Really Right – Page 7 – Religion, Politics, and Culture: Explained and Defined

Haley’s X Account Bites Her in the Butt

That sage prophet of our times, Scott Adams, is known for the axiom,” There is a right way, a wrong way, and the weasel way”. Last week, Nikki Haley showed her true colors on X (formerly Twitter) by taking the weasel way and getting caught with her proverbial pants down.

Oh, Troll, sorry for that visual.

Anyway, Nikki showed she knows as much about computers as actually leading America—which is to say she is totally unqualified. On her X account she displayed this letter of praise from a follower.

The post reads:

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR FIGHT!! In a world that’s become crazy with strife, we need a level headed conservative leader to navigate us through the insanity! NO ONE is more capable than you are to right the ship, and heal this great nation! WE NEED you Nikki! This country NEEDS you. Our allies, and the beautiful people of this world need you!

I don’t want to see you give up, and I guarantee you there are millions more out there who feel exactly as I do!

Michael B.

Unfortunately, this glittering endorsement has a few problems as folks were happy to point out to her.

Please note that this was posted on the official Nikki Haley X (Twitter) account.

As REdState pointed out:

But many people noticed a problem with the “email.” Someone appears to have forgotten to hit send and there’s no address header and no subject. Not to mention, it says “new message” in the left-hand corner. Whoever sent this out didn’t understand what it was showing.

For those from Rio Linda this means Nikki wrote this on her account about herself and forgot to do anything to make it look like it was sent to her. Like so many other women do when necessary, she faked it and then tells you how good she was.

But it gets even better. Here’s another comment.

Folks, they forgot to hit the “Send” button on the email and show it as a received message in their Inbox, instead of one they composed themselves.

Nikki just proved that she has an IQ approximating room temperature. However, let’s take a quick look at the content of her fake message.

Is Nikki running for President of the United States or President of the World? She seems confused on this point. “…The beautiful people of this world need you!”

Oh gag me. Nikki’s number one promise if elected is not to make America a great nation, it’s to write a blank check to Israel. Nikki also wants us in Ukraine as well. She wants to be Nikki Haley, world policebabe. She wants to create good paying jobs at home by building and selling munitions to the rest of the planet. Can we call her George W Bush in drag?

As recently as today, Nikki is claiming that she will win the Republican nomination for President. She’s only trailing Trump by 35 points in her home state of South Carolina. Folks this babe is a legend in her own mind and if she believes she has a chance to win, she is every bit as delusional as Joe Biden. At least we know Joe has dementia but what’s her excuse?

Special Counsel Ruins Presidential Hopeful’s Chances

Much to the chagrin of Democrats and Never Trumper’s, Special Counsel Robert Hur who was investigating Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. and his stealing of confidential documents dropped a bombshell Thursday. In just one sentence he may have destroyed ole Joe. He called him a “well meaning, elderly man, with a poor memory.”

This is something William and I tried to warn you all about. The Democrats needed Joe 4 short years ago to beat Trump. Joe is the same then as he is now. He is a fragile, senile old man who should be enjoying a beverage (maybe warm milk?) after playing a round of golf with friends. Hur also added Biden “with his advancing age and diminished faculties, would be seen as a sympathetic figure to a jury.” In essence the man is in steep mental decline and punishing a man like that with potential jail time is mean. Biden had a long-distinguished career in government and was seen as a foreign policy expert, even though Robert Gates, an Obama era defense secretary called Joe wrong on all foreign policy decisions in his career.

But it gets worse….

In the report there is more damning news:

The special counsel’s report was surprisingly blunt. It described Biden’s memory as appearing to have “significant limitations,” characterized an interview he recorded in 2017 as “painfully slow” and said Biden did not remember some key dates of his vice presidency or “when his son Beau died.” Yup, no clue when his term as Vice President started or ended, and no idea as to when his son Beau died…. which by the way, even though his son died of brain cancer, Joe insists he was killed on a battlefield in Iraq.

How could it get even worse? It somehow did!

Rather than waiting for the news cycle to restart the following morning, the Democrats thought it would be a smart idea to try to go on the offense. In a letter to the Special Counsel, Biden’s lawyers called the numerous references to Biden’s memory “gratuitous,” as well as “prejudicial and inflammatory.” Ah yes, the old, that attorney is a know nothing, hack. It won’t work, that attorney actually absolved your client of any wrongdoing…no charges will be filed. In this case it worked to Joe’s favor, if Joe came off as a perfectly competent human then charging documents would have been filed, or at the very least it’s a damning report but no charges are filed. This is the typical offense I expect from the Democrats, how dare you use personal attacks against us. In this case they attacked a non-partisan Special Counsel, sure Mr. Hur is not a mental health expert nor a psychologist but again, charging decisions have a lot to do with mental state of mind.

