Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Thursday, July 16, 2026
My favorite curmudgeon.
This weekend will mark the celebration of life for one of my favorite curmudgeons, Tommy Covington. Tommy was always an old curmudgeon, from the first day I met, him back in the 1990s. Being a curmudgeon, he always tended towards the cranky side. Oh there were a few days when you would catch him just right, and he would actually be in good mood.
You were never safe around Tommy, if you did, said, or acted in some way Tom disapproved, he had the ability to ratchet up the cranky to olympic levels. However, if you kept supplying him with some sort of asshattery, he could dial cranky into full blown pissed off in the blink of an eye. If you've ever been on the receiving end of Tommy when he was good and pissed, you would know it immediately and it would stay with you for while.
I was never in Tom's direct crosshairs. I think mainly because I always paid special care to stay out of his firing line. I enjoyed spending time with the Marks, (Meyers and Burns) sitting around the wood stove at Tommy shop in the fall and winter. We would all have drink in our hand, telling stories, and I could smoke cigars while Tommy would smoke cigarettes. You had to start early to catch Tommy. Somewhere around 4:30 or 5:00, he would just disappear and slip back to his house. Covington is an English name, but Tommy had the Irish Goodbye nailed down.
Having moved to Yolo County in the 80s, I did not know young Tommy. I only knew middle-aged Tommy. Who looked quite a bit like crank old-man Tommy if I remember right. Tommy is kinda like Willie Nelson, he's looked 80 for the last 30 years. Then again, getting dropped off your first day in Viet Nam to go out on patrol in the jungle for a few weeks would give you that look.
Now for those of you who only knew him briefly, or just as the old guy who yelled at you if you drove past his house at any speed that approached double digits, let me tell you about another side.
Tom was a softie, wrapped up in husk of bad language, and surrounded by cigarette smoke and a glass of whiskey. The Wednesday afternoon horseshoe games at Tommy's place were another of my favorite times up the valley. Sometimes, when it was just Mark and I waiting for the guys to get out there after work, we would just sit at the picnic table under the tree and talk. Every once in a while he would let out that softer side, and it was so different from his usual state. It was kind of cute.
Because I'm a man, and we never miss the chance to give your friends some grief, I would tell him I thought he was going soft. He would then tell me to go have sex with myself.
I am really going to miss that guy.
Saturday, July 11, 2026
Tennessee Governor's Race: An outsider's view
So, being a new Tennessee resident, I have been fascinated by the ads I'm seeing all over the media about the upcoming governor's race. Being a resident for all of seven months, I am trying to find my way through the issues that affect Tennessee. As far as I can tell, the number one issue affecting the state of Tennessee is the threat of China buying Tennessee farmland.....
Okay, I'm new to the state, so I wondered, is China buying up all available farmland throughout the state? This must be a big issue, right? I must see a dozen ads on the news, and on my Youtube feed about China buying farmland. So, I looked into it. Here is what I found.
According to one attack ad against Congressman John Rose, a Hong Kong/Chinese owned company bout a few hundred acres of farmland in Loudon County Tennessee. He didn't stop them, and so he has to go.... And Senator Marsha Blackburn just came out with the add where she is telling me that she will stop the Chinese from buying farmland..... You have probably seen these ads too.
Alright, so China buying Tennessee farmland is the biggest problem? Hmm, maybe this one one small parcel is part of a much larger problem? So I asked Grok how much farmland do Chinese affiliated companies own in the state, and how many acres of farmland are in Tennessee? Here is what I got back.
What about here in Tennessee? What foreign nations own Tennessee farmland?
I get it, these ads get clicks..... People seem to care, or people are made to care about it, is probably a better way to look at it.
Having moved here from California, being born and raised there, I look at this race the way I could look at a race for state office there. In California, it would be the opposite of the Tennessee races.
The California elections will come down to who will 'fight Trump' and oligarchs, and who will raise taxes on billionaires more. That will be what democrats will focus on.
Not how to fix the failing school system, how to solve the unfunded half-trillion dollar state retirement system, how to stop sending tens of billions of state tax revenue to NGOs and non profits who have been 'fixing' the homeless problem by doubling the number of homeless in the past few years.
Nope, the releasing of career criminals back onto the streets will not get much airtime in California. Steve Hilton, who somehow made it onto the ballot in the California governor's race will try to get some of these issues brought up in their debates, but it will be a struggle in deep blue CA.
Besides the budget and crime, both climbing in California, infrastructure was one of my main concerns. The state squanders money there at an embarrassing rate. While the state has spent about 15 billion on the hi-speed rail project, a few miles of concrete pillars sit and rust in the central valley while not a mile of track has been laid.
The people in California voted years ago to fund a bunch of new dams and reservoirs, because the state hasn't built a new water supply reservoir since 1979, while we have added millions of people to the ever shrinking water supply. Did we get any new dams or water supply? No, but the state did use that new water storage funding to tear down four small dams in Northern California......
