Birdnow's Aviary

October 20, 2026

The Problem with Our Military

Timothy Birdnow

The great Victor Davis Hansen does a cost analysis of why our war making capabilities are a very bad deal.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/10/15/hanson-problem-americas-military-arsenal/

Patriot missiles cost $4 million a piece, Tomahawks cost 3-4 million, and the Hellfire is two hundred grand and has to be shot from a plane, rising our pilots. The enemy can fight with drones that cost five to six THOUSAND dollars and can be made very easily.

So we are spending twenty to thirty times as much to knock them down as they spend to put them up. It's a recipe' for disaster.

Yes, ours can do more, but who cares? In the end ours are the best weapons we won't be able to afford.

Meanwhile we've lost a quarter of our own drones and at most it is projected we will produce 300,000 new drones - while war-raveged Ukraine is making over a million. There is something wrong with this.

And our drones cost several million dollars to make. We've got to do this much more cheaply. Much more.

Maybe we should arrest all the illegal aliens and force them to serve sentences in drone factories; make cheap labor (in this case free) work for us for a change.

There is no reason we can't build Predator drones and at the same time make cheap expendable ones.

It's the same old problem; American labor costs are too high due to labor unions, government regulations on environmental and work safety conditions, etc. But if we outsource we spill the secrets about our equipment and put ourselves in danger of having our hardware supplies cut off.

Hansen contrasts our wonderful military of today with the military hardware that won WWII:

When we rearmed, and we started the war with number 19 in size of our army and almost virtually no air force to speak of except some B-17s and out-of-date fighters. We had a good Navy, but the idea was we were not going to try to match the Germans or the Japanese necessarily, in the quality of each particular plane.

We were not going to build a Panther or Tiger tank that was indomitable as far as the power of its gun, and the armor, but would be produced in very limited, at 5,000 or 6,000 Panthers to a little over 2,000 Tigers. We were going to do something different. We were gonna produce 50,000 Sherman tanks.

Pretty good tanks. 10 hours on the road, one hour maintenance. Not like the Tiger or Panther, one hour maintenance, one hour on the road. Easy to maintain. Very crew adaptable. If they were hit, you could drop out on the bottom through a trapdoor. Three out of five of destroyed Sherman crewmen escaped with their lives.

This was based on a war of attrition model. America abandoned that when it became obvios Russia and China could outlast us in a war, so we went full Wehrmacht and devised a new kind of military, one which could outmaneuver the enemy.

But times change and now we are seeing that our wonderful gadgets and superior tech is too expensive and can be countered by cheap, simple tech. All this fancy hardware does is force us to waste money and resources better served with a more lean approach.

When Rome and Carthage went to war in the first Punic war the Romans were at a serious disadvantage because, while they had the best close-range fighters in the world, they had virtually no navy. Carthage had far and away the best navy on Earth, with vast capabilities in what was then the best ship on Earth up to that time - the Quinquereme - which balanced speed and power and maneuverability. The Romans couldn't hope to compete - they were fighting the best sailors of the time. So they took a low-tech shortcut; they put grappling hooks on their ships, closed with Carthaginian ships, then sent in Roman soldiers to fight hand to hand. Worked beautifully and the Romans quickly neutralized the superior Carthaginian vessels and won the war. Carthage never could recover from that and in the end Rome utterly destroyed the city and sowed salt in the Earth to make the place uninhabitable for a long time.

Lower tech can often outperform the spiffy new tech that everyone becomes enamored of so quickly. Mostly because it's cheap and takes little in the way of resources.

The Chinese invented a repeating crossbow and they could then use children or women with no training to help fight battles. reasonably low tech but it worked.

And we all remember what the Vietcong did to us during the Vietnam war. They hid in the jungle, lay nasty, hidden traps, and generally did not engage us directly. It worked.

The point is it is sometimes better to use cheap and small than big and expensive. Low tech - especially when there is an innovation nobody expected - can often defeat a superior opponent. Too much pomp. It's part of why the British lost the Revolutionary War. They strutted around in their fancy uniforms while the Colonials moved faster in their simple clothes and shot faster with their simple varmint guns.

America needs to overhaul our military system. The time of wars with big armies going at each-other and navies dominated by carriers is largely over. Now it's drones and precision missiles. We need to adapt or wind up like Persia after Marathon.

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Vomitorium

Timothy Birdnow

And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

Leviticus 18:28

And that is just what is happening in Europe, with the enthusiastic efforts of the Ruling Class.

Follow the money.

"Replacing Europe": Undercover Film Follows The Money Behind Europe's Taxpayer-Funded Mass Migration Pipeline

It's government money and NGO's, most especially the Catholic Church, who is moving these Muslims into Europe in an insane effort that is incomprehensible; it will swallow Catholicism whole, as it did Orthodoxy centuries ago.

Spain is the lynchpin, or one of the chief ones anyway, and the Spanish facilitate the invasion so they can get more money from the European Union. Most of the migrants move through Spain to get into France and from there the U.K. and much of Western Europe. Italy and Greece too.

But there is vast sums of wealth flowing to make this happen. Someone sure as hell wants to disappear Europe and replace it with an Islamic Caliphate.

Boats leave from several North African states but mostly from Mauritania and then they reach Spanish territory, where they are then offered the fatted calf:

A worker for the UN's International Organization for Migration says Spain deliberately lets the boats keep coming so it keeps receiving EU money.

ACCEM, a Catholic NGO that took in about €225 million in 2024, mostly from the Spanish state, moves arrivals from the Canary Islands to the mainland, houses them in camps and pays them a monthly allowance.

