00:41 An unhappy nation. (Far from gruntled.)
06:28 Triple dysfunction (1): Congress.
13:42 Triple dysfunction (2): the Executive.
19:36 Triple dysfunction (3): the Judiciary.
26:42 Immigration roundup. (Provincial, national, global.)
35:39 Perils of air travel in Japan. (Sumo of all fears.)
37:30 Next year’s boy baby names. (Onomastic insanity.)
40:27 White lady won’t cringe. (No mercy for savage.)
43:02 Bye-bye DVDs. (I hardly knew ye.)
44:02 Bike trannies. (The madness of our age.)
45:29 Signoff. (Bad liver, broken heart.)
01—Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from your triadically genial host John Derbyshire, here with some commentary and reflections on the passing scene.
Actually, this week, mostly on the state of the nation. Let me explain.
02—An unhappy nation. I seem to have been seeing recently, in my daily sifting of news and opinion outlets, I seem to have been seeing more than the average quantity of reports of Americans' negative feelings about the state of our nation. State-of-the-nation-wise, if not totally disgruntled we are far from being gruntled.
A couple of random such reports.
First report, quote:
Most U.S. adults say the country is heading in the wrong direction, according to a recent survey from the Associated Press-NORC Research Center.
The poll, released Saturday, found 78 percent of respondents saying the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 21 percent said it is headed in the right direction. ["Most US adults say country is heading in wrong direction: poll" by Tara Suter; The Hill, October 14th 2023.]
End quote. Second report, quote:
A large portion of Americans on both sides of the aisle favor getting rid of democracy and imposing violence on their political opponents, among other authoritarian measures, according to a new poll.
Thirty-one percent of Donald Trump supporters and 24 percent of President Joe Biden supporters said democracy is "no longer viable" and an alternative system should be tried, according to an October poll from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. ["Large portion of Americans doubt democracy and view violence as acceptable, poll finds" by Brendan Rascius; Miami Herald, October 18 2023.]
End quote.
Hm, well: be careful what you wish for, guys. As Chairman Mao told us: "? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?"—A revolution is not a dinner party. So be careful. And just to be double careful, make sure you have lawfully-purchased firearms on your property and know how to use them.
Heaven forbid things should go that far, of course. Those poll respondents are not mistaken, though: there has been a serious falling-off quite recently.
The other day I read something—something I forgot to bookmark—about the mid-1990s, the first Clinton administration: those years when, in 1994, Senator Joe Biden sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in Congress. That was the Act which funded stronger policing, stricter sentencing of criminals, more resources for border control, and other things that our President would much, much rather not you remind him about.
Those were also years before the horrible plague of wokeness settled on our land, when the Soviet Union was a rapidly-fading memory and communist China was turning from politics to economics, when the internet was new and the phrase "Islamic terrorism" rarely heard, when you didn't have to take your shoes off for airport security, when young working people could buy a house without major financial strain, … and so on. We had our issues and problems in 1994, of course; but overall we were much more sensible than today, better in touch with reality, with better social harmony and more common understandings.
Less than thirty years ago, yet so much has changed—mostly for the worse. Who denies it? Well, I don't deny it, certainly not as it pertains to the political sphere. Permit me to enlarge on that.
The first thing you learn about the U.S.A. federal government, when you're prepping for your citizenship interview, is that—like Gaul in Julius Caesar's introduction—it has three separate-but-equal parts. There is the legislature, in which the people's elected representatives make our laws and declare war when necessary; the executive, which administers and enforces those laws and manages our relations with other countries; and the judiciary, which interprets laws in light of the Constitution when disputes arise.
Today, closing out the first quarter of the 21st century, all three of those branches are in a sorry state. I shall give them a segment each.
03—Triple dysfunction (1): Congress. Next to declaring war, a power Congress last exercised in 1942 against Bulgaria, the second most important function of our national legislature is to authorize federal spending—in other words, to pass a budget each fiscal year for the next fiscal year, October to September.
We are, as I speak, not quite three weeks into fiscal year 2024, so this is a current issue.
The fact that it is a current issue is itself an issue. The federal government should of course enter each fiscal year on October 1st with a budget approved by Congress on or prior to September 30th. Did our Congress do that? In your dreams.
I have been commenting for a couple of decades now on what a farce the budget process has become. I have in fact posted so much commentary on this I can yield to sloth and just cut'n'paste commentary from previous years. Not only that, in fact; I can cut'n'paste myself from previous years cutting'n'pasting from previous previous years.
