stop freaking out about the Coronavirus. I agree with this and feel that the danger will be gone in a few months. I also don't think it's impact is going to be great. Having said that, I moved our investments out of the market on Monday and parked them in safe instruments. Massive doses of uncertainty are deadly to the market's animal spirits.

Watching Someone Go Mad

At our Mardi Gras party on Tuesday, a couple of the guests were full-on social justice types. They are genuinely good people and have devoted their lives to helping the homeless and the addicted. I still think they're wrong, but I love them and love their motives. I wish I was more like them and sometimes, I wonder if my arm-waving about the whole social justice craze isn't colored with envy.

Still, they were there and one of them talked about a person they know who has a long history in the civil rights movement. I wanted to say something, but I kept quiet. No point in being a jerk unnecessarily when I can be a massive and deliberate jerk here. Today is the rant I would have launched at the time had I given in to my worst nature.

Begin Rant

What ever happened to those civil rights guys? It looks to me like they've become self-absorbed, sanctimonious and downright evil. They're the ones who are making sure that some of our friends are experimented on like prisoners in a Nazi death camp. My specific example is my transgendered friend who has recently entered a new phase in her hopelessly doomed attempts to become a man.

Here's how her life has gone since I've known her.

1. Could hold a job, had boyfriends.
2. Could hold a job, had girlfriends.
3. Could hold a job, was a boy.
4. Could hold a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed.
5. Had a hard time holding a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot.
6. Had a hard time holding a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot, dabbled in Satanism.
7. Had a hard time holding a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot, involved in Satanism, took 100x doses of testosterone*.
8. Bipolar, couldn't hold a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot, involved in Satanism, took 100x doses of testosterone.
9. Bipolar, couldn't hold a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot, involved in Satanism, took 100x doses of testosterone, into polyamory.
10. Bipolar, couldn't hold a job, was a boy, smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot, involved in Satanism, took 100x doses of testosterone, into polyamory, exploring BDSM.

The polyamory and BDSM is the new twist to the whole thing. Both scream out, "Please, someone love me!" With polyamory, a woman crawls towards any relationship that will have her, even if she's the third-choice concubine. With BDSM, well, if someone is beating you, that doesn't suggest self-respect, now does it?

In short, I'm watching someone go mad in slow motion and there's nothing I can do to help. It's like one of those nightmares where you can't stop the doom you see coming.

Thanks, Social Justice crowd!

Because of civil rights and social justice tyranny, everyone has to keep their mouths shut about it. Medical professionals hand out poisons and slash bodies apart even though they know it's all rubbish. Me, if I was still working, I might get fired if I said I didn't think a woman could become a man. At the very least, HR would discipline me.

Here's what the social justice and civil rights warriors have told my friend:

• You are perfect the way you are.
• You should express your inner desires.
• Anyone who doesn't agree that you're a boy is full of hate.
• Avoid and fight hate.
• Cut yourself off from family and friends if they don't acknowledge your gender because they are transphobic.

To my friends, I'd say, "On your way home, you can listen to NPR and their airy-fairy stories about acceptance and open-mindedness. You can fold your hands and look up to heaven and talk about how you're fighting hate. You can smile when you see trans kids and perverts in the library and say that love wins. But right here, right now, between me and you, I just want you to know what you've done. You did this to her. You're killing her, slowly torturing her to death while I watch her go mad in slow motion, day by day."

End Rant

And after that, my wife would rightfully divorce me and I'd become a crazed, blogging hermit.

I see it! I see it all now! Years and years of talking to myself on this blog and I have finally achieved total wisdom and clarity! Too bad there's no one to tell because my rants have driven everyone away.

* - I spent a fraction of a minute looking up the testosterone regimens for women with low T and women trying to become men. A normal woman who needs T gets doses from 0.5 to 2 mg. A tranny gets doses in the hundreds of mg. There is simply no way her body can cope with that and it's no wonder there are mental illness issues cropping up in my friend.

Seven Howler Monkeys Walk Into A Bar

... or maybe onto a debate stage.

I keep promising to get off this track, but thoughts occur to me that I want to share, so here we are again. This time it's really simple. John Harris, writing at Politico, pointed out the obvious.

The snarling incoherence of the latest Democratic presidential debate Tuesday evening made it painfully hard to follow.

The Democrats' debates have turned into apes screaming at each other because they're not debating anything substantial. They agree on everything, so all that's left is poo flinging and loud noises.