Migrants are flown by the hundreds from Gran Canaria to Madrid.

In the Spanish border town of Irun, an activist group has painted a trail of footsteps guiding migrants past police and into France, where a city-run shelter takes in people with no papers.

The UN's own migration agency says the priority should be "facilitating, not restricting" migration...

Many of these are Black Africans, which is why the Left in Europe wants them so badly; they want a multicultural Europe, a multi-racial one. They think Europe is too white and too Western. So the push for Arab, Berber, and especially Sub-Saharan Africans to migrate into the heart of Europe so as to replace the "racist" old white folks with a new Europe, a "more colorful" Europe.

The only thing is nobody ever ASKED the Europeans if they wanted this; the elites just did it. Where is their precious democracy now?

Never in history has a People not just stumbled into collapse but actively sought it's own demise and yet the Western World is doing precisely that, purposely endeavoring to eliminate her own people, to replace them, solely to "atone for the sins" of their great great great grandfathers. It's insane But it is what happens when you gut the core out of Christianity and leave the bare-bones aspects of it. Christianity is universalist and requires good things be done for the less fortunate. The Left kept that but gutted the other aspects of Christianity. The Bible speaks all the time about not just letting alien peoples in your midst - just look at what the Jews were commanded to do to the Amalekites.

God made Israel His special People - he did not want them erasing themselves out of some misguided sense of charity.

Being Christian means understanding family and country come before others. Yes, you should care about others, but you should care first about those entrusted to you by God. Muslim military aged men are not entrusted to the Papacy - Europeans and the nations that sprang from Europe were.

There is no wisdom in Rome any longer, nor in the capitals of Europe.

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SAVE at the State Level

Timothy Birdnow

The problem is reciprocity; illegal aliens can get liceses in sanctuary states then get relicensed in the states with the SAVE act at the state level.

Congress Failed, but Voters in 11 States Get Their Say on Core Provision of the SAVE Act

Also, things like the national database are not in place.

Immigration and illegal immigration necessitates a federal response; the states simply lack the power and authrority to do it on their own. And of course the blue states are the problem in the first place.

But it is a good start. We don't want TOO good a start though because it will absolve the GOP in the Senate from passing a Federal law, a law that is necessary for the security and safety of our country.

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Polling and Plan B

Timothy Birdnow

The media clings to their claim that the polls show a Democrat Blue Wave next month despite clear evidence the "lead" is eroding and the public isn't buy what they are selling. It occurs to me that they want the Demo-Left to have this illusion shattered to trigger rioting similar to what we have just seen in France. They want a revolution.

If the Dems have a "slim lead" they have no lead at all.

But if there is a red wave, or even just a holding action, the Democrats will cry foul, say Trump stole the election, and trigger "No Kings" riots across the country. I think this is their plan B.

BTW this poll ended October 1, still before the public is fully engaged, and before some of the more egregious comments by a number of key players. If anything I suspect the polls have improved considerably for Republicans.

The article points out:

To get at overall preference, the I&I/TIPP Poll asked: "Which party do you prefer to control Congress after this year’s midterm election?”

The answer: 46% of voters preferred Democrats, 42% preferred Republicans, and 12% weren’t sure.

I suspect a lot of those "aren't sure" voters have gone to the light side, but so too some of those 46% who said they are supporting the Darkness will change their flags after listening to some of the crazies in the People's Democratic Party. Many of them claimed support for Democrats purely to protest against things like high gas prices, but in the end they may well realize gas prices will be much worse if Democrats are back in power. They were just a few short years ago.

Remember, the GOP has outraised the Democrats in funds and will be able to answer the Donkey ads in the home stretch; it's not like in some years where the Democrats have the only voice since the Republicans are out of money.

Many American voters ARE dimwits who forget what happened a week ago and who are so ignorant of the ramifications of policy they can be manipulated, but many are smarter than some think and, while they may not be up on all of it, have to know that they have been gaslighted by the media about how bad the economy is and how terrible a job Donald J. Trump is doing. And I suspect many understand that Iran was and is an existential threat ot our national security - the primary job of the Federal government.

We will see how easily Americans can be manipulated in the upcoming election. But I suspect we're going to have a good night.

I think the polls are WAY off this season. I hope and pray I'm right.

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Becoming Oceania

Timothy Birdnow

An article in American Thinker by a British teacher shows how Orwellian Britain is becoming.

When I read this I couldn't help but think of Tallbloke. Tallbloke is a climate blogger of some renoun in Britain who was arrested and had his computer seized by the government when a commenter on one of his posts leaked the Climategate e-mails. You may remember they were private e-mails between members of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and a few Americans, notably Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann. They exposed the whole global warming thing as a scam from the word go. The British government desperately wanted to strangle this baby in utero and so they arrested Tallbloke and seized his computer. This was not something they had any right to do - they just did it.

We see this increasingly in Lesser Britain these days as the nation has become increasingly Bolshevik in character and is forcing people to hide what they really think in favor of what a few elites have decided is acceptable thought and speech.

Anyway the author of this post tells a true story about what happened to him - a teacher - for writing for American Thinker and other subversive acts when in private. He was eventually exonerated after a "tribunal" but that won't continue; next time the knock on the door will end with GUILTY! and the accused will wind up in prison. It's happening in Europe these days right now. French actress the late Bridgit Bardot went to prison for "insulting Islam". Now France is burning and Britain will be next.