Here I was, for example, on October 1st 2021, cutting'n'pasting from September 28th 2013. Just so you're clear: this is a cut'n'paste from two years ago (pips) containing an inner cut'n'paste from ten years ago (pips twice). Here we go.
Pips.
Here was Radio Derb podcasting back on September 28th 2013:
Pips twice.
The way things are supposed to work is, the President proposes a budget for the coming fiscal year in January or February. The House and the Senate debate the President's proposals and come up with their own; they get together and nail down a final congressional budget resolution; and then they pass the necessary appropriations bills based on the resolution. That should all be done by the time the fiscal year opens in October.
Things haven't actually happened like that for many years. Congress hasn't even produced a budget resolution since 2009. It's always been a contentious business, of course, except when the President's party also controls both houses of Congress, which doesn't happen much—four out of the last 17 Congresses, so around a quarter of the time in recent decades. When Congress is divided, House and Senate controlled by different parties, as has been the case since the Tea Party revolution of 2010, things are especially fraught.
While the process has always been contentious, though, a lot of us think that the wheels have really been starting to come off in recent years.
Be that as it may, here we are in the last days of the fiscal year, and there is no federal budget—no proper authorization for the federal government to spend money doing all the wonderful things it does. Not a big problem: Congress just has to pass a short-term authorization, technically called a "continuing resolution," authorizing spending to go on at current levels for some period. The House works up a bill, the Senate passes it, and everything's tickety-boo for a while. Lather, rinse, repeat.
And that's what happened …
Pips twice.
A-a-a-and that's what just happened again last night, a continuing resolution.
Pips.
Not only are things today no better than they were in 2021, they're worse. The entire budget process—I mean, the "continuing resolution" fandango that substitutes for an orderly budget process—is tangled up in a mess the House of Representatives has got itself into since, on October 3rd, they canned the House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
What did they can him for? Policy-wise McCarthy's not a total RINO. NumbersUSA gives him an A-minus on immigration, which is nearly as good as it gets, and he's taken plenty of pro-Trump positions. Still, the House Freedom Caucus—Matt Gaetz, MTG, Lauren Boebert, etc.—thought he'd been insufficiently aggressive in negotiations with House Democrats about reducing spending.
With that handful of GOP votes, plus a solid pile-on from House Democrats, and a newish House rule that any House member can move to dismiss the Speaker, McCarthy was gone.
The House still doesn't have a Speaker and the federal government still doesn't have a budget; not even a budget of the spurious kind we've all gotten used to long since: billion-dollar items packed into thousand-page proposals that most congresscritters haven't actually read.
Plainly there needs to be a major overhaul of congressional procedures. Of course there will always be disagreements about federal spending. That's why we have a legislature, though: to thrash out those disagreements by debate and compromise, in the national interest. Is that really not a thing we can do any longer?
04—Triple dysfunction (2): the Executive. If the legislature has come unmoored from good sense, the Executive is worse. Administer and enforce federal laws? The current executive laughs at federal laws.
There is a whole mass of federal laws prescribing which foreigners may enter the U.S.A. and which may settle here, on what terms. Those laws are not being enforced, except against perceived enemies of the administrative state—white Christian home-schoolers, for example.
In what is perhaps the most monstrous, shameful delinquency in the history of our republic the Executive has twisted and perverted the wording of those laws on issues like parole and asylum to, in effect, annul immigration law altogether.
The proper constitutional remedy for this executive delinquency is impeachment of the relevant executive officers, beginning with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. There have been efforts in that direction, with Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona taking the lead in filing articles of impeachment.
When matters came to a head in July, however, it was clear that most Republican congressweasels, while willing to make disapproving remarks, would cuck on actual impeachment for fear of alienating their donors.
When it comes to managing our relations with other countries, our executive is stuck fast in the imperial gear. Thirty-plus years after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. we are still a member of NATO, for no reason I can fathom. When, a year and a half ago, the world's most corrupt white nation attacked the world's second most corrupt white nation, we began shovelling billions of dollars into the second party there.
(The actual rankings are: Russia, number 137 out of 150, Ukraine number 116. Next are Bosnia-Herzegovina at 110, then Serbia at 101. What's up with those Slavs?
I take those rankings from Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI for short. There's been some academic criticism of the CPI, and some grumbling from countries like Hungary that feel unfairly judged. No-one seems to have come up with any better standard for public-sector corruption, though, so CPI is the one I go with. Listeners who know of something better, please email me at VDARE.com.)
