Tag: News

Memorable Monday: Daybreak in America: Trump’s Inauguration, MLK Day, and a New Hope

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America, and tomorrow will mark one year since President Trump’s Inauguration.

It seemed fitting that Trump would be inaugurated for his second non-consecutive term on the day set aside to commemorate King, a man who very likely would have descended into grifter status had he lived much longer.  Trump election also continued the rollback of the affirmative action racialist system that King’s successors endorsed.

Most importantly for yours portly, it’s a day off—and a cold one!  I’m looking forward to a quiet morning with Dr. Wife before Murphy and I make the frosty trek back to the South Carolina.

With that, here is 20 January 2025’s “Daybreak in America: Trump’s Inauguration, MLK Day, and a New Hope“:

Read More »

TBT: Make Greenland American

The Portly Politico16 Comments

Yours portly has a lengthy post over at Free Speech Backlash today about Trump, Venezuela, and the intersection between American nationalism (“America First”) and American imperialism (the piece is called “Trump: Nationalist or Imperialist?“).  “Imperialism” is a dirty word, but America is an empire, whether we like it or not.  Indeed, we’ve been an empire since at least 1898, when the United States gained Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain, and occupied Cuba for several years.  Cuba became nominally independent, but remained a virtual American protectorate until Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution in the 1950s.

Many on the Right are concerned that the Maduro capture is something of a “heel turn,” to use wrestling parlance, for Trump’s foreign policy, and that he’s abandoning America First principles in favor of open-ended American adventurism abroad.  My piece details why Maduro’s arrest is not another quagmire, and how it’s very consistent with traditional American foreign policy dating back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.

Similarly, Trump’s desire to annex Greenland, which sounds like a joke or someone playing a True Start Location Earth map in Civilization VI, is quite serious.  Greenland is in the Western Hemisphere, which—whether we like it or not—is America’s hemisphere.  American geopolitical strategy since 1823 has been to dominate this hemisphere to avoid a balance-of-power situation like Europe’s in the nineteenth century.  It is also seeks to prevent foreign intervention into the independent nations of this hemisphere.  One reason for the Maduro operation was to prevent Maduro from selling his country off to the Chinese, which would put America’s primary geopolitical rival in our backyard.

Similarly, China and Russia have designs on the Arctic, with the former particularly attempting to gain influence over the tiny Greenlandic population.  Denmark is entirely too venal to combat foreign intervention in its colony, so greater, more serious powers will do so.  With ice caps receding, the Arctic is the great oceanic chokepoint of the twenty-first century, and America needs Greenland to secure our interests in the Western Hemisphere—and to keep China out.

It’s unpleasant to think about Great Power politics in the twenty-first century, when we’re supposed to be beyond all that foolishness.  But it is the rules-based international order of the 1990s that is the aberration, not the kinds of aggressive power plays we’re seeing today.

Taking Greenland—which the Trump Administration seems intent to do—is part of the broader return to Reality the world is experiencing.  Reality is often hard, but it cannot be ignored.

I wish no violence upon Greenland or Denmark—far from it!  Greenland does not need to be taken by force.  At a certain point, the United States can offer Greenlanders a package so enticing, they cannot refuse.  Denmark should be eager to offload an expensive asset that they are not using—and that the bankroller of their social welfare state is willing to go to great lengths to obtain.

With that, here is 15 January 2025’s “Make Greenland American“:

Read More »

SubscribeStar Saturday: Systemic Wokeism

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

If the assassination of Charlie Kirk highlighted anything, it was the systemic nature of woke Cultural Marxist ideology in our institutions.  Most everyone knew of that sinister influence already—even and especially the Cultural Marxists—but Kirk’s assassination cast the lethal extent of this brainwashing into sharp relief.

There are demonic forces at work in the United States and the West that seek to promote confusion about sex, biology, faith, and Truth.  The reigning mantra of the institutions is to “speak your truth,” “your truth” being whatever subjective set of assumptions and experiences cobble together into a narrowly solipsistic worldview.

It’s the mantra of unmarried women with overpaid jobs that are essentially daycare for grownups.  That’s fitting:  if you’re trying to build a worldview that just encourages people to consume until they die, it makes sense to frame it in the language of advertising and target it towards the demographic that spends the most money.

And in an increasingly feminized world, it’s the sales pitch of a lifetime:  do and be whatever you want, as long as you’re not a mean old conservative.  Worship whatever you want, especially yourself—just don’t worship Jesus Christ, because He Has Rules that might limit “your truth.”  Consume as much as you want—just don’t get your hopes up about buying a house.  Make your family look like whatever you want—just so long as you have god-like powers over slaying unborn children and snipping off your toddler’s wangdoodle when he starts playing with Barbies at his cousin’s house.