None of these issues will be front and center in the California races, because it's California. The races will come down to who hates Trump more.
I don't want see the inverse happening here in Tennessee. I don't really care who loves President Trump the most, or who will fight the communist Chinese. I want the best people who understand the real problems a growing state will face, and who will take them on, even if the solutions are not click friendly. Infrastructure is not sexy, but it lasts for decades and make smart progress possible.
Are there any real issues in Tennessee that we need answers to? Yes I'm using 'we' because I do care about the state and the people where I live. What are those questions we should be asking these candidates?
I'd like to hear your thoughts....
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Father's Day or 23andOMG
(Happy Father's Day Annual Post)
I sat there looking at my phone in disbelief.
No way. Wow... No way.....
This cannot be happening.......
I guess I should start with a little background. I have had three fathers in my life.
That's two more than the standard, so let me start with the one with whom I share a name; Walter Joseph Lucas.
My father was 50 when I was born, so you could say he was late to the game when it came to having children. My sister Lisa is two years older that I am. I knew my father had been married twice before, but the few times he did talk about it were very brief. He would just say his previous wife did not want to have children and he did. It seemed reasonable enough.
Even into adulthood, I never pushed him to tell me more. He had a very complicated relationship with his own family. He was born in 1915 on a ranch near Lockeford Ca. His father died when he was 18 or 19 and he had to take over the responsibilities of running the family ranch. I'm sure he did all he could for his mom, but there was definitely some bad blood between he and his siblings. I only know the little he told me about his family, and I don't know their side of the story, so I cannot judge what really happened.
My father was two generations older than me. He rode a horse to school, and milked thirty cows by hand before and after school. His life was work, money and family, but mostly work. He could not get into the Army during WWII because he was deaf in one ear. He worked in the shipyards at Mare Island, building PT boats during the war years.
By the time I came into the world my father was a successful rancher, real estate broker and owned a land leveling business. He had an extraordinary work ethic and drive. I can best describe him as a combination between John Wayne and Donald Trump. Just imagine that for a moment.
Starting off on our ranch in Clements, our family seemed to be on the move most of my early years. We moved to a ranch on the John Day River near Mitchell Oregon when I was a toddler.
He tied me onto my first horse when I was two years old, and sent me plodding off down the dirt road to the bunkhouse where the cowboys lived. My mom said the snowfall that winter was the biggest in decades. You could ride a snowmobile over the corrals without touching a post. That was enough for her. Somehow, we ended up back in California, in Orland. That's the first house I can remember, but we were soon on the move again to the tiny town of Oak Run, north east of Redding.
I loved Oak Run. My father had wheeled and dealed his way into a big ranch there. It was several thousand acres of red dirt, lava rock and oak trees, but it also had a hundred acres of good bottomland where we could raise hay.
The ranch at Oak Run was a giant playground for me. There was a lot of work, but my father never seemed to drive me the way I'm sure his father drove him in his youth. Those were different times. That drive came out of sheer necessity.
I learned to operate the ranch trucks and tractors when I was old enough to reach the pedals. I fed cows, cut hay, and helped irrigate the fields. But only when I was asked or I wanted to. It was not forced labor to be sure, but there wasn't a lot of laying around the house either.
I was turned loose much of the time. In the summers, I would leave the house after breakfast and sometimes not come back until evening. We always had dogs on the ranch, lots of them. They were my constant companions since I didn't have any bothers. Lisa didn't see the enjoyment in damming up streams, throwing rocks, or chasing frogs down at the creek all day.
As I grew older, I was given more responsibility, and expected to do more. By twelve I was gathering cattle in the summer heat, driving Caterpillars, clearing brush or skidding logs. Most of these things were semi-dangerous for a twelve-year-old kid, but I survived.
My father had a way of teaching that could be summed up by the old Nike slogan: Just do it. He never took the time to patiently teach me how to do anything; he just put me in the seat and told me to do it. Drive this D-8 Caterpillar, clear this brush off these hills, I'll be back when you're finished. For a kid, it was equal parts excitement and terror, but that's just the way he was.
He would also let me skip school to go to the Shasta Livestock Auction in Cottonwood on Fridays. I would spend the day running around the sorting pens, while he was in Ellington Peek's office doing business. He would also let me go on business trips with him. I would sit quietly at a table full of businessmen and listen to million dollar deals be made. It was a unique experience for a young man. However, some of favorite times were in his old blue Jeep Cherokee where he and I would go 'check the cows'.
I loved my father, as most sons do. I loved him despite the fact that mine was very flawed, like all fathers are.
My father was an alcoholic. Ever since I can remember, my father drank, a lot. He was a maintenance drinker. He was never falling-down drunk, and he was never hung-over. He would always get up at 6:00 the next day ready to work. Back before computers and cell phones, business was done by telephone. After dinner, my father would start making his business calls. Every night, he sat at the kitchen table, talking on the phone and having several large 'hi-balls'.
