NO KINGS. GO FISH.

          Yesterday, June 14, was Donald Trump’s 79^th birthday and the occasion of a large military parade in D.C. to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the U.S. Army.  It was also the day of “No Kings” demonstrations, which were called that because the demonstrators believe there is a danger Trump will make himself king of America.  They think that even though everything he tries to do as president gets instantly shut down by an injunction from a federal judge somewhere who voted for Kamala Harris.

 

         I went to the No Kings gathering in downtown Philadelphia for many reasons.  For me, it was easy to get to, and free, and I was curious about the signs, the people, the cops, and the different political cults who would attend.  Also, I knew that the newspapers and TV stations in Philly would never actually perform any journalism on the event so if I wanted to know what was happening, I would have to find out for myself.  This is increasingly a problem in a place like Philadelphia, which has been run entirely by Democrats since 1952.   Newspapers used to report news with a far-left spin to it.  Now you often get only the spin and the propaganda, and you can only guess what the underlying facts are.

 

         Even though the weather was a bit iffy, I knew there would be a huge crowd, which added to the appeal.  Two days before, the Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krassner and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel held a press conference to say they understood that the protesters in Philly would be just like those who marched for Martin Luther King in the 1960s, so nobody would be arrested.  These assurances were largely unnecessary since we all remember the George Floyd riots in 2020 when the city suffered tens of millions of dollars in damage and looting (and dozens of police injuries), with only a few arrests and no serious prosecutions.  In fact, the city later agreed to pay protesters $9.5 million because the police used tear-gas on people who took over an interstate highway in town and stopped traffic. 

 

         The gathering point was Love Park in the heart of downtown, and my arrival at 11:30 gave me a solid hour to wade through the crowds, photograph signs and tee-shirts and costumes and flags before the march up the Ben Franklin Parkway.  The march would end at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the speeches would happen.  I had no interest in marching or the speeches.

 

         The signs and tee-shirts were predictable but there were a lot of them.  Many dealt with immigration and due process rights and ICE:

 

·       “ICE IS BEST WHEN CRUSHED” 

 

·       “Due Process Is A Right!  Doo-doo Process Is All Wrong!” (with picture of a dog pooping)

 

·       “We Are All Immigrants”

 

·       “On Stolen Land, We are All Illegals.

 

         Probably a majority mocked Trump in some way or echoed the No Kings theme:

 

·       “Only Butterflies Should Be Monarchs!”

 

·       “Trump Is A Cunt.”

 

·       Picture of Trump with a pig nose.

 

·       “ABORT UNWANTED PRESIDENCIES”

 

         Then there were a few oddballs, like the guy in the Alexander Hamilton costume with a Guy Fawkes mask, or the gentleman wearing a FUCK LANDLORDS shirt or the woman carrying an “Obama 2028” sign.

 

         The only group physically separated from the rest of the demonstrators was the crowd in the street at 15^th and Arch and not actually in LOVE PARK.  These were the pro-Hamas people carrying huge Palestinian flags and manufactured signs, along with Jewish Voice For Peace, Code Pink, the AnswerCoaltion, and other miscellaneous Jew-haters.  Almost everyone here was wearing a mask or a keffiyeh to conceal their identity.  Because of Israel’s recent attack on Iran’s leadership and nuclear program, I had wondered whether there would be any pro-Iran signs at the rally, and yes, there were a few in the pro-Palestine squad, which may have numbered a hundred people or so.

 

         The mood elsewhere at NO KINGS was festive and fun, with lots of laughter and people greeting old friends and taking pictures of each other.  But the Jew-haters at 15^th and Arch?  Not so much.  They just chanted and waved their flags in a somber and disciplined fashion.  Nobody was taking photos of them, and I had a sense it might not be wise to do so.   I kept my phone in my pocket. 

 

         At 12:30, the march began.  I positioned myself on the sidewalk at 16^th and Arch streets, at the very beginning of the Parkway, so I could watch the entire crowd walk past me, and I stood there for the next thirty-five minutes.  The police estimate issued later that day was 80,000, which seemed a little high to me but what do I know?  Still, I’d guess at least fifty thousand walked past me.

 

         (There may be some methodology to the estimation of crowd sizes but I doubt it’s a terribly exact science.  Maybe if you spend an hour with an aerial photograph and a magnifying glass, you might get close to a realistic number, but I suspect that doesn’t happen very often.  Usually, you get a police captain looking out at the scene and he says, “40,000” or “200,000” or some other round number.  You never get an official estimate of 73,400, which leads me to believe it’s just some guy picking a number out of the air.)