Somehow Joseph Robinette Biden Jr’s day got even worse.

Yes, you read that right, the Democrats thought it was a smart idea to wheel out old Joe and have him give a press conference in response to the report. It backfired, big time. Instead, a visibly angry Biden made the exact type of verbal flub that has kept Democrats so nervous for months, mistakenly referring to the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, as the “president of Mexico” as he tried to address the latest developments in the war in the Gaza Strip. Yep, somehow Mexico is a border country to that part of the world. And Biden himself, with visible frustration, expressed disbelief at the idea he did not know when his son had died: “How in the hell dare he raise that?” He raised it because you said it and it’s very material Joe. Sadly, you came off as an angry white male, who is drunk on power. Like someone else I know, your only playbook is to lash out and declare you are completely and totally fine. Sadly, for you and your campaign, the attack ads from Trump and other parties write themselves.

He had a couple other good one’s too this week….

First, during a campaign swing in Nevada, Biden confused François Mitterrand, a former French president who died in 1996, with the country’s current president, Emmanuel Macron. Then, on Wednesday, he referred twice to having met in 2021 with Helmut Kohl, a former German Chancellor who died in 2017, instead of with Angela Merkel, who led the country three years ago.

Don’t believe me? Check out James Carville’s comments…

“The public does not view his age as — that’s not a Fox News issue,” he said in an interview after the news conference. “It’s not a Taylor Swift rigging the Super Bowl kind of thing. So — I don’t know how you get out of this.”

“The whole day,” he added, “was confirming an existing suspicion.”

Yikes. How about David Axelrod, the guy who ran both of President Obama and VP Joe Biden’s campaigns.

“Fair or not, you can’t un ring the bell,” said David Axelrod, the former strategist for Barack Obama who has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s leading figures warning about how voters view Biden’s age. Axelrod said the Special Counsel’s report was so troubling for Democrats because it “goes to the core of what is plaguing Biden politically now, which is a widespread fear that he’s not up to it.”

He added: “The most damaging things in politics are the things that confirm people’s preexisting suspicions, and those are the things that travel very fast. It’s a problem.”

These are not quotes from a far-right wing website. The toothpaste is out of the tube, you have a scenario where Democrats are panicking behind the scenes. Ballots have been printed in 80% of the states for the primary, so no one will be able to “out delegate” Joe. The only way is to whack him at convention…. seems like maybe the wheels could be in motion? Carville may be the “old guard” of the party, but Axelrod is very much well connected and informed. Bill Mar said the same thing, Joe will be replaced at the Democrat Convention; something we have been saying for over a year now.

I think Joe is finished, it’s just a matter of how the Democrats do it and with whom?

Oh, by the way, for the second year in a row, Joe will not be doing the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview. Yup, the one day most folks around the world sit in front of the TV all day, and he won’t be on it. This could have been a chance to show a contrast between him, and whacko Donald Trump who will nuke everyone and join us with Russia…but alas, the staffers decided Joe can’t do the interview. They are scared he will say something equally dumb.

And Thursday night’s news conference was an example of the political dangers for Biden, whose missteps are magnified in part by the White House team’s tight control over his media exposure. His aides are so risk averse that they passed even on a pre-Super Bowl interview this weekend before one of the nation’s largest annual television audiences.

Joe didn’t deserve this…. but he is the fall guy for the Democrat party right now.

The Chief

Commercial Real Estate Will Sink Biden’s “Economy”

The jobs “report” was great Friday….it really was. We added 345,000 or so “jobs.” Why am I using air quotes you may ask? Well in the recent few weeks we have had layoffs from Meta (formerly Facebook), UPS, Microsoft, and Macy’s to name a few. My understanding is Alphabet aka Google is laying off folks too. The jobs at all of these are from management positions, not from closing stores or low-level employees. My point here is the jobs I see opening are in the fast food, gas station, retail, and government work. These are jobs at the very low end of the wage scale, even after factoring in California’s $20 an hour wage. If the economy was so healthy, why have we so many homeless in these parts? Why do they come here?

The truth is the economy is not well. But the danger is not lurking where you think it is. The danger is in commercial real estate and some sectors of the banking industry. Follow along I’ll tell you.

