Did you ever wonder how your life could have been different? What if you did not get that one break in your career where you were at the right place at the right time? Or you had an accident because you left the house five minutes later than normal and were in a hurry? Perhaps if you had not blown that entrance exam, you might have gotten that key grant that would have eliminated that college debt that eats at your life?

Now take those “what ifs” and look at key points in the history of humanity and think of how our lives today could have been so different. We might all be speaking Greek, or Turkish, or we might not exist as one of our grandparents died in a car accident instead of only suffering a broken leg. Few alternative histories are either beautifully written or present the reader with the “what ifs” of any particular scenario. Virtual History by Niall Ferguson is one of the few that stand out. Another is Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson. Publish in 2023, he takes us on a tour of twenty key pivots points in history and presents us with alternatives such as Alexander the Great who successful creates an empire that lasts a thousand years, the First World War which never happens because the Kaiser answered his phone before he went for a horse ride, a United States with a  President Wallace instead of Truman in which the Atomic bomb is not used and the result is a Soviet occupation of parts of Japan and most of Europe is controlled by the Soviet Union, the Third Crusade fails with the result that the Turks take Vienna in 1683 and all of Europe ends up like the Balkans, or Jimmy Carter starts a nuclear war. You cannot imagine the other alternatives.

What makes this alternative history so much better is that it does not stop with a different end to a war or siege but delves into the next step and the step after that to the point where our world is entirely different. How is that possible? It is like when you drop a stone into water and the waves continue to move out, continuing to disrupt the stillness. Exhibiting a wonderful knowledge of history and excellent insight into human nature, the author takes the reader on voyages which are both exciting and at times disturbing. Nietzsche wrote that each action we take impacts us for the rest of our lives and Johnson applies that to the entire scope of humanity.

This is a fun book that should leave you thinking not only about his subjects but also encouraging you to apply his concept to your life. Read it and enjoy!

Unfortunately, we tend to get our news via short, highly edited, and questionable “objective” snippets as we are on the run. The old legacy media media of NBC, CBS and ABC are widely ignored no matter how much is paid to the latest talking head. That is why an interview like the one linked here is so important.

Tom Holman is often presented as a hard talking, in your face individual who is doing the dirty job of cleaning up not only the prior Presidents’ mess, but also the mess of other Presidents. It seems that everyone agrees that we need to remove the worse of the worse criminal aliens from our midst, but for some reason there are short sighted politicians who fail to understand that their efforts to block Holman guarantees to make life harder to the “good” illegals that they say they are protecting; especially those who clean their pools, mow their laws and act as their nannies.  Never mind that those same illegals are the first to suffer at the hands of the “worse of the worse.”

This interview shows that there is so much more to Holman’s job than picking up criminal illegals. He and his ilk also rescue some of those 300,000 children who were somehow “lost” during the Biden administration. They also rescue women forced into prostitution by the criminal cartels, act with other agencies against money laundering, tax evasion, and more.

If you watch the interview, you may view the next interview by a talking head of Holman a bit differently.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

• Germany: the race to the bottom- For well over a thousand years, especially in the West, the concept of a social contract between the government and the governed has been developing. It has not always been perfect, but it has been a steady part of Western culture. Briefly it says that you the citizens agree to pay taxes and obey the laws, including if necessary, taking up arms to defend the state. In return, the state agrees to work to protect the citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic and to provide certain services (health inspections, a school system, fire, and police services, etc.). No government can stay in power without at least a minimal amount of support from its’ citizens.

Germany, like all other governments is constantly looking for new streams of revenue. One new stream is making cannabis legal. As usual, on paper it looked like a great idea; by making it legal, it should undercut the drug cartels and thus save money on policing. Additionally, it is a repeat business that is unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy. Never mind that modern day cannabis is basically a mutant of the cannabis which is not only stronger than the cannabis of Woodstock fame, but is know to cause mental problems, such as depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc., especially among the younger generation (up to the age of the mid-20s). So, a certain portion of our youth will face mental problems in their lives, that is just the cost of getting more taxes.

The problem is, in Germany for example, that the sale of cannabis is not creating the tax windfall that was expected. Why? One reason is that the underground economy offers a stronger version of cannabis than that offered by the government. This can be done by altering the amount of THC; in fact, the amount of THC in European cannabis is nearly double since 2013. The market responds as the legal cannabis has less THC and thus the underground economy is outperforming the legal product.

