The Persistence of the Left

by

Benjamin Kerstein writes:

”The American public has clearly rejected the RGA’s (Red-Green Alliance) barbarous rhetoric and violence; universities have cracked down on illegal protests on their campuses, albeit unwillingly; Congressional investigations and hearings have savaged the Alliance’s claims to moral authority; and the election of Donald Trump is seen, rightly, as a total repudiation of the progressive left’s ideology and agenda….

“…As of yet, the RGA has very much not been stopped completely. It continues to fester in its totalitarian citadels of academia, the NGO industry, and the fringes of the American political establishment like the Democratic Socialists of America. Racist hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine are still very active. The Democratic party politicians the RGA owns are planning their next move. In short, the RGA is regrouping and reassessing its situation, contemplating its next steps and perhaps a new strategy. It will be back.”

Kerstein states that part of that strategy is to run a favored candidate in the 2028 presidential cycle, a successor to Bernie Sanders if you will, in the form of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Now I don’t think very highly of Sandy “Squeaky” Cortez. We’re at the claw-machine part of the 2028 cycle where seemingly attractive names are bandied about and grasped for, without any idea if they are viable candidates in terms of exposure or fund-raising. I have a feeling that AOC will wear as well on the campaign trail as Kamala did in 2019. Most people forget that Kamala pulled in a lot of money and hype when she started in 2019 and never got a delegate.

However, Kerstein brings out two key points.

The first is that the totalitarian Left still lives. It may have been routed in 2024, but it was able to retreat in good order into its redoubts in higher ed and NGOs. More importantly it still possesses the key elements of mass and cohesion. Given those two attributes, it will continue to play a role in Democratic politics. Its defeat was telling, but not decisive. It will be back. In fact there is nothing in American social and political history from the past 50 years that would lead anyone to believe that they won’t play a role in 2028 and for years to come.

The second is something that is a bit more chilling:

Read more

People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump

by

On May 30, 2024, Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsified business records that allegedly abetted crime(s) unstated in the March 30, 2023 indictment. The jury was instructed to choose between three candidates for the other crime; their choices were not disclosed in the conviction. During the course of the trial, legal experts have struggled to deduce the nature of the underlying crime. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg played his cards close to the vest; as CNN analyst and Bragg’s former colleague Elie Honig stated:

Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial. (This, folks, is what indictments are for.)

Pieces to this puzzle are scattered about the Internet address in bits and pieces. This is my attempt to pull those sources together to adequately outline the main issues of the case.

Read more

The LA Fires and the CA Coastal Commission

by

January 10, 2025

 

Over 20 years ago, my family rented a house in Bodega Bay, about 70 miles north of San Francisco. It is most famous for those outside No CA for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic, The Birds. I strolled through the burg and went by a realtor’s office, with the various homes and properties displayed in the window.

There were 2 hilltop adjacent lots, both with the same view of Bodega Bay and both the same size.

One was priced at $50,000 (this was over 20 years ago), while the other was $450,000.

And over the years I have occasionally asked people “why the discrepancy?”  They are both the same size, next to each other and both with the same view.

Nobody could answer, even Californians.

Read more

California, Angela Merkel, and Dancing With a Train

by

I was thinking of California and Angela Merkel today.

Los Angeles County is being hammered by wildfires, causing damage on an epic scale. The destruction is heartbreaking and it will only get worse in the coming days. There are stories of bulldozers being deployed to push aside cars abandoned by fleeing residents so that emergency crews can be deployed.

For California, like much of the West, fire and water are a fact of life. However, California has a very poor track record when it comes to wildfire mitigation tactics, allowing fuel loads to build on forest floors and in canyons.

Then there is the issue of water. In a state where five years of precipitation can fall within a single year, dams and water systems are essential to capture that bounty before it flows into the Pacific. Yet it will take nearly 20 years, if ever, to build water systems that are already funded. A dam may  be made of of concrete but it is constructed through red tape.

All of this lack of preparation is combined with a dearth of first responders, fire hydrants running dry, and a lack of crisis leadership. Watch the following clip of the LA Mayor, trying to respond to a reporter’s questions.

Read more

At Long Last…

by

… and probably too late for the largest portion of the British ruling cadre (such as it is, and to include their national establishment media, political and intellectual class) to emerge with any honor and credit – now that the industrial-scope sexual trafficking and abuse of mostly white lower-class British girls at the hands of Moslem and Pakistani men has blown up into an international concern. Abuse which was enabled and hastily buried away from attention because .. well, musn’t hurt the delicate feewings of a favored minority class by pointing out rampant lawlessness on their part. One mussent point anything so infra dig, don’tcha know, because they are an essential and obedient voting bloc for the Ruling Cadre … and the segment of the population that they prey upon are so … (shudder) deplorable. I mean, one just doesn’t! It would be so raaacist…

Read more