What's Trump's Shutdown Strategy?

A point I've been making about Trump, especially in his second term, is that he isn't the implulsive, ego-driven guy the legacy media wants to make him, although I haven't seen even any alt media making a serious effort to portray him as an astute strategist. But clearly a bull-in-the-china-shop disrupter couldn't have worked out this past week's Gaza deal -- and let's recognize that he's also been eager to share credit for that with Secretary Rubio and his personal emissaries. This isn't a comic-book narcissist.

But if there's method to the madness, what's his strategy for the shutdown? He seems over the past several weeks to have been concentrating on foreign policy; after the Gaza deal, he seems to have been renewing focus on Ukraine, while raising the level of harassment against Maduro in Venezuela. Over the same period, he's had little to say about the shutdown, other than consistently calling the Democrats "deranged" every few days since before it began. He seems happy enough to let Speaker Johnson make most of the public comment. As of yesterday, he added slightly more:

In clips that aired Friday from Trump's interview with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo, President Trump was asked about the ongoing closure of the government by the Democrats and if he thought that this weekend's "No Kings" rally planned by leftists in Washington, D.C., and across the country was the reason Democrats had refused to reopen the government.

Trump shook his head no and explained that the shutdown was happening because Schumer is trying to hang on to his failing political career.

"Chuck is at the end of the line," Trump said. "He's being beaten by everybody that they poll against him. And you know what he did is he did the right thing a couple of years ago on something like this. And he got hurt by his party. "

"I don't think it matters to him," he added. "He's just so dead that he will do anything. I think they could just stay out forever, to be honest with you."

On one hand, Trump doesn't seem particularly perturbed at the idea of the shutdown lasting "forever", although I suspect it's because he's confident it won't. His move to use unspent funds to pay the miitary on October 15 relieved a pressure point on the administration, but a new one now looms if other federal workers, including air traffic controllers and TSA, go unpaid through Thanksgiving.

“As TSA agents and air traffic controllers show up without pay, Democrats brag they won’t budge until planes fall out of the sky,” said Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), the GOP conference chair. “Really? Seriously?”

. . . “Airports will be flooded with flight cancellations and delays amid the busiest time to travel all year, and the list goes on and on,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said alongside Speaker Mike Johnson at a news conference Tuesday, calling on Democrats to “reopen our government.”'

The polls appear to be moving:

Just last week, the blame gap stood at 11 points, with 39% of Americans pointing fingers at President Trump and Republicans, while 33% blamed Democrats. Now that gap has shrunk to just 6 points, with Democrats holding steady at 33% but losing ground as fewer voters are willing to split the blame equally between both parties. That number dropped from 23% to 20% in a single week.

Via Axios:

In his first term, President Trump was highly sensitive to being blamed for a shutdown, and there has been an undercurrent of bipartisan belief that he will try to get a deal from Democrats this time.

But so far, Trump has displayed none of the concerns or worry he had in 2018-2019, during the longest shutdown of 35 days.

This seems to be borne out by his seeming imperturbability at the prospect of the shutdown lasting "forever". As he appears to see it, Schumer isn't thinking strategically, he's just fighting a losing battle to prolong his career. Axios contiinues,

44% in the internal White House polling blame the shutdown on President Trump and the GOP-led Congress. 38% blame Democrats.

But public opinion has shifted a net of seven percentage points against Democrats. Two weeks ago, Democrats had a 13-point advantage on who was to blame. Now that lead has been cut by more than half.

The trend line of the White House's polling numbers are consistent with YouGov/Economist surveys that showed Democrats taking more blame as the shutdown grinds on.

Yesterday's headline at The Daily Beast: How Trump Broke Congress in Just Nine Months. The subhead: The government shutdown is just the tip of the iceberg of the dysfunction in Washington, DC.