What is a government to do? They want their money. They could put an all-out effort into eliminating much of the underground economy but that would take time and money, and they have not been that successful in the past. The obvious solution to the government is to increase the THC, thus making the legal stronger so it can compete with the underground-economy product. Of course, the stronger the product, the more dangerous and damaging to the citizens who not only use the product but have to face individuals who are impacted by the stronger product. Given the long-term thinking (?) of the government, which should solve the problem, right? Not really, as all those who work the underground economy need to do is to up the amount of THC to maintain market share. This means in effect that the government, in its quest for dollars, is in a race to the bottom against the underground economy. It is a kind of, “if we cannot lick them, we can join them.”

The social contract is not what it used to be; we cannot count on the government to protect us from foreign and internal enemies. Does that mean I get a tax refund for the governments not only failure, but conscious decision to offer a product that is increasingly dangerous. (FT,  6/7-8, 2025, pp. 2)

In the past week, three Chinese students some of whom had entered the U.S. illegally and even voted in the 2024 election were caught and face Federal charges of attempting to bring in the U.S. a deadly fungus that can devastate crops such as wheat, barley, maize and rice.  They have been studying at the University of Michigan, and one has an advanced degree in plant pathogens. Some of the students have received funds from an institute partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party. Elsewhere, there is a growing concern over the purchase of U.S. farmland near U.S. military bases. Although the amount of land is only about 1% of our total farmland, it still amounts to nearly four hundred-thousand acres of land. While the recent military success of the Ukrainian forces against the Russian strategic bomber fleet has begun to bring concerns about the safety of our B-1 and B-2 strategic bombers, the Governor of Arizona recently vetoed a state bill restricting the purchase of land by Chinese nationals. Finally, the discovery of unlicensed Chinese labs in the U.S. who were working on dangerous work related to Covid-19 and were found to have genetically modified mice, has raised further questions of what are the intentions of Communist China.

The intentions are not a secret if anyone has read the 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, both retired Chinese colonels. Originally published by the People’s Liberation Army Literature & Arts Publishing House, it must have been approved by the Communist Party. They argue that generals such as Colin Powell and Schwarzkopf are more “traditional” and that they do not understand today’s war options. Further, for today’s war to be won, all available tools, including cyber and economic means, the use of media influence and legal manipulation (lawfare) must be used. They argue that the traditional boundaries of warfare must be “widened.”  For example, they write:

“The existence of boundaries is a prerequisite for differentiating objects from one another. In a world where all things are interdependent, the significance of boundaries is merely relative. The expression “to exceed limits” means to go beyond things which are called or understood to be boundaries. It does not matter whether they fall into the category of physical, spiritual, or technical, or if they are called “limits,” “defined limits,” constraints,” “border,” “rules,” ….” or even taboos.”  Speaking in terms of war, this could mean the boundary between the battlefield and what is not the battlefield, between what is a weapon and what is not, between soldier and noncombatants, between state and non-state or supra-state.”  (pp158) In other words, no boundaries, a concept of warfare (with both success and failure) that the West has attempted for a thousand years to change. In their concept of war, one need not worry about “terms of engagement,” for the gloves are off.

On the next page, they attempt to dress this up by referring to “going beyond the limits,” “surpassing all boundaries and conforming with the laws of victory when conducting warfare with combinations. Thus, we obtain a complete concept, a completely new method of warfare called “modified combined warfare that goes beyond limits.”

We currently have over a quarter of a million Chinese nationals in our universities. Those students are expected to report back to the homeland on research, ideas, and individuals. Those same universities have accepted billions of dollars from Chinese foundations and think tanks funded by the Chinese party and military.

There is an old saying, “forgive me my paranoia, for I know what I fear.”  We are an open, trusting society. Traditionally we have always thought the best of our fellow man as we were founded on Judeo-Christian ideals. It has been eighty years since we faced and defeated nations which believed that the ends justify the means. Perhaps eighty years is too long a time for us to put a threat in its’ proper perspective.

