Booker in CA

California conservative. Byzantine Catholic.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. -Julian of Norwich.

[Booker in CA @ChateauChav]

Morning in America.

[God @Indic_God]

These penguins have more gratitude than mulli converted penguins 🌚

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Has Sergey Brin funded any right wing causes? I’ve asked around. Answer is no. But he gave blank checks to the left. Wearing a MAGA hat when a wealth tax is looming does not undo this evil.

[Tony Seruga @TonySeruga]

🚨 THE MCCONNELL-CHINA TIMELINE: THREE DECADES OF COMPROMISE, ONE CARDIAC ARREST, AND A WIFE WHO FLEW TO BEIJING WHILE HE WAS GETTING CPR — AND THE MEDIA WON’T EVEN ASK WHY 💥

Thirty years. Half a billion in CCP-dependent contracts. A $25 million gift. A Senate office run by unelected staffers. And when the 84-year-old flatlines, his wife’s first move is a strategic sit-down with the Chinese Vice President.

The question isn’t whether Mitch McConnell was compromised. The question is whether there was ever a single day in his entire Senate career when he wasn’t.

🧵 Again, The Question Isn’t Whether — It’s How Long and How Deep

The posts below lay out the current Potemkin operation masquerading as McConnell’s Senate office, but they barely scratch the surface on the CCP angle. Let’s connect the dots the institutional media has spent 30 years refusing to connect.

🇨🇳 The Chao Family: Not Just “Ties” — Structural Integration

Elaine Chao’s father, James Chao, grew up with Jiang Zemin — the man who became President of China and General Secretary of the CCP. They attended navigation school together in Shanghai. This isn’t some distant acquaintance; James Chao met with Jiang at least six times after Jiang rose to power, including inside the CCP’s secretive leadership compound in Beijing in August 1989 — mere months after Tiananmen Square.

The Chao family shipping empire, Foremost Group, doesn’t just do business in China. It’s built on Chinese state contracts:

- Angela Chao (Elaine’s sister and Foremost CEO) sat on the board of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation — the entity that builds warships for the People’s Liberation Army Navy

- In 2017 alone, Foremost signed contracts with CSSC subsidiaries for six massive bulk cargo ships, deals valued at roughly half a billion dollars

- The signing ceremony for one deal included the Consul General of China and CSSC representatives at Foremost’s New York office

- James Chao was publicly celebrated by Xinhua (Chinese state media) and the CPAFFC (a known CCP united front organization) as a “vanguard of China-US exchanges”

💰 The Money Trail: Follow the $25 Million Gift

In 2008, James Chao gave Mitch and Elaine a gift valued at between $5 million and $25 million — overnight, McConnell vaulted into the ranks of the richest senators. As Peter Schweizer documented in Red Handed, this wasn’t just generosity. It was financial fusion.

The Foremost Group’s entire business model depends on CCP goodwill. If Beijing decided to pull the plug on contracts, the Chao family fortune — and McConnell’s, by extension — would evaporate. That’s not influence. That’s leverage.

Plus: 13 members of the extended Chao family have funneled over $1 million into McConnell’s campaigns and leadership PACs since 1989 — starting before he even married Elaine.

🛑 The 2017 Scandal Everyone Forgot

When Elaine Chao became Trump’s Transportation Secretary:

- She conducted a private photo session with her father and Foremost Group employees inside the Department of Transportation headquarters with Chinese media present

- She attended a Foremost contract-signing ceremony with Japan’s Sumitomo Group — a company subject to DOT oversight

- Senior DOT aides arranged an “off limits” VIP tour of the U.S. Capitol for Chinese Communist Party officials from the home region of Chao’s mother, coordinating directly with McConnell’s Senate staff

- She had to cancel a planned China trip after U.S. Embassy officials in Beijing raised ethical concerns about her plan to bring family members from the shipping company to official events

🏥 June 2026: The Timeline That Screams

Now connect this history to the current crisis:

View image below.

Let that sink in. Your husband of 30 years suffers cardiac arrest — CPR on the floor of his home — and three days later you’re in Beijing meeting with CCP Vice President Han Zheng, discussing “strategic stability” in U.S.-China relations.

That’s not a wife visiting family. That’s a handler checking in.

🔍 The “Office of McConnell” as Continuity of Operations

My original posts 💯 nail the current structure: McConnell is a brand identity, not a functioning senator. His staff — Josh Holmes, Shannon Saylor, Don Stewart — run a shadow operation maintaining the institutionalist-uniparty firewall against Trump’s populist agenda.

But the Chao-CCP dimension adds a darker layer: the people running “McConnell” aren’t just protecting K Street and the MIC. They’re protecting a three-decade financial entanglement with the Chinese Communist Party that would make the Burisma-Biden connection look like small claims court.

☠️

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

La France a déjà vécu exactement ça en pire.

2005 : les Français votent Non à la Constitution européenne. 55%, participation massive.

