For the last few weeks we have been watching one of the greatest collections of weaponized autistics in the world going happily about their task of unraveling exactly how much of our money was directed through previously undetected means for previously undetected and wholly curious ends. The Doge crew are going at it with the zeal and joy of unleashed rat terriers turned loose on a field of suitable prey, in tracking millions of dollars’ worth of our money into various progressive slush funds.
And interesting things are suddenly happening. Although coincidence is not causality, by any means … still, there are things that people on the conservativish side of things have wondered about for the last decade. Things like … strangely well-choreographed protests, with tens and hundreds of participants (who mostly have no obvious means of support) appearing almost like magic, carrying professionally-printed signs. Hmmm … we all wondered in times past: who is footing the bill for all this?
It may very well turn out that we all were – just as it has turned out that USAID grants went out to support practically every cause beloved by progressives nationally and world-wide. To non-governmental organizations playing hopscotch with international migrants. To champion the causes of LGBTWXYZLOL-whatever, around the world in our own back yard and in our elementary schools. To progressive media voices, like the BBC. What the ever-loving H-E-double hockey sticks? Don’t those smooth-talking euro-snob Jew-haters get enough moola from their own government, they have to vacuum up from us as well, like a coke addict snorting a line as long as the US-Canada border?
And while I’m on the topic of our very own dear media, what about the ongoing slaughter of careers and the driving rain of pink slips falling at CBS and NBC? Joy Reid, Lester Holt and other expensive performers are being pried out of their comfortable sinecures. Personalities whom I have never particularly followed and only hear about when they have been spectacularly stupid on camera and the conservative blogosphere takes notice. I imagine their superiors pried them loose, like a dentist with an impacted molar – but why now? Is it because top management at the various media enterprises have suddenly realized with the election of Trump that a large chunk of the public ignores them – and they have not anything like the power that they thought they had? Have they figured out that advertising on their programs was money wasted, and business sponsors know it? This is a new world for our national establishment media organs, where CBS Sixty Minutes counts for naught, and a podcaster like Joe Rogan may have put Trump and Vance over the top with an important segment of the voting public through doing searching, free-form long-format interviews.
Or could it be that laundered government funds were holding up our own media, at least as much as paid advertising? Now that such funds are being short-stopped – is that another reason for the collapsing of our media’s house of cards, now that the gravy train has come to a halt?
Comment as you wish and have knowledge.
When I can look at a YouTube video of some guy building something on a milling machine with more views than the top rated program on MSNBC, I have to wonder if the advertisers are really stupid enough to fork over the money to pay 7 figure salaries for only a few thousand eyeballs. The market for adult diapers must be really, really good.
VDH was on all of Megyn Kelly’s podcast today and he said something interesting about one of the reasons the Dems lost – their complete faith in Legacy Media and the influence they (presumable) had.
As far as USAID – 8% to the BBC? What the !@#$% ? I head that even Chelsea Clinton was given $85 million – any truth to that?
Why the Libs are really screaming is that with all of this funding to left leaning world organizations -it was given us the impression of the dominating power of the Left. Be interesting to see how this sorts out when things settle.
It must have been a shock to the media managers that half the country wasn’t listening to them. In addition, network news viewing has declined. Four or five decades ago, Walter Cronkite’s evening news program on CBS–not mentioning the other 2 networks– had 27 to 29 million viewers. By contrast, CBS-ABC-NBC evening news in recent years have 10 million viewers combined.
It was a surprise to me to see how much AID money went to fund lefty propaganda all over the world. I will be glad to see the head of that snake cut off.
People in Guatemala poke fun at the Mormon missionaries. But there are also woke agnostic lefty propaganda missionaries come to Guatemala to push the latest lefty narrative. I once saw someone pushing whole language method for teaching reading in Guatemala. Given the highly phonetic nature of the Spanish language, which makes phonics an even more obvious method than in English for teaching reading, this is one more example of lefty preaching that makes one wish for the Mormons.
From The Return of the King:
“As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless until they feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell enslaved, ran hither and thither mindlessly; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope.”
When an apparently invincible power just suddenly falls apart, anything can happen. Gotta admit, I saw November ’24 as being a welcome political correction. But I did not recognize it as The Ring being tossed into the fires of Mount Doom. (with of course the Gollumesque James Carville holding onto it gloating “My Precioussssss…..”
Even as they expose one massive leftist slush fund after another, the DOGE whiz kids are being damned by the Woke as “unprofessional” and “unqualified.” One must be grateful that America’s youth has turned out to be so “incompetent.”