Commercial buildings and the loans they have are the problem. They differ from your mortgage in a few ways. On your mortgage, you pay principle and interest every month. (I’m leaving out insurance and taxes to prove my point since they are not relevant here). So, your outstanding balance goes down, the principle each month, maybe not by much but you are paying it off. On commercial loans you pay interest only…yup kind of like the financial crisis circa 2008 on home loans. You may ask what do they do when the loan comes due in 20, 30 years? Well, they simply “recast it.” That’s a finance term for re-financing and maybe pulling out the additional equity (remember folks, real estate only goes up LOL) and buying your next shopping center.

Truth be told, if the shopping center is about 80% capacity, the loan payments can be made each month without much issue. Sure, you may have a pizza place, burger place, clothing store, etc. go under but they are usually easy to re-constitute the property to suit the new tenant. The problem that arises is when the anchor tenant closes up shop. I will use the example of a shopping center located near my office; one this blog is familiar with. The anchor tenant is a Target store. There used to be a OSH (Orchard Supply Hardware) but it closed and was rebuilt into a Ross, Ulta!, and something else. When that happened, the food stores located near the OSH had about 3 turn overs into something else. No real loss because Target is the store that drives business in that center. There used to be a Save Mart grocer, it turned into a wine store, a baby store, and a surplus type store. A couple of those have since changed over but again, the center is pretty much full. The issue is what happens if the Target leaves? No chance you say. But what if it did? The car traffic would decrease by at least 50%. Other food stores would close. The boutique shops would re-locate. It will be hard to sell burgers at Smash Burger when the parking lot is empty. The mall would be a ghost town.

If you think this scenario is a fantasy land, tin foil hat idea, check this out.

Park Hotels own(ed) two very upscale hotels in San Francisco. In May, they decided to stop paying the loans and give the keys back to the lender. Yup they walked away. The hotels were not Motel 6 where Troll has told me you can pay by the minute or some “extended stay bull shoot” they were the Pac 55 and the Hilton Union Square. Think tourist areas. Combined, both hotels had about a 3,000 room capacity. These are very nice hotels, rooms are about $250 a night at a minimum. The parent company walked away. These were two crown jewel hotels. Now the lender is stuck because a hotel is not easily convertible into something else. San Francisco will likely house their illegals or criminals there since it makes sense to make them comfortable on the taxpayer’s dime. But I digress.

For Park Hotels, there is not much repercussion for them. They get out of a couple of underwater loans but have to give up the revenue (loss) each month of these properties. The ones holding the bag are the banks. You may ask why you should feel bad for a bank? They got a property, banked the interest all these years, and now they can sell it. The reason is banks do not use a mark to market accounting rule, they value the asset based on the appraisal from when the loan was issued/refinanced. That could be from a decade or so ago. A good example would be the Aon Center Tower in LA. In 2014 it was bought for 269 million, for a 1.1 million square foot building on Wilshire Blvd, an icon in LA. In 2023, it sold for 148 million. Over 100 million evaporated in 10 years. Sad! In these cases, the bank has to write off the loss on its balance sheet.

Just this past week, New York Community Bank, a highly respected conservative bank as far as lending goes, took a major loss and had a massive write off of bad commercial loans, such as the above. While you may not recognize the name, the regional banks will be the ones to suffer from this crisis. The reason being, regional banks have to take more risk, their larger peers, think Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, etc., have large credit card portfolios, deposit accounts, and home lending to fall back on. The regional banks must take on risk, this comes with commercial loans which were typically very lucrative. New York Community bank is not the first and will not be the last. A tip to watch is this; when a bank fails, watch the price movement of Bitcoin, we do not endorse that here, but the price will shoot up as a hedge against the dollar/bank failures.

A word of advice “when you have a short-term loan (car loan) you are at the mercy of the bank, loan could be refused to be refinanced/underwater etc. If you have a large long-term loan (mortgage, commercial) the bank is at your mercy.”

Good luck

The Chief

Genealogy Slash Photo Project

In an effort to reduce the amount of physical stuff we have in our house; my winter project is to scan the photos that we have accumulated. As I see it, my job at this point is not to cut or cull stuff just reproduce it digitally.

Folks, this is a daunting task. I started in January with two boxes of my stuff which were mostly photo albums. The rest of it belongs to my wife. She has boxes from both her grandmothers plus her mom plus her stuff. I started with 8 boxes. There are more boxes that may have stuff in them but you gotta start somewhere.

