Bah!

The Great Disconnect

Posted on April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

The fishy smell intensifies.

According to most national media hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

U.S. media claim doctors and nurses are collapsing under the stress and strain of conditions they describe as “war zones” in the battle against COVID-19.

Media are now reporting about nurses and doctors committing suicide as they try to deal with severe PTSD, and psychological trauma, as a result of endless shifts in overcrowded hospitals filled with desperate and dying patients. Additionally, refrigerated trailers now fill with piles of dead bodies as the morgues are overwhelmed with deceased coronavirus patients.

Influencers, perhaps people with an interest in pushing an agenda, are sharing videos of nurses and doctors pleading for help and crying under duress amid their struggle. It all seems rather sad and unnerving. Additionally, professional instability that severe seems a little disconcerting…. That said, that’s one summation of a recent 24-hour media cycle.

However, there is a disconnect.

I’m not talking a little disconnect; there is a profound and entirely opposite set of reports from nurses, doctors and healthcare workers –in multiple states– who are being laid-off, sent home, told not to come in; and doctors worried of losing their practices because hospitals, and their offices are completely empty.

For every media claim of overwhelmed hospital war-zones, there are a dozen reports from actual workers, nurses, doctors and medical personnel reporting exactly the opposite; and yes, a disparity in reporting even in the New York metropolitan area.

Medical personnel in Wisconsin, Missouri, California, Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Georgia New Jersey, and every region in the USA are reporting there are few to no patients in their facility and the medical staff is being laid-off, or told to go home and/or stay home, because there is nothing to do.

How the heck is this level of profound disconnect possible?

Here here, sirrah! Have I somehow misconstrued? Or do you seriously imply that our national liberal-media complement—so essential to the well-being of the entire Republic, now as always—might conceivably be LYING to us?

Why, you impudent scoundrel! Such damnable slander against good and honorable “journalists” cannot be borne, SHALL not be borne, without consequence! To the field of honor straightaway then—where, on my oath as a gentleman, I shall see justice done upon you, decency and righteousness upheld! Pistols at dawn, I say!! PISTOLS AT DAWN!!!

Sundance solicits reports on all this from readers working in the field, and he gets plenty of ’em. Call me a conspiracy nut if you will, but considering the source of the horror stories—and also bearing in mind, as we should here and elsewhere, that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”—I nevertheless feel the idea that Enemedia might possibly NOT be giving us the straight dope is in no way too great a strain for rationality to bear.

(/sarcasm)

Whither freedom?

Posted on April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

Going, going, gone.

Here’s a sensible question. If the mayor of the most notable metropolis in the country can openly suggest that the government has the right to permanently shutter the doors of a church if it refuses to comply with “social distancing” guidelines, or any other edict the government finds necessary in a given moment, then what can’t the government do?

If ever there was a question better left unasked…

Just a few weeks ago, the threat of COVID-19 was considered by nearly everyone to be potentially far deadlier than it has yet proven to be. The fatality rates, hospitalization rates, and the predictions of American death tolls (once routinely touted as “over 2 million”) associated with infection were all much higher three weeks ago than they are today. And yet, as the dire projections about the impact of infection has become considerably smaller with new data and improved medical readiness, the social restrictions placed upon the populace have become progressively more obstructive and draconian.

Got that? The better the health outlook has become, the harsher the government’s restrictions on you have also become.

Coincidence, I’m sure.

If that isn’t bothersome to you, maybe you should think about the fact that these social restrictions seem to have only become harsher on you. Some Americans are enduring no government obstruction in their lives, and others still are actually enjoying more freedom than they would have before these social obstructions in your lives were introduced.

Consider this. A junkie can wake up on a brisk morning in the streets of San Francisco, defecate on the sidewalk in plain view of onlookers, and insert a used needle into his arm to inject illegal narcotics into his veins. The cops will make no effort to stop him, for, you see, that might be a violation of his supposed “rights.” That’s much the same as it was before the coronavirus pandemic, so I should probably add that this junkie’s sleeping and social arrangements may very well be in violation of “social distancing” guidelines, also.

Now, consider that he is far less likely to incur the attention of law enforcement, or even the news media, than you might incur for the crime of choosing to attend your local church, should it have the audacity to be open. It is you, don’t you understand, who is the public health menace.

To put it mildly, the social fabric is being torn apart. And for what?

It’s healthy for Americans to maintain skepticism about the motives and effectiveness of our government. Right now, there is a lot which calls the government’s motives and effectiveness into question. Like what I suspect is a growing number of Americans, I am completely unconvinced that the harsh measures being foisted upon the American people, as collective units amongst the states, are entirely necessary, and even more unconvinced that a similar outcome could not have been achieved with fewer rigid restrictions upon healthy and less at-risk individuals and American life, in general. And as days pass, I’m ever more convinced that the utter annihilation of the economy that we’ve seen, and the trillions in spending of taxpayer money that we absolutely, positively do not have, could have been significantly less damaging if we had demanded fewer government restrictions throughout this crisis, rather than more.