There are getting to be a number of “trigger” words, which when heard, should make you immediately be on your guard. Normally these trigger words are spoken by an individual or group who present themselves as having a plan which will make your life better. As a rule, they spring up from the Left and their mission may be to save the planet, or save some particular species, or it is to ensure “equity” which will be better for everyone. There is always an entire pantheon of causes that need to be put right. They talk a lot about what a glorious future they offer but somehow never manage to tell you the price in either economic or very personal terms. They remain true to their mission no matter the actual results, assuring themselves and their audience that success is just around the corner.

Such promises are nothing new for if we read our history, great promises of utopia were the rationale of the various five-year plans under Stalin. There were great successes as well as great failures, but the promised utopia never arrived and the millions who paid the ultimate price were swept into the dustbin of history.

More recently we have seen a great march to “net zero,” especially in Europe. Germany has spent untold billions of Euros on their particular march with the end result being that the cost of energy is among the highest in the world, industries are leaving for nations with lower energy costs, unemployment is creeping into industries which were the mainstay of the economy and finally, the air is no cleaner, in fact it is dirtier than before the great march to “net zero”.  It is as if the political leadership of Germany had just arrived from another planet and did not realize the realities of German weather. The fact that most of Germany only gets 150-200 days of sunshine is something that the planners of solar power never realized.

Learn from mistakes? Why do that when the architects of failure can always count on the mild nature of the people they rule? Spain and Portugal are recent examples of failure when both countries suffered electrical failures of a size never before experienced in the history of humanity. The result? The leaders of both nations swore to move even faster toward net zero, putting the health and well-being of the citizens ever more into a danger zone.

The quest for left of center rulers to dominate and control the lives of those they rule is never ending. The attached article focuses on the concept of “15-minute cities”, where your ability to travel freely and participate in an open society will be discouraged. Do the rulers in this situation believe that their citizens will be happier, more prosperous, more creative? That is not what they offer. They claim that such cities will be better able to withstand challenges like they faced during Covid. So, do we completely restructure civilization in the belief that we will face more Covid type challenges in the future? When will the next pandemic show up? In a year, five years, 50 years? We are expected to give up our freedoms for an event that might very well not occur in our lifetime. Given that the “scientific” leaders were so disastrous wrong about the value of masks, distancing, shutting down schools, churches and businesses, not to mention insisting that those with the highest immunity be forced to take a vaccine which could counter-act their natural immunity, why would we accept that “15 minute cities” will be any more successful than more open societies?

It is always nice to look at a project or plan and imagine the wonderful upside of success. But we must be realistic how many of those golden promises have ever been fulfilled. We need to be more willing to ask and demand answers on what are the dangers on the downside. If the downside risk is greater, or more easily achieved than the upside, perhaps we need to tread a bit more cautiously.

The War on City-Dwellers: ‘Climate Change’: Grift of the Century, Part III :: Gatestone Institute

The average citizen expects that after the changing of the guard at the White House, there will eventually be a couple of “insider” books which will air some of the dirty laundry for that administration.  It used to be that those books would wait a discreet length of time, similar to a time of morning before the dead, or in this case, the dethroned would not be spoken of ill. Not any longer; the exit of the Biden administration has produced a fountain of tell all books in a remarkably brief period of time.

Fight was one of the first, and the two authors, both from left of center careers tell much of the story of the palace coup which led to an election unlike any other in U.S. history. They present a well-balanced book which is both kind and cruel to various players. They give credit where credit is due, such as to Kamala Harris for her successful efforts to quickly wrap up the delegate pledges despite the lack of support from former President Obama. While much of the hierarchy of the Democratic party procrastinated, Harris was on the phone, working to secure her position as the candidate of a party shaken by the turn of events. Unfortunately, from there, here next steps were halting and ineffectual. Pelosi held the view that there were “better candidates who didn’t have Harris’s negative, but that anyone would be better for House and Senate races than Biden” according to one Pelosi insider. Obama went as far as to tell Harris that she could not defeat Trump.

The book also details the gradual slippage of support for Biden after his disastrous debate against Trump. Biden was determined to hang on, as he had been pursuing the Presidency for years and was still upset at Obama for supporting Hillary Clinton. Additionally, Biden had been unsuccessful at selling his touted economic gains, he refused to acknowledge the terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan and his open border policy were all unpopular with the majority of Americans. After the failed debate, many Democrats wondered how they could sell another four-year term of a clearly shaky Biden to the public. It was a difficult choice for Obama, Clinton, and Pelosi but in the end, they decided that Biden simply had to go; up to fifty years of friendship was not as important as the maintenance of power.

