The Outrage Is Not an Accident

Here’s something you can test yourself, no research degree required. Open your inbox. Count how many fundraising emails from either party mention a policy detail versus how many mention a villain. Scroll your social feed for five minutes. Count how many posts from either side describe the other as “evil” versus how many describe a disagreement.

I’ll save you the counting. It won’t be close.

That’s not because one side is worse than the other. It’s because both sides are being run through the same machine, and the machine doesn’t care who wins. It only cares whether you open, click, share, and donate.

Political fundraising emails are A/B tested the same way a shoe company tests two versions of an ad. Somebody writes version A, calm and detailed. Somebody writes version B, urgent and scary. They send both to a slice of the list, measure which one gets opened and which one gets money, and then everybody gets version B. Every cycle, every party, this has been true since direct mail. Fear and urgency outperform nuance. Not sometimes, reliably, across decades, regardless of which side is running the campaign. “The commies are coming for your guns” and “democracy dies if you don’t give $5 right now” are the same product with different labels on the bottle.

Your social feed runs on a similar engine with a different fuel. Engagement, not donations, is the currency. And the version of any political opinion that gets the most shares is never the accurate one, it’s the most inflammatory one. “Republicans are all MAGA extremists” gets shared more than “most Republicans are people I disagree with on policy.” “The left wants to destroy the country” gets shared more than “the left and I disagree about the size of government.” Nuance doesn’t clip. Contempt does. So what shows up in your feed isn’t a representative sample of what people actually think, it’s a representative sample of what got the most clicks, which quietly trains you to believe the loudest, angriest version of the other side is the normal one.

I wrote a parody speech a while back putting a fake $5,000-per-voter bribe in Trump’s mouth, tied to a mocked-up currency bill “backed by the Department of D.O.G.E. and Tariffs.” It worked, if it worked, for the same reason the fundraising emails and the outrage posts work, it’s built to travel faster than a fact-check, because a joke that lands doesn’t need anyone to read past the headline to get the point. I’m not proud of that mechanism and I’m not ashamed of it either. I used the same lever everyone else is pulling. That should bother you a little. It bothers me a little.

None of this means the disagreements are fake. Real differences exist on taxes, immigration, healthcare, foreign policy — differences worth arguing about hard. But the version of the argument you’re being shown, on both sides, has been filtered through machinery optimized to make you angrier and more loyal, not more informed. Loyal is the goal. Loyal voters don’t need to be persuaded. Loyal voters just need to be reminded who the enemy is, on schedule, forever.

So here’s the ask, and it isn’t complicated: stop voting the party line because it’s your team, and start voting for the candidate who actually earns it. That might mean sticking with your party most years and breaking from it some years. It might mean voting in a primary specifically to weaken a candidate you can’t stand, even in your own party. It costs you nothing but the discomfort of not being predictable to the machine that’s counting on you to be.

Nobody’s asking you to switch teams forever. Nobody’s asking you to feel bad for the values you hold. The ask is smaller and harder than that: notice when you’re being fed fear instead of information, on either side, and vote like you noticed.

Screwed, Blued, and Tattooed

Yes, you’re screwed, blued and tattooed.

A little history for you youngsters. The phrase “screwed, blued and tattooed” (sometimes “screwed, blewed and tattooed,” or variants like “stewed, screwed and tattooed”) is classic slang meaning thoroughly cheated, taken advantage of, victimized, or put in a hopeless/messed-up situation. It’s emphatic: not just screwed, but really screwed.

So yes, my Republicans, you have been Royally screwed, blued and tattooed.

Take a deep breath. Here is the lay of the land. Right now, take a good look at what kind of a Republican you are. MAGA, far right, deaf to all but the noise that validates your rock-solid position? If so, read no farther. Go away. I’m not interested in you. I don’t like closed-minded people. Goodbye. Oh, and that goes for you on the far left as well. Adios.

Okay, so you have a Red Hat, and it has some letters on it, and the slogan coined by Ronald Reagan was actually a pretty good one, until it was hijacked and bastardized by the First RINO. Yes, the real RINO, not the Republicans that could actually think for themselves.

