The path ahead.

This is a nice path. 

It's used for walking, biking, jogging -- the usual low-tech path stuff. Well made, I think, dotted with benches, running through the wooded areas of several towns. It goes almost twenty miles along the former railway line. It's popular, and it's an example of the kind of things local governments can do well. 

I can't think of a thing that the federal government has done this well in many years. Its response to Hurricane Helene is making the Katrina response look like a model of logistics and efficiency. How could it have gotten worse since 2005?

voilà

Of course, it will probably turn out that some of the funding for our local trail project came from the National Institutes of Health's American Bicycle Path Fitness Initiative, a $20 billion slush fund that donated $10,000 to the county. Who knows anymore. I just made that initiative up, but you know it sounded legit. Who cares? It's just money.

Our money.  

We've been building a lot of bike paths in America, but the actual number of bicyclists is declining. Around here we have a handful of serious bike riders, a small group of oldster bikers-for-exercise (they like to use the path), and the rest are kids, or illegals without cars, or guys who got their licenses yanked for DUI. Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, said while running for office that he was going to bike to work at City Hall, and he did -- the second day he was in office, with the cameras rolling. Since then? Well, with the weather and traffic in New York and the idiocy of city drivers and other bikers, I think he'd be a fool if he did. But I doubt he has.  

Of course the campaign statement was just posing. It's all about appearances, and to hell with appearances. Appearances are ephemera, mist on a windy morning, nothing more than the emperor's new clothes, and the emperor is not someone who you want to see naked. 

This is how we get things like this:

What's her foreign policy plan? "Friendship is magic"?

I can't forecast what's going to happen in the election, but I will make one prediction that I think is ironclad: If Trump is elected, Antifa and all the other wannabolsheviks will go back to the only things they know how to do -- throw bricks, burn things, attack bystanders. The so-called insurrection of 2021 will be nothing by comparison, but of course it was nothing compared to the human injuries and billions of dollars in damage these commie cosplayers caused in 2020 anyhow, the one Governor Walz's wife and daughter enjoyed so much. The iron fist in the sparkly pink glove.

I can't lose hope for America, but I'm certainly not as optimistic about it as I once was. I know nothing lasts forever -- but it would be nice if the world's oldest constitutional republic could show itself to be more resilient than the ancient Roman Republic, which lasted almost 500 years. We'll be halfway to that mark in 2026 and it's looking grim.

News of... the Future!

Friends, I have seen the future and am here to tell you all about it! 

Last night I dreamed I went to the office -- although I haven't been to an office in years -- and by the time I got there I realized that I was now a thousand years in the future! How did it happen? How did I even know it had happened? Beats me. All I knew was that I was in the 3020's. So I decided to continue to the office and see how things had changed. Maybe I still had my job! 

It didn't look like this at all, FYI.

Here's what I found in the far-future city of New York:

1) Everything is bigger. The long-prophesied mile-high skyscrapers apparently came to pass, but I can't say for sure because I could only see them at the bottom levels. They had exceptionally large lower floors to support all the weight, though. So I guess maybe. 

2) Everything still sucks. The old company was still in the same spot. I didn't know how to get in, so I went in the service entrance. The corridors were dirty and the wallpaper was water-stained and peeling. The future is filthy. 

3) The bathrooms are stupid. Apparently our preposterous bathroom issues have metastasized. I asked someone where the can was and was sent into a large room that had merchandise all over, like the floor of a cheap department store. The urinals and whatnot were against the walls in the rear, but good luck finding them. Also, there was no separation of the sexes, but that hadn't become a casual thing -- people seemed annoyed by it and the women were trying to stake out their own territory. Of course some fellow in a dress wanted to use the plumbing on their side even thought his own, er, plumbing was presumably different. I just left.