One must also be grateful for the single member district system that prevails in our country. A similar reaction against the Woke has taken place in Germany, which has the usual European system of proportional representation. Conservative podcasters there are also gaining rapidly in popularity, as is distrust of the legacy media. As in the US, this fact was reflected in the results of the recent election there. A similar majority of the people voted against the ongoing colonialist invasion of their country from Africa and Asia, but it doesn’t matter. The AfD, the only party there that is serious about preserving Germany as a country for Germans, scored massive gains, particularly in the former East Germany. Overall it garnered just over 20% of the vote. The other major “conservative” party, the CDU, also gained voters, while the election was a disaster for the openly pro-colonialist SPD. The CDU also claimed to be against uncontrolled immigration, but it was a lie. It had joined the other parties in establishing a so-called “firewall” against the AfD, agreeing not to form a coalition with this “far-right” party. Given the election results, the CDU leadership could easily have formed a majority government with the AfD. However, they knew full well that, with such a “firewall” in place, they would have to form a coalition with one of the pro-immigration parties to form a viable government instead. They also knew that such a government would never take any serious steps to control immigration. In other words, their “opposition” to the invasion of Germany was just hypocritical rhetoric. Now we are told that the German voters are “frustrated” by this result, but they are prisoners of a system that is supposed to be “fair” while it really enables defiance of the will of the people, not to mention political instability.
Having burned out the utility of the phrase “national security” to protect their corruption, they now shout “privacy! privacy!” as if to any reasonable person (that is, not a Obama/Biden judge) the actions of the government are protected from inquiry by the public.
Dems have gone full EUropean: “We rule, dammit, and you stay away.”
“ Now we are told that the German voters are “frustrated” by this result, but they are prisoners of a system that is supposed to be “fair” while it really enables defiance of the will of the people, not to mention political instability.”
Centuries, nay, millennia of rule by kings have well shown the problems of tyrannical rule. After a few hundred years, the easy corruption of democratic government becomes more and more obvious. Is a new form of government possible? Or are all theories of government footnotes to the Ancients?
Given the brouhaha aroused by DOGE, it must be clear to the casual observer that there is SOMETHING to their work that arouses those who seem the most likely beneficiaries.
IOW, Chucky Schumer jumping up and down in protest must indicate he’s feeling a bit pinched by what DOGE is exposing. Good.
Our local ‘governor’ who apparently really did not win a majority+1 as required, also apparently was listed to receive a LARGE pile of money as JRB walked out the door(shuffled? crept? slithered?) to operate some sort of grift. Hope she goes hungry in that respect. Contrary to the look she has indicating she has not gone hungry in a looonnnnggg time.
I do hope the appointment of the many non-normal job fillers results in some change. Things certainly cannot go on as before or the dollar will be nothing more than toilet paper with printing on it.
There was a great op-ed in the WSJ yesterday on the German elections. As you said, the CDU, instead of joining with the AfD – which combined was over half the German voters, instead make deals with the left. I have a German friend with relatives in Berlin who are disgusted and perhaps he called it right – frustration this time around and a tidal wave next election.
I’m a fan of The Fourth Turning and I think the US was so overwhelmingly dominant over much of the world that it essentially superimposed our societal failure timeline upon our Cold War allies. Note that political chaos is overtaking not only Germany but also England, France, and even South Korea.
But note also that we did not impose our timeline upon the former Soviet block. What used to be East Germany went all-in for AfD, producing an amazing voting map that exactly matches the former border.
I obviously can’t predict the future but I have real trouble imagining that the end fate of Europe will be decided by elections. The “migrants” certainly don’t care and I bet fewer and fewer Europeans do either, considering that they vote over and over again just to get the exact same policies exacted against them.
My guess is that the EU will soon generate open defiance against its endless anti-European edicts, resulting in violent resistance against the foreign invaders the EU is dumping into every European nation. I have some Irish ancestry and I make a deliberate effort to follow Irish accounts on X. I have learned that the Irish government is importing an enormous number of African migrants into Ireland and building them housing in rural Ireland because reasons, as well as allowing wealthy Indians to buy up any available housing in cities. They’re also allowing these newly arrived foreigners to join the Irish police force.
Gosh, I suspect violence might ensue. I presume similar events are unfolding in other EU satrapies with languages I do not speak.
Back to the US, we seem to have avoided the assigned fate of Ireland- that is, to be demographically swamped by foreigners imported by an unpopular failing regime. Yay.
I’ve thought for a long time that our failing regime had the choice of peacefully disappearing like a soap bubble or violently attempting to retain power. For example, if the regime of George III had peacefully let the 13 Colonies depart the Empire after every Loyalist regime in those colonies had been deposed in 1775 then we would have had the soap bubble option. But that didn’t happen. This was another Fourth Turning era, btw.