 

         Anyway, my estimate was 50K+, and I’m sticking with it.

 

         But while I’m uncertain about the total number, I can share some observations about the demographics, because that was my primary interest.  I didn’t care so much about the sheer numbers as I did about who these people were who went to the trouble of going downtown and spending several hours of their Saturday expressing their disdain or dislike or hatred for Trump and his administration.

 

         And the demographics were startling and stark, for me at least.  We basically know who voted for Kamala in 2024, and they were there in downtown Philly on Saturday.  Republicans pondering future elections in 2026 and 2028 would have to be pleased by who was on the streets because there was no hint that the core Trump-haters (who are still legion, of course), are growing in numbers at all.  The people on the streets were extremist segments of increasingly marginalized groups.  What I saw were practically caricatures of the elitist elderly white liberals that Republicans do not fear electorally.

 

         You want cat ladies?  We had cat ladies.  Women were clearly the majority of the group and they tended to be older.  There were certainly young people, of college age and under 30, and they were displaying some of the more radical and obscene sentiments, but those in their 30s, 40s and 50s were much harder to find.  The blue-hairs were everywhere.

 

         As for men, they were quite a bit less numerous.  For one thing, I don’t remember seeing a “bunch of guys” together (except in the pro-Hamas squad), while the women were frequently in groups of 3 or 4 or 5 girlfriends.  The men tended to be accompanied only by a wife or girlfriend, or solo.

 

         By far the most shocking observation for me was the almost-complete absence of black people.  This is the largest ethnic group in the city.  They comprise 40% of the population, and there are estimated to be 615,000 of them living in the city limits.

 

         I counted them.  As I stood on the sidewalk for 35 minutes and watched 50,000 people walk by, I counted 63 black people.  Maybe I missed a few.  Maybe there were 80.  There were NOT a hundred.

 

         There are more black people at Neil Diamond concerts.  There are more black people in Latvia.  There are more black people at Klan rallies.

 

         I counted black faces, of course, because one of the big stories of the 2024 presidential election was the inroads Trump made into the black electorate.  George Bush in 2000 won 10% of the black vote in America, and that was considered a great result for Republicans at the time.  In 2024, Trump secured 20% of that demographic, and his success there is viewed as a big reason for his victory.

 

         It is axiomatic among strategists in both parties that a Democrat cannot be elected president unless he or she brings in at least 90% of the black vote.   It has only been eight months since the 2024 election, but my conclusion from the anti-Trump rally on Saturday is that the Democrats have made ZERO progress in rebuilding the sorts of coalitions they will need to claw their way back into power.

 

         June 14, 2025 was a day of triumph for Republicans.

 

Copyright2025MichaelKubacki             

DUE PROCESS AND 5TH DIMENSIONAL TARIFF CHESS

         You can go for quite some time without hearing the term “due process,” but now I seem to hear it every day.  As ICE and other government agencies gather up gang members and soccer players and Jew-haters and ship them off to their homelands or distant prisons, the howled complaint always seems to be about due process.  “Don’t they get any due process?  Where’s their due process?  Whatever happened to due process???”

 

         In every case, the question that needs to be asked is not “Where’s the due process?” but rather “What process is due?”  Process is expensive and time-consuming, and different people are entitled to different amounts of it.

 

         I am a citizen of the United States and I was born here.  If the Philly District Attorney decides I belong in jail, I get a hell of a lot of process before he can put me there.  I get an impartial judge and a jury of my peers.  I get to cross-examine witnesses and see the evidence against me.  I get a lawyer to present my case and make arguments for me.  I probably get bail.  Even before any of that happens, the DA has to get an indictment against me and a warrant to arrest me.  And even if I’m convicted, I get to argue for probation, or maybe just a fine.  I can appeal my conviction to a higher court.  I can even ask the governor for a pardon.  I am DUE a lot of process.  I get process out the wazoo.  I probably get more process than a guy in any other country.

 

         The people getting kicked out of America don’t get nearly as much process as I do.  That’s how the law works.  They get due process too; it’s just that, for them, not much process is “due.”

 

         For one thing, they are not being convicted of crimes and put in prison, they are merely being sent away beyond our borders.  If the U.S. government grabs a guy from Syria who has been harassing Jews on a college campus and sends him back to Syria, he can step off the plane, walk into a restaurant in Damascus and get himself a nice plate of schwarma, falafel and muhammara.  Yeah, he’s not in NYC anymore but he’s not in prison either.  He’s free.  He’s just in a different place. 