2008 : le même texte, rebaptisé Traité de Lisbonne, est ratifié par le Parlement. Sans redemander l'avis du peuple. (Sarkozy le traître)

Ici le Non n'a même pas été "refait voter". Il a été contourné.

Et vous, qui avez inversé le sens de tous les mots.

Qui passez vos journées à parler de "protéger nos démocraties".

Vous êtes précisément ceux qui s'assoient dessus, en permanence.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

My father cried.
I had never seen it. Not once in my life.

70 years old. Post-war generation. He hated America with everything he had.

60 years. Not one kind word. Not one.

Then March 2011 came.
He sat in front of the TV. Every day. Silent. Fists on his knees.

Your Marines digging black mud with their bare hands for Japanese strangers.

Your 19-year-old sailors sleeping on cold steel floors so our grandmothers could have beds.

Your carrier sailing INTO the radiation while the whole world ran out.

He watched all of it. And said nothing.

Then one night I passed his room and I froze.

Behind that door, my father, the strongest and most stubborn man I ever knew, was sobbing like a child.

I couldn't move. I just stood there in the dark hallway, listening, crying with him.

Then he said it. One sentence. It tore 60 years apart:

"I was wrong about them."

Do you understand what that took?

A lifetime of hatred. Gone.
Destroyed by soldiers carrying soup to strangers.

America, you didn't just save our towns.

You reached inside my father's chest and healed a wound he swore would never close.

He passed away believing in you.

Happy 250th. 🇺🇸🇯🇵
An old man who hated you died loving you. My father.

[Catturd ™ @catturd2]

Commie lawfare.

[Booker in CA @ChateauChav]

@Cernovich If only the Republicans even had the b@ls to attempt it. But, alas, not to be.

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

The Democrat machine, which includes every major media outlet, can protect anyone, and remove anyone who becomes a problem. Almost at will. Impressive.

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

“My kind of man” - Elizabeth Warren

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

!!!

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

Turns out he wasn't a tanned European
He was a Muslim named Hamid Wali

[Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs]

Consider these words from 1920, written by French author Hilaire Belloc:

“The modern world imagines that it has outgrown religion. It has done nothing of the kind. It has merely forgotten it. And because it has forgotten it, it no longer understands itself. Men do not realize that the whole framework of their moral judgments, their political habits, and even their intellectual methods were formed within a Christian society and cannot exist long outside it. When that framework breaks, they will not find themselves enlightened, but bewildered; not free, but enslaved; not rational, but confused.”

[mauro henri @xtinohenri]

os patos estavam sofrendo com um calor de quase 40 graus até que uma moça teve a ideia perfeita

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Just some months earlier, rescued tiger Maruay only knew a concrete floor and a small cage.

This is an uninterrupted minute of Maruay with his beloved ball.

[📹 wildlife_friends_foundation]

[Culture Explorer @CultureExploreX]

What an amazing and breathtaking photo…

Photo by Elle Lookbook…

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

The new communism

[Eva Vlaardingerbroek @EvaVlaar]

I cannot remain silent on this.

The Pope’s decision to do this now, right as Europe is witnessing yet another wave of murders of its citizens by migrants (think of Louis, Christian, Henry, and the countless others) cannot be dismissed as a mere public relations blunder.

It is a painful slap in the face of the Christian native peoples of Europe and all those who lost their children and loved ones as a result of mass migration.

Where is the Church’s charity and compassion toward them?

Why do we not hear a word from the Pope about the 250,000 white British girls who were raped?

Why do we not hear a word about the attacks on Europe’s Churches and Christian communities?

Why do we not hear a word about the millions of Europeans who are unsafe and estranged, fast becoming a minority in their own homelands?

The Church’s silence regarding the threats European Christians face is already deafening. Combining it with telling Europeans that they must do more to “integrate and protect migrants”, is adding insult to injury.

As a new Catholic, I have generally tried to refrain from critiquing the Pope, for we do not lightly challenge the father. This, however, is not a matter of dogma or infallible teaching. The Pope has chosen to make a political and pastoral statement on migration, and on such prudential questions the faithful may legitimately form and express their own judgment.

And my opinion on this is clear: Europe does not have a moral obligation to house the entire world, especially not when it comes at the cost of civilizational destruction.

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

They worship a "god" who orders his followers to enslave and murder Catholics. You are a demonic anti-Pope.

[Booker in CA @ChateauChav]

@Cernovich Honest and true. We may wrestle with God, but there is so much more we tangle with that isn't so clear. As a new Byzantine Catholic convert, the stunt the Pope pulled yesterday has left me reeling. How do I wrestle with that?

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

September 10th began as one of the best days of my adult life. A new business I was helping out hit its first inflection point, the flywheels were spinning, I had quality time with the family. Cracked open a can of nitro cold brew and got ready for another day of war on X. 10/10 day.

My wife said, “Charlie Kirk got shot.” I opened the video and then life changed for everyone.

The grief fell down on me like a ton of bricks.