There is big money in transgenderism; just ask the Pritzkers, the bizarre family of overweight, moon-faced dwarves investing heavily in gender-altering surgeries.  All of it, it seems, is in service to a devilishly Gnostic belief that technology will allow humans to transcend life and death—that we will truly be our own gods.

The price for these elite fantasies of apotheosis is the price that is always paid to make the waking nightmares of empty people come true:  death and degradation for everyone else.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Legion

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

“And he answered, saying, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.'” – Matthew 5:9b

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” – Ephesians 6:12

Charles James “Charlie” Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday, 10 September 2025, while holding an open, civil debate.  Coupled with the (racially motivated) murder of Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail, my heart has been heavy.

I saw the Zarutska surveillance footage on Telegram before I even knew the story.  When I first saw it, I thought she’d been punched violently in the throat—until I noticed her bleeding out.  I watched it a second time and realized with horror that I had just seen a woman die.  The look of utter fear and confusion on her face still haunts me, and will for some time.

I’ve been on that light rail.  The murder occurred very close to where Dr. Fiancée purchased her wedding dress.  It is a good, generally safe part of the city.  But evil goes where it wants, and it took the train that night.

So far I’ve avoided the close-up footage of Kirk’s assassination, but I’ve seen long-range footage.  From the commentary I’ve heard, as well as Dr. Fiancée’s medical expertise, it is likely that he died instantly, or at least very quickly.  He may not have felt it before he went into the loving arms of Jesus.

Yours portly was never a big Charlie Kirk listener, but I certainly knew of his impact.  He was a bog standard conservative Christian, very much like most people I know and love.  He might have been a bit milquetoast on some policy positions, but he was an incredibly effective speaker, debater, and organizer.  His organization, Turning Point USA, did real yeoman’s work to reach out to people that historically have not found a ready place in the modern Republican Party:  young people, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, etc.  Kirk’s efforts likely won Pennsylvania and other key States for President Trump in 2024.

Kirk was also openly and unapologetically a Christian.  He spoke boldly about his faith in Christ, and urged Americans not to be afraid, but to find strength and peace in a saving knowledge of Christ.  He never, it seems, brandished his faith as a way to gain cheap political points, but espoused it sincerely, forcefully, and effectively.

His effectiveness is, likely, one part of why he was murdered.  I believe that his faith had an even larger role to play.

Satan is powerful.  He will lose in the end, yes—and that is why he tries to drag so many souls to Hell with him.  Satan can only be in one place at a time, but his demons are many—and manifest.

His favorite tool right now seems to be the inherently atheistic, nihilistic, life-hating, angry doctrine of Cultural Marxism.  Masquerading in a cloak of compassion and understanding, this woke ideology demonizes anyone that is not in complete lockstep with its ever-changing orthodoxies.  Just like Satan, this ideology twists good concepts like compassion, sympathy, and health and applies them to the most wicked of goals:  abortion, assisted suicide, catch-and-release policies, racial division, and on and on.

The modern Left is demonic.  It promises that every person can be their own god, but all it produces is misery, emptiness, corruption, and death.

When the bullet ripped through Kirk’s neck, I am sure that Hell was rejoicing.  But Christ, not Satan, Is King, and He Uses even horrible acts of evil for His Glory.

Turn away from this wicked ideology and embrace Jesus.  Please—please!

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

“American” Trucking

The Portly Politico8 Comments

It seems that lately there is an endless parade of evidence showing illegal immigrants behaving badly—or, at the very least, with lethal incompetence.  The latest example is the infamous Indian Sikh truck driver who made an unsignaled, last-minute U-turn, causing a family of three to crash into his trailer, killing them instantly.

An ex-girlfriend’s dad was a trucker for many years, and I remember him telling me that the state of the industry has really declined.  Instead of unionized drivers with rigorous training and employment protections, there are loads of young, hastily-trained, immigrant men driving recklessly.  As we saw with the Indian driver, many of these immigrants are here illegally, and come from cultures that do not hold human life sacred to the same extent as Western cultures.

Read More »

The End of NPR

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Well, they’ve finally done it—Republicans have defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally-funded non-profit that operates the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio.  Note that this defunding is not a temporary executive order, one which a future Democratic President could undo with the stroke of a pen:  it’s part of Congress’s budget cutting, and the House holds the power of the purse.

