Author: Patrick

Short Bio: I started blogging about politics in 2006, as a populist, skeptical left of center type, with a blog called simply, "The Populist."I suspect, but cannot prove; that my blog might have been hacked by some evil neoconservatives. I cannot prove that at all and also too, around the same time. Hackers from China where attacking wordpress blogs. I believe either the Neocons or the Chinese got my site. I don't know honestly know which.Either way, by 2007, I began to see that I really did not fit within the Democrat Party and liberal circles and after my blog was hacked; I created a blog called "Political Byline" and I kept writing; first as a Centrist and then as a Conservative PopulistFor my long bio, see the "About Me" section on this blog.

I am glad the Israeli hostages are released, BUT!

Well, it seems that the President has been able to force a peace plan on Israel and Hamas. It also seems like the Hamas Hostages have been released. Which I am happy to see. However, something else is about to happen, that I and other believe is going to be a tragic mistake. The bad thing is, it has happened before.

Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage Magazine writes and boy is he ever right:

On Oct 7, 2001, the United States began an ill-fated campaign to ‘nation build’ Afghanistan.
Now 24 years after that anniversary and 2 years after the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas, we may be on the cusp of an even worse nation-building program in Gaza that seems to have learned absolutely nothing from the disastrous nation-building operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Right down to resurrecting former UK PM Tony Blair to head ‘nation building’ in Gaza.

Sounds familiar, does it not? We tried this before and it failed badly. Mr. Greenfield lists the reasons why:

The Bush administration believed that the problem in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries wasn’t the people, their culture or Islamic religion, but their governments.

Bringing ‘democracy’ and ‘free enterprise’ into murderous tribal societies was supposed to marginalize Islamic terrorists by giving the locals something better to do than kill infidels.

Foreign aid experts and world government types would build a ‘technocratic’ government propped up by international investments to turn Afghanistan and Iraq into Switzerland.

That turned out to be the biggest abortion job of a mistake ever and we’re still sporting the scars from it too.

I very highly suggest that you go read the rest of that article.

You know you are living in strange times, when you find yourself reading and agreeing with something written in Frontpage Magazine! 😮

Trump and the Republicans are going regret this foolishness

Like I have written before, I am truly glad Donald Trump won the election.

However, it appears that The President and the Republicans are reverting back to his antics that happened during his first term.

First there is this, which comes via Molly Ball at the Wall Street Journal:

AUSTIN, Texas—Standing at the wooden lectern at the front of the state House chamber, Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter put the purpose of his legislation to redraw Texas’ congressional map in forthright terms. “The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward,” he said: “Improve Republican political performance.”
What might once have been considered a damning admission was embraced as an explicit rationale as the state House proceeded to pass the map on a party-line vote late Wednesday. Democrats charged that Republicans were shamelessly redrawing the lines ahead of the usual decennial schedule at the behest of President Trump to add five potential congressional seats for their party—and Republicans largely agreed.

The redistricting plan, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in the coming days, has set off a national partisan arms race, reshuffling the landscape for next year’s midterm elections and potentially permanently altering the parties’ electoral calculations. California has already begun a high-stakes gambit to redraw the massive blue state’s congressional lines in response, while other red states, egged on by the White House, are jockeying to follow Texas’ lead.
The upshot of the redistricting wars looks likely to benefit Republicans overall. And the episode seems fated to stand as yet another illustration of Trump’s willingness to use his stranglehold over his party to maximize his power, polarizing the national landscape and trampling long-held norms in the process, and leaving the opposition dazed.

Then there is this, via the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal:

President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term.
His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.” Agents showed up unannounced at his Bethesda, Md., home at 7 a.m. They confiscated his wife Gretchen’s phone because it was visible and not on her person. Mr. Bolton had already left for his office, which is where FBI agents greeted him.

Kash Patel, the FBI director, sent out a cryptic tweet at 7:03 Friday morning that “NO ONE is above the law . . . @FBI agents on mission.” He didn’t specify to whom he was referring, but the timing is unlikely to have been coincidental.
It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication. The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material.
The book investigation faded away under President Biden, but now it looks as if Mr. Patel is reviving it. Whether Mr. Trump ordered the FBI probe or not doesn’t matter. Mr. Patel knows what the President thinks about Mr. Bolton, and the President’s minions in Trump II don’t serve as the check on his worst impulses the way grown-ups did in his first term. The presidential id is now unchained.
===
The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.