Sadder than the betrayal Biden felt as he was abandoned by his long-term friends and allies was the complete misreading of pre-election polls and its impact on Harris. Up until election night, Harris was sure she was going to be victorious and like Hillary Clinton before her, but for different reasons, her loss hit her like a hammer. Despite spending over one point five billion dollars, she had failed at the basic level of being able to communicate with the average American. Missed opportunities were often due to her inability to balance her loyalty to Biden and her need to show she was her own person. She also simply did not have the skills necessary to play in the real world of politics where she had to stand on her own before the masses.

This is one of numerous books which have and will continue to flood the market, and each one will add to the mosaic that is the story of this past election. As the Democrats had to discard friendships and loyalty, so to will each of the stories told by insiders mean that they will have crossed the Rubicon against their party. Loyalty, or at least discretion, seem to have disappeared in the scramble for a publisher and royalties. The election is not a story that has many winners.

This is the story of how American business, which is the American people came together to produce the best equipped military in the history of the world.  The book has two key players; not FDR, not Eisenhower, not even Marshall, but two Americans, one a first generation American, the second, an immigrant who helped to focus and force American industry at a time of national peril. 

The first was Henry Kaiser, first generation American who through his drive and skills was the driving force behind such pre-war projects as Boulder and Grand Coulee dams, as well as thousands of miles of paved roads as the country was getting behind the wheel of their new cars.  His vision of what he could do enabled him to move into ship building, but his skill was not just in being able to successfully move from industry to industry (during the war he would build ships, airplanes, etc.) but in finding ways to mass produce them in record time.  An example is his work building the Liberty Ships which helped to defeat Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic.  When given a contract to build ships, he also had to build his own shipyards, as well as recruit workers and provide housing for them.  The workers came from every facet of American life; they were teachers, hairdressers, farmers, students, housewives, etc. and they all had to be taught how to handle tools, cut sheet metal, maintain equipment, order parts, inventory those parts, supervise production lines, etc.  All from scratch.  And he did it so successfully that a ship which use to take 200+ days to produce were coming down the waterways at one every 15-20 days.

The other main character in this excellent book is William Knudsen, a Danish immigrant (he landed in the U.S. before his teens) who not only revolutionized the production facilities of Henry Ford, but also was the driving force behind General Motors which he managed to be built to a point where it surpassed the production of his old boss, Henry Ford.  Knudsen was the type of production man who could look at a production problem and, in his mind, reconfigure the entire process to speed up production and better quality.  In recognition of his skills, he was the only civilian in the history of the U.S. to be made a Lieutenant General in the military.

But this is also the story of the average Americans who not only worked at the huge war plants but created tens of thousands of businesses to support the war effort.  An excellent example is Ma and Pa Harrington in Rockford Illinois.  Their specialty was making machine tools for turning artillery shells and tank turrets.  When they realized that a new lathe would cost four thousand dollars, they made their own out of a junked lather, an old washing machine motor, and oil pump from a 1926 Chevrolet and an old washtub that caught the oil that leaked from the bottom of the home-made tool, all in their living room!  This is an example of American ingenuity which was not found anywhere else in the world and which contributed so much to the war effort.

In the days before the internet, social media, faxes, computers, even a reliable nationwide telephone system, we would able to design, order, produce, ship, inventory and assemble the 55,000 parts for a bomber, all in record numbers.  That ability won the war as surely as the men on the front line, and despite the best efforts of the New Dealers in Washington who wanted to direct all production centrally, as occurred in Nazi Germany. 

This is an inspiration book, of interest to anyone interested in production, or wishing to read a book about what the country was capable of during those dark hours.  Is the country, are our people still able to pull together in such a desperate time?  That is for you to determine.

Last week I posted (But Will Europe Listen) about the threat to Europe, not from the U.S., but from the leaders of Europe who have allowed their nations to sink into an unrealistic sea of complacency. For decades, living under the U.S. umbrella of protection, the leaders of the E.U. have acted like teenagers, believing that tomorrow will never come regarding their own defense and their survival.