They think this makes them enlightened but thought control and suppression of speech is barbarism, not enlightenment. But of course the ruling elites crossed that Rubion long ago. They are attempting to impose the self-extinction of a People and a way of life so they can rule over a new kingdom without restrictions. It is natural for human beings to resist their own extinction. And the public knows it is being lied to, being pushed into the shadows. Not everyone in Britain cares only about ale and soccer.

So the British ruling class is going back to the Soviet playbook and using the tried and true methods that bring destruction and misery to assert their own power.

The Aristocracy never forgave the rise of the commoners, and always wanted their power back. Now they are moving to take it and anyone who objects will be silenced. And that power will be in the form of a reduction in British. As was said in the movie Braveheart "the trouble with Scotland is there are too many Scots" and so ways to get rid of a lot of them needed to be found. "If we can't get them out we'll breed them out". The British upper class used that movie as a blueprint.

I fear Britain is as lost as is France. How long before this comes to America? It's already in Canada and Australia.

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October 19, 2026

Tiny Homes for Tiny Brains

Timothy Birdnow

How the tiny home movement collapsed and why it was always a terrible idea.

They were, in essence, large campers as opposed to actual homes. Not even full sized trailer homes, just camper sized. When I was in real estate we would occasionally have studio apartments but we could never keep them full; people called in a few months asking us to move them. Studios were just too small and the tenants became claustrophobic after a while. And there was no place to put their stuff either.

People forget that they still have to have utilities, a lot, and all the things a regular house has. Also, the trim work requires as much effort and time - probably more - in a tiny house as opposed to a big one. More square footage does not necessarily mean more work.

And, as the article mentions, there are still all the fun little goodies like municipal inspections and the like, and codes were not written with these things in mind.

A few years ago there was a story that made me laugh; here in St. Louis a teenage girl built a tiny home and had it in her parent's back yard. A thief came and simply carted her house away! Then thieves stole another tiny home from a suburban area where Habitat for Humanity had built it.

Funny but it's going to happen when you can put your house on a truck bed.

I really like some of these tiny houses on television and would love to have owned one so I could take it to the country and use it as a cabin. They are nice places to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. The Ozark Hilton, my home-made cabin in the pines, is about five hundred square feet - larger than most of these crazy things.

But of course I was not going to pay $40,000 for it. I could just get a camper for less.

Anyway the "sustainability" movement, the Gang Green environmentalists and the Left, want to get us all used to the idea of living with less, having less, using less energy. Energy is the measure of wealth in modernity and so basically they want us POOR, living frugally. So many of them are still stuck on stupid, buying into Paul Ehrlich from the seventies. They dream of people living in 250 square feet, basically in cells like prisoners. They flatter themselves that they are the wise ones, the enlightened, and that everyone should live poor and be virtuous like they are. It's a form of mental illness.

I once got into it with some tiny home advocates on ST. Louis University's website. They were all gung-ho about building them for the homeless and I pointed out they could buy full sized houses in neighborhoods on the north side and rehab them for less than the tiny house would cost, and that the homeless recipients would quickly tear up so small a building in short order. Naturally they simply said "nuh-uh!" but could give no good reason why the tiny houses were a superior idea to buying an existing house with utilities and a lot already there. St. Louis is lousy with abandoned houses and people are always deeding their abandoned property to the Mayor.

Tiny homes are for tiny people and if anyone should think this a good idea needs their head examined.

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L.A. Times Admits Illegal Aliens Vote

Timothy Birdnow

Well they finally admitted the truth!

Los Angeles Times

@latimes

Surge in ICE raids is aimed at discouraging voter turnout, immigration advocates say

So the LA Times is admitting illegal aliens vote, and in numbers large enough to impact elections! Wisdom in their dotage!

That is exactly what they are SUPPOSED to do; discourage illegal aliens from voting!

Bear in mind Democrat Elise Slotkin admitted that the SAVE America Act would "make it harder for Democrats to win" by eliminating illegal aliens, the presupposition is that said aliens are already voting. And we know from the large numbers of aliens being arrested for just this crime that it is true. We have barely seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to voting by aliens.

Look, a political party is not going to go against the public sentiment on so lopsided an issue if they didn't have something up their sleeve. They Democrats are desperate to keep the door wide open, and that can only be so they can acquire and keep power. They've worked for decades to build a nationwide political machine similar to the Daley machine in Chicago, only across the whole country. That is why they scattered the illegals through all the states; those illegals were intended to be a cornerstone in their lust for power.

The last election and the one prior to Biden were a case of too many Americans showing up to vote for them to seal those. Biden's election was pure vote theft; the mail-in ballots were unsecured and Biden, who did not campaign at all, won while hiding in his basement. This while Trump won more votes than any person in history. This while Biden won more African American votes than Barack Hussein Obama. This when statistician William Briggs said it was mathematically impossible for Biden to win the way he did. This when all the bellweathers failed.

'20 was purely stolen. Trump won it back with a massive outpouring. Now the Donks are trying to rebuild the shattered machine but the Trump Administration is't buying it.

So the LA Times spills the Mexican jumping beans. Illegal aliens vote, and they affect elections.

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There IS Something Wrong with That

Timothy Birdnow

Here's how to handle the crazy Left.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld mocked a pro-Palestinian heckler from the stage while doing a show in Chicago.

From X:

Everintrigued

@EverIntrigued

Jerry Seinfeld to the heckler:

"I’m racist. It’s a genocide. I’m into it.”

Then: "I’m gonna find out how much your ticket was and I’m sending it to Israel.”

The heckler was being hauled away by security after interrupting Seinfeld's act and shouting:

"Twenty-two thousand Palestinians who are children now are killed with our taxpayer money, and you’re making jokes!”