 

         How much process is he “due?”  Not much.  Maybe he has not been adjudicated a “criminal” and maybe he was here legally on a student visa, but he doesn’t get nearly as much process as I do.  If he were arrested and the U.S. wanted to put him in prison, he would get a lot more process, but just to send him back to his homeland?  Not so much.

 

         Then there’s guys who are here illegally.  They have no legal status at all in America.  They may have been convicted of crimes here, or back in their home countries.  Or maybe not.  Regardless, they get nothing.  No process is due.

 

         The amount of process you get is based on your personal legal status and what the government wants to do to you.  What is unusual at the moment is that a lot of people are being deported and the Left is screaming about what is happening to them.  But the way the deportees are being treated, and the legal rights they are being afforded, is not at all unusual or troubling. 

 

*

 

         I’ve never been a fan of the idea that Trump plays 5^th dimensional chess while the rest of the world is playing checkers.  He’s a player, and a strategist, and a negotiator, but he’s not an intellectual, and he’s not intellectually curious, and there are a lot of things about which he knows nothing.

 

         The 5^th-dimensional-chess theory, however, is an interesting one.  And maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe he is secretly trying to achieve completely different goals from the ones to which he pays lip service.

 

         Let’s talk about his protectionist, tariff-based trade-war, for example.  On its face, not much of it makes any sense.

 

         Why impose a tariff/tax on bananas, for example?  How does it benefit anyone if I have to pay 20% more for my bananas?  Is there a banana industry here in Pennsylvania that is being strangled by those damn bananas growing all over Ecuador?  Then there’s blueberries and grapes and cherries.  They are all grown in the U.S., but not in January.  Why have tariffs on blueberries and grapes and cherries in January?  Why will I now have to pay a tax on them?  What’s the point?

 

         Then there’s all those manufacturing jobs that disappeared (for a lot of reasons) fifty years ago, but Trump now wants them back.  The world of cars and international trade is complicated, I suppose, but what about sneakers?  If we tax Nikes coming from Vietnam and have them made in Arkansas instead, we will be paying $500 for those Air Jordans instead of the $250 we pay now.  Those poor bastards in Little Rock are just NOT going to make sneakers for $100 a week, but the guys in Hanoi will.  So why not let them?

 

         In other words, even if Trump “wins,” much of this tariff war is pointless.  No one in America will benefit---not consumers and not the (mostly imaginary) US manufacturing workers.

 

         So maybe there’s another explanation.  Maybe there’s a 5^th-dimensional chess game Trump is playing here and the trade war is just a means to a completely different end.

 

         The inflation that has crippled the American economy over the past five years is the result of the attempted globalist takeover during the COVID years.  The lockdowns designed to get Trump out of office necessitated the printing of trillions of dollars to create a fake economy while the attempted takeover was proceeding.  The increase in the money supply, along with further wasteful spending in the Biden Administration, inflated prices across the economy (and around the world).

 

         There are a limited number of ways to reduce inflation.  One is to “grow out of it” by expanding the economy without increasing the money supply.  Trump is trying to do that, primarily by expanding energy production, but the money supply has been so inflated that this method will take longer than Trump has in office.

 

         The other tool is to remove extra dollars from the money supply through taxation, and maybe that is actually what the tariffs are for.  If I have to pay $800 for a dishwasher rather than $600, and the extra $200 is simply a tax that the US government collects and then removes from the money supply, deflation occurs. 

 

         Trump has been so adamant about cutting taxes that he could never admit he is actually raising taxes, but he doesn’t have to.  He claims, and has always claimed, that it is the Chinese (or the Mexicans, or whoever), that pay the tariffs.  He says it so much that I sometimes think he believes it, but of course, the extra  dishwasher money is coming out of my pocket.  And money that comes out of my pocket and goes to the U.S. government has a name---it’s called “tax.”

 

         Economists who don’t know much about economics will often say tariffs are “inflationary,” but what they really mean is that tariffs tend to increase prices.  Everything that increases prices is not “inflationary,” however.  Killing 100 million chickens quadruples the price of eggs, for example, but it is not “inflationary.”  A lot of events can increase prices but are not “inflationary.”  Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply.  Tariffs, since they are taxes, are a way of reducinginflation.

 

         And maybe that’s the only purpose of them. 

 

Copyright2025MichaelKubacki