Maybe you even voted for someone and now have regrets. Well, you may not be alone. You see, the campaign promises were actually pretty good promises, but a campaign promise is not a legal contract. No politician fulfills all their campaign promises, but most try.

Sadly, this time around, it was more like the reverse of every promise is what he did — except the Dictator part. But this isn’t about Trump’s character. It’s about YOU, and what you are going to do now.

Don’t drink any more Kool-Aid (actually it was Flavor-Aid), and administer the Vaccine. It is easy to self-administer, it is painless, and it makes you feel good instantly. Its label is Voter’s Ballot.

Okay, let’s go back to being a Republican. I would never suggest you change parties. By the way, I am a registered Republican. But what I would suggest is that you stop voting the party line. I would suggest you evaluate the candidates by their strengths and what they bring to you.

We may have to vote for an independent or a Democrat in the next couple of elections to get our country back on track. But if we do, then study the candidates and vote for the ones that best align to your values. You may even have to “change” parties for an election. Or vote against the one you can’t stand in your party just to weaken them in the primaries.

Remember, this isn’t about being LOYAL. Loyalty sucks and is stupid if it means supporting an evil, stupid person. Think that one over.

Most of all, stop the HATE. The other party is not evil. There may be bad people in the party, and the extremes of all parties come close. But when you hear “they are all Commies” or “all Socialists”, that’s just BS to scare you and control you.

And it’s the same when the far left keeps referring to all Republicans as MAGAs. You don’t need to apologize, but if you’re not a card-carrying MAGA, tell someone that. Hey, I’m a Republican, I’m conservative, but please don’t make me a NAZI and I won’t make you a COMMIE. Deal?

When the FCC can strong-arm a network into yanking a Senate candidate’s interview off the air—and it happens twice, to two different hosts covering the exact same race—that’s not some random regulatory hiccup. That’s a carefully delivered message.

Traditional broadcast is getting the memo in real time: book the wrong guest and the federal referee might just decide your license is looking a little fragile today. No formal ban needed. No public hearing. Just a quiet threat, a sudden schedule change, and the interview vanishes before most viewers even notice it was supposed to air.

Twice. Same race. Different hosts. If that still reads as coincidence to you, I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a very earnest press release about “viewpoint diversity” to sell you.

The beauty of the system is how deniable it stays. Officials never have to say “pull it or else.” They just apply enough pressure that the network’s lawyers and risk managers do the rest. The candidate never gets the airtime. The hosts learn the lesson. And every other producer in the building files it under “things that can get expensive real fast.”This isn’t about one interview or even one race.

It’s about the chilling effect that spreads the moment people realize the government can still lean on the old broadcast gatekeepers with almost no friction. Streaming and social might be harder to throttle, but the licensed airwaves? Those still come with strings—and the FCC knows exactly how hard to pull them.

So yeah. Not a coincidence. A warning shot. Loud enough for anyone still playing by the old rules to hear it clearly.

A tale of two parties, who would have ever guessed that both parties could see such power in the simple Endorsement by the sitting President of the United States.

The Republican view it as the mark of Cain, the albatross around the neck that will surely drag them down.

Trump, tainted, branded, scarred by life. MAGA forever.

To ever survive the suspicion of corruption they must distance themselves from Trump at all cost.

Trump, Trump who?

The Democrats see it as the battle cry, a rally point.

That one, he’s/she’s got Trumps endorsement, you know what that means, don’t you?

A Trump enforcement, must be on the take..

Of course he has Trump’s sign of approval, he’s a pool contractor.

“Backed by Trump”
“Trump’s Seal of Approval”
“Trump’s Endorsement: Pure Political Gold.”

Take your pick, they all come with the same baggage.

Yes, you read that correctly. It’s up to you.

I can’t tell you what to do. Plenty of people will try. All I can say is this: what you read and hear is often not the full truth. From my experience, the louder something is labeled—and the more superlatives it carries—the less substance it usually has.