We went through stretches where things would be fine for a time. Then, if the cattle prices or real estate market would go down, the stresses and pressures he put on himself would start to boil over. It was very volatile around our house, but then again, my father seemed to live in a constant state of chaos.
In the late 70's my father's ranching business started to take off. I remember the bankers from Bank of California sitting at our dinner table asking my father how large of a credit line he wanted. They were just giving money away, and they were taking my father's word he had the cattle to cover that amount of credit. All with a wink and nod. (Think of the housing bubble in 2008)
He bought a new ranch in Lakeview Oregon. He bought new pickups, horse trailers, semi-trucks, hired more cowboys and a mechanic. We even built a pool and a new addition to the house. It was a good time for our family. Well, until it all came crashing down a few years later.
He was always in conflict with the neighboring ranches, including one actual range war complete with sheriff's deputies, a helicopter and me standing in front of a gate with a lever action rifle to make sure the neighbors didn't push their cattle out of that gate onto the road.
My father made and lost several fortunes in his life. He never seemed to find a balance he could reach. He always wanted more; he always wanted to move forward, never content with where he was. My father was a complicated man.
He loved us kids, but he couldn't stop drinking. He had my life planned out and expected me to take over his 'empire' when the time came. But he spent almost no time teaching me how to do it. He was hard working, but had a soft heart. He could also bend a rule, or outright break it if stood between him and his business success. He never talked about his own feelings, and rarely how he felt about you, unless he has been drinking. Even then it was 50-50 propositions. You were either the best kid in world, or a huge disappointment.
Much like I described him as a combination of John Wayne and Donald Trump, many people loved my father and thought he was a great guy. Others thought he was a son of bitch. I think, in the end, they were both right.
After another lost fortune, our family ended up here in Yolo County. He bought a house with 20 acres after the bank took back the ranch in Oak Run, and he went to work leasing ranches and running steers and heifers for other ranchers.
He stayed in the real estate business, and never letting well enough alone, he took my mom and my sister's interest in cutting hair and turned that into a business. He opened a beauty salon in Vacaville for my mom and sister to run while he had his real estate office next door.
I was in college and discovering the world outside of ranching, hay bales, and cattle. In other words, I was have a great time.
It wasn't until I met my future wife that my interest turned back to the ranch. She loved it out there. Being a city girl, she couldn't understand why I didn't want to ride horses if I had the opportunity. To me horses meant work, and 14-hour days gathering cattle in the brush from sunup till sundown. Why would you want to ride them for fun?
We both were going to school at American River College, but I was still a year from getting my associates degree, so when my wife transferred to UC Davis, I went to work for my father running cattle. We lived on a ranch my father leased in Dunningan. I think I made $600 a month plus the nine hundred square foot house we lived in. Those were good times.
However, like all things cyclical, the good times are always followed by tough times, and that came in 1991. My father was again overextending, and planning as if the good times would always be good. He hated paying taxes, so for every dollar he made in the cattle business or real estate business, he leased a new ranch, or built new corrals or helped my wife and I buy a place of our own. Our house was just about complete, and with my father's help, we had just made our first annual balloon payment on the new place.
One day he was in Sacramento at a deposition, not surprisingly, he was being sued by one of our neighbors for some semi-shady way he sold their ranch, when he felt sick. He came home and stayed there for a while before my mother convinced him he had to go to the hospital.
I was irrigating the alfalfa at my place when I got the word he was headed to the hospital. He sat in the ER at Woodland Hospital for three or four hours while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with him. By the time a new doctor came on and decided he was bleeding internally, it was too late. He had an aneurysm of his aorta. They air lifted him to UC Davis Med Center. They performed surgery to repair the tear in the aorta, but he had lost too much blood and died the next day.
Not that there is ever a good time to lose a parent, but it could not have come at a worse time for our family. The cattle market was heading into a decline along with the real estate market. Loosing not only my father, but also my employer and the person who had engineered my life, was a huge hit. Even though I had my real estate salesman's license and was working on my father's ranch, I had let him make almost all my decisions for me. He was running the show, and now he was gone.
I was very immature for someone in my position. At twenty-five, I should have been ready for this day, but I wasn't. Not by a long shot. I went through the motions of gathering the cattle, and trying to help my mom figure out if we should keep the leases on the ranches. In the end, with all my father's bills and past due taxes, we had to sell everything, my house included, and start over.
At the time, all you see are the problems, all you feel is the pain, all you want is to have things put back the way they were. That isn't going to happen. You have to move, you have to go forward, you have to grow.
15 years later, I was working in the technology field, something I really liked, we had two children, and I was making a good living. My mom and sister were living in North Idaho and my mom had a met a man.
This is where I met my second father, Paul.
Paul is a so much different from Walt Sr.
He is soft spoken and kind. He's a patient, caring man, and he is very happy with the life he has. He is content, or at least at peace with his place in the world. Paul is a contractor, although he's retired now. He's a hard worker, but doesn't chase the almighty dollar at all costs. He likes to read, and loves working on his classic cars. He is interested in the world around him. He is self-aware in a way my father never was.