Well, Jerry got the last laugh. Good for him!

And of course this number is pure horsepoop. It comes from the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health and not any credible source.

More people need to treat these people as the jokes that they are and they should be shouted down when they disturb decent Americans. If this woman wanted to send a message she should try Western Union. This was neither the time nor the lace and the audience had paid good money to be entertained by a comedian, not listen to her lecture about how rotten Israel is in her puny little mind.

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The real Brownshirts are marching out of the Democratic National Committee

Timothy Birdnow

Democratic Rep. Elise Slotkin says the quiet part out loud:

"I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.

I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that, I want that deterrence message sent.”

This was the goal of the endless accusations, investigations, and impeachment of Trump in his first term and it isn't going to end when Trump is out of office. The Left is going to pursue Trump as long as he is alive, and will try to ruin the lives of anyone who dared work for him. It's going to be happening for a long, long time to come.

The Democrats first started experimenting with this sort of thing when Richard Nixon was in office; by the end working for Nixon was a career death sentence. They tried doing that to Reagan as well, and now they have tripled down with Trump.

And Barack Hussein Obama, who weaponized the DOJ along with his self-proclaimed "wing man" Eric Holder were the ones who ginned up the fake and phony Russian Collusion hoax to take Trump out. Yet now he has the goal to say:

""It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say,”

This when he himself did exactly that. The chutzpah is astonishing. Perhaps he has forgotten how he used the IRS to target conservative groups he did not agree with?

Obama also sent corporate execs to prison for crimes of which they were not even aware in a stunning dilution of basic civil rights.

He sent a bunch of whistleblowers to jail for outing some of the things he was doing he was not supposed to do.

He seems to have forgotten his investigation of members of the press and his spying on many of them. Secret tapings and seizing phone records for the AP and others.

He has forgotten his NSA's PRISM surveillance system which spied on ALL Americans.

Obama is as American as borscht.

And he never made a peep when Biden was bullying and prosecuting a host of people, from Peter Manafort to Steve Bannon to Roger Stone and Rudy Giulliani and dozens of others who were prosecuted solely based on politics. Where was Mr. Obama when THAT was happening?

This is so typical; accuse others of what you yourself are doing.

The fact is a Biden-appointed leftist judge signed the warrant to raid Omar's home because there was definitely probably cause. The Administration didn't go to Ailene Cannon or some other Trump appointee. And his own successor had opened this investigation of fOmar, not Trump.

This is going to be the Bill Clinton defense "you're just picking on me because I am effective" and thus we should ignore the law because, well, just because.

Tom Homan said they are looking at denaturalizing Omar and deporting her. As Patrick Stewart used to say on Star Trek The Next Generation "Make it so!"

At any rate the Democrats are the true fascists and they use thuggery and violence and threats of imprisonment as a weapon against political opponents all the time, but they cry foul when the Law catches up with them.

Anyone remember how dismissive they were when the Supreme Court was being threatened? Remember Chuck Schumer telling the SCOTUS members

"I want to tell you, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, you have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price,"

The real Brownshirts are marching out of the Democratic National Committee.

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Will China Have a Queen?

This from Mike

Will China have a Queen after Xi? No, not that kind of queen, but a female ruler to replace Xi when the time comes.The rumors of Xi's failing health are no longer rumors. His trip here saw him requesting a private bathroom for himself and his wife as well as cutting short an event at the National Archives due to the stairs he had to climb. Following this, his trip to India had meetings cut short and a no show at a stand up meeting. Upon return to China he was hospitalized for several days after which a transition team was formed of mostly family members said to be led by his wife who will most likely replace him. One of the main reason for this is the real fear is that should someone else be put in power the entire family could be disappeared. With Chinas economy in free fall,30 million college graduates with no jobs or future, panic buying of gold, the social net on the verge of collapse and having to resort to AI to find those not paying their fair share and "encourage"participation its time to pop the popcorn and sit back and watch the show.

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October 18, 2026

No Kommissars

Timothy Birdnow

No kings - but a Kommissar is just fine.

No Kings Protests Taking Place Across the Country

This sort of thing may help rally Republicans; be careful what you wish for Comrad.

In honor of the No Kings Rally I give you the lovely sounds of After the Fire - Der] Kommissar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBfFDTPPlaM

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Hog Heaven and Hell

Timothy Birdnow

Pork - it's what's for dinner. But apparently not for lunch in Italy.

This is Appeasement: Pork Removed from Italy's School Lunches

Why so? It wasn't to make Jewish Italians happy.

We know who this is intended to appease.

The sole reason the Bible and the Koran both ban the eating of pork is for good health. Pork often carries diseases that can jump to humans. Trichinosis, for example. In Biblical times, and in Arabia in the seventh century, nobody had the knowledge or capabilities to prevent these diseases, hence the animals from which they came were deemed "unclean". Pigs do roll around in dirt a lot.

But as a religious tenant Christianity resolved that long ago. Christians were advised to eat whatever was put on their plates by non-believers, and that included pork. There was a big issue with meat offered to idols, but that was resolved because Paul said it was lawful for Christians to eat whatever they wanted if their consciences allowed.

The end result was the Christian world made major advances in our understanding of diseases and preservation of meats and now it's very, very rare to get sick from eating pork.