As for a president so keen to tout his peacemaking skills overseas, he has not lifted a finger to facilitate an end to the standoff, and in many instances, eagerly stoked the political battle raging just down the road on Capitol Hill as his top officials look at ways to consolidate his power in Washington, DC, further.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is The Daily Beast left-wing?" and it replied,

Based on analyses by media watchdogs and other observers, The Daily Beast is generally considered left-leaning or liberal, particularly in its commentary and opinion content. While the outlet describes its news reporting as "non-partisan but not neutral," its liberal bias is a widely noted characteristic.

In other words, the left is starting to worry that Trump is going to win this. Because, of course, he's impulsive and ego-driven.

Pritzker Hinky?

Yesterday it was reported,

Billionaire Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker raked it in big in 2024, including more than $1 million while gambling in Las Vegas.

A new tax filing released by Pritzker’s campaign on Wednesday, Oct. 14, shows the Democratic governor and his wife, MK, reporting about $10.7 million in adjusted gross income, according to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC News.

The filing also indicated that $1.4 million reportedly came from the Hyatt Hotels Corp. heir winning blackjack at a Las Vegas casino.

. . . “I went on vacation with my wife, with some friends,” he said. “I was incredibly lucky. You have to be to end up ahead, frankly, going to a casino anywhere — it was in Las Vegas — and I like to play cards,”

His campaign said the governor will be donating his winnings to charity.

Several things jump out at me here. I'm not a tax expert; all I know about taxes is that my wife takes everything to an accountant before April 15 each year. But what has me scratching my head is that Pritzker won the $1.4 million in 2024, but here we are in 2025, and his campaign says he "will be donating" the money to charity. This reminds me of the Amber Heard dodge: it came out in the Johnny Depp defamation trial that she "pledged" to donate her $7 million divorce settlement to charity. However, a pledge is just a non-binding promise, and she never actually donated the amount, saying she just used the words "pledge" and "donate" synonymously.

So I have a certain sense of weasel-wording from Pritzker here. More suspicious is the social media reaction to the news of his blackjack win reported in this post at Gateway Pundit, in which observers thought this must be a way to launder kickbacks and similar payments. I asked Chrome AI mode, "How unusual is it to win $1.4 million in blackjack?" but didn't mention Pritzker. Oddly, "AI" immediately read my mind and already knew the question was about Pritzker:

Winning $1.4 million in blackjack is extremely unusual and almost certainly the result of a high-stakes, short-term lucky streak, rather than a prolonged session of consistent winnings. While blackjack has some of the best odds in a casino, the house edge makes such a massive net win highly improbable over the long term.

. . . Such a large win typically occurs with very large bets placed at high-roller tables, which require a substantial bankroll. A high-roller, such as Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who won $1.4 million in Las Vegas, could place wagers as high as $100,000 on a single hand. This makes it possible to accumulate huge wins in a short period.

Here's the problem I see, or at least think I see. Nothing gets by casino security; there are cameras everywhere and agents to back them up on the floor. The Governor of Illinois, J B Pritzker, doesn't just wander into a casino off the street. His security guys coordinate with the casino's security guys. The casino is perfectly aware of Pritzker's every move, they know what table he's playing. They likely know every bet he makes in real time. Nothing involving J B Pritzker is going to be a surprise, especially not a $1.4 million win. I don't need to be Philip Marlowe to figure that one out.

"AI" is telling me this is just blind luck, a whale of the sort that's comped suites, gourmet meals, expensive booze, trips on private jets because he always loses suddenly wins big time. But "AI" goes on to tell me that not only is Pritzker real, real lucky, he's real, real smart on top of it:

A key factor in realizing a large net win is having the discipline to stop playing while ahead. As Pritzker also observed, many players who go on a winning streak will keep playing until they lose everything they have won. Ending a session after a big win locks in the profit.

According to Wikipedia, Pritzker's estimated net worth is $3.9 billion. $1.4 million should be chump change to the guy. So the received version of this story would be, "Wow, what a night! Never had such fun in my life! This win will really be great for the Holocaust Museum's new wing! I'll tell my lawyers to transfer %1.4 million to the museum tomorrow morning!" Except that's not what happened. If his campaign has this right, he still hasn't donated the money, at least a year later.