The executive is still shovelling, or trying to. Their last funding request, back in August, asked Congress to approve 24 billion dollars for Ukraine. That never got through the congressional stalemate, but in his address to the nation last night our President pressed his case again.
All these billions are to keep us involved in a European war; a war which the Europeans, with five times Russia's population and ten times her wealth, should be able to deal with themselves. Perhaps they would deal with it themselves, if they hadn't gotten so accustomed to sucking on Uncle Sam's teat. Er, Auntie Sam's … whatever.
And then, Israel. You can make a case for some modest financial support to Israel on grounds of civilizational solidarity against the barbarous hordes of militant Islam. Since the Israelis are willing to do their own fighting, I'd support that case. Modest financial support is not what the executive has in mind, though, you may be sure of that. They are thinking in terms of more billions and tens of billions …
And I'm just scratching the surface of executive dysfunction here. Regulatory overreach; entrenched obese bureaucracies both civilian and military; federal law enforcement's relentless pursuit of conservative and Christian dissidents while smiling indulgently at anti-white radicals burning down a police precinct house.
The American federal executive, with all its authority to harass, arrest, and punish under federal laws, is no friend of the American people … unless they hold correct opinions.
05—Triple dysfunction (3): the Judiciary. There is of course an intersection there with the federal judiciary. A key post in the executive is Attorney General, chief law-enforcement officer of the federal government, present incumbent the sinister apparatchik Merrick Kirillovich Garland.
Spot quiz: Does the acronym AGAAVE mean anything, listener? That's A-G-A-A-V-E. No? It didn't mean anything to me, either, until I read this terrifying report in the October 4th Newsweek, headline: "Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears."
Listeners, you should read that article. It's on the internet; google "Newsweek AGAAVE." Sample quotes, edited, referring to a joint report to Congress given by the FBI and the DHS back in June:
The threats listed in that paragraph [of the joint FBI-DHS report] are all clearly associated with America's right and in particular with Trump's MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report ("Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond") in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE ("anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism") from "furtherance of ideological agendas" to "furtherance of political and/or social agendas." For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.
It was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism. Where the FBI sees threats is also plain from the way it categorizes them—a system which on the surface is designed to appear nonpartisan. This shifted subtly days after the events of January 6 when it comes to what the Bureau calls AGAAVE.
End quote.
And yes, the A-G is in there. I mean "A-G" for "Attorney General," not the "A-G" of "A-G-A-A-V-E," although there's not much daylight between the two. Another quote from Newsweek:
For Attorney General Merrick Garland: [Inner quote.] "Attacks by domestic terrorists are attacks on all of us collectively, aimed at rending the fabric of our democratic society and driving us apart." [End inner quote.]
End quote.
So what happens when a dissident dragged off to jail after having had his door kicked down by Merrick Garland's goons, what happens when he is brought to trial in front of a federal judge a year or two later? You don't need to ask; or if you do need to, ask one of the January 6th demonstrators.
And when federal judges aren't helping Comrade Garland to put away political dissidents on double-digit sentences, they are busy conducting double-jeopardy trials of defendants like Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd case, or the Brunswick Three in that of Ahmaud Arbery.
Those double-jeopardy trials are of course the evil fruit of our poisonous and surely unconstitutional Civil Rights laws, otherwise known as the Federal Anti-White Charter. That's how I think of Civil Rights laws, anyway. I shall continue to do so until the day I see nationwide publicity over the trial of a black American for violating the Civil Rights of a white American.
A footnote to that: Just yesterday came the news that Derek Chauvin's legal team has filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case. The official U.S. Supreme Court filing comes after the Minnesota Supreme Court declined to hear the case in July: the case, that is, that Minnesota Courts violated Chauvin's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.
It's not very likely, just on a statistical basis, that the Supremes will hear the case; they get far more petitions than they can handle. There are very serious questions about Chauvin's trials, state and federal, though; dissident journalist Andy Ngo has tweeted some of them. It would be great to see them aired in a setting where there are no jurors to fear for their lives.
06—Immigration roundup. Here's a roundup of short news items about immigration. I'll take them in expanding order by geolocation: first provincial, then national, finally global.
Provincial, for this Long Islander, means New York City and environs. As I have been reporting, the city has been coping, or trying to cope, with a mighty flood of illegal aliens being bused, and sometimes flown, up from border states.