During January, I finished going through about two and a half boxes. Thus far I have the following to report: 13,447 individual files and 159 gigabytes of storage space. There’s actually more but you get the idea. The age of the photos is about a 100-year span from the 1890’s to 1990’s. In addition, there are newspaper clippings, recipes, diaries, and other stuff.

One of the unique things in and amongst all this stuff are scrapbooks that seem to have their origin with people of limited means. One type of scrapbook from some distant relative was created from an existing book and that was covered on every page with clippings from various newspapers. Not only do you get deaths and births but entries into social pages, news articles, and a host of other things that seemed important to the person that created the book. Some are scrapbooks with five or six columns of articles on each page: front and back. The box I’m working in now has a few of these in the bottom. They look to be very labor intensive to scan. In fact, I may have to buy a book scanner to do them. I won’t really know until I start on them, probably next week.

To do this project, I’m using an Epson photo scanner (Model FF-680W). It works great but needs constant cleaning. This scanner does both front and back of photos. In addition, it also tries to auto-correct color. I am also using a multifunction HP printer/scanner (Officejet Pro 7740). Most photos have been done at 1,200 dpi and other things have mostly been 600 dpi. I am using both the Photo app in Windows 11 and ACDsee photo software. The software is mostly for cropping and touching up the things that I scan.

An example of what I’m scanning is Grandma’s scrapbook for the 1946 road trip to Glacier National Park, Canada, Utah, and other parts of the West. She has 109 pages for this road trip with receipts, postcards, personal photos, handwritten narrative of each day and so forth.

1946 — Gorilla at Crescent City CA (early Bigfoot?)

Not only is it an insight into my wife’s family but also a glimpse at post-war America. An additional ten pages in the scrapbook were for a much shorter trip in 1947. This scrapbook yielded 660 files.

I know I won’t complete this project before spring, but I hope to make a dent in the pile.

Joe English Band at Orlando for Jesus 1984

Next, I will need to tag people in the photos and try to sort them by year. Part of this will allow the first cutting of unknown people out of the pile. This is afterall a genealogy project, at least in part. Of course, if the children don’t get going with grandchildren, then this project will lose much of its importance.

Killed my first deer about 1974, Blog Father with Grandfather Jim

I must say that I have a greater appreciation for the resilience and determination of past generations as a result of this project. I have so little information about my own family that to see another that did try to give to the next generation evokes many emotions in me.

China Could Invade Taiwan….

The sounds of saber rattling you hear in the China-Taiwan part of the world is in my opinion frustration with Russia. You see, Taiwanese people are happy with the current arrangement. They are essentially an autonomous zone off the coast of China. China on the other hand views Taiwan as a breakaway province that is part of China, not separate. Xi Xinping, the leader of China, has been ratcheting up the rhetoric lately and has been using his military to scare the Taiwanese people.

What I do not understand is this. What does China really want here? Taiwan is only really known for semi-conductors, think the chip in your computer, car, etc. While this is a large booming sector of the world economy, couldn’t China just copy the IP and mass produce on the cheap? They do this with literally everything else. The US will never support that you say? Every CEO in America is looking to cut costs by even $.01 to meet or beat quarterly numbers. Trust me, China would be inundated with orders for their semi-conductors. Sure, our military will still order from Taiwan but let’s be honest, we have a hell of a lot more computers and cars than we do military items.

A military conflict seems increasingly likely, but is it necessary? The US has stated we will defend Taiwan. I would assume South Korea, Japan and the Philippines may get involved too. But is it necessary? Taiwanese people are likely ready to fight to the death, it sounds like they have the island fortified the best they can. (Far better than Ukraine ever was). They seem to have advanced military capabilities, (again better than Ukraine) as they have always figured a day will come when China will swallow them up.

If I am Taiwan, I have a plan set up, so the second Chinese war planes approach I evacuate all the engineers, scientists etc. to a safe haven. I make sure all IP, files, etc. are evacuated or destroyed as well. These are what I feel China really wants. I do not think they really want the land. I would also make sure any buildings or other structures were rigged to blow upon China encroaching. My opinion? Take the land, but it will be proven useless over time.

In my opinion, China is very angry at Russia behind the scenes. The war in Ukraine has dragged on, now it appears likely to have a long stalemate. This is not the way the plans were drawn up. The plan was to occupy the US and its allies, and while Russia marches on toward NATO borders China would take Taiwan. It didn’t happen. China is now having to assist Russia much like we are assisting Ukraine. We are now re-positioning ships and other war machines in the Pacific as a counter to China, exactly what they do not want. China is now watching Russia go to North Korea and Iran to re-stock their military and it’s been uncovered that Russia’s military is ripe with corruption.