And here's another odd bit: in his televised remarks on his big win, he urged people to come gamble in Illinois casinos -- but he went to Vegas instead. I doubt if any Illinois casino can comp at his level. Or maybe nobody in Illinois casinos has the resources to launder money at the national Democrat level.

Still suspicious, I asked Chrome AI mode, again without mentioning Pritzker, "Are there any surprises when $1.4 million is involved?" Boy, is AI something -- it read my mind once again!

Surprises with a $1.4 million windfall typically relate to the financial, legal, and personal complexities that arise from managing a large, unexpected sum of money. Recent events, like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's $1.4 million blackjack win, highlight how such windfalls can attract intense public scrutiny and require thoughtful handling.

To a guy with a net worth of #3.9 billion, $1.4 million ought to be chump change, just a lucky night at the casino, but apparently it isn't, or it would already have been donated. Pritzker is a strange character. Short, fat, and Jewish, his chances of being elected to the presidency as a Democrat are close to nil, but he continues that vanity project while denouncing Trump with increasingly unhinged rhetoric. I don't rule out that he's nervous about too much federal law enforcement getting a little too nosy around Chicago.

Looking More Closely At Mikie Sherrill's Involvement In The Naval Academy Cheating Scandal

Late last month, information leaked that Mikie Sherrill, a US congresswoman and candidate for New Jersey governor, had been somehow caught up in the 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal, which I've discussed here. Her original version as of September 25 was this:

"There was a test at the school that was stolen," Sherrill said. "I did not realize it was stolen. I took the test... afterwards I knew what the rumor mill was... I didn't come forward with that information."

No documents released or obtained by news outlets have shown that Sherrill was involved in the cheating, but because she did not report her classmates, she was not permitted to walk at graduation.

However, on October 9, she appeared to modify this story, indicating that she had in fact spoken to inveatigators:

“There were hundreds of people in my class that spoke to investigators. When I did, I told them what I knew,” she told reporters after her second debate when asked about her explanation.

. . . Sherrill has refused to release her full disciplinary record, which would paint a fuller picture of what happened.

A source who was involved in the Naval Academy’s investigation into the cheating scandal also expressed skepticism about Sherrill’s version of events, saying, “There would have to be more” to the story based on the punishment she received.

But this slight change leaves much more unsaid. This substack essay goes into greater detail about the actual wording of the Naval Academy honor code, the Inspector General's investigation of the cheating, and what it implies about Sherrill's potential violation:

The investigation was complicated and lengthened by the decisions of many midshipmen not to cooperate and even to lie to investigators. It concluded on January 20, 1994, with a 30-page Report of Investigation. The Report notes numerous instances where midshipmen refused to answer questions either because they wanted to protect themselves or because they did not want to “bilge” their classmates by giving truthful answers about the cheating.

. . . The IG’s Report details how some midshipmen lied repeatedly to investigators, even when under oath. Others retained attorneys who advised them to “plead the Fifth” by refusing to answer questions, even after the Academy Superintendent dropped a criminal investigation and granted them immunity from criminal charges. The IG also found “much evidence that midshipmen conspired to conceal their involvement” in the cheating scandal, including efforts “to coordinate and perfect the testimony they would give.”

. . . Sherrill claims that she was disciplined by not being allowed to walk and not being listed in the graduation program because she did not “turn in” classmates who were implicated in cheating. However, as shown below, her story does not ‘hold water.’

An important distinction between the honor systems at the Naval Academy and those at West Point and the Air Force Academy is that the USNA Honor Concept does not contain a non-toleration clause as do the other academies’ Honor Codes. The latter state simply, “A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.” Under that last clause, a cadet’s failure to turn in another cadet is treated as an honor violation and is punished just as severely as the original violation. But in the absence of such a non-toleration clause, USNA midshipmen are not required to turn in others for honor violations, and USNA does not punish a refusal to do so as a violation of the Honor Concept. And consistent with the lack of a non-toleration clause, midshipmen are not punished for refusing to turn in their classmates.