Sure, but how was THAT supposed to provide our masters with any kind of trial run for making certain America had accepted the bit fully?

If you think it’s bad now, though, just wait till the next time they decide to put the boot on American necks and press down. And if you think there isn’t going to BE a next time, you’re a damned fool.

Numbers game(s)

Posted on April 4, 2020April 4, 2020 by Mike 1 Comment

They ain’t adding up.

All admit that the numbers that are scaring the sense out of the country are mathematical projections. All projections are based on assumptions about the ever-changing numbers of “confirmed cases” of COVID-19, as well as of deaths resulting therefrom. But few—and here it seems we must include many “health officials”—consider that the latter numbers are themselves “soft” and tell us next to nothing about how much, how little, or what kind of dangers the virus poses to us.

To make intelligent decisions about countermeasures, we would need have hard data about all these matters. Yet, for two months, doctors such as Anthony Fauci have messed up millions of lives and commandeered trillions of dollars while scaring the hell out of people and watching curves based on projections based on meaningless numbers. Watching the several curves resulting from the testing that is now ongoing and that is projected to continue as the country suffers will provide only more guesses, that will feed more models and more disputes.

The most important fact about COVID-19, its true mortality rate, is the number who die of the virus divided by the number infected by it. No algorithms. Simple arithmetic.

In short, Fauci, et al., are showing themselves to be typical of our bureaucracy: over-credentialed, entrusted with too much power, and dangerously incompetent.

It’s mind-blowing to see how many of us who long since accepted American bureaucratic realities are now willing to set it all aside and squander their faith and hope on those same demonstrably inept, corrupt, and untrustworthy bureaucracies…with no evidence whatsoever of even the slightest change or improvement therein.

Learning the true figures about precisely what danger the virus poses to whom must begin by taking into account one thing we know for sure about COVID-19: that many, if not most, of those infected by this unusually contagious virus show few or no symptoms. This suggests eventual near-universal contagion.

But we don’t know how many of these asymptomatic people there are. Hence, meaningful epidemiological testing must include a random representative sample of the population, regardless of whether they are presumed to be infected or not. The numbers resulting from monitoring what happens to the health of individuals in this sample over a few weeks would tell exactly what percentage of people in each category and subcategory suffer what consequences from whatever contact with the virus they happen to have.

Backed by the media, Fauci and company have contended that actions by anybody, ordinary citizens, elected officials, or physicians that do not follow proper bureaucratic procedures are illegitimate. Who the hell do they think they are? We belong to ourselves. Not to them.

Surely, President Trump’s low point came when he supported bypassing roll call votes in the passage of a $2.2 trillion bill as part of his and other executive officials’ decisions to shut down the country. Making decisions on the basis of meaningless curves and bureaucratic authority rather than through open debate about hard facts followed by roll call votes is not just undemocratic. It’s stupid.

I’d tell you to go read it all, but it’s Codevilla, so I’m sure you know that already,

They’re getting the band back together

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

There they go again. But Trump, bless his stout heart, ain’t having any of it.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is doubling down on his call for President Trump to name a “czar” to oversee the production and distribution of coronavirus-related medical supplies.

Schumer sent a letter to Trump on Thursday saying it was “long past the time” to name a senior military officer to lead the effort, including allowing the individual to use the Defense Production Act “to complete and rapidly implement a plan for the increased production, procurement and distribution of critically-needed medical devices and equipment.”

“The existing federal leadership void has left America with an ugly spectacle in which States and cities are literally fending for themselves, often in conflict and competition with each other, when trying to procure precious medical supplies and equipment,” Schumer wrote.

The Hill, being just another Enemedia propaganda organ, minimized Trump’s scrumptiously scathing response to the tapeworm Schroomer. But I won’t.

Note Trump’s prominent mention of the failed Shampeachment hoax. There’s a reason he brought it up.

The team is back in action. On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis. The new panel will have the authority to investigate any aspect of the virus emergency and the Trump administration’s handling of it.

Pelosi’s announcement came a day after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called for a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate “mistakes” in the virus response. Shortly after that, Schiff told the Washington Post that in Congress, House Democrats must investigate the Trump administration’s handling of virus testing and the government’s distribution of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.

“We need to make sure there’s no favoritism in terms of political allies, no discrimination against states or governors based on lack of presidential flattery,” Schiff said, indicating the probe would be aimed squarely at President Trump.

Less than three months after sending to the Senate impeachment articles to remove the president from office and less than two months after the Senate trial ended in Trump’s acquittal, the Pelosi-Schiff team is up and running again.