In summation, I believe China does take Taiwan. I think the US and others essentially secure a “peace agreement by bending the knee to Xi.” It’ll be a classic US split the baby in half and hope both sides are ok with it. With the goings on in the middle East, Russia-Ukraine, and the usual unrest in Africa, I do not think the American people have the stomach for another conflict. I do not think many bullets will be fired, but as a warning to China, do not underestimate a populace who does not want to be occupied/governed by an adversary. The US never learned its lesson in the Middle East, and we lost many a service member/contractor to needless occupations. I also believe China has a very corrupt military as well. They may not be as powerful with weapons as we think. They do, however, have a large supply of bodies. The supply of bodies, also like Russia, contains hundreds of thousands if not millions of “expendable” bodies. Think slave labor types, political prisoners, ethnic minorities, opposition forces, rural areas, and you know North Korea will supply ample bodies as well. My point being China’s folks in the mainland may not even know a war is going on.

The Chief

400 Thousand Reasons

I was minding my own business yesterday when this article showed up in my mailbox. The title was so dumb I just about skipped it. However, since the first sentence of the article was, “California is where freedom goes to die,” I took a further look. A few paragraphs in was this nugget:

There are more than 400,000 business-related regulations on the state’s books…
About Last Week… ‘Please tread on me’

And with that fact, you need read no further to know its time to leave California.

Please note that the people who have not left are largely OK with the tyranny and love being in “Trashworld”.

An exception is the people featured in the film series “Red, White, and Blueprint”.

It’s a ten episode series about folks fighting the Tyranny of Covid lockdowns in Redding California. I never heard about it while I was living in the Sacramento area but it’s a heck of a tale. I saw an edited version of the first four episodes at the local John Birch Society meeting last night. The next four episodes are slated for the next meeting. Note that unlike CRA meetings, this group starts promptly at 6 pm and is done by 7:30 each and every time.

The short version is that folks in Redding were mad that the county (Shasta) shutdown for Covid, told its citizens that wanted to open businesses and schools to go to hell, and then doubled-down on strangling the county’s economic activity. The citizens decided to recall the county supervisors and went to war with the establishment.

The Birch folks were holding this group in California as a model for the rest of us to take control of local government. Not having lived in California, they don’t understand how rare and exceptional the circumstances were that allowed the citizens to fight back. Sadly, what happened in Redding was a case of the conservatives going to war with RINOs and their Democrat allies. Shasta County voter registration is reportedly two-thirds Republican.

I recommend the series but caution you that your mileage may vary when trying to replicate reforming government. If you pick up the torches and pitchforks remember that you are making a lifetime commitment. If you ever claim victory and go home, your state will be worse than having never fought the fight. Just ask a CRA member if you can find one. They once owned the California GOP. Or look at the recall of Gavin Newsom. The recall failed and Gavin is untouchable. The recall’s final result may very well be his eventual ticket to the White House.

Yet Another Reason We Can’t Win Against China

Does anybody really think that we can or will stand up to China if it comes to a military conflict?

I think it’s clear that we will rollover and let them take Taiwan. Do we even have the will to fire a shot?

OK, let me restate the last. Do we even have the ammo to shoot at them?

Frankly its clear that we lack the independence of a military supply chain that is not dependent upon China. Liberals in this country say they are more afraid of people like me than a country that has its nuclear arsenal pointed at them. WTF?

If, like me, you think we have been caught with our military pants down while in the outhouse then these next articles will frighten you even more. It proves that Obama and Biden have sold us out. OK, no surprise there.

The U.S. began resuscitating major World War II-era military sites in the Pacific in 2023 amid a sweeping pivot toward preparation for a potential China conflict.

Earlier in December, a U.S. Air Force general said the U.S. has made “significant progress” toward reclaiming the Tinian North airfield on the Marianas island chain from which the U.S. launched its strategic bombers against Japan during WWII, Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported. The plan, which has not been officially declared by the Department of Defense (DOD), reflects a trend of expanding and repositioning U.S. troops in the Pacific region as the Pentagon promises to deter China and, if necessary, confront threats to the U.S.

“If you pay attention in the next few months, you will see significant progress, especially at Tinian North,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the Pacific Air Forces, told Nikkei.