. . . Given the USNA policy of not punishing midshipmen who refused to inform on others who may have committed honor violations, Sherrill’s repeated story that she was punished for not turning in her classmates cannot be true.

So this makes her September 25 statement that her honor violation was not turning in classmates questionable. But what about her October 9 statement that she did in fact talk to investigators? The substack goes on,

So, we know that Sherrill was disciplined for something related to the theft of the EE 311 exam, but we still do not know what. But we do know that it was not for failing to turn in classmates. Based upon the IG report, however, we cannot rule out that she was “punished for lying to Naval investigators.”

A 1994 classmate of Sherrill's and former Navy officer, Brent Sadler, is quoted in the New York Post story linked above:

He believes that her public admission about not coming forward with information she knew about the cheating scandal sounds like a violation of the honor concept.

Besides expulsion, the way to rectify that is a corrective program known as honor remediation, which includes tasks such as writing papers reflecting on their transgressions.

“Some of the things they had to do that I remember is that they had to write a letter … to the [academy] superintendent [saying ‘I am] very sorry …. I’ve learned my lesson,'” the investigative source recounted of how remediation worked. “Which is really horses—.”

Sherrill has a 254-day gap after graduation, during which she remained at Annapolis.

. . . “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Sadler said when asked about how Sherrill could’ve been barred from walking and not faced further discipline.

“There was only one group of folks associated with the double E scandal that didn’t graduate … but then got the commission later, and their degree later … and that was for this remediation, this honor code remediation.”

So it sounds as though Sherrill's original explanation for her violation, that she didn't rat on her classmates, is improbable at best. The actual circumstances under which she didn't walk with her classmates to receive her diploma are also unclear; a gap of eight months before she actually received her diploma and commission after the rest of her class isn't mentioned or explained anywhere else, and a reasonable inference would be that her actual violation was much more serious and could only be resolved via a remediation program.

Polling data suggests that Sherrill still leads Republican Ciattarelli in the runup to the election, although her lead is shrinking. It's difficult to say whether the Naval Academy scandal is any part of this effect, since other questions surround her, especially the fact that she and her husband have enriched themselves since her election to congress.

The Simmering Battle Over Public Space

In Sunday's post, I began to think about the role of public space in a well-ordered society, and it brought me back to what I've recognized for several years: there's an ongoing battle over who controls it. Remarks in 2021 by former LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva brought the issue into focus:

“Public space belongs to the entire public, not to one individual. And that is the fundamental responsibility of government. That’s the fundamental failure of the Board of Supervisors, L.A. City Council and the mayor of L.A. — they have refused to regulate public space,” Villanueva said Monday. “And that is why the problem is growing exponentially year after year.”

The particular problem was that the Venice boardwalk, a feature of a city beach area, had become a space for homeless encampments, which due to filth and antisocial behavior had driven out ordinary citizens who had expected to visit for recreation. In effect, the local authorities had abdicated their responsibility to regulate public space on behalf of the community. Villanueva, for a time at least, unilaterally stepped in, using his overall authority over LA County law enforcement to override the city's LAPD and use sheriff's deputies to clean up the boardwalk.

On one hand, this so irritated nearly every other local official that they coordinated an effort to vote Villanueva out as sheriff in the next election. On the other, city voters in the Venice council district also voted out the incumbent councilman who'd enabled the homeless problem there. Villanueva is attempting a comeback in next year's election. But so far, I think he's made the single most succinct articulation of the issue surrounding public space.

This is also related to what might be called the Starbucks Dilemma. I think Starbucks's problem began with an incident nobody remembers from 2018: two African-American men intended to hold a business meeting with a potential associate in a Philadelphia Starbucks. They seated themselves at a table as they waited for the other associate.