I could not have picked a better person for my mother to marry. He loves her dearly, and she has found someone to love without having to deal with the whirlwind of chaos and volatility.
Living sixteen hours away, I don't get to see them as often as I would like, but I have never worried a moment about my mother since Paul entered her life. He is wonderful, and I owe him more than I can say. He is the perfect second father.
So wait, I thought you said this was a story about three fathers? Yes, I'm getting to that.
Shortly after my father passed away, my mother told Lisa and I that dad had two sons with his first wife, long ago. He had told her not to tell us kids, but now that he was gone, she thought the time was right. She didn't have any names, just the little my father had told her.
This was fascinating to me and it started me on a long journey to find my lost relatives. Ancestry was a new service, and I signed up looking to see if I could find my lost half brothers. I had no luck. I tried to find his first wife, but without her maiden name, you cannot find birth records and such with the counties involved.
I think I solved the mystery a few years back when I found a census record of my father living in Stockton with his first wife Zelda, her mother, and two small children with different last names. So, I think those kids were my father's stepsons, and would be no relation to me. A bit anticlimactic, but the mystery was solved.
Enter the new DNA registry 23andMe.
I had always heard from my father that he was mostly Irish with some French from my grandmother. My mom is full Portuguese, half from the Azores and the other half from Portugal by way of Brazil.
I wanted to see how true that was and signed up. A week or so later a package arrived. I followed the instructions and spit into the little tube, sealed it up and mailed it back. They said it would take about 6 weeks to get the results.
I didn't think I would find too many surprises, but being a huge history buff, I thought it would be cool to be able trace my heritage. I received an email saying my results were in and I logged on and looked at my DNA make up. Nothing too startling. I was 28% British/Irish, 25% Broadly Northwest European, and 35% Iberian, (Spain/Portugal) with the rest a mash up of mostly European make up.
This tracked almost exactly the way I thought it would. Oh well.
I had traced my father's family back to Prince Charles County Maryland in 1731 through Ancestry, and I thought there may have been an American melting pot, genetic wildcard thrown in there somewhere. But it turned out I'm just a plain old American white guy.
I had told my mom about the 23andMe findings and she wanted to know why I was so interested in it? I said I found it fascinating to know for sure where you come from. Knowing what part of the world you came from, tracing your history and such.
I thought that was the end of the story.
A few days later I received an email from 23andMe asking if I wanted to search for my DNA relatives. Sure, why not. I clicked the link.....Oh boy....
I looked at the page for a minute and reread it a few times just to make sure.
I have two half-sisters.
No way. No. Way.
I clicked on their names and looked at their profiles.
No way.
How could this be? They must belong to dad, but when were they born? I found a link to send them a message. What do you say? Hi, I'm your long lost half brother, where did you come from?
I sent each one a message. I had so many questions. I asked if they knew my father, and did they know about my sister and I?
Pam was the first to respond:
”.... Tracy and I now know how we are half sisters through information told to us by our mothers when we were young adults. I'd be happy to connect if you want to solve this mystery for yourself. It is just because our parents really wanted us to be born, and all they did to arrange for our arrivals. I was born in 1961. Tracy in 1967. It will benefit us all to know the health and genetic data. So glad to find you. :)"
Wait? What?
I was a little slow on the uptake here just because it seemed so strange. With Pam being born in 61, that was before my mom and dad were married, so no foul there, but Tracy was born in 67, two years after me. Why would our all our parents really want us to be born? I could see my dad having a bit of fun, but I'm pretty sure my mom would not have been okay with my father out populating the planet.
Like I said, it was staring me in the face, but I hadn't put it all together.
I sent both a message saying it looked like my father was a bit of a scoundrel. I think Pam and Tracy had a correspondence between each other and decided to have Pam spill the beans:
"Well, not a scoundrel actually. I don't want to shock you, but since you are over 50, I think you can handle it. When I was 14, I found out that my father (my legal father) was not my biological father. Before my parents married, he had a vasectomy. It couldn't be reversed. My parents really wanted me, so they went to a specialist in San Francisco who arranged for a sperm donor. All they knew was he was a medical student who was healthy and had a great health history and already had a family and children. I was never to have known. Back then, the secrecy was thought best for the child being conceived. At 14 when I chose to sever my ties to my father, my mother told me the truth of my paternal creation. I didn't know about any of you, but always thought that this medical student may have made several donations. Lol. I met Tracy last year through her daughter making a connection to me. We were both stunned. Tracy found out from her mom about the medical student on her 22nd birthday. She is still very close to her legal father, so she is cautious about making it known because she doesn't want him to feel bad. So was your legal father a medical student? Tracy and I don't know if you were from donation like us or if our parent’s donor was both your legal and genetic dad. Sorry for the shock if you didn't know."
Wow..... No way.
I was shocked.
So the only man I ever knew as my father was not my biological father.
No flippin' way.
As I sat there staring at my phone, I felt a rush of different feelings.