These are highlights from last night's debate. Or maybe it was the Vegas debate. Or maybe an earlier one. Or it could be a preview of a future one.

Whatever.

Whether it's government mandating health care or slaughtering babies as they are being born or pledging undying support to women who think they're Cleopatra men, there isn't a sliver of difference between them. They all want to take more money from successful people and they all despise profit. Bernie is called a radical, but everyone says they agree with his goals.

For crying out loud, they all want to give free health care to illegals. After that, what's left? Racism? Nope, they all think America is profoundly racist.

This is the natural end point of the left's cancel culture. No one is allowed to disagree with the mob. Anyone getting out of line with progressive thought is going to be obliterated. The Democrats made this bed full of howler monkeys and now they get to watch their candidates jump up and down on it, screaming at each other and tearing the sheets to shreds.

Live it up, kids.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Wife kitteh is lovingly supporting my ersatz-Southerner schtick as we host a monster Mardi Gras party tonight. 40 people or so. Having learned from previous parties, I started my kitchen prep work on Sunday. I did all my shopping then and made three dishes yesterday, a pair of gumbos and jambalaya. All of those will age well, particularly the gumbos.

I have a couple of posts I need to share that fit what my dad used to call "letting my hair down" on the blog. That is, semi-intimate things I've learned from personal failures and weaknesses. Those will have to wait for Lent proper. In the meantime, I've got a long list of stuff I still need to do today to make this soiree happen. I hope you have a great day yourselves!

Wife kitteh has done all the cleaning and decorating. The place looks great.

Side note about marriage and parties: For wives, parties are those times when a woman invites her friends over and they come to pass judgment on her as a housekeeper, hostess and fashion model. For men, it's simply conversation, drinking and food. That's why women freak out in stress before a party while men think it's no big deal. I'd be happy to host my parties in a barn with a dirt floor. She insisted on all manner of decorations and cleaning.

I did my best to understand and, as always, ended up tremendously grateful for her artistic touches that will make this a lot more fun.

Forget Bernie, The Coronavirus Is Going To Kill The Democrats

Once the thing gets loose in Mexico and Central America, especially their prisons, we're going to wish we had the border under control. We are also going to have no appetite whatsoever for giving health care to illegals.

This is the story that spooked me.

China reported 889 new cases of novel coronavirus infection on Friday, including more than 200 from a prison, and an additional 118 deaths – all but three in the province of Hubei, bringing the total deaths in the country to more than 2,200.

I went to Russia in the late 1990s. Before going, I went to a travel clinic where they told me how rife with diseases Russia was. Tuberculosis was particularly bad because their lousy prisons were riddled with it. When prisoners were released, they spread it to friends and family members. Coronavirus will work the same way. Lots of weakened people in dirty, enclosed spaces are tailor-made for viral slaughter.

And if you think Chinese prisons are bad, look up Guatemalan or Mexican prisons. They're a horror.

So once it starts running wild down Mexico way while the Democrats preach open borders and health care for illegal immigrants, how do you think sane people will vote? How much impact will accusations of "RACISM!" have then? Do you think anyone will be worried about children in cages? Nah.

Yes, I know that with an epidemic, once it crosses the border, more of it crossing the border might not be all that big of a deal, but the optics of the thing will be a millstone around the necks of the Democrats. And spreading or not, demands that we take care of a hundred thousand or more medical refugees streaming across our open, southern border will be infuriating. Talk about skin color and fantasies of white supremacists all you want, it will fall on deaf ears.

California, of course, will remain a sanctuary state. After all, our governor thinks he can solve homelessness with doctors' prescriptions. No, really. He's gone mad. I can only imagine what will happen among the massive, homeless, drug-addict populations in feces-ridden Los Angeles and San Francisco. And when we go to our hospital for treatment and find it teaming with infected Hondurans, we might start wondering if America should atone for imagined racial sins after all.

Finally, I can predict the headlines that will pop up in the proggy news media.

"White Supremacists Take Advantage Of Coronavirus Outbreak To Spread Racial Hate."

That's as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning.

Kind of like this sunrise from Virginia Beach in 2010.

Russia! Russia! Russia!

What is the lefty fascination with Russia and Putin? Why all the hysteria about "Russian meddling in our elections?" Russia is a pipsqueak. Dig these facts.