The Jews stll have the standard because they do not have the New Testament, but it's pretty much ignored by most Jews, with the exception of the really strict ones like the Hasidic. But almost all Muslims still practice this, despite the fact that the main reason for it is no longer valid. They do not believe the Koran was Divinely inspired as do Christians the Bible, they believe it was dictated word for word to Muhammed, who didn't know how to read, or so they say (hardly recommends him, does it?) So if it's in the Koran they won't do it, no matter how safe the meat may be.

So the only reason these Italian schools won't give kids a porkchop or a pork loin sandwich is to appease the Muslims. The Jews never complained. Nobody did.

So the schools won't let the kids have pork. Food trucks should pull up outside selling nothing but pork products, and if that doesn't work kids should receive free pork lunches to take to school with them. I like the idea of putting pork gravy in water pistols...

We should porcinate the place!

Considering how Muslim men rut like pigs I can't see why any Muslim would take offense at children eating bacon with their eggs. Who are true animals here? Men who would murder women and children or the eaters of meat?

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Consecrate Russia Already!

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a rather dull article about Pope Leo greeting a crowd for the first time since his hospitalization for lung cancer. Yawn, right. But it made me think.

There is war all over the world right now and there seems to be no way to stop it, but I know how it could be done and the Pope is the only man capable of doing it. Hear me out.

Of all the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most talked about and firmly established one is Fatima. It is the Gold Standard of all Marianne apparitions. Of that there is absolutely no question. It has been exhaustively studied by scholars and ruled by the Church to be 100% authentic; God did indeed dispatch His mother to give comfort and counsel to Mankind at the little village in Portugal.

I say this in preamble to my proposal to establish that this is coming from God.

The world is burning and the Pope is fiddling. Why hasn't he gone to Russia, or Ukraine, or Iran?

At Fatima Mary told the visionaries a simple remedy for all of this:

"I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart…If people attend to My requests, Russia will be converted and the world will have peace.”

But no Pope - not even Pope St. John Paul II - dared do it. JPII came close, consecrating the whole world to the Immaculate Heart and he mumbled something about Russia (and we had a limited time of peace and prosperity, just as we made a limited response to her request) but none have dared make this consecration. The Pope, and ONLY the Pope, can do it.

If Leo wants to live up to that name he chose he needs to step up, and to do that he needs to finally fulfill Mary's request. If he consecrates Russia to the Immaculate Heart this destructive Ukrainian war will end and there will be peace. The War in Iran will probably end too if this happens.

He has the power, he has the authority. Now he needs to grow a pair.

The Papacy was terrified of doing this when the Soviet Union was in existence and they feared the political ramifications of it. They also feared angering the Protestants, with whom they were negotiating a return of the Protestant churches - ecumenism. Ecumenism is an attempt to meld the Christian world back together, and the Catholic churches appear much more Protestant now than they did in times past; much of the ritual and even the design of the churches has changed to "modernize" the Church, to make it more inviting for Protestants. No more prayers in Latin, no more having the Priest on the altar with his back to the congregation. The churches now are more open, more inviting, far less judgmental, far less strict, and far more empty as a result. They no longer preach messages with any real content. It's become a social club with a crucifix.

The Pope doesn't want to mess that up by consecrating (dedicating) an Orthodox Russia. He, like his predecessors, have hopes of bringing the Orthodox back into the fold.

So what IS the Pope planning to do? He's going to Uruguay, Peru, and other Latin American countries where he will receive adulation. But that is not where he is needed. He should visit Kiev and then Moscow and try to broker peace. He should visit American troops in the Persian Gulf (obviously not go to Iran - they'd probably kill him in a horrible and vulgar way). Instead he's going to friendly country. In my mind that makes him a coward.

Look, the guy is in his seventies and has lung cancer. If he is killed while visiting these countries it will suck, but he doesn't have THAT long to go anyway and if he truly believes he will be joyous at the prospect. But instead he goes as far away from these conflicts as he can.

And he, like his predecessors, refuses to do the one thing that will bring peace to this Earth.

This is entirely in his hands, and those hands will be stained in blood on Judgment Day. He will have to answer for his refusal to act here. His silence is deafening.

Consecrate Russia already!

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Barbara Bush Donated Heavily to Talarico

Timothy Birdnow

The shrub family shows it's true colors.

Barbara Bush Donated $2,500 to PAC Supporting Leftist Texas U.S. Senate Candidate James Talarico

With Bush leadership it's no wonder the country has fallen apart.

Bear in mind this is George W.s daughter, not the old lady who would find it difficult to sign the check given her, ah, state and all. Of course that won't prevent her from voting, at least not as a Democrat.

This isn't the first time; Babs had campaigned for Kamala Harris too, so she is a Leftist loser.

I always warned the Bush family is not to be trusted.

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Bless the Least of the Children

Timothy Birdnow

The sad thing is the poorly educated teachers and administrators probably believe they are following the Constitution since it bans CONGRESS from establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. These dopes think it means banning school children from simply showing their Bibles rather than banning teachers from promoting or prohibiting the free exercise of said religion.

Hey, teacher: Leave those Christian kids alone

The kids in a Washington school had to hide their Bibles in sealed envelopes lest they infect the minds of other children, who may start praying or act out in other destructive ways.

The HORROR!

FTA:

Students attending an optional, off-campus Bible program were required to carry their Bibles and other religious materials in sealed envelopes inside their backpacks when they returned to school.

Now the Everett School District has agreed to apologize, revise its procedures, provide religious liberty training for school board members, and pay $275,000 in attorney’s fees to settle a federal lawsuit.

As Fox News reports, the controversy involved LifeWise Academy, which provides privately funded Bible instruction to public school students during the school day. Parents must give permission, and the classes are conducted away from school property.