So after nearly FOUR FUCKING YEARS of refusing to accept defeat in the 2016 election instead of pretending to be grown-ups and abiding by the result, here we go with Round Four of the perpetual coup attempt from these scrofulous scoundrels.

Lemme see now, what was it I was just saying about how they never, ever stop? And didn’t I have something about bullets in heads lying around here someplace, too?

There is no way in Hell that the next Democrat-Socialist president should be allowed one single moment of peace from his/her/zxher/xxhis/its opposition after this outrage. He/she/zxher/xxhim/it should be hounded into a total schizophrenic break beginning the very instant the election results are announced, without surcease or pity. Full stop, end of fucking story.

MORE TESTOSTERONE, STAT!

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

A risk-free society ain’t a healthy one.

The panic over the virus is something new to modern society. This virus is not a threat to humanity, but it is treated as one. We know there was no panic over the Swine flu, the Asian flu, the Hong Kong flu and so on. There was no panic over the great influenza outbreak of 2017 that killed 80,000 Americans. Yet with the death toll soaring to 4,000 with the Chinese flu, America is paralyzed with fear.

It could be that when a civilization becomes sufficiently advanced, three things happen that change how it interacts with the world. One is the birth rate falls. This is something we have seen all over the world. Once a society can reliably feed its people and it reduces interpersonal violence to a certain level, total fertility rates fall. At the same time, the society feminizes. Women begin to take up positions of authority in both civil and government institutions, changing the nature of those institutions.

That’s the third thing, what we are seeing today. A society dominated by women is extremely risk averse. The focus first shifts to elevating the value of life, then to guarding the children against any potential risk. We saw this happen in the 90’s and 00’s with the millennial generation, who were sheltered from everything. Finally, the society shifts to organizing against any threat, even those that promise to merely trim a few years off the lifespan of the octogenarians.

A society that is hyper-focused on preventing even the slightest risk is not a society taking great risks to explore the stars. Maybe that’s why the cost of going back to the moon is prohibitively high. The safety precautions that would be required make the venture pointlessly expensive. The reason it takes ten years to build a building that a century ago only took a year to build, is that today’s society is risk intolerant. If just one worker gets a hangnail or stubs a toe, the cost is considered too high.

Ahh, but the cost of quivering in terror at the mere prospect of risk is far higher. Or will be when a stronger, bolder, more virile one comes along to kick its cowardly ass, subjugate it, and eventually replace it completely, while the lily-livered, man-bunned MenWymryn all cringe weeping in a corner—soiling their expensive designer skinny-jeans in fright, pleading from their weak knees for a mercy not forthcoming from their steely-eyed conquerors.

The spy in your pocket

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

Our modern technological conveniences come at a price. And it ain’t calculated in dollars alone, either.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Dr. Lee Norman, the head of the KDHE, addressed several issues Wednesday afternoon.

The KDHE is using a GPS program that tracks people’s locations through their cell phones. From the data, the state can tell that a lot of Kansans are not following social-distancing guidelines.

The program the state is using gave Kansas a grade of B Monday but has now downgraded the state to a C. Dr. Norman said some Kansas counties are getting an F grade because of how many people are not observing the stay-at-home order.

Well for God’s sake, man, with a scarifying tally to date of 482 cases and ten deaths as this doomsday pandemic ravages the state, how could anybody blame ’em for keeping a close eye on the witless knaves? Sundance cautions:

Comrades, again we note – our voluntary transponder devices (cell phone, FitBit etc) are being used by government officials to monitor our ‘stay-at-home’ coronavirus compliance. It only takes one slight flip of the government switch, or a carefully worded executive order, to turn that innocuous data into a personal penalty (civil fine).

If you choose to roam, ditch your phone…

All well and good, I guess. But what does that do about the countless surveillance cameras, drones, and satellites still monitoring our every move?

“I Used to Think, Are They Really that Evil? Well, Yes they Are”

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by Mike 1 Comment

Welcome to the party, pal.

Mike Lindell, the inventor and CEO of MyPillow, announced Friday his company will convert 75 percent of their production from making pillows into making masks in an effort to combat the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Lindell told Fox News he is working with the Trump administration on the type of masks needed. “Obviously, we specialize in cotton and we found out different materials that they didn’t want — latex. So, finally, we got the final prototype three days ago,” he said. But after Trump invited Lindell to speak at a press briefing in the White House Rose Garden Monday afternoon, verified blue checkmarks and members of the media did not take kindly to Lindell’s remarks to Americans.

Lindell, who just announced his company will produce 50,000 masks a day by the end of the week, was mocked for sharing his faith from behind the lectern, and encouraging Americans to turn to God in this time of crisis.