4) Vending machines are a big deal. But also stupid. I left the building through the front entrance, which was below sidewalk level. There was an enormous spiral walkway that led up to the street. Along that were large vending machines with all kinds of stuff sold in little boxes, but I couldn't read the names on the packages. Maybe the written language had changed that much -- or more likely it is because you can't read in dreams. I thought about getting something to eat, but I had no money -- then realized the thing was busted and I could just take something. Some guy in a suit reached in and grabbed merchandise that had fallen to the bottom. I did too, and I still couldn't figure out what I had. So I put it back.

And that was about when I woke up, because indeed, I had to use the can. 

So, as you can see, my dream visit to the future was kind of a waste of time. Pretty typical for my forays while slumbering -- I never get anywhere and I just get stressed out. 

I'm basically an idiot in my dreams. Maybe even in real life! 

Voices from the sky.

"Mother Earth is angry," the Speaker of the House declared last month. Well, that's a very interesting proposition. I'm impressed that Ms. Pelosi is able to receive intimate messages of emotional content from the Earth Spirit Gaia. Interestingly, it does not seem that Mother Earth had very much to say about wildfires and hurricanes and tornadoes and whatnot before Mr. Trump became president of these United States, but perhaps Mother was holding her tongue, trying not to interfere, as a good mother often does.

Be that as it may, I -- like Ms. Pelosi -- am an expert in interpreting messages from nature. In fact, I have some small renown in being able to get such messages from my observation of the sky. Here are some photos from recent weeks and the messages that are being sent from Mother Nature, courtesy of my interpretive powers.

"Everything is on fire. This year sucks."

"Lex Luthor is attempting to turn the sun red to deprive Superman of his powers. Alert Batman."

"Shoppy Mart has swordfish steaks on sale, $8.99 a pound."

"Your finances are a mess. Consider moonlighting. How about Lyft?"

"Your fly is open."

"Cannot predict now."

Second-half comeback.

We're almost at the halfway point of this miserable year. I am going to be unusually optimistic and say that the second half of the year is going to be great. It can't make up for the people who have lost loved ones due to the Chinese Death Virus, or businesses lost to the lockdown or the Grand Antifa Barbecue, and I pray they will find solace. But what form will this second-half greatness take? Let me gaze into my crystal ball and peer ahead into the mists of time. I don't like to prognosticate -- at least not where people can see me -- but I will do it for the good of our nation.

Eenie meanie jelly beanie... the spirits are about to speak...

The latter half of 2020 will bring these amaaaaaaaazing changes:

🔮 The McRib is coming back.

🔮 Firefly will be rebooted but just as awesome.

🔮 All Fortune 500 companies will change policies from "Yes, Karen" to "Bye, Felicia," refusing to obey whiny leftist insurrectionists; this will enable smaller companies to follow.

🔮 AutoTune will be outlawed by Geneva Convention.

🔮 Stores will be so full of toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, hand sanitizer, and disinfectants that circulars will advertise them being given away free with every $50 purchase.

🔮 The economy will bounce back like flubber, wiping out half the national debt by Halloween.

🔮 That gum you like will come back in style.

🔮 Starbucks will apologize for being pretentious slobs, and begin to repent by renaming coffee sizes big, medium, and small.

🔮 Twitter will suffer a major fail when millions desert the social media platform. When asked what else they will be doing instead of following tweets, responders will say "Anything."

🔮 In addition to jail time and fines, destructive activists will be forced to spend community service putting up new statues of the nation's Founding Fathers.

🔮 Fred Key's amazing new mystery novel, Dwindle, Peak and Pine, will be an Amazon #1 best-seller! Woo!

🔮 A huge JAMA study in November proves conclusively that the benefits of ice cream outweigh any bad effects.

🔮 The "Don't Trust China" movement sends shoppers shunning Chinese goods as much as humanly possible, leading the leaders of that large and contentious country to wonder, "You think we pushed it a little too far with the bat virus thing?"

🔮 Americans sick of sickness, violence, and destruction will begin to do something weird to one another -- treat them with respect.

The spiiiiiriiits have spoooooken! The rest of the year will be awesome!

Now, if we can only get through the rest of the month.