This weekend President Trump announced the biggest, greatest, most fantastic oil deal in history: majority U.S. control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan reserves. The deal was struck with the interim leader the United States helped install after the January military operation that removed Maduro. Don’t hold your breath. Even if the agreement holds, it will take years of investment and development before any meaningful volume reaches the market. It won’t lower the price of gasoline or put bread on the table anytime soon. It’s loud, diversionary messaging.

This same weekend Trump was praising the successful launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, as if it happened because of him. Spoiler: his administrations repeatedly tried to cancel or slash funding for the project. Congress kept it alive. Now that it’s launched, the credit is claimed as his own.

Did you know Trump was a registered Democrat for years? Most people don’t. Somewhere along the way he realized he could take control of the Republican Party by building the MAGA movement around himself. MAGA was never a traditional Republican project—it was a personal brand that the party chose to follow.

Trump is not a Republican. He is the original RINO. And too many of us let him get away with it.

With the midterms approaching, the only real question left is this: when will America find its backbone again and take the country back?

The Original RHINO

It’s good to be King. Or to think you are.

When you are King, anything can happen. Wars can dissolve like bone spurs can.

The whole Vietnam catastrophe — French involvement, Chinese influence, the death tolls, the North Vietnamese and Communist threat, and yes, our own misguided decade of it — deserves at least a timeline. Trump’s war of choice deserves a footnote. At least Vietnam had the decency to be a real war. This one was invented by a man who needed to feel like a war president.

After all, why did he insist on changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and put a Bottle of Gin in charge of it?

The Peace President. Who became the Peace President by destroying anything that could pose a threat. A war created against a country so they couldn’t have a nuclear weapon — a weapon they didn’t have. A capability Trump declared he had previously destroyed only months earlier.

Hmm.

But back to anything can happen. Somehow the Persians, the Iran War of choice, turned into scalloped potatoes. Yes, you read that right.

“Small potatoes.” That’s a quote. He said that. About Iran.

18 dead. Most of our missiles depleted. The Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln — a bit rusty and overworked, her sailors thinking about swimming home, every last one of them dreaming of a nice warm plate of scalloped potatoes — reduced to small potatoes.

It’s good to be King.

Now go read that voters pamphlet. Over meatloaf if you like. Take your time with your ballot. Find a good polling station or ballot box if your state provides one.

Screw the USPS if you have the choice.

The long game and it’s only a little piece of dirt so who really cares.

Why does anyone ever do any thing? That’s a good question, and I have a couple of divorces under my belt to highlight that question. But why would someone buy or pay $4,000,000 for a parcel of land next to Yosemite National Park that sure looks like prime Resort land and upscale homes real estate.

That what Kingsbarn (through related LLCs such as Sanctuary at Yosemite) owns roughly 83 acres (two ~40-acre parcels, historically known as Hazel Green Ranch) just outside Yosemite’s western boundary in the Stanislaus National Forest area, purchased in early 2024 for about $4 million.

Now what this interesting and why I write about it is, all it would take is roughly quarter-mile strip, access road to connect it to an existing Park road. Access that has been repeatedly denied over the years by both the parks services and even the courts.

Yet they still purchased the land. Without this access road, Sources say Resort or homeowners would have ~90 minutes / 1.5 hours, more than 10 miles from an entrance via the long Forest Service route

In exchange, Kingsbarn would buy and convey to the National Park Service other land of equivalent value in California (location not yet specified; potentially near Yosemite or elsewhere).

Who determines the value. A quarter mile of dirt isn’t worth much, an access road for a resort could be worth millions.

Interestingly there are noted business connections in other contexts (e.g., a separate deal involving firms with ties to Trump orbit figures), including an indirect link via Don Hankey (whose insurance company underwrote Trump’s $175 million bond in a New York civil fraud appeal) through a different real-estate transaction. These are not the same as the bond underwriter or poster being the party seeking or receiving the Yosemite land/access for a resort.

I am not suggesting anything other than the coincidence of timing and it is only a little piece of dirt.

But that dirt, belongs to you.

Are you a Republican? A real Republican, not a RINO like Donald Trump.

You read that right. Donald Trump is no more a Republican than Barack Obama is. He hijacked the party and turned it into a vehicle for his personal MAGA brand. That movement’s loyalty is real, war paint, buffalo horns, felonies and all, but loyalty to a man is not the same as loyalty to conservative principles or to the country.