“God gave us grace on November 8, 2016 to change the course we were on,” Lindell said. “God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the Word. Read our Bibles and spend time with our families.”

Lindell audaciously daring to mention God in the course of his remarks was of course just too much for the Evil Left, who viciously attacked him as “insane,” an “awful human being,” and “an embarrassment,” among other such vileness. Happily, their bilious, reflexive hatred splashed back on ’em some.

An executive editor at CNN retweeted a video of Lindell’s appearance with the sarcastic caption, “In case you were wondering what My Pillow is doing in a time of coronavirus.” That’s odd, because Lindell just said he spent three days converting a 200,000-square-foot factory into a facility to produce millions of masks for American health-care workers, so we know exactly what he’s been doing during the public health crisis.

Insty jumps in with one of his simple, pithy slashes: “More than CNN has done. And even if he’d done nothing at all he’d be ahead of CNN, which as usual is mostly making things worse.” He also appends a couple of Twitter responses, of which this one is my personal fave:

Man, if only the My Pillow guy recorded a video of him singing “Imagine” in his bathroom instead of retooling his factory to make medical gear.

Then he’d be stunning and brave.

— Henry (@HMSPitts) March 30, 2020

Lindell went on to an appearance on Lou Dobbs to discuss his belated awakening to Who They Are, What They Do.

Mike Lindell told Lou Dobbs, “I heard Jim Acosta attacked me too and he was just 10 feet from me in the Rose Garden. This is just evil, Lou… CNN what they did to me? I’m sorry, I put out a message of hope to the country that God had given us grace on November 8, 2016 for such a time… I’m appalled by the journalists that I see there. I used to think are they really that evil? Well, yes they are.“

Y’know, most days I truly dread the coming schism—the Great Unpleasantness that will see the country torn apart, riven by another bloody Civil War. And then other days something like this happens, and suddenly I look forward to seeing some of these fucking assholes shot right in their goddamned empty heads.

Prison Planet?

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

Welcome to Prison Nation.

Over the weekend, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that “synagogues” and “churches” that disobey his order to remain shut down may be closed permanently as punishment. One can’t help but notice that the good mayor conspicuously omitted one type of worship facility from this dire warning. But whether mosques are exempt or not, the bigger issue is that Bill de Blasio certainly does not have the authority to permanently close places of worship as a punitive measure for defying his commands. He has the word “mayor” in front of his name, not “sultan” or “king” or “supreme leader.” And the First Amendment still exists, even if he’d prefer to pretend otherwise.

But this is just one example of government officials seizing power that does not belong to them. And it’s not only happening in the United States. Over in the UK, police are setting up checkpoints to questions drivers about where they’re going and why. Those deemed to be engaged in “non-essential” travel will be fined. Some UK police departments have gone so far as to deploy drones to track and follow non-essential joggers, hikers, and dog walkers.

Well, okay then. But that’s only Once-Great Britain, right? As I pointed out last night, the crucial question of whether the English people remain English was answered long ago. A hint as to which way that decision went might be found in the name of the “overpraised Chancellor” Hitchens complained about in the piece I excerpted, which is hardly one of those fine multi-hyphenated English names of old—the ones PG Wodehouse had such riotous fun with, like Cyril Bassington-Bassington, August Fink-Nottle (“Spink-Bottle” to Wooster’s beloved Aunt Dahlia, of course), or Claude Cattermole “Catsmeat” Potter-Pirbright.

Yep, that’s Anglund, and Anglund definitely ain’t what once it was. Thankfully, America is still America, right? And always will be, right?

Well. About that.

This week a pastor was arrested and charged with criminal offenses for holding a worship service. Let us note that this event occurred not in North Korea or Saudi Arabia, but the United States of America. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, of Revival International Ministries, turned himself into authorities after leading his congregation in Sunday worship, which put him in violation of his county’s “stay-at-home” order.

Hillsborough County in Florida, like many other states and localities across the country, has forcibly shut down all establishments that it has deemed “non-essential.” As far as I know, no government at any level, anywhere in the nation, has deigned to label churches essential. Our Founding Fathers, who gave the right to assemble and the right to practice religion pride of place in the Bill of Rights, seemed to have disagreed. But in these times we are not subject to the opinions of the Founding Fathers or even the legal document they wrote. We have entered a point in our history where governors, mayors, and local county boards, can come up with any rule they like, outlaw whatever behavior they don’t like, and enforce their edicts at gun point. But to question this new system, I have been repeatedly informed, is to wish death on our nation’s elderly population.