Neither placed an order; their intent was simply to hold the meeting in the Starbucks's comfortable public space. However, when one asked to use the restroom, he was told it was for paying customers only, and he was asked to leave. When he refused, the store manager called police and requested that the men be removed for trespassing. The two men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were arrested for trespassing and taken to jail, but they were released several hours later without charges.

A major controversy then ensued.

“We were there for a real reason, a real deal that we were working on,” Robinson explained. “We put in a lot of time, energy, effort … We were at a moment that could have a positive impact on a whole ladder of people, lives, families. So I was like, ‘No, you’re not stopping that right now.”’

The Democratic mayor, Jim Kenney, who is white, said what happened at the Starbucks “appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018”. The police commissioner, Richard Ross, who is black, said in a Facebook post that arresting officers “did absolutely nothing wrong”, and added that Nelson and Robinson were disrespectful to officers.

. . . Over the weekend, attention and outrage over [a viral] video grew, prompting a protest at the local Starbucks restaurant and a national boycott. By Monday, the men were set to meet with Starbucks’ CEO, Kevin Johnson, to discuss what happened.

Johnson has responded quickly to public outcry around the arrests, calling them “reprehensible”, apologizing and ordering stores closed for mandatory training to tackle unconscious bias.

Starbucks's original business model was to create a "third place" between home and work equivalent to a local pub or European coffee house. The problem is that it's a sorta-kinda public space, theoretically like a park or museum, but the users must pay to use it, indirectly in this case. The cost to the store of the pleasant, welcoming, community-like environment is offset by the premium price of the coffee drinks and snacks the customers buy. Nelson and Robinson were in effect subverting the business model by refusing to pay for the store's comfortable environment, which they nevertheless used for their own business purpose.

There's a certain elitist insincerity here: Starbucks's whole concept was invented by a middle-class American who was captivated by the atmosphere of the European coffee houses he saw as a tourist, and his target market from the start was bourgeois kids who'd seen the same coffee houses on their junior year abroad. Everything was going to be entre nous, African-Americans who wanted to use the restroom without buying expensive lattes were just never in the picture. The Philadelphia incident was effectively a system error.

But soon enough the COVID panic made that whole business model moot. The intent iof the lockdowns was to shut down all public space, airports, churches, parks, schools, museums, barber shops, restaurants. Chi-chi coffee houses were just incidental casualties. Starbucks closed many stores and changed others to take-out only. The expense of cleaning all the "third place" furniture and facilities made them uneconomic, and this business strategy continued after the lockdowns were lifted.

This effectively made the problem of providing public space for people who wouldn't pay for it or observe decorum disappear -- but only as long as nobody noticed that they were still paying "third place" prices for their lattes. But in 2025, Starbucks has decided it needs to revive the "third place" strategy. In June, company founder and inventor of the "third place" strategy Howard Schultz re-emphasized his vision:

“The third place is not something we need to reinvent — it’s who we are,” Schultz said. “People all over the world are longing for human connection… We are a company that is steeped in humanity. We are steeped in human connection, because of all of you and the people you represent.”

Schultz, who led Starbucks from a small Seattle roastery to a global brand with over 40,000 stores and nearly 500,000 partners, emphasized the need to reclaim Starbucks soul. “We’re not a company that needs AI to do what we do. It’s an enabler. What we need to do, is just be ourselves — be the people that we’ve been,” he said.

But if you restore all the wall hangings, chairs, and tables, you're back to the problem of freeloaders and druggies shooting up in the restrooms. I see more Philadelphia incidents in Starbucks's future, still with no good way to deal with them.

While the COVID lockdowns placed restrictions on public space that had unanticipated business consequences, Trump's crackdown on illegal migrants is having a similar impact:

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors declared a local state of emergency Tuesday in response to ongoing federal immigration enforcement raids, alleging the actions are preventing people from going to work and forcing some businesses to close.

