Pardon the Swearing

 In many cases, it’s good advice.

What’s with the Germans?

 With some election coming up in Germany, I hear the German authorities are trying so hard not to be Nazis, that they are turning into Nazis.  Shit posting and Meme posting can apparently get you thrown into jail, or be raided so that your phones or computers can be seized. And apparently some NGOs that are fine with this sort of thing are receiving USAID-style funding from the German government to help in these persecutions.

Maybe the Germans should also have made it illegal to be Stasi.

I suppose this blog post would earn me prosecution if I had posted it from Germany.

Chesterton on Sanity

 “Of a sane man there is only one safe definition: he is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”

Chesterton on Moderns & Nature

 I think modern people have somehow got their minds all wrong about human life. They seem to expect what Nature has never promised; and then try to ruin all that Nature has really given.

Is the Blob being disassembled?

 

What to do if you’re in government and your iron rice bowl is threatened?

 The proverbial iron rice bowl is, simply stated, someone’s way of making a living.  Hopefully, most iron bowls are honorable; but surely many iron bowls are rackets and grifts.

What to do if you have a government iron rice bowl?  You have the bowl because there is a problem that exists and you are said to be solving it.  So, what to do if a reformer enters government and questions how you are dealing with the problem and even questions if you’re solving the problem at all?  Your iron bowls being threatened, you can exacerbate the problem and then blame the reformers.  Or you can expose what hithereto had been a result of your workings that you had hidden, and blame it on the reformers.

Anthony Esolen: The Vandals Within

 “Consider a few measures of cultural oblivion.  We have college graduates who have not read a single book in their lives.  We are not replacing ourselves with children.  Marriage is not on the rocks; it hardly gets out of port to begin with.  Churches are closing.  Ignorance of Scripture, in part bound up with a general ignorance of history and the cultural heritage of Western civilization, is endemic.”

Esolen is another favorite writer of mine.  What he writes has that hard slap of the unvarnished truth.

Read his whole essay here.

Zman on Trump and Prudentialism

 This is how we arrived at this odd time where John Derbyshire and Paul Gottfried share a pew with RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. The excesses of progressivism, unconstrained by the necessity of the Cold War, have put everything at risk, thus calling forth an old force that has been dormant since Gettysburg. That force is prudentialism. The thing that lies at the heart of Western conservatism is a set of precautionary principles that act to avoid unknowable negative consequences.

Read it all here.

David Warren says to make the USA a monarchy

 Without entering overmuch into details, I am an enthusiastic monarchist, and see it as the solution to many little problems; that, and an appointive legislature. I think this would appeal to that sizeable majority of Americans who approve Mr Trump’s policies, on immigration and everything else, and might also assuage the minority of voters who worry what might happen if he were ever deposed. For with democratic practices, the future is always unsound.

Immediately we have the lovely Queen Melania, and a very plausible, impressively tall heir in Prince Barron, together with an extensive royal family. But more to the point, Canada and Greenland could join this American Union uncontroversially, together with other entities including Panama and Gaza, for our own various monarchical traditions (British, Danish, Spanish) could be easily revised.

Mr (surely, Lord?) Vance would make an excellent Prime Minister — a job he already has de facto —  and any one of Mr (surely, Lord?) Elon’s youthful staff could be given the Treasury to mind, assuming the rocket-man himself wouldn’t have time.

Read it all here

NGD #34

 —Acabamos tratándonos recíprocamente como bienes fungibles cuando dejamos de creer en el alma.

—We end up treating each other as fungible goods when we cease believing in the soul.

Josemaría Escriva. #5

It’s not enough to be learned, in addition to being a good Christian. If you don't correct the brusqueness of your character, if you make your zeal and your knowledge incompatible with good manners, I can't

see you ever becoming a saint. And despite your learning — because of it — you should be tied in a stall, like a mule.

NGD #33

 

NGD #32: My truth

 —Mi verdad es la suma de lo que soy, no el simple

resumen de lo que pienso.

—My truth is the sum of what I am, not a simple

summary of what I think.

David Warren on Politics and Quiet

 Deafening hype is coming from both sides (there are only two) of American politics at the moment. I find it hard to think of any other topic, even though I long for quiet. Given my preference for peace over war, and freedom over slavery, and strength over ignorance (some subtleties are being concealed here) — and, more generally, for good over evil — the reader will understand that I associate with the “Far Right” on the usual political spectrum. It is a reactionary and controversial position.

Read it all here.

It was good to read this.  I’m glad I’m not alone.

Tracked Shopping Carts?