The airfield “has extensive pavement underneath the overgrown jungle. We’ll be clearing that jungle out between now and summertime,” Wilsbach said, adding that the structure will be “extensive” once completed, but did not say when that would occur.
US Moved To Revive Major WWII-Era Military Bases In 2023 To Prepare For Face Off With China

Tinian lies 3,700 miles west of Hawaii and just 124 miles north of the U.S. territory of Guam.

In January [2023], the Marine Corps formally opened its first new base in 70 years, known as Camp Blaz, on Guam, which is roughly equidistant between Japan and Taiwan, CNN reported. Plans to establish the base originated during the Obama administration as a means of relocating Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa, where their presence has stirred up local opposition.

Meanwhile the US Navy will be closing their only fuel depot in the Pacific.

The facility will be defueled and closed permanently, Kirby said. The fuel will be repositioned in “a few locations,” Kirby said.
US military to close fuel storage facility in Hawaii where water was contaminated by leak

In October 2023, the Pentagon revealed the Red Hill storage facility at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam suffered a leak that contaminated the water systems. It then began draining the 1940s-era facility, saying the fuel would be loaded by ship and transported to existing support sites. This process is expected to take several years.

In [Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China] letter, the Republican lawmaker cited a 2016 Defense Department determination that it would need 86 tankers for moving such equipment. He requested that Del Toro explain to the committee whether the department had enough forward fuel storage facilities and would have access to refinery capacity for operations in the Indo-Pacific.

Gallagher also asked the secretary whether the Navy had identified secure locations to build replacement facilities for Red Hill, and whether it had plans to integrate facilities of allies and partners in redistributing fuel.
GOP Rep warns US Navy plan to relocate fuel from Hawaii could jeopardize operations in the Indo-Pacific

We are also making arrangements to get fuel from Subic Bay in the Philippines, a base we closed under the first George Bush as part of the ethereal “Peace Divided”.

Just to refresh, the current size of the entire US Navy fleet is less than 200 ships. This is down from a peak of 600 ships under Ronald Reagan. In order to keep the current fleet adequately fueled, it will require 86 more ships due to closing Red Hill. Yet our masters in The Swamp say, “nothing to see here, we’ve got this under control.”

Those of you that insist on living on the Left Coast might want to brush up on your Mandarin skills. You’ll need them soon.

Haley’s Hail Mary Hopes Hammered

Yep, as we all know, Nikki Haley was ended in New Hampshire. Even after Democrats went all-in on their version of Operation Chaos. Heck, Joe Biden wasn’t even on the ballot in the Granite State. The faithful on the Dem side had to write him in on their ballot.

All you need to know about this race is the following:

Trump easily outpaced Haley among registered Republicans (+42 points).
Fox News Voter Analysis: Trump tops Haley in New Hampshire

The mainstream media would like a GOP horserace for ratings and so they can ignore Trump, but the reality is that Haley has no path forward and never did.

In New Hampshire, unaffiliated voters – those not registered with a partisan affiliation – can participate in primary elections, and these voters were the main reason the race in the Granite State was tighter than in Iowa. Unaffiliated voters made up slightly less than half of the electorate (47%), and broke for Haley by 26 points.

Since Trump is the Republican Nominee, it matters not what Independents or Democrats want.

In the end, much of Haley’s support came from voters outside the GOP mainstream. Just over half of her supporters (52%) backed Joe Biden in the 2020 election, while 32% voted for Trump. The vast majority (90%) of Trump’s backers in the primary voted for him four years ago.

Those who considered themselves part of the Make America Great Again movement went overwhelmingly for Trump (+77 points), while non-MAGA voters backed Haley by 52 points.

All told, three-quarters (77%) of Haley voters said they would not vote for Trump in November; 51% of his voters felt the same way about her.

Much of Haley’s voter support was a vote against Trump and not an affirmative vote for her or her policies. Most Haley supporters will vote for Biden in November no matter what candidate the Republicans select. Nikki Haley is not a GOP candidate but the candidate of RINOs and Democrats. To appropriate a quote from a Sylvester Stallone movie, Nikki and her ilk are the disease and Trump is the cure.

Two Wildest Conspiracy Theories on Israel Hamas War

Folks, frankly I’m tired of all the nonsense about this conflict. However, the two articles that I will dive into in mere moments are worth a look, if nothing else but to see that our way of looking at the world is very different from that of the people propelling this conflict. Our categories of thinking and reasoning in the West are not capable of understanding this conflict. We should abandon all hope of a rational understanding of this conflict and embrace the craziness as a foreign worldview.

