Birthin' no babies

So among the other weird creepy MAGAt things that Tubby47 has uncorked is something call "natalism"

Birthin' babies.

Apparently this came up back in March:

"The White House has been hearing out a chorus of ideas in recent weeks for persuading Americans to get married and have more children,” The New York Times reported on Monday. Proposals include baby bonuses for American mothers and a new affirmative-action program that would set aside almost a third of Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have kids. Malcolm and Simone Collins, oft-profiled natalists hoping to seed the future with their elite genes, reportedly sent the White House a draft executive order establishing a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with at least six children."

 "Medal of Motherhood"?

For fuck's sake, haven't we been here before...

And, anyway, it sounded better in the original...aw, fuckit, you know the rest.

Mind you, the obvious point here is not just "more kids" it's "more white kids" since MAGAts, duh. 

As I pointed out back in November of '24, the "problem" of an aging native population can be "solved" by immigration (or, conversely, that eliminating immigration usually results in an aging, shrinking population).

But for MAGAts that's a nonstarter. Hence the Mutterskreuz 2.0.

Anyway, this came to mind today because it's my daughter's birthday today. She's 19.

She's a terrific person, and I'm glad she's my daughter. I wouldn't trade our 17-and-a-half-years together for anything. 

But.

Here's the thing; she and her brother are, in economic terms, expensive luxuries.

Seriously. They've cost her mother and I...well, lots of money. And time. And emotional investment, general head- and heartaches...they're wonderful kids, I love them dearly, but...

If your "chorus of ideas...for persuading Americans to...have more children." were limited to trivial dumbshit like a measly $5K tax credit or similar gimmicks that range from useless to outright insulting?

You can fuck right off with that shit.

The death of the eleven-kid-family is baked into any industrialized society. Once childhood mortality drops to a statistical rounding error and mechanization makes homegrowing extra farm- or millhands superfluous?

People stop pushing out sprogs.

They're fucking hard work. Good work, if you and they are lucky. But decades of often-difficult, always-expensive, sometimes-heartbreaking labor whether you're lucky or not. Even one kid is work. Two is twice the work. Four? Six? Fuck me sideways, no! 

Early on my now-ex and I agreed; two, full stop. And, frankly, after losing Bryn Rose had Sheadon been a little girl? We might have stopped there. It's hard to express how difficult it was to roll the pregnancy dice again after Bryn. Terrifying. To do that four, six, eight more times?

You're out of your motherfucking mind.

And the MAGAt version is actually even worse:

"First of all, it’s telling that this administration will do anything other than what families really need. If the Trump administration was actually interested in supporting parents, they’d be pushing for paid parental leave, subsidized childcare, and an end to laws that make it deadly for people to give birth.

Actually, scratch that—because the administration’s “baby boom” push isn’t just about boosting the birthrate. It’s about reasserting a rigid, traditional vision of American family life: one where parents are straight, women are submissive, and the bro-natalists in charge get to pretend it’s all for the good of the nation."

Color me shocked, bro.

So, no. Nobody but the Quiverfull loons will sign up for this nonsense. Just like the other creepy, weird MAGATrump shit, it's just a clown car full of weirdos.

But whatever. Screw the MAGAts, it's her birthday, so...

Happy Birthday, kiddo. 

You kick ass.

Question for the readership: Frontiers 1914

So I'm hacking away at this and it's slow going. Looking at the pageviews of the earlier posts in the series it doesn't seem to be attracting much interest, either; couple of hundred views, tops, for the first one, less for the followups.

Is it worth continuing?

And if so, is it worth going into the granular detail that I've been putting into the earlier pieces?

I'm not averse to pushing on, but I'm also not enthusiastic about putting time into a time-consuming effort if there's little interest in it. I can find other topics to write about.

Let me know in the comments if anyone has strong opinions one way or another.

If I don't get any? That'll tell me a lot right there... 

I see no method at all, sir...

I'm reading speculation that Tubby's SECDEF has finally shat the security bed so thoroughly that Dear Leader will get shut of him.

I don't buy it. 

Hegseth is precisely the sort of posturing ignoramus that Fat Nixon loves; a preening, smug, self-satisfied blowhard in love with the sort of performative "toughness" that people who are not genuinely hard find fascinating.

If competence was an issue Fatso would never have considered the ninny, or pushed him through the confirmation process. It stands to reason, then, that INcompetence at his job isn't a deal-breaker. No, if the jamoke made the mistake of praising (or promoting) someone MAGA-icky like a woman, or a darkie, or a trans-person it'd be the end for him.

But fucking things up at work?

Why should Porco Arancia give a shit?

Those guys are all losers, right? NPCs, just there to do The Leader's bidding and die. So long as Hegseth keeps doing MAGA work there the actual professional staff will keep the lights on and the munitions stockpiled enough to blow up pesky foreigners and shoot domestic opponents, so, fine.

Nope. This goober isn't going anywhere.

Which is annoying as hell, not because of that kind of shit, but because of this kind of shit:

 

It's exactly this sort of 12-year-old's-concept-of-"military strength" that bugged me about the guy in the first place. I knew he was a MAGA creep - with Felon47 that's baked in - whose c.v. was tissue-thin. But it was his wanktastic obsession with the Manly Men Doing Manly Things With Manly Stuff Like Rifles that made me really question his value in this particular post.

Because anyone who runs the War Department needs to understand that United States armed forces don't win wars because their minds are sharper, bodies are stronger, and mindsets are more "mission-first".

They win because their bureaucracy is bigger, stronger, more capable, and their economy is more massive.

There are a fuck-ton of smart, strong, mission-focused people in Indonesia, Dakar, the PRC, and Russia.

There's nothing remotely as sophisticated, deep, wealthy, and multitask-capable as the U.S. Defense bureaucracy and the echelons-above-reality in the armed services themselves, or as immensely, terrifyingly monstrous as the U.S. economy.

So the SECDEF's job. Their ONLY job. Is to oversee, manage, direct, grow (and prune) that bureaucracy and harness that economy to manage the steel behind diplomacy in peace and win in war.

Whatever inside Hegseth's head that wasn't pickled with Fireball has the mind of a middle schooler addicted to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. He thinks like a shavetail, and a not-very-bright one at that. 

Someone like this goofball is going to be easy pickings for defense contractors, as well as completely incapable of managing an organization as diverse and complex as the armed components. 

To complete the analogy it's like making that middle schooler superintendent of schools; by June you'll be lucky if the entire fucking curriculum isn't recess and lunchtime. 

He's got nowhere near the ability to figure out how to manage the existing setup, let alone anticipate or respond to challenges from as-near-to-peer-foes-as-we-have, like Russia or the PRC.

Which seems troublesome to me. 

But what do I know? I don't have a problem with "bureaucracy" so obviously I know nothing about military readiness like our current SECDEF.

Maybe I can get an invitation to the next Signal chat and then I'll learn something... 

Update 4/26:

So, yes. It's funny, in a kind of "look at that fucking idiot!" way.

But this idiot is the boss of my Army brothers, and his boss refuses to can the idiot because owning the libs or some equally stupid shit like that.

I'm not sure if there's enough profanity in existence to explain how I think about that.

Fuck all these people.