But Everett officials weren't satisfied with making children conceal their Bibles. They also required parents to submit new permission slips every week rather than allowing authorization for an entire semester. LifeWise was excluded from certain school community events and opportunities to distribute flyers available to secular organizations.

And then there's school board member Charles Adkins, who at a December 2025 board meeting, publicly declared, "I do in fact hold animus toward LifeWise Academy.”

If you hold animus against LifeWise does that make you Lifefoolish? I would think so.

Undoubtedly this creep is an atheist or some sort of neopagan, or maybe Muslim He may have a philosophical hatred of Christians and Christianity. But many of the others just did it because they were too ignorant of what separation of Church and State" means (and it wasn't even written in the Constitution. That phrase came from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church "it's as if there were a wall of separation between church and State" was Jefferson's exact quote in his letter to the Baptists.)

The reality is there is a concerted effort to remove Christianity from public life. This is the Soviet model; the Constitution of 1936 expressly granted freedom of worship - but it also granted freedom of anti-religious activities, meaning they could target churches and bust up worshippers. Also, the "freedom" did not allow church schools nor promoting religion with pamphlets or books or whatnot. They wanted to strangle religion while making it appear they were protecting it. Stalin was pleased and the Soviet Union saw church attendance decline drastically over the years.

That is exactly what they are trying to do here. They are making all signs of religion disappear so as to eventually make church attendance fade away. It's unamerican and has no business in our schools but there you are. Teachers tend to be very liberal because they live like leeches off government money. So they all go overboard in stuff like this.

America was founded by Christian men and women and the country was settled by Christians seeking free worship as they pleased. The clause was put into the Constitution to prevent one religious group dominating the country, but it has become a war on religion itself, most especially on Christianity. If you wage war you shouldn't be surprised when war is waged on you; we will eventually have the power to take away your parasitic lifestyle and we are starting to see that now as things like the Department of Education are defunded. Parents pay the taxes for those schools and they can stop paying. The public really has more power than they know and if they exercise it these cretins running our schools will have to back off, or better yet leave the profession entirely. Peddle your Godless Marxism elsewhere. Our children deserve better.

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The REAL Causes of Inflation

Timothy Birdnow

As Vincent Price would say on Btman, "eggzactly":

What Inflation Obsession Misses

FTA:

I too find that there are three oligarchs in our nation, but my three are significantly different from Sanders’s. The real oligarchs causing the biggest impact on affordability and the cost of living are the federal government, state governments, and local governments.

That’s a trifecta for sure, but with one key difference. Bernie’s anger is aimed at the private sector, where most Americans can choose to buy or not buy. That same decision is not available for citizens of a government oligarchy except at the state and local levels.

For instance, even Gavin Newsom understands that a wealth tax at the state level is disastrous, but he supports it at the federal level. He fully understands, and has seen, mass migration from California to less burdensome states. He clearly understands that a citizen can mitigate the oligarchy of the state and local government but not of the federal government.

The affordability crisis due to government is hidden in the form of price increases due to higher taxes and fees on the products and services we buy. When Americans talk about inflation, they usually talk about prices when we should be talking about affordability, which includes the government-imposed oligarchy costs.

And do not forget the big culprit, the Federal Reserve, who prints money as if it were water in the ocean. Inflation is a monetary problem, not a production problem. Sadly few people understand how inflation works, or how our monetary system works.

It used to be tied to gold (and then gold and silver) and the price of gold determined how many dollars went into circulation. That was the whole point of Fort Knox, to hold gold to back government spending. Now money is whatever the Federal Reserves decides it will be, and they are forever inflating currency by printing more, then they fiddle with interest rates to avoid "the economy overheating" as if demand is the problem. It's not; that is quasi-socialist thinking, the stupidity that came out of John Maynard Keynes and was employed by Nazis and Fascists and eventually the rest of us. It has been successful only because America has grown and keeps growing and so it can overcome the idiocy. But it won't forever and high prices now are just one of the early symptoms of the Western World's eventual collapse.

It's like saying we spend a lot of money on feed for the horse - why should we do that? Let's just SAY we feed the horse and it will be fine! For a time it is, then it gets weak and feeble and eventually dies. And the horse owner is stunned that the animal he took such good care of was so ungrateful as to croak on him.

That is essentially what the Fed is doing; making money out of nothing and seeing a booming economy so they say "why should we not make more money?" And it works for a time.

Because there IS NO WEALTH behind the money. It's just paper - or now just digits. There is no there there. It's a Ponzi scheme that eventually will leave someone holding the bag.

At any rate the author is correct; every level of government adds cost to most if not everything we buy. And a lot of it is wasteful. Do we really need libraries to host trans readings? Do we really need all of the "services" we are promised? DOJE found all sorts of stuff to cut when they were operating. Government is basically a welfare scheme for the politically connected.

We need to return to the traditional ideas of limited government. The Father Christmas approach to government is a failure; it's costing us way, way too much. Eventually it's going to crash and burn.

I just hope I'm gone when it does. I don't think the Ozark Hilton - my home-made cabin in the Ozark Mountains - is going to be adequate for me when nobody can spare a dime anymore.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Andrew "Benedict Arnold" McCarthy

Timothy Birdnow

If there ever was a reason to toss National Review into the trash it is this despicable article by the once-good Andrew McCarthy.

Congress Must Investigate Trump’s Aid and Comfort to Putin

I'm sorry if it's behind a paywall. You may not be able to see it. But the title speaks for itself.

Aid and Comfort to the enemy is treason, and the punishment for treason is death. McCarthy is calling for Donald Trump to be executed.