Theory One

The first story is from World Net Daily. If you don’t understand the theological presuppositions of this website, then you might miss the point of what you are about to read. These guys are all-in on Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth—except for the part about it happening 40 years after Israel became a nation—which clearly never happened. They are Premillennial and Dispensational. As a result, they are very pro-Zionist. On occasion, these assumptions have a way of making them look foolish.

(Please note that just because these guys believe this stuff doesn’t mean that it can be found in the Bible because it can’t, but it is entertaining.)

Anyway…

While political experts worldwide pontificate on the war in Gaza, most have overlooked Hamas’ explicitly stated reason for its Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, revealed on Day 100 of the war.

Incredibly, according to the terror group’s military spokesman, it has to do with attempting to prevent the “ceremony of the Red Heifer” – a mysterious event of great meaning to both Jews and Christians.
Hamas reveals hidden reason for Oct. 7 attacks on Israel

“We look back 100 days to remember the educated, the complicit, and the incapacitated among the world powers governed by the law of the jungle, reminding them of an aggression that reached its peak against our path (Al-Quds) and Al-Aqsa, with the start of its actual temporal and spatial division, and the “bringing of red cows as an application of a detestable religious myth designed for aggression against the feelings of an entire nation in the heart of its Arab identity, and the path of its prophet (the Night Journey) and Ascension to heaven.
Resistance Strikes Will Increase in Coming Days – Abu Obeida’s Speech on the 100th Day of War

Ok so what are the “red cows?”

Nope, nothing to do with Chick-fil-A.

The red cows or heifer is related to the establishment of the mythical third temple in Jerusalem.

The “red cows” referred to by the Hamas leader were five red female calves brought to Israel in September 2022 by Boneh Israel, an organization that connects Christian lovers of Israel to the Holy Land, working under the auspices of the Temple Institute, an organization in Israel focusing on establishing the Third Temple.
Hamas reveals hidden reason for Oct. 7 attacks on Israel

Yep, some Jews and Christian folks like those at World Net Daily want to see the Jews build a new temple in Jerusalem and reestablish animal sacrifices. Talk about bringing on the old-time religion!

Obeida continued, focusing his ire on Israel for aspiring to build the prophesied Third Temple:

“We will not tire or falter in calling all the free people of the nation to rise to support their Aqsa and the path of their prophet, which the criminal Zionists are practically advancing towards destroying and establishing their temple. This is what we have chosen with our blood in Gaza for 100 days and for which the epic of October 7th was about.”

Zionists of both Jewish and Christian persuasions believe the mosque on the Temple Mount must be leveled and that it will be replaced with a Third Temple. Once this is constructed, they believe that animal sacrifices of the Old Testament will again commence.

Christians support this idea because they believe that a third Temple is necessary to usure in the return of Jesus and institute Armageddon. Oh, these Christians believe that most Jews living in Israel will be killed as a result of all this and then somehow those remaining will acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah.

Here is more …

Islamists do indeed perceive the five red cows from Texas as a dire threat. Arab-language media covered Obeida’s speech extensively, focusing on the red heifers. Both Cairo24 and Al Jazeera reported on the speech, emphasizing that the heifers had been acquired and brought to Israel by evangelical Christians.

After the announcement of the arrival of the cows last year, Hamas reacted almost immediately, warning that the potential Jewish ritual posed a threat to Al Aqsa. This warning came during the Jewish high holidays. Arab-language media, including the “Al Manar” channel, which is closely associated with Hezbollah, are reporting on the intention of the Temple organizations to make a sacrifice on the Temple Mount. The Hamas journal Al–Rassala published an article claiming that the slogan “Al Aqsa is in Danger” is no longer sufficient because the Israelis are already working on manifesting the Temple rituals that would “Judaize the holy mosques.”

For Christians holding to a premillennial view of eschatology, even just one red heifer arriving in Jerusalem means the Rapture is imminent. They believe a Third Temple will be built during the End Times, at which point all the other prophesied events will follow.

The fact that Israel is a clearly secular nation and not one established on the basis of the Old Testament’s Laws doesn’t move the needle in this discussion.

Theory 2

Theory Two is one based on the idea that Israel is not bound to uphold the Ten Commandments.

Theory Two is a mixture of things unrelated to Theory One but interesting in its own right.

In a startling reappraisal of the situation in Israel, former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman described the official narrative of the October 7 attacks on Israel as a “cover story for genocide” – backed by “hard line pro-Israel American leaders.”