It seems the President Trump did not learn the lessons from his first term, that ended up being a disaster in the end. Furthermore, it seems that the President is out for revenge. The simpletons in the MAGA movement think that this is awesome. However, the MAGA movement is not the entire conservative movement; they might think they are, but they are not.

You see, there are principled people, like myself, that see these sort of actions as big Government tyranny. Whether it be on the State level, as in Texas or as in the Federal Government. You see, it seems that this “MAGA” Government and President, have something in common with the Neoconservatives of the early 2000’s —- and that is that the MAGA Government and President, love big Government, as long as they control it and it suits their agenda.

What America needs is a President that will respect the idea of limited Government and respect for our Constitution.

Beege Welborn you can do better than that!

What am I talking about? This:

You can read the blog posting here.

Most of the time, Beege is funny. She totally missed the boat on this one. Calling a black woman, the coconut queen is not even remotely funny. Why didn’t she just call the former VP the N-Word and get it over with?

You see, where I come from, which is southwest Detroit, Michigan or “The Hood” as we Southwest Detroit alumni call it; calling a black woman, the coconut queen, would get your butt kicked or worse get your throat cut or get you shot in the head. Not a smart move by HotAir.com, which has been accused of racism and Antisemitism in the past, by former affiliates.

Beege and HotAir.com can and should do better than this nonsense. I mean, the left calls us Trump supporters racist bigots; why prove their point for them? It just does not make any sense to me at all.

Old School Blogger Kevin Drum has died

One of the old school bloggers, from back in the day, has passed away.

Kevin Drum, a left of center blogger, which is, what I was prior to the buildup and election of Obama.

From NYT:

Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.
His wife, Marian Drum, announced the death on his website but did not say where he died or cite a cause.
Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.
He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.

Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.
His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.

Brian Delong quoting Ben Dreyfuss:

By 2020, I was the editorial director of Mother Jones and no longer did much of anything directly except oversee the newsletters AND occasionally act as Kevin’s protector. Because the whole liberal journalism universe had gone crazy at this point. We had spent years hiring all these young kids who hated Kevin. They hated anyone with his politics or his tone. He was a normie white lib in Orange County, you know?
He was regularly the main character on Twitter, which wasn’t fair, and internally that spilled over to the point where the Mother Jones union was constantly complaining about him. All these staffers that didn’t know him would go on Twitter and get into a lather about how he was the devil and complain.
The greatest example of this is the movie Parasite. Kevin wrote a blog post about how he doesn’t like subtitles in the specific context of Parasite. I read it and saw nothing wrong with it. The CEO read it and saw nothing wrong with it. Twitter read it and lost its shit. This spilled over into Slack and people were acting like he was in the KKK. I had to email him and say “Hey, please do me a favor and elaborate on your point about subtitles in a new post because all these idiots are misconstruing you and it’s causing problems for me.” He then did do exactly that.
This sounds insane. Who cares if he likes subtitles or not? I hate subtitles. I actually refuse to watch most foreign films because I hate subtitles and dubbing. But this shit was just par for the course at this time.

So, in a sense, Kevin was forced out of Mother Jones, because he was an older white guy, who was not in tune with the radical Neo-Left. Sounds about right to me. I too, basically, left my Left of Center position, because it seemed to me, that white people like me; were not longer welcomed in that party and political spectrum anymore.

Rest in peace, Kevin. Your moderate liberal voice will be missed.

Others: New Republic

America is Back, Finally

Well, Donald J. Trump made it. As I wrote before, I voted for the man. I quite literally had no other choice and basically, I could never really vote Democrat, they have just lost me.

Paraphrasing John Wayne slightly, I voted for the man, I hope he does a good job.

I just hope that the President does not get caught up in the blatant stupidity that hounded his last Presidency. To be fair, he does seem to have a quite competent team around him this time.

I do hope, however, that the President is able to get this Nation back on the path that it desperately needs to return to being on.

I hope the prices on food, gas, goods, and other such things drop back to acceptable levels.

I hope that we can cast the Neocon, internationalist Democrat style of foreign policy, trade, and world outlook into the dustbin of history as an example of what not to do.

I hope that Democratic Socialism is cast into the ash heap of history, as a tragic mistake that almost cost the Democratic Party any sort of political legitimacy and it will be viewed as an flawed political doctrine and that the Democrats will never, ever give those fools any sort of place at the table of political discourse ever again.