. . . The proclamation approved by the board states that the raids that began around June 6 "have caused residents to be fearful of leaving their homes, to go to work, take public transportation, access county services including medical services, access open public programs and resources and attend appointments with immigration lawyers and legal service providers."

The immigration actions "have created a climate of fear, leading to widespread disruption in daily life and adverse impacts to our regional economy due to decreased attendance at workplaces, the temporary or permanent closure of businesses and restaurants and increased strain on our local institutions such as schools, hospitals and places of worship," according to the proclamation.

Put only a little differently, the ICE raids are having a massive impact on the use of public space. This also reflects the real size of the illegal immigration problem in the area; if illegals have a realistic fear of apprehension if they go out in public, this seems to have a major impact on the economy.

But these are just small pieces of the overall battle over public space. If the civil authorities abdicate their responsibility to control it, or if private enterprise refuses to manage quasi-public space or "third places", then other forces will inevitably claim control, or other factors like a pandemic or immigration crackdowns will intervene and force solutions. Nevertheless, the other factors will only force temporary or unsatisfactory solutions if authorities can't regulate public space themselves.

"Giant Of Jewish History"

On Monday, Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana called Trump a "giant of Jewish history". Now, I've been though a couple of Old Testament surveys and Fr Schmitz's Bible in a Year, and the only comparable non-Jew I can think of who would get that designation is Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who conquered Babylon and issued a decree permitting the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, ending the Babylonian exile. In fact, Ohana said this:

Mr. President, you stand before the people of Israel not as another American president, but as a giant of Jewish history — one for whom we must look back, two and a half millennia into the mists of time to find a parallel, in Cyrus the Great.

In other words, I think it's a real mistake to underestimate Trump. And reading analyses of how Trump brought about the Hamas agreement, I keep thinking about the business school article I've mentioned here several times that makes the point that Trump prefers to negotiate with parties that have no alternative. This appears to be what he did with Hamas:

Egypt and Qatar told [Hamas leader Khalil Al-]Hayya the deal was his last chance to end the war, according to the officials. They pressed Hamas to understand that holding the hostages was becoming a strategic liability, giving Israel a source of legitimacy to keep fighting.

The next day, joined by Turkey, they warned him that if Hamas didn’t approve the plan it would be stripped of all political and diplomatic cover; Qatar and Turkey would no longer host the group’s political leadership, and Egypt would stop pressing for Hamas to have a say in Gaza’s postwar governance, the officials said.

It was enough to get Hamas to agree to release all its hostages in Gaza and sign on to the first part of Trump’s peace deal, giving up what had been its most important bargaining chip to keep a seat at the table. While modifying its acceptance with heavy caveats that reflected its concerns about the deal, Hamas had given Trump an opportunity to declare victory and set the stage for a hostage release early this week.

But Tump was able to limit Hamas's options though a series of small steps, none of them obvious by themselves:

Trump narrowed Hamas's options by eliminating both their diplomatic wiggle room and military alternatives through decisive American action. His administration launched strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, completely upending the regional balance that had favored Iran and its proxies. Israel had already done serious damage by taking apart Hezbollah's leadership and financial network, which led to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime and the emergence of a new Syrian government hostile to Iran.

Trump's strikes forced every player in the region to rethink their strategies. He showed he was willing to use military power to protect American interests, something the Biden administration never demonstrated. Joint U.S. and Israeli resolve against terrorism pushed regional stakeholders to their breaking point, leaving Hamas without any meaningful support.

The stereotype of Trump is that he's impulsive and ego-driven, but what we see in cases like the Gaza agreement is that he works from a long-term plan in which he clearly understands the advantages and disadvantages of each side. This ias the same Trump who was defeated in 2020 but fought his way back to re-election in 2024.

So what are we to make of his current domestic opponents? His main domestic issues right now are the shutdown and the anti-ICE protests. It's hard to avoid thinking he has a plan and a strategy for giving his opponents no options. I've go to think we'll see some indications soon.