Speaking on December 26 to behavior analyst Thomas Karat of SaltCube Analytics, he described the Israeli reaction to the October 7 assault which triggered the Gaza invasion. Speaking of the assault which triggered the Gaza invasion, he said:

The Israeli response is essentially to conduct a genocide in Gaza. They are attempting to expel or murder all the Palestinians there. This is a crime against humanity under international law, but Israel justifies it with a cover story, which is that it is going after Hamas.
US support for Israel is destroying America’s power and prestige around the world

The mainstream media tells us that the war in Gaza was triggered by the slaughter of Israeli citizens attending a music festival, by the Islamic militia Hamas. Instead, it appears many Israelis were killed by their own army, following a secretive government doctrine known as “The Hannibal Directive.”

Freeman points out how Israel’s war in Gaza began with a lie.

Reflecting extensive research by independent journalist Max Blumenthal, Freeman refers to the “outlandish music festival… taking place beside a concentration camp” at which over a thousand Israelis lost their lives.

“The people who were killed there were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces”

Citing extensive Israeli sources, Blumenthal was accused by an Israeli journalist from Ha’Aretz of spreading a “conspiracy theory” – about the fact that the Israeli army bombed Israeli houses and even its own military base with tank shells and missiles fired from Apache helicopters.

Whilst Hamas did indeed kill Israeli civilians during its military action, a month later, Ha’aretz confirmed the Grayzone report as true, admitting that it was Israeli action which killed many of its own people. It should also be understood that most Israelis of fighting age, in civilian clothes or not, were considered by Hamas to be combatants because they are almost all reservists or otherwise in the Israeli military as required by law.

The reason for this action is said to be the secretive “Hannibal Directive,” which dictates that Israelis taken captive should be killed by the military rather than left in the hands of Palestinian militants.

An Israeli helicopter pilot quoted by Ha’aretz supported the charge Israelis had been murdered by their own army according to this Israeli government doctrine.

Freeman claims the Hannibal Directive led to most of the deaths on the day, as it dictates, “rather than get into bargaining over a hostage exchange, you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors. And that was also a factor here.”

Freeman recalls earlier remarks of now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying

“I think his exact statement was he hoped for a war which would provide an excuse for the final removal of all Palestinians from the land of Israel as claimed by Israel.”

Freeman reminds listeners that Israel is unique for two reasons: “It has no borders” – a startling claim evidenced in the Israeli press here – and it is led by Netanyahu’s Likud Party whose “charter calls for Israel to extend from the river to the sea.”

This phrase, which is now mistakenly charged as some sort of Palestinian endorsement of genocide, was in fact quite the opposite. It is a Zionist endorsement of genocide against Palestinians.

Conclusion

Folks, I find it interesting that both of these theories or explanations of the current war are probably true but likely incomplete reasons for what we are seeing.

Yes, I personally know Jews that are all-in on a Third Temple and believe it will happen someday. That Christian Zionists are supporting this too is not surprising. However, this has nothing to do with Biblical prophecy or the Return of Christ.

On October 7^th, did Israeli forces fire on their own so they would not be taken as hostages? I think this is possible. That Israel would negotiate with Hamas on the issue of hostages is unusual and not how their government used to operate. Israel has been provoking Palestinian people for many years and systematically pushing them out of areas that they once occupied.

That Benjamin Netanyahu’s political party slogan is “from the river to the sea” is hysterical to me when said slogan is widely reported in the United States as being anti-Semitic. Guess Jews can say it with impunity but not anybody else.

Republican Presidential Primary Ends Tomorrow

Yep. I said it and I mean it. As if there was any doubt, Donald J Trump will be the 2024 Republican nominee for President. Nikki Haley is toast.

Tomorrow she will get a reality check that should end this thing once and for all. If she persists in staying in the race, then others on our editorial staff may begin calling her Ted Cruz.

Please note that mathematically, less than one percent of registered Republicans have had a chance to cast a vote during the Primary season and it’s over.

Now that the Democrats have the opponent that they wanted, it will be interesting to see who, if, and when Joe Biden gets pushed out to pasture. Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama have long been rumored to be on the short list to replace Biden, likely at the convention. Folks, it could be that in 2024, Democrats select both party’s candidates for the November General Election without ever casting a vote for either candidate in the primaries.

Meanwhile, some discontented Democrats are trying to encourage one of their followers to attempt to assassinate Trump to save America.

Bullet hole and $47 (if elected Trump would be 47th President)

In other news, I hear John Hinckley is out of prison.