What’s our present day Deep State got cooking? The sudden collapse of the leftist media and the near disappearance of the protest-industrial complex looks like a soap bubble event. Yay again.
But I have real trouble imagining that our Deep State will go quite so quietly into that good night, even if the river of taxpayer money keeping it afloat appears to have been dried up.
I was reading a Malcolm Gladwell book (I keep it in the bathroom), and one of his anecdotes was about some unconscious bias in network news broadcasts during the 1984 Reagan/Mondale election. Writing in 2000, he said (emphasis mine):
“Then, *AS NOW*, the three nightly news anchors were Dan Rather at CBS, Tom Brokaw at NBC, and Peter Jennings at ABC.”
That’s seventeen years of the same three guys on TV every night to a mostly captive audience. That is insane.
The round of firings and downsizings in the national establishment media is interesting because it is happening NOW. Top management must had a come-to-Jesus realization that they can’t continue as ever. One way or another, the money spigot is turning off. Perhaps they are also realizing, all of a sudden — how much of the establishment media is despised by a substantial portion of the consuming public. Despised and disbelieved for a long, long list of failings. The consistent political bias. Helping to conceal Biden’s mental decline and corruption. Working overtime to scare the snot out of the public over COVID. Libeling the Covington kids, the Seal veteran heling to get Afghan allies out of Afghanistan, and going back aways, the Tea Party, Trump himself. (Among others.) Screaming raaaaaaacism at the drop of a hat, and perpetuating flat-out lies like the 1619 Project. So the tears of someone like Joy Reid, or reporters on the White House beat now loosing unquestioned access to the press pool … too bad, so sad! And anyway…
I feel so sad the lame street media are being stripped of their monopoly access, viewers and cultural/political narrative management. NOT! Market forces may take some time to assert popular preferences, especially in government sponsored/supported/regulated areas, it can eventually find a way to provide choices even in such rigid areas. Frustrated lack of choice, especially in areas of wide and compelling interest, will invent work arounds sometimes driving technological development. If we can limit the crony capitalism (mercantilism), adjustments can be much more rapid.
Apparently the Washington POO is trying to change course, possibly admitting that there may be more than one opinion or something equally unheard of:
https://nypost.com/2025/02/26/media/jeff-bezos-fires-washington-post-opinion-editor-david-shipley/
Likely too little, too late. Bezos must be getting tired of signing those 9 figure check to keep all those “opinion leaders” in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. If “democracy dies in darkness”, they must have had a hell of a budget for black bags.
This looks promising
https://x.com/matt_blackwell/status/1894552583013834892
The gutting of both the Washington Post and MSNBC shows that the traditional media has not found their new business equilibrium yet. Even since the election, when you would think anti-Trump fare would being back the rating and subscriptions of the first term, these guys are losing money hand over fist.
To those on the Left who say that’s because the Post and other outlets are not anti-Trump, up your medication and turn in your drivers licenses because you are not living in the real world. Everything is anti-Trump all the time
Like an evil hydra cohort
https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1894763674860163500
They’re definitely not living in the real world. The woke globalist elites are not even aware of what self-caricatures they are. To cite another example from Germany, their Green Party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, just visited China, where she delivered herself of some pious observations about how that country wasn’t quite up to her standard on human rights. That from a country that just disenfranchised more than 20% of its voters and regularly sends police goon squads to break down the doors of and arrest anyone who dares to express an opinion on social media that some regime bureaucrat finds displeasing.
If history is any guide, the Irish seem destined for some “troubles”.
Someone observed that the remaining cable audience are nursing home residents who can’t turn off their TV. Having spent the past few years helping my folks through this I think that’s pretty accurate. Recently I also dipped my toe into twitter and youtube on a seldom-used account. The algorithms haven’t figured me out yet so have been pushing anti-Trump rage bait. There is a huge market right now for fake “Trump voter regret” testimonials, along with reaction takes admonishing those voters that they will not be forgiven for their vote. It’s been healthy for me to use a good web blocker and firewall myself from the internet. AI is ruining youtube anyway. If it’s not the guy building something on his milling machine or some other practical human-generated content, I don’t want to see it.
“The gutting of both the Washington Post and MSNBC shows that the traditional media has not found their new business equilibrium yet.”
By the time the obscene act between NBC and MS that spawned MSNBC took place, it had been 20-25 years, and should have been longer, since I had anything resembling respect for NBC as a source of information. There was never anything to gut there.
By the time I had access to the Washington POO without driving 60 miles, one way for a day old copy, I thought just as highly of it. My first thought of it was when they tried to throttle the Lewinsky affair, so never did consider as anything but a hack sheet.
If I ever knowingly read anything from either, it’s just to see what bilge they’re spouting now.