 Somewhere in Wuxi, there is a supermarket where the shopping carts don’t have fixed back wheels.  That is, the back wheels spin like the front wheels. I learned about this when I was accompanying someone on a beer buying odyssey. This someone complained about it and asked me if I hated it as well.  I had to confess that I had never noticed, never thought about it, and that furthermore, I usually let my son control the cart.on family shopping odysseys.

So, the next time, I went on a shopping trip, I had to check out the back wheels of the cart.  I didn’t want to feel like I was blind to something.  I even took a video and sent it to that someone.

The rear wheels were fixed.  That turned that someone on! 😛

Which leads me to wonder why there aren’t tracked shopping carts, like a tank is tracked.  It’s a useful innovation that the Chinese are capable of like all those mop and pail combos my wife buys.

Is Justin Trudeau a USAID Project?

 If it’s true, those Americans are dastardly!

David Warren on the best politics

 the best politics consists simply of negating whatever the other side has done: retiring regulations and withdrawing taxes. There is no economic argument for government interference, even against corruption; only the moral argument of preventing evil.

It is why, while Donald Trump is no saint, I was more or less delighted by the hundreds of executive orders by which he cancelled everything Joe Biden had done. Alas, I fear he may try to do things himself.

Read it all here

Z-Man on USAID

One of the things that is becoming clear to everyone as the USAID scandal unfolds is that much of what has been presented to us over the last several decades, as far as politics, has been an illusion created by the blob. The media was part of the blob, underwritten by the government and cultivated with government access, so they presented a version of political reality that favored the blob. Even the debates over policy were staged by the blob.

Read the whole thing here.

David Warren on Reading

 I had years of reading “for pleasure,” which led from Pookie through Kipling to other story-tellers, and I was able to avoid what was given me to read, for “education.” But I was not reading, nor thinking, philosophically.

Read the whole thing here.

So far, the Canusa trade war has been comedy gold!

This Canada USA trade war has to be one of the silliest in Economic History.

You’ve got Canadians going to Costco to boycott American products.

You’ve got environmental whackos wanting to put tariffs on electrical vehicles 

You’ve got the premier of  British Columbia wanting to boycott the liquor of states that voted for Trump while allowing the liquor from states that voted for Kamala to stay on the shelves.

You’ve got the President of the USA who can do stand up comedy.

You’ve got a Canadian PM who can’t do stand up comedy or even play a straight man.

David Warren on The Trump Tariffs

 A more suitable financial topic for this morning, in the Canadian news, is “Trump tariffs.” (He is settling the score for decades of smug, Canadian abuse of American generosity.) I mentioned in a previous post that his intention is, incidentally, to destroy our government, and implied that this would be a good thing. The Canadian government is cooperating, by counter-tariffing, and the voters, especially in Ontario, are confirming their reputation as malicious idiots. I could explain how the trade war they are demanding will accomplish Trump’s end, by accelerating the tailspin of the Canadian economy (“drill baby drill”) — but why throw pearls before swine?

Read the whole entry here.

Anagrams of Andis Kaulins

 The name "Andis Kaulins" can be rearranged to form various anagrams. Here are a few possibilities:

1. **Anakin Sulids**  

2. **Sulids Anakin**  

3. **Kain Sulands**  

4. **Luna Skandis**  

5. **Sank Dailuns**  

:

• Sandal Kisiun

• Akin Sun Dials

• Said Ankulin S

• Island An Suki

Here are more anagrams of Andis Kaulins:

• Sandals Uki In

• Akin Dual Sins

• Alas Kind Sun I

• Dusk Ail An Sin

• Ink Laid Us San

• A Sun Kind Ails

• Skid As A Unlain

These are mostly abstract combinations

Z-Man on Trump: The Destroyer of Worlds

 What we are seeing is the long-anticipated end of the 20th century. Russia and China have moved into the 21st century, but America and the West have remained moored to the prior century, convulsively resisting any attempt to abandon it. That world, however, is gone and now, thanks to The Mule, it is being destroyed. For now, the destruction is the show, but soon, what comes next is what will matter. Everyone needs to remember that The Mule is the destroyer of worlds, not the creator of them.

Read the whole thing here.

Buy Canadian!?!

 On X, I saw a  Canadian who was up in arms about Trump Tariffs saying we must buy Canadian: a kind of MAGA like policy for Canada proposed by a Canadian Anti-MAGAer.

So, in a way, Trump is actually helping Canada start to put its house in order.  What will Canadians do when they find out that most of the stuff they buy in malls isn’t made in Canada.?  Or in America, for that matter.

The End of Quantum Reality

 Trailer.

I enjoyed this film.  It gave me hope.