Tonight is Iowa caucus night, the first steps along the road to the nominations for President of the United States. Therefore, this post is designed to offer a perspective that you won’t hear on the major news networks, nor even on the talking head cable news network. And the post I’m linking to actually conforms something that had been troubling me about “Slo’ Joe” Biden’s campaign from the start.

You see, even though I haven’t been following his campaign on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t really matter what any given political campaign or candidate is doing at a given time, it’s how the campaign and candidate are being reported by the Democratic mouthpieces in the mainstream media that counts.

It didn’t take a genius to watch the Biden campaign and think there was something wrong with it. All the venues Biden would campaign at were small, “intimate” gatherings, as if he were somehow being positioned by both his campaign and the media as low-key, supposedly “self-assured”. But it never made any sense to me – if you’re the supposed “front runner” in the campaign, where were the crowds? Where was the commanding stage presence during the debates? Where was the unrelentingly focused message of a self-assured candidate? Shouldn’t the candidate with the most White House experience be rock-solid and leading on the issues important to Democratic voters? Where was the supposed “king of the blue-collar workers” abandoning them with knee-jerk approval of abandoning coal miners and fossil-fuel energy workers in key battleground states and pushing “go green” far-left proposals without so much as a bye you me?

Instead of what everyone thought “Slo’ Joe” Biden’s campaign was going to be founded on, instead what folks began to see was an unfocused candidate being led around by an unfocused, uncertain campaign. I mean, the “No Malarkey Tour”? Are you serious? Biden’s off-hand remarks to reporters were often sloppy and unfocused, confusing states, dates, and even his past positions on things. He seemed incapable of responding to debate questions with a tight, focused response, instead just babbling on as if he hadn’t bothered preparing ahead of time. And what about the missing endorsement from Barack Obama? That, too, made no sense to me. After all, Biden was Obama’s right-hand man for eight years – wouldn’t it be logical for Biden to carry the mantle of Obama’s legacy forward?

So it was truly eye-opening to see a pair of posts here and here by Sundance in his Last Refuge blog about what Biden’s true purpose in running was. Consider the timeline involved. First, you had the end of the Mueller investigation returning no evidence of “Russia collusion” and only the sketchiest allusion to so-called “obstruction of justice:

The Trump-Russia hoax [Impeachment] 1.0 was dependent on a ‘Special Counsel’ because the coup plotters held no other avenue to eliminate Donald Trump. In 2017 and 2018 both the House and Senate were republican. [Impeachment] 1.0 relied upon a created structure of oversight, an insurance policy of sorts, within the framework of government.

[Then], the Weissmann special counsel group, using Robert Mueller as a figurehead, failed to deliver because the Trump-Russia narrative was always a hoax. Without the ‘there‘ there the only damage they could deploy was political speculation, innuendo and weaponized narratives. They tried hard, but were only able to create a tenuous ‘obstruction’ case.

When Mueller eventually testified about his investigation the world saw he was merely a figurehead, a visible prop to represent a team he barely understood; and with that testimony the impeachment usefulness collapsed.

With nothing to use from the Mueller investigation in terms of impeachable offenses to remove Donald Trump from office, the so-called “Resistance” needed to find another avenue to impeach the President, and quick. Again, consider the timeline involved: first you had the end of the Mueller investigation, announced to the public on April 18. Second, you had the election of the new anti-corruption Ukrainian prime minister Volodymyr Zelensky on April 21 and Trump’s initial, congratulatory call shortly thereafter. Then, just four days later, on April 25, you have Joe Biden announcing his run for president. See how this all works? Which is why what Sundance published yesterday makes all the more sense:

Joe Biden was never a viable candidate. He was pushed into the election to set-up a hoax impeachment narrative of President Trump investigating his 2020 political opponent.

If Biden didn’t run, Trump talking to Zelensky is an investigation of corrupt Ukraine activity in 2016. If Biden ran, that conversation is spun into Trump talking to Zelensky to request an investigation of his 2020 opponent. So Biden was told to run for office.

As I have mentioned previously, the high-water mark of the Democrats’ impeachment sham occurred when Nancy Pelosi delivered the two articles to the Senate for consideration. This past week, the country watched as the Democrats flailed around in the withering fire from the President’s legal team, basically saying they had failed to make their own case for impeachment because they needed the Senate to call more witnesses. Once that failed, the whole Impeachment 2.0 sham fell apart.