It’s time for the Republican Party to wake up. The damage may already take 20–30 years to repair, if it can be repaired at all.

If you still hold conservative views, if you care about this nation, and if you remember that so many of our fathers, brothers, aunts, uncles, and grandfathers died on foreign and domestic soil to give us the America we have today, then open your eyes and do something.

I’ve been following the Forward Party and sharing their newsletter for months. I’m not telling you to join them. I’m suggesting you read what they publish. Their focus is the middle: they evaluate and support candidates, Democrat, Independent, or Republican—who actually work across the aisle for the common good. They’re a useful source for finding people who still share the values you care about. Who knows? One of them might even be a Republican.

One Soldier did the right thing, when will the rest of you do it? And he is willing to pay the price. He is a hero. He is what a PATRIOT is.

Well, what are you going to do?

Sadly that may be the real question we all have to face very soon. The static on the grapevine is Trump will declare a national emergency so the midterms either will not happen, or are controlled by him or invalidated before, during or after as fake results because they are against him, and anything against Trump, as we know is FAKE. Just like his orange tan and hair piece.

So, the big question will be, what will you do?

What will you do when you can’t even cast a vote?

That’s not a small question, That’s the Elephant in the room and when/if he does does this, I may not even be able to ask the question without being considered a traitor. Your either for Trump, or your a traitor, If you think I am being overly dramatic, you have been napping just as much as Trump does during cabinet meetings.

He believes he is above the law and Supreme Court Justice Roberts is doing his best to help him believe just that. Nothing he does is for you, it’s for himself and his family. You have stood by and watched him increase his personal wealth by almost 2 Billion dollars in the first year of his second term. He has no plans on leaving, he thinks he is above it all.

I am not suggesting anything, I am not suggesting a course of action, I am just asking a simple question now, because I may not be able to ask it later.

Well, what are you going to do?

After the sheep have been sheared, all they have left to give are the lamb chops.

Well, what are you going to do?

You’ve got an interview today. You open the sock drawer. Two socks left, neither one matches, and you’re already running late. At least they’re both dark — that’s the whole comfort you get.

That’s what voting feels like if you’re not a true believer in either party anymore. You didn’t pick the drawer. You didn’t pick the socks. You just have to leave the house.

I know a guy — well, I know a lot of people like this guy — been voting the same way his whole life, now looking at his own party’s drift and wondering if the other sock fits better this cycle. Not because he switched teams. Because his team stopped looking like the team he joined.

So here’s what people like him end up doing, quietly, without a name for it: they register in the party they can’t stand, vote in that primary against whoever scares them most, weaken the threat before it ever gets to November — then vote their actual conscience in the general. It’s not strategy. It’s damage control. Nobody wins that way. You just lose a little less.

That’s not a functioning democracy. That’s triage.

Ranked-choice voting exists so nobody has to do that math again. You rank your real preference first, without “wasting” your vote, without playing defense against your own side just to survive a primary. It doesn’t end polarization. It just stops rewarding it — because a candidate can’t win anymore by only feeding the loudest 20 percent of the base. They’d need the middle too.

The two-party system and the Electoral College both need an overhaul. And there’s only one group that can actually make that happen.

You already know who I mean.

You may find this interesting, or you may not , the article you sent me is actually the problem, and I’m thinking of using it for a future piece, because it illustrates my point too well.

Ah, here it comes, you’re thinking. Bill’s going to tell me it’s all wrong. No. I’m not. In fact, I’m going to agree with you, and kill the messenger in the process. Because here’s the thing: it’s either my way or your way, but not both ways.

The right hates the left, the left hates the right, and they’ll let the country die before they work together.

But back to the link you sent. “Dems’ hatred of Trump created this socialist monster, and now it’s turning on them.” Boy, isn’t that clickbait bullshit to begin with. I should use it myself.

So I read it. Had to force my way through it, honestly, because all I saw at first was reverse name-calling, oldest trick in the book, one of Trump’s most-used tactics: “you’re a thief,” while he’s picking your pocket. So I took it to Grok, the “right-leaning” AI, and asked it a few questions. And guess what?