This changes everything.
Then again, it changes nothing.
My father will always be my father. He raised me, for better or worse. It was surreal to me that a man from my father's generation would use a donor to have children. He was nothing if not a man's man. With all his success, all that money, there must have been something missing. There must have been a huge hole in his life he needed to fill with children. It made me wonder about those two stepsons he had with his first wife, and how it must have hurt to lose them when they were divorced.
My head was swimming, but it was late and I went to bed with lots of different thoughts rattling around. What was I going to say to my mom? Should I even bring this up? I had to. It was just too much to let go. Besides, my mom did nothing wrong. She did something extraordinary to bring me into this world. The doctors had instructed her not to tell me about my biological father. She kept the secret for over 50 years. She did it out of love, and that is a great reason.
The next day I called my mom in the morning. We spoke for a while and then I told her the story that Pam told me. The story of Children's Hospital in San Francisco, and the donor, and the instruction not to tell us kids. When I finished, I asked, "So, do you have anything you want to tell me?" There was a bit of a pause, "Well, I would say that my story is the same story you just told me."
We talked about dad and her not being able to have children, and the special clinic at Children's hospital was the cutting edge for the 1960s. It was very expensive, but it was their only hope of having children. My sister was conceived the same way. Mom said she never really thought about it about it after a few years, and didn’t think it was important to tell us after dad died. We were going through enough turmoil at the time.
The fact that I signed up for the DNA tests out of pure curiosity was something they couldn't have even imagined back in the 1960s. If I had not spit in that little tube, I would have never known about my biological father.
So, the real question is: Now what?
What does it change? Like I said before; it changes everything and it changes nothing.
Walt Sr. will always be my father. He raised me, he showed what it was to be a man, to work hard, and he showed me you can do more than you think is possible. I will always love that man.
So what about my biological father? Do I want to know more about him? Yeah, I guess so. I would like to see a picture of him, and see if I look anything like him. I would like to know something about his personality, his temperament. Those kinds of things.
I'm sure he never imagined DNA testing, and that three strangers would someday find each other through an ounce of saliva. I wonder if he would want to know how we turned out?
So many questions.
In the end, I am glad I know. I am also glad my mother and father went to that specialist in San Francisco. I am here.
I have a wonderful family, a wonderful life, and memories to last me a few lifetimes. I am hoping to get together one day with my half sisters; that would be cool. Hey, 23andMe is a new company, not many people have signed up, there may be more of us half siblings out there. I always wanted a brother. (Sorry Lisa, love ya)
Monday, November 17, 2025
Saving the right, (from what happened to the left)
One of the things that first stood out to me when I discovered Dr. Jordan Peterson about ten years ago was the question he asked his democrat friends. "How do you know when the left has gone too far?"
He said they would never answer the question. Never.
When he asked his friends on the republican side, how do you know when the right has gone too far? They would answer quickly, and confidently; when they turn to racial superiority, victimhood, and outrage mobs. That's when the right needs to be smacked back into reality.
The left maybe an election cycle too late in finding the answer to the 'too far' question. The DNC are just now coming up with the courage to start asking that small, but insanely loud insider group of the intersectionality wing, to be quiet. In the back rooms they asking themselves, are we sure we should be fighting to sterilize children, and to force young girls to have naked young men in their dressing rooms and sports teams?
It may take a few more election cycles for them to either shut these people up, or separate themselves from this insanity. It looks like the big-money people paying for these billion dollar election losses are starting to say no to the pro-Trans crowd. Money and multi-media culture are the coin of the realm in politics, so it may take some serious work to move the democratic party back towards the middle. We will see.
With the elections in November, we did see people like Democratic Socialist candidate Mamdani win, and that is disturbing, but not really surprising. Electing a young charismatic socialist can happen in deep blue city like New York, but that won’t work across all of America.
The left had their fun on election night in their blue state vistories, but I'm sure the frustration is boiling over inside the democrat party. This socialist stuff is not going to work in purple states, can it?
Watching the left embrace the extremes on the outside of their party is frightening enough as someone in the middle. However, I am now starting to see this same thing starting to happen on the right, and it scares the hell out of me.
The latest item I would point to is the recent podcast by Tucker Carlson. He brought on 27 year old Nick Fuentes. If you don't know who that is, good for you. He's an incredibly talented, yet extremely disturbed young man. He is becoming the ever increasingly popular face of what is called the Groypers. This is a dangerous ideology that is gaining traction on the far right, or the 'Woke Right' as they are now being described.
Now with everyone calling everyone Nazis, and anti-semites, I want to make sure we are describing what is true when it come to Fuentes. There's a never ending list of evidence for his fondness, and support, for both Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin. That seems very odd to someone who has read as much history as I have. One would think it's hard to be a supporter of both fascism and communism at the same time, since they were murdering each other by the millions less than a 100 years ago. But, the woke right doesn't have to make sense, they just need clicks and popularity, and that will bring in revenue and relevance.