I'm not sure what league Trump is playing in here. Some people say Reagan, some say FDR, some say Lincoln, but Speaker Ohana is thinking on a different scale, millennia. He may have a point.

Nothing Marxist About This Revolution

For some time, I dismissed the female Archbishop of Canterbury and the near-simultaneous graffiti installation at Canterbury Cathedral as irrelevant -- the Church of England itself probably became irrelevant around the time C S Lewis died (November 22, 1963); the great uncle of the current Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church abdicated over whether he should marry a divorced woman, a religious issue that never remotely disqualified his grandnephew, whose marital situation was identical.

In fact, there was a time when designating a woman bishop of any sort would have been the province of medieval Lords of Misrule. If it's done now with even a faded aura of seriousness is an indication of how things have changed -- but this isn't the world proletarian revolution that loomed over the leisiured class for more than a century. Communist regimes dynamited churches. The 1911 Mexican revolution aimed to destroy the Catholic Church. The current revolution doesn't want to destroy religion as its enemy -- it wants to retain it as something farcical.

Key to this is the use of public space. Let's keep in mind that central to Marxist regimes was the ceremonial public space, in the Soviet Union Red Square, in Beijing Tiananmen Square. Anyhone who defaced either space would be severely punished. Under current Western regimes, there are no such sanctions; homeless people, street thugs, needles, and condoms abound, as well as graffiti, in major public spaces. The deterioration of Washington's Union Station, in many ways an equivalent national space, despite repeated attempts over seven decades to restore it, is a good example.

I think this is behind the deliberate installation of graffiti in Canterbury Cathedral, a major UK public space. In effect, the ruling class is symbolically turning it over to the Lumpenproletariat, Marx's underclass of street criminals, prostitutes, pimps, and vagabonds. It isn't dynamiting it or maybe turning it into a secular museum, which a socialist regime would do -- it's just turning it into a slum alleyway. Meanwhile, the quasi-archbishop whose seat is at that same cathedral is about as close as decorum will currently allow to a drag queen. Under a socialist revolution, that archbishop would face a firing squad.

So what's happening in Anglo-America is not a Marxist-Leninist or socialist revolution. Let's look at what's currently happening in the US. The vanguard cities of the revolution right now are Portland and Chicago. The current mayor of Portland is also head of a family business he inherited. His most recent predecessor, who in many ways turned Portland into what it is now, is a member of a multigenerational rentier family.

The Governor of Illinois, J B Pritzker, is a member of an extremely wealthy rentier family; his sister is the head of the Harvard Corporation. Pritzker is one of the most vocal opponents of Donald Trump. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, is a member of another wealthy and influential family closely associated with the rentier Getty fortune. He's also one of Trump's most vocal opponents.

Gordon Getty, the son of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, and Newsom's father, William Newsom III, were lifelong friends. The Getty family provided support to Gavin Newsom as a teenager and invested in his business ventures; they also have funded his political career.. William III was an attorney and advisor to the Getty family, delivering the ransom money during the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty's grandson.

But the single issue right now that's driving the revolution that wealthy Oregonians, the Pritzkers, and the Gettys via the Newsoms support is illegal migrants. In Portland, Chicago, and California, they're difficult to distinguish from the homeless and street criminals, simply because so many illegals are also homeless and street criminals. There's a natural alliance among them; we can probably update Marx's definition of the Lumpenproletariat to include illegal migrants, especially since this is a worldwide phenomenon.

So what we're in effect seeing, as I've been saying here for a while, is an alliance between the upper bourgeoisie, the wealthy rentier class and the closely associated upper managerial class, with the Lumpenproletariat, which in the 21st century includes illegal migrants, and also, if we give the matter some thought, sexual deviants. This is why we see so many trans people associated with violence against the lower bourgeoisie -- Tesla dealers, churchgoers, conservative activists.