It validated the article. And it validated me. What? How can that be, you ask?

For those who don’t want to read much further, your loss, a little education is always good for you, there are some genuinely good points being made here, especially about how political parties create their own monsters, ones that end up doing more damage than good. And this time, the monster might be Blue, not Red.

That’s the validation. My validation. It’s not always what you say, it’s how you say it. Our political rhetoric has curdled into hate speech, so often there’s something worth saying, a valid point buried in there, but if you don’t wrap it in a hate-wrapper, you’re afraid, yeah, “afraid,” another loaded word these days, that nobody will listen, that it’ll just get lost in the noise.

I put it to you: in the long run, the noise fades. The calm, rational voice is the one people took notes on.

The hardest lesson to be learned here, is to look in the mirror upon occasion and take those rose colored glasses off. I’m not always happy with what looks back at me, and it’s not just the age.

Bill:
Just who is Victor Davis Hanson, is he legit or so far right he will never see the color of the sky again?

Grok:

Thought for 5s

Victor Davis Hanson is a legitimate, highly credentialed classicist and military historian who has become a prominent conservative political commentator. He is not some fringe crank; his academic work on ancient Greece and warfare is widely respected in those fields, even by people who disagree with his politics. victorhanson.com

Background and credentials
• Born 1953 in California’s Central Valley (Selma/Fowler area). Fifth-generation farmer on a family orchard/vineyard; he still lives and works on the farm.
• BA in Classics (highest honors) from UC Santa Cruz (1975); PhD in Classics from Stanford (1980), focused on Thucydides and Aristophanes. Also studied in Athens.
• Professor Emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno (started the classics program there after farming full-time for a few years).
• Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution (Stanford).
• Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College; past visiting roles at Stanford, the U.S. Naval Academy, etc.
• Awards: National Humanities Medal (2007, from George W. Bush), Bradley Prize, American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, and others.
• Author or editor of ~24–26 books. Scholarly ones include The Western Way of War, The Other Greeks, Carnage and Culture, A War Like No Other (on the Peloponnesian War), and The Second World Wars. More recent popular/political books include The Case for Trump (2019), The Dying Citizen (2021), and The End of Everything.

His early scholarly work reinterpreted Greek warfare and the role of the independent yeoman farmer in the rise of Western institutions. That’s the foundation of his reputation; the political commentary came later, especially after 9/11.

Politics

He was once a registered Democrat but became a conservative (now identifies as independent). He supported the Iraq War, wrote regularly for National Review, and is a strong Trump defender — The Case for Trump argues Trump’s style and policies addressed real problems the establishment ignored. He is a frequent critic of progressive orthodoxy on immigration, identity politics, crime, higher education, foreign policy, and cultural issues. He appears on conservative outlets (Fox, Daily Signal, his own site/podcast) and writes syndicated columns.

Critics (mostly on the left or Never-Trump right) call him a partisan apologist, especially for Trump, and argue some of his commentary prioritizes advocacy over detached analysis. Supporters see him as a clear-eyed classicist applying historical patterns (rise/fall of republics, Western military culture, agrarian values) to current events without the usual academic progressive filters.

“Far-right” or just conservative?

He is firmly on the right by today’s standards — Trump-supporting, critical of open borders, DEI, radical gender ideology, and what he sees as elite progressive excesses. But he is mainstream conservative intellectual, not “far-right” in the sense of white nationalism, conspiracy extremism, or the online alt-right. He has explicitly criticized antisemitism and Hitler revisionism appearing in some right-wing circles (including pushback against figures associated with Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes-style views). mediaite.com

Think traditionalist classicist + farmer + military historian who concluded the cultural left went off the rails, not someone who “will never see the color of the sky again.” His academic credentials and body of historical work are solid; his political takes are opinionated and polarizing, as expected from someone writing for conservative audiences. Read his actual history books if you want the scholarly side; the columns and podcasts for the commentary.