There is a lighter side to this, at any rate for us immigration patriots. We get to chuckle at the cognitive dissonance being suffered by goodthinkful New Yorkers. Immigration sentimentality waxes strong here: Ellis Island! Statue of Liberty poem! Now, faced with the reality of massive unskilled immigration, mainly fighting-age young men, New York progressives are undergoing severe psychic stress. To which Radio Derb says: Good!
The illegals are still piling in, more every week. The week ending October 8th saw almost 4,000 new arrivals, bringing the total for the last year and a half to 126 thousand and change, more than 64 thousand of them still in city shelters.
It's getting worse, but there are small signs of enlightenment. An October 15th editorial in the New York Post printed the phrase "asylum seekers" in quotation marks! I'll take what I can get.
Resistance is strongest in the outer boroughs, away from the intense, suicidal wokery of Manhattan. A shelter for illegals on Staten Island that had been loudly protested by people in the neighborhood was evacuated on Monday after the city fire department declared it a fire hazard.
Given that Staten Island is heavily working-class legacy-American and the Fire Department doubly so, I suspect some sort of quiet arrangement there; but whatever, the evacuation was loudly cheered by the locals.
City Hall is still whining, though. What are they whining about? Well, they have filed over two thousand applications for work permits on behalf of the illegals, and the feds have not approved a single one.
Let that sink in: Our federal government is withholding work permits from illegal aliens. Talk about executive dysfunction!
Not to worry, though. On the national level now, the New York Post has dug out the paperwork on something called the RRM Initiative. RRM stands for "Release and Reporting Management," don't ask me why. It's federal paperwork and it says that, quote from the Post:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is overseeing 5.7 million migrants in the US—who could soon be provided free medical services, food and even housing by the Biden administration.
End quote.
So that's all right then. The illegals may not get work permits, but they'll be getting food, housing, and free medical services. Let's not be stingy, though: why shouldn't they get a yacht as part of the deal?
Nothing much on legal immigration—nothing like as much as I'd like to see. I did, though, spot Gavin Wax the other day on Twitter thus, tweet:
End all student visas. All these "private" colleges and universities are subsidized heavily either directly and indirectly by federal, state, or local government. Tax dollars shouldn't go to educate foreign nationals on our shores at the expense of American citizens.
End tweet.
Right on, brother. Education is a finite national resource, heavily subsidized; it should be for Americans.
Globally, just a couple. I mentioned the Transparency International rankings on corruption back there. What, according to them, is the least corrupt of the 150 nations they've listed?
Answer: Denmark. Readers of the VDARE.com website will also know that as well as being sensationally non-corrupt, Denmark is the least insane of Western European countries where Third World immigration is concerned.
They haven't totally resisted it, though. There are immigrant ghettos in several Danish cities practicing "hard" multiculturalism—i.e. "We'll live in your country because it's way nicer than ours, but don't try to make us assimilate."
Now the Danes are tackling those ghettos, forcibly evicting public-housing residents in them to be moved elsewhere. The relevant laws have full support in the Danish parliament, but are being challenged in the European Court of Justice. We'll see how that goes.
Finally, in the mother country, my idea of detaining illegals in prison hulks moored offshore, as used to be done with the overflows from British prisons, has finally come true … sort of.
That very ugly barge with the silly name, the Bibby Stockholm, moored off England's southwest coast, received its first detachment of illegals on Thursday—thirty men. More will come today and next Monday.
The interior of the barge is actually pretty nice: well-appointed apartments with TV, WiFi, and so on. And I believe the inhabitants will be free to come and go to Portland, the nearest town. Look out for the first reports of rapes and robberies in Portland.
Law and common sense, as represented by the bus bringing those thirty illegals to the barge, encountered lunacy and groupthink on the way there. A posse of Just Stop Oil protestors sat down on the road the bus was coming along. They came without their Crazy Glue, though. The bus driver stopped for a moment; then he crept his vehicle forward, scattering the Climate Crazies. Apparently none of them was keen on martyrdom for the cause.
07—Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: This one from Japan is irresistible.
A big party of Sumo wrestlers, average weight 264 lbs, was supposed to fly on a scheduled flight from Tokyo to Osaka for a tournament. However, when the airline did the arithmetic they realised that was too much sumo: the plane would not be able to take off. They added another plane to the schedule.
I have to admit, with of course no offense to anyone, that I don't get sumo wrestling at all. Two overweight guys trying to push each other over … Wha?