I hope that the MAGA movement and Donald J. Trump’s fight to regain the White House is used by Conservatives to political students of the Republican Party on how to effectively reach those who are not a part of your normal demographic and as an cautionary tale of what happens when a movement gets out of control of its intended purpose. (See Jan 6)

I hope that the Republican Party, President Trump and the Conservative movement as a whole, does not get cocky and use this victory to bash the Democratic Party over the head. Their resounding defeat in the election did that very well.

I hope that President Donald Trump does not abuse his power as President.

Other than that, I have nothing to say really.

I am just glad that America is back!

Pedophile ring leaders William and Zachary Zulock sentenced to 100 years in prison

I wrote about this story, back when only Townhall reported on it.

Well, it seems that these two Pedophile queers, finally got their just deserts.

Via New York Post:

A gay Georgia couple convicted of sickening sexually abuse of their two adopted sons will spend the rest of the lives behind bars.
William and Zachary Zulock, 34 and 36, were each sentenced last week to 100 years in prison without the possibility of parole, the Walton County District Attorney’s office announced.
“These two Defendants truly created a house of horrors and put their extremely dark desires above everything and everyone else,” said District Attorney Randy McGinley, according to WSB-TV.
“However, the depth of the Defendants’ depravity, which is as deep as it gets, is not greater than the resolve of those that fought for justice and the strength of the victims in this case. The resolve I have seen from these two young victims over the last two years is truly inspiring,” he added.
The boys — two brothers who are now 12 and 10 years-old — were adopted from a Christian special-needs agency by the Zulocks.
The couple raised them under the guise of a happy home in an affluent Atlanta suburb.
But their supposedly picture-perfect life — Zachary worked in banking and William was a government employee — held a dark secret.
The couple were regularly forcing the boys to have sex with them, and would film the abuse to make pedophilic pornography.
Evidence showed they even bragged about the abuse to twisted friends, with one telling police Zachary once sent a Snapchat message reading “I’m going to f–k my son tonight. Stand by,” along with images of the boy being abused.
And they allegedly used social media to pimp the boys out to at least two men in a depraved local pedophile sex ring.
The couple was arrested in 2022 after an alleged member of the ring was caught downloading child porn, and he told the investigators how the Zulocks were making porn with young boys living in their house.
Both Zulocks plead guilty to charges of aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, sexual exploitation of children.

This is why I am against Homosexuality. Because of stuff like this here. It is truly the Sodomite lifestyle and it is an abomination to God. Here is hoping that these bastards are killed in prison.

Others: acecomments.mu.nu, One America News Network, The Sun, The Post Millennial, BizPac Review, Twitchy and WSB-TV

Annette Howard Owner of Hosting Matters RIP

This one jolted me quite a bit.

I found out today, that Annette Howard, the owner of Hosting Matters died after a long battle with Cancer.

I cannot say enough good things about Annette and Hosting Matters. I never met Annette, as she was based in Florida. However, her company was a God send, after being a several hosts, that really could not deal with a political blog like mine. Annette and hosting matter really knew how to deal with blog like mine.

There were times, when I would forget my cpanel password or something would go haywire with the blog and I would figuratively be running in circles with my hair on fire and my blood pressure would be at def-con 1 and Annette or one of her employees would straighten out whatever was messed up. Always with calming effect as well, I might add.

I just found out yesterday that Annette, knowing things were not going well, decided to sell the business to Entirely Digital. So far, Mike, is doing a good job and calmed my nerves about the transition to the new company.

My thoughts and prayers to family and friends of Annette Howard, it is truly a great loss.

Jazz Shaw – Rest in Peace

I became aware of this sad news this morning. Jazz Shaw, an Blogger from the old days; before the Democratic Party lost it’s ever loving mind —-has passed away suddenly at age 65.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com remembers Jazz:

How do you say goodbye to your brother from another mother?
First, we start off with the basics. Jazz Shaw was born and raised in Schuyler, NY on September 24, 1959. He served his country with honor in the US Navy, collecting some great stories along the way. He married Georg Hawks, and the two of them opened their home to rescue animals to give them love and a good life.
I got to know Jazz 20 years ago or so, when we both began blogging. At the time, he co-blogged at a fun site called the Middle Earth Journal with the late Ron Beasley, who passed away several years ago. It’s only fitting that we began our friendship by sharply disagreeing with each other over politics on our respective blogs. We got into a habit of picking out topics for debate and doing a back-and-forth, where we always took each other’s point of view with respect — even while disagreeing.
It didn’t take long for us to become fast friends. I feel as though I am telescoping that process too much, although I don’t know if I could ever do it justice. The more we learned about each other, the closer we got, and the more fun we had with each other. After I moved to Hot Air, we continued to banter, both in print and in conversations, sometimes live on air and sometimes in private. When I had the opportunity to get him into the mix at Hot Air, I never hesitated — and it has been an absolute dream ever since to work with him on a daily basis.

I started reading Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal right around the time, when I started to feel exhausted with the Democrat’s using the Iraq War as a wedge issue and their defeatist attitude about that war as well. Not to mention the Dems support of abortion, without limits and Homosexual stuff, which as an Christian of 42 years, I just cannot and will not accept as normal.

I continued to read Jazz over at HotAir,com as well. He was, I felt, one of the reasonable voices at the blog, along with Ed as well. Especially after Malkin left. I respected her and all. But, sometimes, she came off as an bit an uppity asshole and an Asian bitch. I will not get into what happened to Malkin and why she is basically is no longer involved with politics. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Rest in Peace Jazz, you have earned it.

Trump campaign makes a bad mistake

This was a seriously stupid mistake.

Via The Hill:

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe about Puerto Rico, Jews and other minorities at former President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday night were in “poor taste,” as the campaign sought to distance itself from the material.
“It was a comedian who made a joke in poor taste,” Leavitt said during an appearance on Fox News.
…..
Obviously, that joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign, and I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian, rather than the truth that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.”
Hinchcliffe made a number of jokes that earned audible groans from the crowd and that has put the Trump campaign into a defensive mode, including at one point referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“There’s a lot going on. Like, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said, eliciting mixed reactions from the crowd.
At another point, Hinchcliffe said Latinos “love making babies.”
“They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country,” he said.

This obviously was a huge blunder by the Trump campaign. They did not think to vet his routine?

Via Memeoradum

Yes, I voted for Trump

Donald Trump might be an asshole, conceited and a bit of an elitist prick. But I will take that over a socialist giggling, race-baiting bitch, any day of the damn week.

I mean, Kamala Harris has no plan, she stole the majority of her shit from Donald Trump and she’s a fucking gott-damned liar. Plus, she wants Israel to fail. She is on the Democrat train of calling for a fucking cease fire. A Fucking Cease-fire?

Those towel-headed mother fuckers in the Gaza Strip; Hamas, I mean. Attacked Israel on October 7 of last year, following by their goat humping fucking friends in Lebanon murdered children and took hostages; and these assholes on the left want a fucking cease fire??!?! Fuck them.

It is okay though, her campaign is losing and the democrats know it. Why do you think that she is trotting out all these celebs from Hollywood, Music and otherwise? Because the majority of Americas know she’s a fucking fraud! First, they had that demented old fuck Biden and when they finally figured out that the alzheimer’s patient in chief could not win at all in a reelection, they tossed this fucking gigging idiot out there and tried to get America to believe the bullshit hype about her.

I mean, the liberal Jews are leery of her, the conservative Jews hate her with a passion. The Arabs, especially here in Michigan, HATE her. Most black men, even liberal ones are looking at her like she is a fucking fraud. Black woman, with exception of like the really liberal ones; think she’s a fucking joke.

Not to mention, the MEDIA. Holy shit, the non-fox news media is propping this two-bit fake ass, house negro up like a dummy in an Federal Theater Project. (some might get that reference) It is dishonest, it is unprofessional and it really makes people, like me, distrust ANY non-fox media outlet. (The exception being like Newsmax and other conservative outlets.)

Folks, the facts are that we do not need another four years of Democrat’s in the White House. We have seen our economy torn to shreds, inflation is through the roof, job numbers — when figure in the long term unemployed, like me, are terrible. Not to mention wars and tension all over the world, and illegal immigration is rampant; and is full of terrorists and criminals.

In closing, I offer a slightly modified ending of a very famous speech:

“Let us rise to the call of freedom- loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon this Country. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . American Freedom today . . . American Freedom tomorrow . . . American Freedom forever.”

And you can quote me on that one.

Trump 2024.