Me: (Interest, doesn’t sound like a hate monger out to attack anyone, actually kind of intelligent, might have an interesting conversation with)

Bill:
Thank you, just read one of his ‘attacks’ against the left and verbiage was almost unhinged in its structure. The whole article could have been taken with better credibility without the ‘it was their unhinged hate that’ prose.

Grok:
Yeah, that’s a fair criticism of a lot of his recent political writing.

Hanson’s scholarly books on ancient warfare and Greek history are usually tightly argued and relatively measured. His opinion columns and videos, especially the ones aimed at current politics, often shift into a more polemical, high-temperature style. You’ll get phrases that lean hard into moral condemnation — “unhinged,” “Jacobin,” “nihilist,” “collective madness,” “graveyard of destructive ideas,” etc. It reads less like dispassionate analysis and more like a prosecutor summing up the case against the other side.

That rhetorical heat can make the piece land as angry rather than persuasive, particularly for readers who aren’t already in agreement. A cleaner, more clinical version of the same arguments (focusing on outcomes, data, historical parallels, and incentives) would almost certainly carry more weight with people outside the choir. Strong adjectives and “their hate drove them to…” framing tend to signal tribal combat more than truth-seeking, and it gives critics an easy opening to dismiss the whole thing as partisan venting.

This isn’t unique to him — plenty of writers on both left and right do the same thing when the audience rewards intensity over restraint. Hanson’s version just stands out because his academic background leads people to expect more cool detachment than he sometimes delivers in the columns.

If you have the specific piece (title or link), I can look at the exact language and see how much of the substance holds up once you strip out the emotional overlay.

Bill:
https://nypost.com/2026/07/31/opinion/democrats-hatred-of-donald-trump-created-this-socialist-monster-and-now-its-turning-on-them/?utm_source=smartnews&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_medium=referral
Dems’ hatred of Trump created this socialist monster — and now it’s turning on them,

Grok:

This is the piece. Here’s a clear look at it.

Core argument

Hanson claims the current surge of open socialism/communism inside the Democratic Party is not mainly a reaction to “affordability” problems. He argues the party’s establishment spent years normalizing radical positions (open borders, defund-the-police rhetoric, gender ideology, the 1619 Project, COVID origin narratives, etc.) and that their intense, prolonged hatred of Trump further lowered every norm. The younger socialists, in his view, did not hijack the party — they were raised by it and are now simply dropping the remaining restraints and turning on the older leadership that created the conditions.

The key line you flagged is right in the middle:

“The Democratic establishment’s unhinged hatred of Donald Trump helped birth the socialist-cum-communist Frankensteinian monster that’s now devouring its mad-scientist creators.”

He repeats variations of that framing throughout: “crazed new socialists,” “insanity,” “electrified socialist monsters,” etc.

On the style

You’re right about the prose. The piece leans hard into moral and emotional language. It treats the Democrats’ anti-Trump posture as the primary causal force that “birthed” the more extreme left, and it does so with loaded metaphors (Frankenstein, mad scientists, monsters). That kind of writing signals tribal combat more than cool analysis. A tighter version could have made the same historical claim — that establishment Democrats radicalized the atmosphere and the younger cohort is now outflanking them — without the repeated “unhinged hatred” and monster imagery. The heat makes it easier for critics to dismiss the whole thing as partisan venting, even if some of the underlying observations about party trajectory and internal incentives have substance.

This is classic late-career Hanson political writing: sharp historical analogies mixed with high-temperature rhetoric aimed at a conservative audience that already shares the premises. The scholarly books are usually more restrained; the columns often are not.

If you want, I can pull out the factual claims he makes (the specific examples he lists about dossiers, lawfare, public statements by Schumer/Waters/Harris, etc.) and separate them from the interpretive framing so you can judge the evidence independently of the tone.

They’re eating the dogs and cats. Can you believe some fool actually said that on national television, and said it with a straight face, no less? At least he didn’t say they were using Portland ketchup or homemade fries to go with it. Isn’t that just the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? Heck, you may have even seen it yourself.

On top of that, this stand-up comedian was then elected President of the United States. Can you believe that?

Laughter from the audience is acceptable. It was a good delivery. But maybe a little too close to home for some in the crowd.