• Russia ranks 30th among our trading partners. China ranks first. We do $635B worth of business with China every year and $24B with Russia. Ireland is more than twice the size of Russia in terms of American trade.
• Russian per capita GDP is about $27,400 which places them 74th in the world. By comparison, ours is more than double theirs at $59,800.
• Russia's population is declining by about 700,000 a year.
• About 20% of their roads are unpaved.
• Russia has all kinds of problems with its military, not the least of which is their lousy equipment. In the Middle East's military test zone, the Israelis regularly walk all over other countries armed with expensive, Russian junk.

In short, they can't project power, their economy is stalled and their population is declining. I would bet that Russians worry more about whether or not their cars will start in the morning than who is going to be elected president of the US. The place is a trash heap and yet our media screams "Russia! Russia! Russia!" regularly.

I guess that beats trying to figure out why the Normals aren't voting for the Elites' chosen candidates.

Only in Russia.

Hostage To Maniac Ideas

... or is it riding the tigers they've raised in their backyards?

Dig these. There are hundreds more just like them.

Trans women are women.
Trans men are men.
Non-binary people are non-binary.
All gender identities are valid.
#LGBTHistoryMonth

— Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) February 16, 2020

Newsom, getting deep: “Doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing the same way they do for insulin and antibiotics. Why not?” pic.twitter.com/8BD7eSkla8

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 19, 2020

There's no such thing as men or women. A tiny scrap of paper with a doctor's signature can provide someone a home. This is insanity, but it had to be this way. This is the logical next step in the progressives' madness. Everyone can be or have anything they want just by wishing.

We should have seen this coming as soon as we began to separate having from earning, and threw out objective reality in favor of post-modern relativism.

Note that these aren't crazed, Nazi academics like the ones that teach whiteness studies in almost all of our universities. This is the mayor of one of the world's greatest cities and the governor of the wealthiest state in the US. This is the teachings of those crazed Nazis infecting a large portion of our political leadership.

Filling the education industry with madmen is all fun and games until leaders start losing their minds.

Money And Politics

I didn't want to do one more post about that dumpster fire of a Democratic debate, but everyone is missing the biggest point that I had to write this.

Pundits are suggesting that it was a huge mistake for the also-rans to savage Mike Bloomberg and not go after Bernie. It wasn't. It was absolutely mandatory. Mike is an immediate, existential threat to all four of the second-tier candidates. Their campaign managers aren't fools and they all saw what was about to happen.

Presidential campaigns don't die because of lack of support in the polls, they die because they run out of money. Tom Steyer gets about as many votes as the write-in campaign for Donald Duck, but since he can self-fund out of his billions, he'll be in the race until Milwaukee. Far more valid candidates like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris had to drop out because their donors turned off the money spigots.

Mike Bloomberg's entry into the race turned off all the money spigots for everyone but Bernie. His legion of manic followers will keep him going. No one else has that kind of grassroots support and so they all must have wealthy donors ready and willing to make payroll. Once Bloomberg's ad campaign gained traction and he passed them in the national polls, it made no sense for some mid-level Democrat fatcat worth $73M to pit his money against Bloomberg's $60B. Bloomberg was spending more than the fatcat's total net worth every month.

I would bet that Warren and Klobuchar have enough dough to meet expenses for a week or two and after that, they're going to have to cut staff. They had to smash Bloomberg so their donors would open their wallets again. If they didn't, it was game over.

Bonus Take: Future debates won't get any better for Mini Mike. He didn't have any good answers for the racism and sexism questions from his opponents because there aren't any. He's simply a racist and a sexist and there's no getting away from that. For every one particular quote he can explain, there are a dozen more waiting to be thrown at him.

Extra Special Bonus Tidbit: From today's Wall Street Journal:

While billionaire Michael Bloomberg is already spending about $156 million on TV and radio ads across the 14 states that weigh in on March 3, neither former Vice President Joe Biden nor former Mayor Pete Buttigieg had invested in a single Super Tuesday commercial as of Thursday night, according to ad tracker Kantar/CMAG.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren combined have put less than $2 million into Super Tuesday ads. Of the six candidates in Wednesday’s Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders is the only nonbillionaire with a major paid-media presence in those states, with $11 million in ads.

They're out of money and if they don't knock Bloomberg out of the race right now, it will be too late even if their donors turn on the money spigots. It might be too late anyway as Bloomberg will be toast, but Bernie will have racked up massive Super Tuesday wins.