I was not as close to Charlie as Posobiec and others were. Charlie would text me, like he would hundreds of others each day. He was a modern-day Benjamin Franklin, and I was fond of him from afar. Who wasn’t? Charlie was one of the most impressive men who ever lived. Will Durant would need to return to life to give Charlie’s life the treatment it deserves.

I wasn’t sure what to make of him at the time. I watched his star rise at Turning Point and saw him navigate difficult media attacks and grow an empire.

One of the first people I talked to was Jack Posobiec, who said what I was thinking, “We thought it’d be you.” That wasn’t an insult. He wasn’t saying it should have been me.

All of us know that we might be murdered. It’s something we talked about frequently. Who will get shot first? We can say that it’s tragic to live this way, and so what?

As men you accept that there are enemies of civilization, not many allies, and those on the front will be framed for crimes, sued into bankruptcy, or killed.

I went to great pains to put my assets into vehicles for my children, to fund their 529s, to make sure that my family would have financial security. I nagged everyone in the fight to do this, literally telling people, “Assume you will be destroyed, your children will know their father was a historically significant person, your absence will be hard enough to deal with, don’t leave them broke too.”

I embraced the Stoic and samurai ideals of meditating on death. (Since then I’ve returned to Christianity, that is a different story for another time.)

I watched him show up at the RNC in 2016 shouting on a megaphone, “Socialism sucks.” Sadly, I lost most of my video footage from that era, but was able to locate that classic Charlie moment. (I posted it a couple of weeks before his murder.)

Why Charlie?

We kept asking that. Charlie was pure. If anything he was too righteous for this world. A lot of us to this day ask, “Why not me instead?”

I racked my brain and reached some conclusions that may not look good in the written word without facial inflection, but here we go.

Charlie was too pure. No one thought, “If I murder Charlie, then his followers will kill me and my friends and family.” I’m not saying this to criticize Charlie. He lived his Christian values. Some others on the right are seen a bit as more in the “grey area,” not walking fully in the light, as Charlie did.

Morally it’s a question I fight with almost daily. Are we too pure? Will all of our families be lined up against the wall like Tsar Nicholas’ was, as the neo-Bolsheviks bayonet our children?

Are we too Christian and kind?

My own regrets.

When text messages began to leak, my heart broke again. I’m going to carefully word these next sentences to avoid embroiling myself into the endless controversies and drama. I want no part of any of that and reject fully anyone’s attempt to bring me into it.

I wish I had talked to Charlie more often. I had no agenda or angle to work. He needed someone older and removed from the day-to-day whose only question was, “How can I help you, Charlie Kirk?”

We attended Charlie’s memorial service. Most impressive to me was the President of Hillsdale College. Even looking for this video has me choking up. This man loved Charlie. He didn’t see Charlie as a political tool or way to launder a pet political cause onto college campuses.

This is grief. This is true paternal love.

“Why is dad crying?”

During a trip to see my sick father in the hospital, I was listening to the worship music from Charlie’s memorial, weeping on the plane.

There was some comedic relief to the grief. I loathe worship music. Yet there I was playing megachurch jam band songs from the Charlie Kirk memorial. (Someone posted a Playlist on Spotify.)

“How the f—k did I end up a weepy mess listening to this shit?” As the saying goes, you either laugh or cry. For me it’s been both.

Between Scott Adams’s passing and Charlie’s, I was often getting up to leave the house. Had to walk, collect my thoughts, and go cry alone. I get over stuff that happens to me easily, probably too much so. My wife’s biggest complaint is, “You’re too nice and people take advantage of you.” My dad is the same way, and it’s something I’m working on with my oldest. You have to stand up for yourself. Not everyone shares our values. (In fact, most don’t, and they’ll even steal from you if given the chance.) Even so, there’s a lot to be said for not caring about yourself too much. The opposite end of that is endlessly brooding and greed.

I can get over a lot.

Charlie’s death is not something I am close to getting over.

Charlie Kirk got us back into church.

My wife and I hadn’t ever gone to church together unless it was for a wedding, and I hadn’t been inside a church to worship for decades. We went to a local church our friends attended, and it was packed. The pastor immediately mentioned Charlie’s murder and said he would talk about it.

I hated the sermon, as did my wife. We wanted a message of vengeance, not forgiveness and contemplation, and brotherly love. I rebelled against Josiah B. Trenham’s homily calling for us all to reflect for 40 days.

I’ve tried. I’m still full of hate and anger, almost one year later. Maybe my heart isn’t Christian enough, or maybe Christians have lost touch with the Polish Winged Hussars and other warriors who fought back against the Ottoman Empire and other primitives. Maybe Tsar Nicholas should have taken the Bolshevik threat more seriously.

My wife said of the church service we attended, “Maybe that’s the message we needed to hear.” I don’t have it in me to forgive Charlie’s murderer, the far left, nor the Tech and Wall Street guys who funded it all. I am not Charlie Kirk.

God knows I’m not Charlie Kirk.