Well, I can’t get paid as a political commentator, and it doesn’t look like I’ll make it as a comedian either. So what do I do instead?

If I were to toot my own little horn, I’d say that instead of eating my dogs, I do a pretty darn good job of feeding them. You see, I actually love my four-legged critters, and when they get old and die, I die a bit inside myself. So when one of my Golden Retrievers died of cancer at nine , maybe eight or nine years ago now, I went on a mission. A nutrition mission.

Spoiler alert: this isn’t about Putz or politics anymore, so you can leave now if you’re disappointed. It’s about family. Maybe it’s about America too, in its own way, but that’s the last I’ll say on that subject. Promise. Maybe.

We’ve had Jack Russells and Golden Retrievers for a long, long, long time. They pair well together. And the Jack is leaving us any day now, so I’m feeling a bit nostalgic.

But this is about Max, the Golden before, and cancer. After Max died at nine, I started researching dog food, and the rest here is my opinion, not scientific fact.

You cannot pressure-cook gruel until it’s shelf-stable for three-plus years, pour some nutrient slurry over it, and call it food. I don’t give a crap what it says on the label, that stuff is killing our four-legged family members. Check it out, it’s a fact: their lives are getting shorter and shorter. I’ll admit that’s partially due to a lack of overall activity, since American family lifestyles have changed. But if that were the whole reason, why are we living longer?

Long story short: I cook my dogs their food. It’s not scientific, it’s just nutritious. And they still get a high-quality kibble alongside it.

I’ll cover the kibble first. They get kibble for breakfast, why? For their teeth. They need something crunchy to chew on, and a high-quality kibble still has vitamins and minerals added that I haven’t provided myself. Along with breakfast, they get an 8-in-1 vitamin, which I get from Costco, online only, best value I could find.

Now to the piece de resistance. Sounds good, doesn’t it? First, let’s debunk the myths.

Raw food. Dogs only ate raw food because they didn’t know how to make fire and don’t have opposable thumbs. Why do you think they took up with us puny humans, dummy? For that stupid kibble?

Liver, or heart, or whatever other organ meat you can name, forget any diet built on just one thing. Organ meats have lots of iron. Iron is good. Too much iron sinks ships, that’s what cannonballs are made of. Think balanced diet. Think Popeye the Sailor Man. Yep, we’ll come back to him.

All meat, dogs aren’t carnivores by design the way you think, dammit. Then why’s poochie outside eating your grass, dummy? You need a balanced diet. Why wouldn’t you think your loved ones need one too?

Money, the expense, yes, it was expensive to start. But guess what: it’s almost, if not actually, cheaper now to feed my dogs my homemade food than an upper-tier kibble. I’m not talking about super-duper premium, gouge-your-pocketbook stuff, just upper-middle-class kibble. And what I’m making puts to shame the stuff you’re now finding in the “coolers” at the pet store — stuff we couldn’t even afford to eat at our own dinner table. You’d have to be the proud owner of a three-pound foo-foo dog to feed it that hyped-up stuff. Yes, stuff.

I make about six months’ worth at a time and freeze it. I’ll be honest, I fork out a bit of cash all at once, but remember, that’s feeding two, now three, dogs for six months. Nothing is raw. Everything is cooked just enough to kill off any pathogens. No sick puppies around here.

So here’s the ever-changing recipe. Basically it ends up close to a 50/50 meat-to-vegetable ratio, with brown rice to finish. I’ll cover the rice first, since it’s last in the process and I’ll probably forget otherwise. When everything else is done, I’ve got all this water everything’s been parboiled in, full of vitamins and other goodies, just waiting to be poured down the drain. Instead, I pour in about eight to ten cups of brown rice and cook it like any rice, except there’s way more water than usual. They need the carbs, just like we do. Just not a kibble that’s 80% compressed carb, or is that cardboard?

I use a large strainer to scoop the rice out. Simple. Add it to the 200 pounds of yummy dog food we should all be so lucky to have as our own balanced diet.