Pastor Howard-Browne insists that his church took many precautions. Hand sanitizer was given out. Staff wore gloves. Congregants were spaced out as much as possible. They may not have all been 6 feet apart, but they were certainly better spaced than you will be if you wait in line at the grocery store. As it happens, you can go to the grocery store 10 times a day and load your cart up with snacks, candy, and soda. You can then stand in a crowd of densely packed people as you wait to purchase your items from a cashier who may or may not be wearing gloves. All of this, says our Dear Leaders, is both safe and essential. But sitting in a church, a few feet from the next person, taking care to cover your mouth when you cough, and making sure that your hands are washed, is both unsafe and inessential. Does that make any real sense? Probably not. Can the government simply declare all churches non-essential, close them indefinitely, and thus circumvent the First Amendment with so much ease as to render it effectively nullified from here on out? I doubt that was ever what the men who wrote it had in mind, but here we are.

I am trying to imagine a definition of “religious liberty” that includes the government closing churches indefinitely on the basis that they are not essential enough to remain open. I cannot think of one that would be at all cogent or meaningful. Indeed, it has become obvious (if it wasn’t already) that our mainstream notions of “liberty” and “rights” and “freedom” are largely nonsensical, as evidenced by the people who normally assert these concepts as absolutes but now insist that the government has the unquestioned power to lock us in our homes and shut our businesses for as long as it pleases.

Most of us, it turns out, do not have a governing philosophy or set of principles. We are slaves to our emotions. So, if the government scares us enough, we will rip the “Give me liberty or give me death” and “Don’t tread on me” bumper stickers off of our cars and stuff them in the closet while we cower along side it. Then when the threat has passed — or at least we are told that it has passed — we will proudly affix the bumper stickers back on our bumpers again, and sing bravely about our love of freedom.

For as long as the authorities still allow anyone to sing, and not one minute longer. Sadly, tragically, at this point a reasonably objective, historically literate person can only conclude that our Founders wouldn’t lower themselves to piss in our mouths if our gums were on fire. Can’t honestly say I’d blame ’em for feeling that way, either.

No fake news here

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by Mike Leave a comment

More plain-and-simple truth, inconvenient though it be, from America’s Only REAL News Source.

Americans Excitedly Anticipate Getting Paid With Their Own Money
U.S.—Americans have reported they’re very optimistic about the stimulus package passed by Congress last week. In particular, people all around the country are excited to get paid with a little bit of the money that they paid the federal government already.

Americans from all walks of life said they couldn’t wait to receive a check with a small percentage of the money the government had already taken from them.

“I can’t wait to get that $1,200.00 check of my own money,” said one man in Texas, rubbing his hands together. “Surely this will get the economy back on track.”

From the rich to the poor, American citizens spent many hours dreaming of all the things they will spend their newfound riches on. “With $1200, I could save enough to pay my taxes on time this year,” said one woman in Los Angeles. “Thanks so much, Congress. You’re the real heroes here.”

A small percentage of the population said they thought it would be way more efficient for the economy if the government just didn’t take the money in the first place. These people were shouted down as “libertarian conspiracy theorist wackos” and told to move to Somalia.

Sure, why not? Makes every bit as much sense as anything else does these days. Plus, what with Minnesota and other places having been “fundamentally transformed” into Somali enclaves, there’s probably lots of room over there now, available at fire-sale prices.

The Green New Deal Dystopia

Posted on March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 by Mike 2 Comments

Wouldn’t be caught dead living there, myself.

Greens just can’t help themselves. As the rest of us do what we can to tackle or withstand the Covid-19 crisis, they treat it as a sign, a warning from nature, a telling-off to hubristic, destructive mankind. The speed with which they have folded this pandemic into their misanthropic narrative about humanity being a pox on the planet has been shocking, but not surprising.

Right from the top of the UN, they have been promoting their backward belief that this virus is a reprimand from nature. Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, says ‘nature is sending us a message’ with this pandemic and other recent disasters, including bushfires in Australia and locust invasions in Kenya. Of course nature is doing no such thing, because nature is not a sentient being, however much the new religion of environmentalism might fantasise that it is.

Britain’s chief bourgeois misanthrope, George Monbiot, was hot on the heels of the UN’s eco-medievalists. He says Covid-19 has shattered humanity’s self-serving myth that it has achieved ‘insulation from natural hazards’. There is a grotesque glee in the way Monbiot describes what Covid-19 has unleashed – ‘the membrane has ruptured’, he says, and ‘we find ourselves naked and outraged, as the biology we appeared to have banished storms through our lives’.

“Insulation from natural hazards”? We somehow “banished” biology? Ummm, excuse me and all, Mr Moonbat, sir, but…well, I can’t honestly say I know ANYBODY—not a single living soul—who believes ANY of that utter codswallop you just disgorged. I certainly don’t myself.