Tucker Carlson's interview was not problematic because he did the interview with Fuentes, it was the very friendly nature of the interview. He offered almost no pushback or questions digging into Fuentes' outrageous claims.
I used to like Tucker Carlson, even if he's had a some strange takes, and said some bizzare things from time to time, but he's gone off the rails of the conservative movement in a few short months.
Why is someone on the conservative side of things not stomping down a young pro-nazi, anti woman, anti semitic personality like Fuentes? This movement is really growing among those young disaffected men on the right. Like I said, the numbers of views and clicks make money in this new media world, and for a person like Fuentes, what else does he have?
Another person who I follow online is Bret Weinstein. He’s an evolutionary biologist who was one of the first people to be ‘cancelled’ at the University of Portland back in 2015. A bit later in 2019 he gave everyone a stern warning. He said this intersectional identity politics movement on the left was going to create an identity political movement on the far right. He was correct. This is a recent piece about why you should be able to criticize Israel, without being called names.
"What a terrible error it is to go after anybody who has legitimate questions about the interaction between the United States and not only a foreign state but a particular administration that has a very hard line bent within that foreign state.
You're allowed to have questions. You're an American. That's one of the great things about it. You're allowed to have questions. You're allowed to ask any question you want. And anybody who wants to say that the reason you can't ask that question is because you're revealing a horrible defect in character, or defect of character, is running exactly the risk of creating the enemy, effectively calling it forth."
So over the past twenty years or so, we as a society, and culture led by the left, called forth an entity called the Groypers.
So who are these Groypers? I didn't really know exactly until a few months ago. They are the outlet for young, mostly white, men and teens who are not playing inside the lines that modern culture allows.
They have lost meaningful connection with healthy masculinity, and are not engaging with each other in face to face friendship, and have almost ruled out interacting face to face with women. This fear and frustration of trying to engage with young women, who have been told that they don't need men, and men are useless, has been a force driving them to stop trying, and to turn to porn. Porn is their outlet for their sexual frustration with women and dating, and that is not good. They also have resorted to the online gaming world for social contact, and friendship. They have dozens of online gaming friends, and a few close ones, where they can spend hours shit-talking about how bad the real world is.
So, as someone who just turned 60 years old, and retired after a life of working blue collar and then white collar jobs, I do not see what they see. I can't, the world that I grew up in long gone. I need to ask myself, what does the real world look like to me, vs what it looks like to them?
In my next two posts, I will delve into what I see (from the outside) are the two main problems driving young people, but especially men, to drop out of the real face-to face work, and burrow down into artificial worlds of social networks, porn, and gaming.
Affordability: - Why is everything so damned expensive, especially homes?
Getting your shit together: - Communication, dating, socialization, working.
Thursday, November 06, 2025
Basic Economics and what drives Affordability?
If you want to know what is driving many Americans to embrace socialism, one of the major factors is the American education system. At your local district level, schools have not taught the basics of economics to the past few generations of children . The astonishing ignorance of today's public in basic economics is remarkable.
It is said that, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." What follows must be, if you do know history, you are destined to watch others repeat it.
Speaking of history, I remember back in 2024, when republicans were complaining (understandably) about the Biden administration flooding the market with trillions in borrowed cash to keep the economic GDP numbers up. The democrats were also buying votes with government checks. High inflation and crumbling affordability were key factors in Trump's victory in 24.
As soon as republicans were in charge, they gave up on that messaging. Why? Well, because making prices go down is hard to do through federal government policy. The one thing Trump has done well is open the energy markets up, and the price of fuel has dropped dramatically. That helps lower prices across the board, as everything that goes to market needs to use energy to get to your store, or your front door.
Inflation has been stuck around 3%, which is about a point higher than optimal. Remember at one point in the Biden administration, it rose to 9%. You can't get those price hikes back, you can only slow that rise down to a manageable level. Even at that magic 2% inflation rate, prices go higher each year. However, if the economy is growing at 2.5 - 3.5%, your purchasing power goes up. You don't feel those small price hikes with more money in your paycheck.
When people look at housing, it becomes a bit more complex, but also pretty simple; It's Supply and Demand. Do you see subdivisions being built all over your town? No, new housing subdivisions are a increasingly rare. This leads to a lack of supply in the housing market.
The persistent lack of sufficient new housing supply has been a major driver of rising home prices in the US. The country faces a shortage of around 4 million homes right now. That shortage has led to increased competition among buyers. This has pushed prices up by 60% nationwide since 2019.
There is no real way for the federal government to increase home building. Getting the interest rates down will help people afford more home, but it doesn't drive home prices down. Supply does that.
Have you heard anything from your State, County, or City politicians talking about how they will lower home prices? Have they talked about their plans to start reducing regulations, lowering permit fees, lowering new home taxes, lowering developer fees, cutting permitting times, or making rezoning happen? Nope. Not at all.