McCarthy was once Rush Limbaugh's friend. Rush is no doubt rolling over in his grave.

In fact NRO has gone completely mad and is no longer in any way a mainstream Conservative publication. Hatred of all things Trump has driven them to the brink of insanity (actually over the brink) and in their madness they are now calling the President a traitor. It's astonishing.

McCathy used to be sensible but apparently MAGA hatred has rotted their collective brains. They are now basically libertarian.

The same holds true for the American Spectator, which used to be a great magazine but has turned into NeverTrumpers and it's quality has greatly declined.

I got being NeverTrump in the early days. I thought him a tool of the Ruling Class, frankly, and was pretty bitterly opposed to him when he ran against my pick, Ted Cruz. But time has made me far less enthusiastic about Cruz and a stout Trump supporter, and that is because he has delivered, or really tried to deliver, on what he promised. He is not remaking America just restoring her. His policies are pretty much the same as Bill Clinton's back in the Nineties (sans Hillary), which makes Trump moderately liberal, but we moved so far Leftward that Clinton now looks more like Ronald Reagan. Trump was and is the best chance we have to restore America but the idiots at NRO and TAS are stuck on stupid, demanding some sort of purity from the man that nobody is going to be able to provide.

A lot of it stems from the tariffs and from securing the borders. NRO has always been a fan of absolute trade (it's not free trade) and lukewarm to border enforcement because the big money classes wanted the borders open. TAS used to be better but they seem to have become infected with TDS too.

Calling Trump a traitor is a bridge too far and I urge everyone to boycott National Review until they issue an apology. Oh, and they need to fire Andrew McCarthy.

I would like to point out to that jackass McCarthy that we are NOT AT WAR with Russia and have, in fact, been dealing with them all along. There is no enemy here. If Congress were to declare war then there would be an enemy. But not now.

Trump is hardly a traitor if he agrees to a limited trade deal with Russia. Calling him one is vile.

Certainly McCarthy calling Trump a traitor gives aid and comfort to America's political enemies. Who is the traitor Andy?

When George Washington went to visit his friend Benedict Arnold at West Point Arnold plotted to turn him over to the British. Pure luck or Divine Providence saved Washington from a hanging and saved the Revolution, but Arnold certainly tried. That is quite similar to what McCarthy has done here. He is trying to turn Trump over to the evil Leftists who so hate him. BTW doesn't he see that the Democrats and all leftists hate Trump? Why does McCarthy think that is the case?

Arnold barely escaped a hanging of his own, and fled to the British who never trusted a traitor like him. He died penniless in London. Maybe McCarthy can quit writing for NR and instead go to the New York Times. I'm sure they'd take him - but they would never trust him.

National Review owes everyone an apology. McCarthy needs to be in search of a job. Maybe he can work in a free law clinic? He should be a greeter at Walmart.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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All Quiet on the Russian Front?

Reader Mike has this to say about the Russo-Ukrainian war:

The reality is Ukraine has already damaged Russia's ability to produce diesel for years so why should Zelensky care. What I don't understand is why the European countries aren't on Zelensky's butt. In Belgium diesel is going for about $9.15 a gallon. Talk about a hurting, yet they are silent as Zelensky makes it tougher on them. The trade off must be what Ukraine is doing to the Russian military in losses in men and material. Ukraine has managed to reclaim about 150 square miles of territory. The territory reclaimed is a junk yard of burned out Russian vehicles and rotting corpses of dead Russians. Losses in men run from 500,000 to a million. Losses in material is running in the 100s of billions. To bad Trump cant make Putin see the light and sit down and talk peace.

Tim adds:

I hear you Mike.

I suspect the Europeans don't care about diesel because they were all committed to the Paris Accord and are going to use this to transition to "renewables" which they still believe can alter the world economy and end climate change. I suspect the Europeans hope to use this to convince their populations that dependence on diesel and other fossil fuels is bad for their own security and by letting the Russian diesel industry suffer they may suffer too but can turn that to their advantage and get more electric trucks and biodiesel and the like.

And also the plan all along was to bleed Russia to the point where they will have no choice but to stop trying to create an alternate system outside of their "rules based order" as they call it aka the international system and force them to take international aid, borrow money from the big international banks, and otherwise integrate into the European dominated New World Order system. I think they see Russia eventually establishing a liberal government that is in line with their values and willing to join the E.U. in time. I believe that is their goal and has been all along. This couldn't be attained through simple financial pressures since Moscow has already largely severed ties with the big banks and other financial scavengers. But a long, bloody, destructive war may make them more amenable. I fear the Europeans don't care about the Ukraine at all, just are using it to advance their own interests.

Putin walked right into that trap, I suspect. But of course he is the one who started the war in the first place and he should have been more adept at reading the tea leaves. Clearly he was very ill-advised by his military people.

Putin is a dirt bag and Russia would be well-rid of him, but from what I have seen anyone who would take over there would be worse.

I would also add if Russia were integrated into the European Union and even NATO they could in the end wind up being a worse threat to OUR security. How will Brussels hold control of the union with the Russians in it? Especially with France in so much trouble and Germany isn't far behind. Russia could well wind up in control in time.

But I see no way Russia would ever join an a political organization with the Germans; they hate them way too much.

Looking into the future I can see NATO and the E.U. becoming our enemy and our having a cold war with them. Integrating Russia, with her oil and gas and manpower (dwindling as we speak, of course) and with her massive nuclear arsenal into the European Alliance would make Europe at least comparable in power to the U.S. and they know it. I suspect this too is one of their goals.