So what have we seen from the media, then, these past few days? Articles like this and this, basically saying Biden’s campaign is not just in trouble but even collapsing.

Funny how things work, isn’t it?

Now maybe you don’t buy into these kinds of conspiracy theories, but I’ll leave it to Sundance to have the last word:

It’s all rigged folks. Just like the DNC rigging the 2008 and 2016 nominations for Obama and Hillary. Just like the RNC rigging 2012 for Romney and attempting to rig the 2016 with their splitter plan for Jeb. It’s all a rigged scheme.

If there’s one thing the last dozen years of national politics has taught us, it’s that DC politics is heavily controlled, party/club manipulated and ran by operatives of the administrative state. Nothing is organic, everything is purposed for a reason.

…”There are trillions at stake” etc.

Biden was needed for impeachment hoax 2.0, nothing more. And now he’s no longer needed, all pretenses will be dropped and Biden will be dispatched to the ash-heap of history. A decade from now no-one will even remember why Biden ran, and historians will never connect Biden’s July 25th announcement to the collapse of Mueller [‘s testimony] the day before.

The next phase is to see what happens if Bernie Sanders starts piling up delegates, and you can bet that no one in the Dwhich is why you have Hillary Clinton lurking in the background. But that’s for another day. For now, it’s good just to see that someone has connected the dots involving Joe Biden’s campaign that I couldn’t see.

Just don’t expect to hear this anywhere on your local and cable network channels.

(Hat tip: Shem Horne)

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone! We’ve had Chamber of Commerce weather here in the Valley of the Sun for this year’s Waste Management Open, but there’s a big cool-down coming where I’m going to have to get out the frost covers for the sensitive plants in the backyard. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had to do this, but it means that the bougainvillea will take a good hit, thus leading to some much-needed pruning and some thicker, richer flowers come summer.

Been a tough week here at the Richard household. First, we had to have our beloved rabbit Marlie, who we’d had the privilege of sharing our house with for more than seven years, put down. Then, after struggling with the pros and cons of it for the past six months and after many sleepless nights, I grudgingly decided that I would join my fellow Goodboys for the 30th anniversary weekend this coming July in Montreal.

As far as the first decision went, it wasn’t all that difficult – after all, poor Marlie, who’d been struggling with her hind legs mobility the past six months but had still been able to be her funny and food-aggressive self, finally lost all use of her hind legs and had stopped eating (something that a healthy Marlie could never conceive of doing!). Looking into her eyes the last couple of days you could tell she was miserable and not herself at all. If you love your pets you come to know, no matter how hard it might be, that there comes a time to say goodbye (after all, the clock starts ticking the very moment you bring them into your home, doesn’t it?) I’ll be posting a farewell post on Marlie shortly because she was the last rabbit with a tie to all of the great rabbits of the past that we’d had. She was special, and now she’s gone. Our hearts ache.

As far as deciding to attend the 30th Goodboys weekend, well, that was hard as well. I’ll be right up front about it – I really didn’t (and still really don’t) want to go, but it’s hard to turn one’s back on something you’ve been innately part of for such a huge part of one’s life. I mean, three decades is three decades, right? So I decided to go solely for traditions’ sake, knowing this will be my last and the end of it all. There are those in the Goodboys (you now who you are) whom I love like brothers, but there are others who remain after all these years (to be brutally honest here) mere acquaintances, guys I wouldn’t have a problem with hooking up with from time to time were they not some 2K miles away. That’s just the way it is.

…fact is, I look at the calendar and see I’m 64 years old, and I ask myself whether I really want to keep doing this kind of thing anymore, and the answer is no. The tradition has come old and stale, and (again, to be brutally honest), the last four years have, well, sucked. So I’ll do my part this year to make this year’s edition a success, then call it a day. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel bad. It just feels like it’s time. And when it’s all over, I’ll likely fold up shop on this blog as well (after all, you can’t call yourself a Goodboys Nation blog when you’re no longer a Goodboy, right?), but there will be plenty of time to deal with that. But don’t give up on me or this blog yet – there are exciting things in store!