The people who own high priced homes, ones they've owned for decades, want to keep their neighborhoods exactly the way are. They vote politicians into County Supervisor seats, and City Council seats who will pass rules and regulations to keep any new houses from being built in their cities or counties. The ones they will approve will come with hundreds of thousands of dollars in building permits, fees, inspections, environmental research, testing, mitigation costs, open space taxes, green energy nonsense, and layer upon layer of red tape made to do two things; Make money for the local government budgets, and slowing new home building.
I'm not sure what can be done with this. I guess that's why we are seeing the huge migration from Blue States to Red States. These Red States, for the most part, are much friendlier to building homes.
The other side of this is the Demand side of the equation. Say what you will of President Trump's immigration policies, 1.5 million illegal citizens self-deporting, and another half million who have been deported, is driving the demand side down a bit. It's just not quite enough to drive rental housing prices down much, and it doesn't really effect the middle class housing demand side.
So, what can done to address these frustrated Gen Z and Millennials who would love to afford a home? It's a little late to sign them up for YouTube classes on how basic economics work, but we can be honest with them. The people you vote for at the local levels matter.
Encourage these new home buyers show up at their Board of Supervisors meetings, or City Council meetings and ask those politicians questions. Ask if the policies they are approving to make 'smarter cities' or 'greener cities' or 'more sustainable cities', will these policies make new homes cheaper or more expensive? You will be ignored, or given a word salad of slogans and buzzwords to shut you up.
That is what's going on with the affordability crisis. Local and State policies drive up regulation, and costs, while they drive down new home building....
It's not a bug, it's a feature of the class of people who are running your local governments.
Voting them out. That is really the only answer.
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Hitler for Dummies
So, let me just play along with this idea for a minute. I've heard this from the left, democrat leaders and the media for almost ten years now; Trump is just like Hitler, and republicans are just like Nazis.
Do I have that right? I'm pretty sure that's what I have heard from protesters, and seen on their signs since 2015 when Donald Trump rode the golden elevator down at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for President. The real question is, do they actually believe this? I think they do.
Here's the problem, when asked, they can't give you any actual examples of Trump doing anything resembling the acts taken by one of the top three murderous dictators of the 20th century. Basically inside their minds, it comes down to 'I think Trump is a terrible person, and you know who else was a terrible person? Adolf Hitler." It's just that simple.
Here's the problem with that statement; If you think Trump is just like Hitler, you may be confused about who Trump is, but you definitely don't know who Hitler was.
Here's some quick facts from my Hitler for Dummies course.
Hitler was never successful at anything in his younger years. He was an average German soldier who was wounded in the thigh during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, then spent the last month of the war in hospital after suffering a temporary blindness from a British mustard-gas attack in the trenches. When he got out, the war was over. He was convinced the German upper class politicians, and the Jews, sold out the soldiers and capitulated to the Allies to save whatever power and wealth they had before the war.
That was 1918. Hitler doesn't rise to leader of Germany until 1933. That's a short time to go from a failed painter, to soldier, to Chancellor of Germany.
(I grabbed some of this from Grok, since I don't have time to go through Winston Churchill's 'The gathering storm' here.)
After the war, Hitler was busy. With his charisma, oratory skills, and organizational skills, he became the DAP (German Workers Party) chief propagandist, delivering fiery speeches that attracted crowds and new members amid Germany's economic turmoil.
In February 1920, he helped draft the party's 25-point program, which included revoking the Treaty of Versailles, excluding Jews from citizenship, and promoting Aryan supremacy. The party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP, or Nazi Party) to broaden its appeal.
With full control of the Nazi Party, Hitler focused on expansion, using his oratory to rally supporters in beer halls and public rallies. Membership grew from a few hundred to over 50,000 by 1923, fueled by hyperinflation and resentment toward the Weimar government.
He strengthened the SA as a private army for street violence against communists and Jews, while propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels (who joined later) amplified antisemitic messages.
Inspired by Mussolini's March on Rome, Hitler attempted a coup on November 8–9, 1923, known as the Beer Hall Putsch. With allies like Erich Ludendorff, he marched on Munich's government buildings but was met with police gunfire; 16 Nazis were killed, and Hitler fled before being arrested for high treason.
Hitler's 1924 trial in Munich turned into a propaganda platform; he delivered defiant speeches blaming "November criminals" for Germany's woes, earning sympathy from nationalist judges. Sentenced to five years but serving only nine months in Landsberg Prison, he dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle), outlining his ideology of racial purity, Lebensraum (living space), and hatred of Jews and Bolshevism.
Released in December 1924, Hitler rebuilt the banned Nazi Party upon its legalization in February 1925, shifting toward legal electoral strategies while maintaining paramilitary elements. He created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as an elite bodyguard unit under Heinrich Himmler, which would later eclipse the SA.
The mid-1920s saw limited success, with Nazis winning only 12 seats in the 1928 Reichstag elections. However, the 1929 Wall Street Crash and Great Depression devastated Germany, causing mass unemployment (over 6 million by 1932) and eroding faith in the Weimar Republic.