Sure, it could all be undone, but it would require a Democratic President (or a RINO) and a Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate.  Those both might return someday, but for now, conservatives and champions of limited and small(er) government can relish this accomplishment.

Read More »

TBT: We Are All Deplorables Now

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s wild to consider that, about a year ago, President Trump survived a public assassination attempt.  It was a turning point in the election, and had the president not turned to look at a chart at the precise moment the bullet flew, it likely would have been a dire turning point for the nation as a whole.

Fortunately, the bullet missed.  What is crazy to consider is that, a year on, this entire event seems to be forgotten—or, at least, not discussed very much.  I suppose that is the way of things—who talks about the various assassinations of European nobility and royalty in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?  Other than an Austrian archduke, we don’t.

I still shudder to think of how differently things might have been had the bullet struck.  I suspect we’d have a J.D. Vance presidency—if the election had happened at all.  Civil war would have been a likely outcome; the government cracking down and/or cancelling the election on grounds of “public safety” could have been another.  Biden’s cancerous shell might still be marionetting around the White House.

Well, thank God the would-be assassin missed, but let us keep fighting on.

With that, here is 15 July 2025’s “We Are All Deplorables Now“:

Read More »

TBT: Mystery in the Blogosphere

The Portly Politico7 Comments

It was almost exactly a year ago that legendary Trinidadian blogger Renard, formerly of Renard’s World, disappeared—or, at least, his blog disappeared.  To my knowledge, no one knows anything about the once-ubiquitous blogger or his whereabouts.

In searching for his blog, I found two different blog titles from his site, which still shows up in search results even though the site has been deleted:  “Renard Is Not Overly Attached to His Blog,” dated 5 February 2024; and “Nothing Ever Gets Between Me and Blogging,” dated 12 April 2024.  It seems Renard was sending mixed messages in the final months of his blogging journey.

The blog Geek Mamas ran a post on 30 May 2024, “What Happened to Renard’s World?“; it asks all the questions we in the WordPress blogosphere were asking at the time, and noted many of the similar themes:  the change in Renard’s tone; the possible use of AI to generate images and/or to write his posts; the total and sudden disappearance of the blog.  I can’t find much more (although, to be honest, I didn’t dig that deeply), and this may simply remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Internet.

Why speculate?  Well, let’s be honest—it’s interesting.  To understand how huge Renard’s sudden disappearance was, this guy was everywhere—every blogger on WordPress followed Renard, even if we didn’t always read him, and he seemed to follow everyone else.  He even liked a few of my posts on occasion, which isn’t a brag so much as a kind of surprise, because the guy was all over the place.

Anyway, it seems the weeks of speculation died down, and I had not thought of old Renard until casting about for some old blog posts to repost for TBT.  Now I have to wonder again:  what happened to him and his site?  Does anyone have any additional information?

Perhaps one day we’ll know, but I suspect that the mystery will endure.

With that, here is 15 May 2024’s “Mystery in the Blogosphere“:

Read More »

Tariffs: Worth It

The Portly Politico2 Comments

There’s been a great deal of bellyaching this week about the tariffs that President Trump has slapped on countries all over the world, friend and foe alike.  Indeed, even yours portly winced at the drop in his various retirement accounts.

But the pain is worth it—and, we must remember, temporary.  What is often forgotten in the discussion about tariffs is that we have been the suckers, often dropping our trade barriers while other countries—even allies!—have kept their trade barriers in place.  The net result is that our manufacturing base has been stripped away since the end of the Second World War, and we have shifted into a consumer economy.

Read More »

MAGA Monday: Zelensky Gets Zapped

The Portly Politico15 Comments

A quick note:  apologies to SubscribeStar readers; apparently, Saturday’s post, which was scheduled to pop at 6:30 AM EST that morning, never popped!  I posted it manually yesterday.  —TPP

Yours portly is once again playing catch-up, so I’m sharing the full meeting/press conference between President Trump and the little twerp from the Ukraine, President Zelensky:

To be clear, I don’t think Russia is good; their attempted conquest of the Ukraine has been incredibly disruptive to the lives of the Ukrainian people (to put it mildly) and to global order.  But that doesn’t make Ukraine and Zelensky saints, nor does it mean the United States should be getting involved in what is essentially a border conflict between similar peoples in a distant part of the globe.

Zelensky is perhaps the most entitled and disrespectful world leader I’ve ever seen.  He’s jetted around the globe cosplaying as some kind of freedom fighter.  He doesn’t even have the decency or respect to wear a coat and tie when begging us for money.  Even someone looking to get a bank loan to open up a mechanic’s shop changes out of coveralls and into a suit when asking the banker for money.

Read More »