This is also why so many greens online have been sharing images of dolphins swimming near Venice or an absence of airplane trails over California. Because to them, these are signs of a benefit from Covid-19: the humbling of humankind, the reining in of our industrial and technological activity, and the reassertion of nature’s awesome power. If you see a disease as a political statement, as an opportunity to pursue your pre-existing misanthropic agendas, there is something very wrong with you.

Even though all of this is morally perverse, it is not surprising. For a long time, greens have viewed human beings as a pox, a virus in our own right, doing untold damage to the planet. Green god David Attenborough has said humans are ‘a plague on the planet’. Even when greens don’t use such explicitly hateful language, they constantly promote a view of human production and development as toxic and destructive.

And they latch on to everything from bushfires to floods, from plagues of locusts to melting ice-caps, as signs from nature, lessons from a furious Gaia. When religious crackpots blame floods on gay marriage, claiming God is punishing us for losing the moral plot, we rightly mock them. Yet greens offer merely a secular version of such backward, apocalyptic claptrap.

Oh, there’s nothing secular about it. It’s more a contemporary twist on traditional religious faith—a perverse, bitter, ugly one, based not on love and redemption but on bilious contempt—more precisely attuned to the sensibilities of shriveled souls who scorn Christianity, mostly out of juvenile spite.

The truth is that if the Covid-19 crisis has shown us anything, it is how awful it would be to live in the kind of world greens dream about. Right now, courtesy of a horrible new virus, our societies look not dissimilar to the kind of societies Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, green parties and others have long been agitating for. Fewer flights, industry halted, huge infrastructure projects put on hold. Less driving, less travelling, less human interaction. Over the past few weeks, as a result of our response to Covid-19, the ‘human footprint’ will undoubtedly have shrunk. And what an awful world it has become: smaller, quieter, more atomised.

Also stilted, impoverished, and fearful: a world in which trust has been supplanted by suspicion, comfort and ease by hardship and angst, hope by despair. Green weenies frequently blibber on about the necessity of a mass die-off in order to indulge their pet delusion of restoring “balance” and “harmony” between man and his natural environment. Too bad for us saner sorts that they seem determined to take our helpful response to heart and act on it: By all means. After you.

When fear is fueled, principle is abandoned

Posted on March 27, 2020March 27, 2020 by Mike 1 Comment

And the Left is lovin’ it.

Consider, for a moment, what ideas Americans seem to have generally accepted in the last few weeks.

First, there seems to no longer be a question as to whether or not the government has a responsibility to ensure health care for American citizens. The prospect of some hospitals, in some specific locales, exceeding health care capacity has caused the bulk of the American economy, at the behest of government, to simply stop functioning in order to avoid it. In other words, the health of a comparative few is of far greater importance than the personal, financial, and social interests of the many. If we accept that as gospel and the creed of our governance, as it seems we have, then how is Medicare-for-All anything less than a moral imperative?

Secondly, there no longer seems to be any question as to whether our government needs to act swiftly and decisively to defend against an invisible threat which presents an unknown, and unknowable, future impact, even if that means destroying American free enterprise, and the lives and livelihoods of countless millions. Green New Deal, anyone?

Thirdly, this crisis appears to have nullified any devotion to the concept of individual liberty among Americans. A friend in Chicago tells me that he and his young daughters daren’t risk even walking to the park that his tax dollars built, as he risks a $500 fine for doing so. The stiffest resistance encountered by the government officials imposing these infringements upon law-abiding citizens is the quiet grumbling that exists beneath all these loud sermons about “social distancing” and “flattening the curve.”

And finally, as Americans are left unable to care for themselves because the government is prohibiting their free association in the economic marketplace, the government is now facilitating a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers as cash payments to Americans below certain income thresholds.

It is not a coincidence that the greatest economic depression and the greatest expansion of the federal government’s power in American history occurred at precisely the same moment in time (see: New Deal Era). Once you understand that, why American progressives seem all-too-willing to sacrifice Americans’ economic prosperity while promising government-issued security blankets during the crisis shouldn’t be a mystery to anyone.

Americans are being asked to not only accept unnecessarily rigid social restrictions, but to also accept an indefinitely disabled economy for as long as the government sees fit, even though its continued disability has the potential to destroy our free enterprise system and fundamentally alter the American citizen’s relationship with the government.

To justify all of this, Americans are routinely presented the false metaphor that we are at war, and that this war requires sacrifices on our part. But millions of Americans aren’t enduring economic strife, social anxiety, and government-imposed quarantines because modern-day Nazis are looking to enslave humanity. No, we are enduring all of those things as a result of our blanket government policy responses to this pandemic, which apparently require bigger, broader, and more dangerous government policy responses to rectify.

You guys know what I always say: when the Left is winning, America is losing. In a time when government is using panic to expand its reach and power by orders of magnitude, conservative “principles” are old, stale news as the putative Right joins the general stampede to clamber aboard the Big Government bandwagon. All of which means the Left is winning.