I’ve recently gotten deep once again into the music of Kate Bush, and I’m totally blown away. Everyone’s been talking about this Meg Myers rendition of Kate’s classic “Running Up That Hill”, and while I feel it drags just a little, it’s still a damned good performance. Not to mention Meg’s great outfit and plunging neckline. But I think this version is actually better – it shows how talented she really is.

…still, these ears prefer the original.

…even though Placebo’s rendition is pretty damned good.

But now I’m checking some of her other music and I have to say I’m really intrigued. Especially this, this, this, and this (the latter I can’t print the lyrics because they’re so explicit – but the comments are almost as good as the song itself!). Her songs seem to come from a dark place, which I have to admit that I like. At any rate I can see why she would have been attracted to the likes of Kate Bush!

…so who says The Great White Shank doesn’t listen to new music?

There’s not much for me to say about the whole impeachment bullshit that hasn’t already been said, but this article explains the way I feel about as good as anything:

The most amazing thing about Democrats and their allies in the media is that they never actually lose. Any time it seems like they lose, it’s actually the result of cheating and chicanery.

Hillary Clinton didn’t lose 2016, the Russians interfered and the Electoral College is racist. Stacy Abrams didn’t lose in Georgia, the election was stolen. And sure enough, the calls have already come out to say that House Democrats aren’t really going to lose the impeachment trial, because without additional witnesses the trial isn’t legitimate and the acquittal isn’t real.

I have to admit I just don’t get it. I’m not a Democrat and I’m certainly no liberal, but what the likes of Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, and Nancy Pelosi are doing to the Democrats’ chances this fall absolutely boggles the mind. Anyone who knows anything about politics knows you can’t simply run against something, you have to give folks something to vote for – shit, didn’t the Republicans find that out a hard way with Mitt Romney in 2002?

…so let’s say you’re a Democrat candidate running for Congress or the Senate this year. Your party has had the House for the last two years and what do you have to show for it? You hate Donald Trump? Fine. But what do you stand for that he doesn’t? Higher taxes? Unrestricted illegal immigration? Transgender bathrooms? Heh. Good luck with that.

Personally? I’d like to see Bernie Sanders get the nomination, but there is no way in hell the Democratic Party power structure is ever going to allow that to happen. The Party fears the socialist-activist wing taking over, but there’s really no choice now – Trump has already taken away the Democrats’ old blue-collar, union worker center-right. And there’s no way pitiful “Slo’ Joe” Biden is up for the rigors of a presidential campaign. I’m sorry (well actually I’m not), but the guy – more than beyond a phony and corrupt politician – is borderline senile and would be destroyed in any campaign against Donald Trump.

…the reason I want to see Bernie get the nomination is because I want the 2020 election to be a referendum on socialism against capitalism. I don’t think it’s going to happen – I still think the Party is going to ask Hillary Clinton to be its nominee and she is going to choose Stacy Abrams as her running mate – and that will be the election that destroys the Democratic Party for the next two decades. Believe me when I say this – folks will be writing about what’s coming this years for the next hundred-plus years.

I feel bad about what happened to Kobe Bryant, but I’m over this whole beatification orgasm the mainstream media has imposed on everyone for the past week. The guy was a flawed human being besides a basketball player (a damned good one, no question) – but enough already!

If I’m the Republicans during this election cycle, all I would do (beyond trumpeting the accomplishments of Trump these past four years, of course) would be to pound the table of birth-right immigration and transgenders destroying women’s sports. These are common sense issue that go against what most people would judge fair.

Why I’m right about Steely Dan.

Good for the Brits. Now, only if California, New York, and Massachusetts would do the same.

It’s time the world tells the Palestinians to shut up and go away. If you want to be a real nation, act like grown-ups and not spoiled children. The world is in a far different place than it was three or four decades ago. The time for petty bullshit politics is over.

And since it’s Super Bowl Sunday, here’s my faultless prediction: if the game is close coming down to the end, San Francisco will win simply because Andy Reid and his eternally-ugly while/yellow mustache is the worst clock-managing coach in the NFL. It’s a lock he’ll do something stupid if the game is close. Otherwise I’m picking KC in a wide-open offensive shootout.