Tomorrow has arrived with the second Trump administration and the demise of the enfeebled Biden presidency. Suddenly the leaders of the Western European democracies face a dark and threatening future with troubling questions. Will Trump leave NATO? If he decides to stay, how much will the U.S. contribute to the defense of Europe given the other challenges to the U.S.? Given the hideous bureaucracy of the EU, how can the nations of NATO co-ordinate their growth of military spending so that waste and inefficiency are minimized? How are the massive amounts of money needed to rebuild NATOs military going to found? If the money is raised, does Europe have enough energy at reasonable costs to manufacture what it needs? Given the level of technology in Europe vs. the U.S., does Europe have the ability to produce the technology for current and future weapons systems. The list can go on and on.
The attached article outlines key problems and provides practical solutions to a few of these questions.

We are living in interesting times, and it remains to be seen if Europe, so long living in a dream world can summon the leadership and be able to face its greatest challenges in over eighty years.

Joint EU debt for European defence investment is a questionable idea – Brussels Report

Europe is going through a challenging time. For decades it has lived in a never-never land of social welfare programs designed to provide its’ citizens with ever immagionable comfort: free schools for as long as you wish to remain an adolexcent, free health care, job protection, and so much more. Of course, those “perks” of life are not really free, they are paid for by high taxes. But it was a compact between the government and the people. This promise could be fulfilled as long as the United States provided for the protection of Europe thus freeing billions of Euros annually and the demographic balance could be maintained.

Unfortunately, that compact was broken; the governments upset the balance by allowing seemingly unlimited migration of people who do not have a tradition of Western liberal democracy values, who want the “goodies” of the west without having to produce anything has disrupted the compact. Somehow the leaders of the EU managed to convince themselves that individuals from societies morally grounded in the fourteen century would provide the technocrats, doctors, engineers, and other skilled professions needed to maintain their standard of living.

Additionally, the umbrella of U.S. protection begain to be pulled back. With a new major economic and military threat growing in Asia, the U.S. began to question, why should the U.S. spend its precious wealth protecting someone else who had no desire to protect themselves?

Finally, while the leaders of the E.U. claim that President Trump is a threat to democracy, it is the Europeans themselves who are passing laws aimed at limiting speech and even thought.
The quiet secret that no one has mentioned for decades suddenly has come into the light; most of Western Europe has been suffering from societal atrophy. Europe has lost their economic edge; they have contributed little to recent technologies, their militaries were often decades behind the times, their industry is moribund, their tax system and bureaucracy stifle those who are innovative and reduce their capital for new ventures.

The attached lightly edited speech by Vice President J.D. Vance points out a number of threats to the E.U., all of them internal and all of them created by the governments of the E.U. The E.U. cannot regain its’ strength by fining American tech companies because Europe does not have the ability to compete, nor can the E.U. claim to stand for the dignity of man when they warn people not to pray in their own homes if they are within a “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic. If a politician can use the law against a citizen because the politicians “dignity” or “feelings” have been hurt, then it is time for those politicians to realize they are there to serve and not to act as if they wear the purple. Crimes by those immigrants who cannot and will not assimilate have been covered up for years and arresting those who expose them only go to undercut the trust between the governed and the governments.

It was said that no one had ever spoken to European leaders like Vice President Vance and that is too bad. Continuing to follow a failed path is the mark of stupidity and we all want to believe that there are still rational, strong leaders in Europe who can reverse the course of failure.

Europe Must Listen to Its People – The American Mind

The politicians and bureaucrats of the EU are incredibly nervous about President Trump. They fear that the party is over and the days of using the U.S. as a financial milk cow via lawsuits, unfair tariffs, billions of dollars of fines and a refusal to adequately support their own militaries during the march of dictators and religious fanatics.

Western Europe in particular is nervous as France, Germany, Belgium and although not in the EU, the U.K. are led by weak political leaders who often are at the mercy of their own shaky coalition governments. Behind the scenes, the faceless bureaucrats who are the real power continue to insist on the failing policies which they promised would deliver a better life but have failed by every standard.

The attached article shows that the real problem with Europe is in fact the EU. The EU bureaucracy is Europe’s “deep state.” Unelected the committees and departments follow their own ideology and pay no price for their remarkable number of failures. From an idea to provide easier trade, the EU has grown into an uncontrollable behemoth which seeks power over those who it believes should serve it.

Perhaps Trump will provide the cover for European politicians to begin to gain a degree of control over their nation’s future as his desire to “balance the books” between Europe and the U.S. is enunciated.

What Is Really Destroying Europe? The EU. :: Gatestone Institute