Sad!

Posted on March 25, 2020March 25, 2020 by Mike 6 Comments

He’s sinking fast.

Call off the search, Joe Biden has been found.

After days of people wondering exactly where the former VP has been, Biden decided to appear before some friendly faces on The View today. He was interviewed remotely from what I’m assuming is his home, as it’s the same background he’s had for the last several videos he’s made. Apparently, all the rest he’s been getting the last few weeks has done nothing to sharpen Biden’s mental faculties, as he ended up devolving into incoherence rather quickly.

Follows, a Tweet quoting some trademark Biden-blibber: “We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what—no matter what.”

Wait, what? Yeah, I’m not going to even attempt to translate that. I have no idea what Biden is attempting to say there.

It got worse, though.

How could it not? The man is actually lapsing into morbidity and decomposition publicly, in real-time. Jazz Shaw picks up the rapidly unraveling thread, and remarkably, it gets worse still.

This is about as close as we can get to a transcript of Biden’s remarks falling into disarray.

“And uh, and, and in addition to that, uh, and in addition to that, we have to, uh, make sure that we, uh, we are in a position that we are, well, lemme, lemme go a second thing. I’ve spoken enough on that”

To be clear, there was almost certainly some sort of technical failure going on here. A couple of seconds into the clip you can see Biden gesturing with his right hand, most likely urging a staffer to keep the teleprompter rolling. I’m assuming it just froze up at that point. But it was the former Veep’s performance after that technical failure that sends some worrisome signals.

Let’s keep one thing in mind. This wasn’t some moment where Biden got caught by surprise when a reporter tossed a loaded question at him or an awkward answer to a pointed comment from an audience member at a town hall. This was a planned, staged event where Biden was able to set the tone and tempo at a time of his choosing. All he had to do was successfully read the words on the teleprompter. And even if the prompter failed, he had plenty of time to practice the remarks in advance, allowing him to push forward and summarize his message in the same general theme. He didn’t even manage to meet that low bar.

I swear to you that I’m not trying to be unkind to Joe Biden or just run him down in the name of gaining some momentary political advantage. My family has struggled with “mental clarity” issues involving some of us in our advancing years, as I’ve mentioned here in the past. I can totally sympathize. But this guy is asking to be made the leader of the free world and be given the launch codes. And if the Democrats are taking this election seriously and honestly care about something besides just replacing Donald Trump with any other warm body they can find, the DNC should be having a long, serious discussion about this by now.

Ahh, but they don’t care about anything else. It’s dubious at best, should he somehow survive and win the Presidency, whether they even have any intention of allowing Uncle Gropey to operate in any capacity other than as a front for the real Power operating behind the scenes anyway. If Biden can stave off his escalating collapse and decay long enough, we could well end up with a ventriloquist’s dummy as POTUS. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you President Charlie McCarthy!

Think I’m kidding? Think they’re not desperate enough to be gaming it all out even while we all watch in horror as Gropey continues to disintegrate before the eyes of the nation?

Think again.

Stay Alive, Joe Biden
Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.

Voters seem to have coalesced around Biden for his past—who they have known him to be for the past four decades in American politics—rather than for anything in his present. It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate.

Today, as the country (and the world) enters what is likely to be a prolonged period of darkness, left to the mercy of a deadly virus, Biden is grappling with the reality of what he can—and must—do in this hour of crisis, as the man who would like to take over leadership of the United States.

Gropey is grappling with reality, period.

In all likelihood, the desire to oust Trump will be piercing in the coming days, as death and chaos escalate. The president has been reckless, duplicitous, and morally hazardous in his leadership during a pandemic that is likely to be the defining event of a generation—forget about a campaign cycle. But the many union members looking at their closed casinos and the mothers in lockdown with their children and the students forced off their campuses and the older Americans living in complete isolation may find it impossible to imagine that their earlier fears about another four years of Trump have abated, or that the ferocity of their desire to get him out of office has lessened. Indeed, the emotion of this moment may displace any that has come before it.

Biden’s team appears to understand this, and to believe that what matters most now is keeping their candidate alive in the American imagination as an alternative to Trump.

Keeping him alive at all is the real task.

His appearances these days have an almost parallel-universe quality to them:

Don’t they. Don’t they just.

Biden’s audience-less remarks from his home in Delaware have the suggestion of an Oval Office address, and their content seems intended to offer a glimpse into the twilight zone

Okay, is this hapless bint just trying to be funny now?

where someone else, someone more empathetic and capable, is president. It’s as if Biden is telegraphing to his public: You have already imagined that I can beat Trump; now imagine what it will be like when I am president.