Hitler capitalized on this, promising jobs, national revival, and scapegoating Jews and communists. In the September 1930 elections, Nazis surged to 107 seats, becoming the second-largest party.
In the 1932 presidential race, Hitler garnered 37% of the vote against incumbent Paul von Hindenburg but lost; undeterred, the Nazis won 230 seats in July 1932 elections, making them the largest party, though a November rerun saw slight losses to 196 seats.
Backroom deals with conservatives, who underestimated him, positioned Hitler for power.
On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor in a coalition government, hoping to control him.
The February 27 Reichstag Fire, blamed on communists (likely arson by Nazis), allowed Hitler to suspend civil liberties via the Reichstag Fire Decree.
In March 1933 elections, Nazis secured 44% of votes, and with allies, passed the Enabling Act on March 23, granting Hitler dictatorial powers to rule by decree.
He banned other parties, unions, and opposition press, establishing a one-party state. On June 30–July 2, 1934, the Night of the Long Knives purged SA leader Ernst Röhm and rivals, killing over 85, to appease the army and consolidate SS dominance.
Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934, let Hitler merge chancellor and president roles into Führer, with the army swearing loyalty to him personally.
In 1935, Hitler defied the Treaty of Versailles by reintroducing conscription and revealing the Luftwaffe. The September Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship and banned intermarriages, institutionalizing antisemitism.
In March 1936, he remilitarized the Rhineland without Allied resistance, boosting his prestige. The 1936 Berlin Olympics showcased Nazi propaganda, while economic recovery via public works and rearmament reduced unemployment.
By 1937, Hitler had allied with Mussolini (Rome-Berlin Axis) and, in the secret Hossbach Memorandum of November 5, outlined plans for territorial expansion through war, signaling aggressive intentions toward Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Hitler's ascent relied on exploiting crises, masterful propaganda, violence, and alliances with elites who saw him as a tool against communism. By 1937, Germany was a totalitarian state poised for expansion, setting the stage for World War II.
A few bullet points: If you have not read up on Hitler's rise to power, maybe you think he was just voted into power like Trump was, so they must be the same, right? Um, no. Not by a long shot.
If you back and look at that Night of the Long Knives section, Hitler and his boys went around to all the leaders of the Nazi party who weren't absolutely loyal to him personally, and murdered them.
Let's look back at our top three murderous dictators in the 20th century......
Communist leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, killed around 40-60 million human beings through the purges of USSR's military, its citizens, through planned starvations, and his brutal work camps in Siberia.
Germany's National Socialist leader, Adolf Hitler, killed somewhere between 14-20 million human beings, not including those in war fighting. Jews, Gypsies, Soviets prisoners, pretty much anyone he didn't like, and he didn't like anyone but the Aryans.
Communist China's Mao Zedong is our winner of the murderer of the century. He killed his own citizens by the tens of millions. Through political executions, but mainly through famine and farm collectivization. His estimate is well over 100 million human beings who were killed.
By the way, Pol Pot and the Communist Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia, get an honorable mention in the murderous dictator category. He murdered about 3 million of his citizens in the Killing Fields in the 1970s. He may have been the worst one, he just didn't have access to enough people to murder.
Each one of these murdering maniacs we not elected into power through a free and fair election. Even in the German elections, there was active street violence everywhere, and political assassinations. Remember that Hitler failed in a Coup d'eTat that wound up with him in prison. He became Chancellor through backroom deals, then he went on to murder dozens of people inside the Nazi Party who opposed him.
Stalin murdered any political opponent he thought may be threat to him, even in the future. He murdered bright, young army staff officers because people 'liked them' too much.
Mao had millions of young students who led the revolution, turning in anyone who had beliefs that were not in line with whatever came down from Mao. Young students sending their own parents off to be murdered for the revolution. These same students had a rude awakening after Mao was firmly in power. He didn't have much use for a bunch of young idealist, with a taste for blood and power, so he murdered them as well.
See the commonality in all these authoritarian dictators? They do not want any opposition. None. Zero.
Now let's look at President Trump for a bit. You might hate his orange hair, his orange spray tan (although thankfully he's backed off both of those things recently) his mean Tweets, his crude talk, and generally, just his personality. You can hate all those things. It's perfectly fine to do so.
You can be mad that he is enforcing the laws on the books when it comes to illegal immigration. You can me mad that he is sending National Guard troops downtowns in big cities because the local police chiefs and mayors of those cities will not keep violent protestors from blocking and hindering federal ICE facilities and ICE officers. You can hate all that, but here's the real question, do any of those things make President Trump a Nazi?
When a judge issues an order to stop doing this, or says you can't do that, Trump says, okay fine, and follows the court rulings. He may appeal the ruling, but once there is a final say, he lives with the outcome. That seems to be the opposite of an authoritarian dictator?
I just don't get it. Hate all you want, but calling someone, who doesn't believe in what your political side believes in, the same as someone who murdered 20 million people seems more like a mental illness and less than someone who failed their history class.
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