Where is this headed? It's certainly an uneasy coalition and hardly a natural alliance. On the other hand, what's also developing is that the traditional working class, hourly laborers, is being forced into a natural alliance with the lower bourgeoisie, IT workers, small business people, clerical workers, and the like.

I think this is the tendency that links what we're seeing in the US with what we're seeing in the Church of England -- the alliance of the upper bourgeoisie with the Lumpenproletariat seems to have as its goal, whether or not its final goal, a simple increase in overall disorder. How this benefits anyone is beyond me.

Ninth Circuit Hears Arguments On Portland Guard Deployment

Judge Immergut's temporary restraining order a week ago prohibiting Trump from deploying the National Guard to protect the ICE facility in Portland has disappeared from the news, probably because the issues are complex, but they mostly favor Trump. On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals placed an administrative hold on the case prior to hearing arguments on Thursday. Via the Oregon Capital Chronicle,

U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut. . . granted the restraining order against Oregon Guard deployment on Saturday, saying the Trump administration had not made the case that a “rebellion” was taking place at the protests outside the ICE facility.

A stay would prevent Immergut’s order from taking effect, but because of a second, broader restraining order she issued Sunday that has not yet been appealed, federal troops still couldn’t be deployed.

Via Oregon Public Broadcasting,

Federal law allows the president to deploy Guard members if there’s an invasion from a foreign nation, a rebellion or if the president cannot carry out federal laws with “regular forces.”

Immergut, who was nominated by Trump, found the administration did not clearly prove those were the conditions taking place in Portland. She said the White House, therefore, could not send in troops to deal with protests at Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut wrote in her initial ruling.

"The facts" appear to differ widely depending on whether you're a Portland-area resident or you live almost anywhere else.

Portland is in full gaslight mode over the Antifa assaults on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on a near-nightly basis. Legacy media is helping in the deception by ignoring the story for the most part since June and then committing resources to the story only after they fashioned it into a Trump's Picking on Portland narrative, covering the facility during the daytime when there are generally no attacks on ICE officers in the driveway of the facility, and highlighting the costumed protesters wearing fuzzy furry suits.

Back to the Oregon Public Broadcasting link:

The appeals court panel indicated in its [Thursday] questioning that the president has sweeping authorities when it comes to law enforcement. The panel was made up of Judges Ryan Nelson, Bridget Bade and Susan Graber. Nelson and Bade were appointed by Trump during his first term, while Graber — a former Oregon Supreme Court justice — was appointed by President Clinton.

The judges also used Thursday’s hearing to question whether the judiciary has the authority to put limitations on National Guard deployments if the president believes it is necessary.

“I am sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of executing the laws is right or wrong,” Nelson stated.

. . . The judges from the 9th Circuit did not immediately issue a ruling, but said that they would offer their opinion as quickly as possible.

All the furries that turn up in photos of the Portland demonstrations have me scratching my head. Several of them appear in almost any given photo, both of the tamer daytime protests and the more violent episodes after dark. And we've begun to encunter furries outside Portland, too -- Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson's trans partner had a sidline kink as a furry, for instance. Back then, I noted that YouTube pop psychologist Dr Todd Grande felt the need to reassure us that only a small subset of furries have sex with each other while dressed in animal suits.

Well, maybe so, but even if there's no kinky connotation here at all, what are we to make of fully-grown adults wearing onesie costumes better suited for toddlers? I did a quick check, and you can certainly get adult animal onesies everywhere from Walmart on up, but they're advertised and sold as bedtime wear, not something meant for going out in public. There's a serious incongruity here. And as Victoria Taft noted in the accounts I've cited here, the media in covering the Portland protests stresses that families with children attend.

Really? I wouldn't want a grown man in a chicken onesie anywhere near a kid of mine. What on earth is the matter with Portland? Nothing to see here, just a bunch of adult furries dressed up in toddler jammies parading in front of kids, completely harmless. Only a small subset of these guys have sex with each other. Whatever you're thinking, it's simply untethered to the facts.