So to me it makes sense how they've approached this whole war. This is, after all, the model used by France in the creation of the European Union in the first place; they wanted to integrate their economy with Germany's to make the Germans unwilling to ever attack them again. They did this by first forming an economic framework (The European Coal and Steel Community) which grew into the Common Market then the European Union. They did it and now Germany and France are little more than provinces in the European Union, run from Brussels. They hope to use this same Anschluss model on Russia, to tie Russia into their New World Order system. They hope to create a new nation with real power not dependent on the United States.

(By the by there was also a plan by the International elites to turn North America into a North American Union and that's why we had the North American Free Trade Agreement and in fact there is an African Union too, with similar goals. This was all part of an international movement to ultimately create world government, but I digress.)

Zelensky, who, I am sure, is run by the internationalists, refuses to negotiate peace. Of course Putin is making that refusal very easy as Putin is still under the illusion he can get a big win. He has been indulging in a war of attrition but he didn't anticipate drone warfare, which nullifies his larger army and greater resources. Also, I don't think he expected all the European and American aid that would flow into the Ukraine. At this point Putin needs to sit down with Zelensky in private and work out a way he can save face and get out. Both sides need to make it appear they won in this. There is too much bad blood, so I doubt it will happen.

And I would add Putin needs security guarantees to take to his people. HE didn't covet Ukraine for security reasons but economic and matters of pride, but the Russian People are suspicious by nature and also fear not having control of their borders. The country is mostly a flat plain and enemies have just strolled in for centuries. The Ukraine has always been a buffer zone; the very name means "borderland" and the Mongols destroyed it and kept destroying it so it was a wasteland that a Western army could not cross because they wouldn't be able to provision themselves. The Russians do not feel safe with a foreign power at their doorstep. When NATO expanded into Poland and the Baltic States the Russian People got very nervous. If the Ukraine joins NATO the Russians would be terrified. They want the borderland to be a borderland and not part of an enemy coalition, which they see NATO to be.

Of course Putin has other motives but the Russians themselves fear this. At least a good number of them do.

At any rate I know I made a long-winded reply to you Mike but I felt it necessary and also I'm feeling unusually windy today. So cheers!

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October 17, 2026

Rampaging RINO's and Wily Coyotes

Timothy Birdnow

Trump says Killer Karl Rove and John "I'm as corny as" Cornyn will be at fault if Ken Paxton loses to Tallimebananarico.

Trump Says He Will Blame These People If Ken Paxton Loses Texas Senate Race

Trump is right; Cornyn has actively worked against Paxton, encouraging his followers to vote against him. As for Rove, he's long been the Bush family lawyer and despises any real conservatives. Paxton is such.

And Paxton has gotten little to no money from the Republican National Committee, showing the RINO's still have a stranglehold on the party.

When Conservatives lose the RINO wing tells us to suck it up and vote for the RiNO, but when we win they take their ball and go home. I long for the day when the RINO wing can be safely kicked out of the GOP entirely and then they can go hang with the Democrats, who won't have them, of course. They will learn the hard way that the Dems were never their friends, just used them to gain power.

Anyway we need to purge Rove from any position of power and that includes his job and his seat on the board of directors at Fox News. Fox is moving ever leftward and it is going to ruin them in years to come (and probably us as well unless Newsmax or OANN grow big).

BTW I hear Sean Hannity was responsible for taking out Katie Zacharia, launching a surprise attack on her when she was interviewed by Hannity. Word on the street has it that Zacharia was not the spokeswoman of choice for Susie Wiles, Trump's Chief of Staff and a good friend of Hannity's.

Her tenure of office was even shorter than the next shortest - Anthony Scaramucci. The Mooch at least lasted a full week.

I know little about Zacharia but she apparently padded her resume', giving the impression she was a lawyer when in fact she failed the bar (something quite common). If we are to dismiss people for resume' padding most of Washington would be gone.

I've never trusted Susie Wiles. She ran the RINO John Huntsman's Presidential campaign, for instance, which does not speak well for her commitment. I would add she is the daughter of NFL star and broadcaster Pat Summerall and that she has never held a ral job outside of politics, starting her career as a receptionist for politician Jack Kemp.

Anyway I don't trust Wiles; I think she is Wily. And if Katie Zacharia was a bad pick because of her record why didn't Wiles know that and bring it up to Trump? Sounds to me like she was either derelict in her duty to vet Zacharia or she put a hit on her. Either way I feel Zacharia has gotten a raw deal here. She should at least have been given a couple of weeks.

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Omar Lashes Out (but What Else is New)

Timothy Birdnow

This from the brother-marrying son daughter of a genocidal military man.

lhan Omar

@IlhanMN

Thank you to everyone who stood with me over the years. It’s been a scary journey but I have always been grounded in my work and ability to provide exemplary service to my constituents. Trump and his administration have been after me since I arrived in Congress. I have always stood up to him and that will never change. The pedophile protector will never silence me.

She sure is cocky. And calling Trump a pedophile when she married her brother is pure bravado.

One of the commenters (before she shut them off) scoffed, saying Omar was exonerated over these charges in 2019. I hate to break it to the brother lover and this fellow but not only did a Federal judge issue the search warrant by a BIDEN APPOINTED federal judge who is a protege' of James Boasberg. There is new information that has come to light. And even the Biden DOJ had half-heartedly investigated the "riches to rags" Congress chick.

(BTW she looks like a trannie to me. And she never takes that scarf off her noggin; I wonder what is under there. Maybe it's just empty space?)

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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