Second detail not to be overlooked: the chicken is chicken hindquarters, bones and all. Everything I cook gets run through a LEM ¾ HP grinder. Bones and all. The dogs get all the nutrients of bone meal without the danger of bone splinters. You can rub the finished food between your fingers and not detect a single bone fragment. But why do you think bone broth is so expensive?

Chicken bones are incredibly nutrient-dense, calcium, phosphorus, essential minerals like iron, magnesium, and potassium. You don’t eat them whole, but simmering them extracts rich collagen, protein, and amino acids to make a deeply nourishing broth. So why not just grind them up and include everything? They’re already cooked, softened, and digestible.

Okay, the rest you can figure out and scale to your own needs and budget, but here’s my recipe. It’s not cast in stone, availability shifts with the season, farmers markets, canning season. I only do this two and a half times a year, usually buying from the Chef Store (formerly Cash & Carry, I’m sure you’ve got a wholesale food outlet near you) and WinCo. Just ask for the butcher, tell them what you’re doing. They’ll go out of their way for you.

• 40 pounds chicken hindquarters (Chef Store, comes in a 40-pound frozen package)

• 2 pork butts, boned out

• 2 whole beef hearts (I get these at WinCo)

• 15 pounds beef trimmings or chuck roll

• 5 pounds beef liver

• 5 pounds frozen spinach (remember Popeye)

• 10 pounds green beans

• 10 pounds peas

• 5 pounds broccoli

• 15 pounds beets

• 15 pounds carrots

• 15 pounds sweet potato

I didn’t start at this level. First I cleaned out the fridge and freezer, then added this, then that, using a KitchenAid with a grinder attachment. Then I bought a meat grinder at Cabela’s and quickly returned the overheated toy. Settled on a ¾ HP LEM. Then tried this, tried that. I mix it all in a 60-gallon plastic stock tank that lives in the garage, the same one that holds all the misc. bags and storage containers, plus a 36-quart aluminum stock pot, until it’s ready to portion and freeze.

As for my dogs: the old Jack Russell, well, she’s still old, still dying, and still loved. She’s on a special kidney prescription diet now. You do what you can do.

The nine-month-old puppy, 100% mutt, think terrier crossed with an Irish wolfhound, with Muttley’s grin from Dudley Do-Right and the size to match, well, she’s solid. How else to describe her: looks lean, looks thin, weighs a full 50 pounds. Solid. Coat’s fantastic.

But the real proof is the now eight-year-old Golden Retriever, the one whose teeth are fantastic, who’s never needed a cleaning, whose breath never offends, who’s sharp as a tack, who still has the energy of a two-year-old, and whose coat gets brushed maybe twice a year. I’d put him up against anybody’s Golden that isn’t in the show ring, the ones that go to the groomer on a regular basis. Every vet checkup, the vet just shakes her head and says I must be doing something right.

It took a while to get here. It sounds expensive, and it was, at first. But at six-month volume, it costs less than upper-middle-class kibble now. It’s healthier than the “fresh stuff” in the pet store coolers that costs ten bucks a tube. And you get the satisfaction of knowing you’re doing it, you’re returning the love they give you so freely.

Oh, and I almost forgot, two very big wins both you and Rover get out of this.

Win one: ever feed them a raw carrot, then clean up the yard and notice the carrot’s still raw in the stool? That’s because a dog’s digestive system runs fast, for good reason, since bad stuff moves through before it can make them sick. But the downside is they don’t fully extract the nutrients from what they eat raw. Cooked food is easily digestible. Most of the nutrients actually get absorbed into their system instead of passing straight through.

Win two: the volume you feed them drops, a lot. Check the back of a kibble bag, how many cups, how many times a day, and how much poop are you picking up because of it? One quart of my stuff feeds the Jack and the Golden for two days. Yes, that’s not a typo. Two days. Breakfast is a half-cup of kibble for the Jack and a cup and a half for the Golden. And I still have to keep an eye on whether they’re getting overweight. If that doesn’t show you how little actual nutrition is in that bag, I don’t know what will.

It’s a win-win.

One last parting Trump bash: what kind of sicko would say they’re eating the dogs, with a straight face, in a presidential debate, no less?