I wish Japanese fans joy of their sport—honestly—but I doubt I shall ever share the appeal. When I started drifting around the Far East fifty-some years ago, I soon noticed that while, after a little practice, I was comfortably at ease in a roomful of Chinese people, the Japanese always seemed to me like space aliens.
Again, no offense intended. God bless you all over there. And yes, I'm aware that some people feel the same way about Brits. Perhaps it's something to do with both us and the Japs having been offshore islanders for a couple of thousand years.
Item: This one's a bit more disturbing. It's about baby names. See if you can guess what, according to experts, will be the most popular names for boy babies in 2024.
Give up? The experts say "Jade" and "Rose." And yes, those are names for boys.
I'm getting this from, of course, the New York Post, October 18th. Sample quote, edited:
Researchers determined that girls' names for boys will be all the rage among accepting parents come the annual calendar change, noting that A-listers such as John Legend and Chrissy Teigen—who crowned their little bruiser Wren Alexander in June—as well as Rihanna and A$AP Rocky—who named their latest addition Riot Rose in August—have already kicked off the gender-bending festivities.
[Inner quote.] "It's tempting to chalk up this trend to society's increasingly progressive views on gender identity, but that's not the only reason parents are choosing girl names for boys," read the report. "Feminine boy names often appeal for their symbolism, soft and sensitive image or connections to the past." [End inner quote.] …
Names like "Capri," "Florence" and "Noa" have been designated choice boy names for the incoming year.
End quote.
Have they indeed? Well, if it's "connections to the past" you're seeking, how about Attila, Genghis, or Rocky? If you want to keep it continental, why not Geronimo? Or for more literary types, perhaps Conan?
Work with me here, listeners. Let's get together a good list of kick-ass male names to put online for new parents. Maybe we'll be able to redress the sexual balance some.
Item: You know the story; you've seen it a hundred times. White American suffers some assault, injury, or loss as a result of a vicious attack by a black person. The victim tells the news outlets he or she totally forgives the perp, understands his or her frustration as a member of a disadvantaged minority, and refuses to press charges, or pleads for a lighter sentence.
I don't know about you, listener, but those stories make me want to throw up. Imagine the pleasure, therefore, with which I read this one.
A young white woman named Joan Naydich was teaching in a Florida high school—one which, says the news story, quote, "has been besieged by violence in recent years," end quote.
Ms Naydich got a taste of that violence herself when she asked Brendan Depa to stop playing a video game in class. Depa is black, was 17 years old, was 6 ft 6 in tall and weighed about 270 lbs. He beat Ms Naydich unconscious, punching and kicking her as she lay on the ground.
Arrested and charged with aggravated battery, which is a felony, Depa has all sorts of light-sentencing strategies. He can claim autism, and could be sentenced as a youth, not an adult. Most of these strategies depend on Ms Naydich approving them.
Well, she won't. The lady has made it clear she will do nothing to mitigate the penalties Depa may face—possibly as much as 30 years in jail.
I heartily applaud Ms Naydich's lack of compassion for this savage psychopath. Give him the max, Judge.
Item: Best Buy has announced they will no longer sell DVDs or Blu-Ray discs as of early next year. Quote: "The way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago," end quote, a Best Buy spokesperson said in a statement to Variety magazine.
"Decades ago," what? It seems like I only just started noticing the durn things last week. Getting old, I guess.
Stick around, listeners. A few more of those Best Buy "decades" and they'll just beam the movies direct into your cerebral cortex. I really don't like the 21st century.
Item: Here's another reason to dislike it. October 2nd was held the Chicago CycloCross Cup, a major women's cycling event.
You know what's coming, right? Of the three on the podium for prize awards in the Single Speed race, two—the gold and silver awards—were men.
My Saturday New York Post had a picture of those three winners on the podium. The merest fleeting glance at that picture will tell you who are the two guys and which is the one girl. One of the guys, name of Evelyn Williamson, isn't even trying to look female. He just says he is and if you doubt it, you're a bigot.
I have a message for that lone female, whose name is Allison Zmuda. I don't know if you have any kids, Allison; but if you don't, may your first child be a masculine child, and may you name him Conan.
08—Signoff. That's all, ladies and gents. Thanks for your time and attention, and start getting that candy in for Halloween.
Oh, signoff music? Something to suit my mood—which, you may have divined, is somewhat downbeat. Here's Hayes Carll.
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
[Music clip: Hayes Carll, "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart."]