Oh, that one’s easy: we’ll be treated to seeing Gropey (or a stand-in) being trotted out now and then to recite a few meaningless words, maybe taken for a brief stagger ’round the White House lawn, then trank-darted back into stasis and returned to his sarcophagus until another PR turn is required of him. Meanwhile, the nation will continue to be (mis)ruled by a shadowy cabal of Swamp critters—out of view, out of reach, out of control, answerable to none.

Thus will the status quo ante be restored, and the Deep State preserved.

Top Men

Posted on March 22, 2020March 22, 2020 by Mike

Bitter Clinger is not impressed.

It’s not just infuriating, it’s depressing, to see how mentally softened our country has become. Reduced to a shadow of ourselves, once the greatest, most inspiring nation to grace the planet. A nation colonized by men that sailed across oceans to a wilderness unknown without modern convenience or assurance of survival to have what they coveted most, personal autonomy. A nation that sent men to the deepest depths of the oceans and planted flags on the moon.

And what are we reduced to by media-induced panic? A nation of cowards, that casts the eye of suspicion on our fellow countrymen for the crime of a public sneeze or clearing of the throat.

My Little Clingette recently travelled to Spain on a school trip, one wrought with government travel bans, social distancing advisories, the ever-present “abundance of caution”, airport screenings, and a rucksack replete with hand sanitizer, alcohol-wipes and the like.

Upon her return, the top men of government, medicine and science have deemed it proper that she be quarantined for a fortnight, because, you see, having travelled makes her a hazard to society, or so say the top men. Mind you these same men of science have informed us that a child, moments from birth, is no child at all and may be summarily executed. These same men of medicine have assured us that injecting livestock with hormones is a dangerous practice, but injecting an eight year old with hormone blockers is sound medicine. These same men of government ply us with sound logical practices such as the forgoing of jurisprudence for the rapists, murderers and drug peddlers that invade our country from lands afar and near that pillage our great nation by way of government trough and illicit acts.

As a child of the internet generation, Little Clingette is given to trust the collective knowledge of the keyboard. So she is convinced that a visit to grandma’s house is tantamount to issuing a death sentence to her elderly maternal role model, and while I love her heart for being so concerned, a part of my heart breaks for her that she is assuredly is symptomatic, not of COVID-19 (or as it is referred to in House Clinger, “The Boogeyman Virus”), but of a deeper, more worrisome disease, one that is increasingly pervasive in our society. She suffers from fear, and fear is a dreadful disease most certainly. For while a bacteria, a virus, a stranger, or whatever other form that risk may manifest as may indeed kill you, fear itself will cripple your growth and life in a way that Polio or Ebola never could.

I still say that if our Top Men—with their superior wisdom, judgment, and access to much information we lesser beings lack—were really all that concerned about CV-19, they wouldn’t be in Washington conducting the usual business in the usual way right now as if there was nothing to worry about.

They’ve lied to us, and lied to us, and lied to us—about everything under the sun, for years and years and years. We know this full well. We know they’re not to be trusted; we know their intentions, ethics, and behavior all habitually fall a good ways short of honorable. Yet now, all of a sudden, we’re going to start believing them? We’re going to start trusting them, we’re going to just take it on faith that they have our best interests at heart—that they mean well after all? That they’re only “here to help,” as the bumper-sticker joke goes?

I could be all wet, I could be overly cynical, I could be a damned idiot, but…nah, brah.

Jersey dhimmis embrace Teh Suck

Posted on March 21, 2020March 22, 2020 by Mike

While your attention was diverted, a thing happened.

New Jersey City Approves Changes to Noise Ordinance to Allow Islamic Call to Prayer to Broadcast Five Times a Day – Beginning at 6 AM
After extensive debate, the City Council on Tuesday night voted 5-4 to approve changes in Paterson’s noise control ordinance that supporters say will allow mosques to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer five times a day.

The vote drew an impassioned standing room only crowd of more than 120 to City Hall, including some Christian pastors who opposed the measure, saying it would create a nuisance for people who live near mosques, as well as members of Paterson’s Muslim community, who praised the ordinance as a victory for religious inclusion.

Hey, long as those pesky Christian pastors don’t try something truly offensive and dangerously confrontational like, oh, reading from the Bible audibly in the vicinity of a mosque, say. Or, heaven forfend, handing out pamphlets advocating Christianity where a Mooselimb might see you.

Because that would be wrong.

But another resident, Steve Bauer, said mosques’ loudspeakers would be “blaring” in neighborhoods. During his comments, Bauer mentioned Islamic terrorists, including the man who was living in Paterson in October 2017 when he killed nine people at a Hudson River bike path in Manhattan.

Public nuisance isn’t the real issue; volume isn’t, and the time of day the devotional yodeling gets cranking damned sure isn’t. The issue is the establishment of a preferred state religion, most especially the official embrace of a hostile, alien pseudo-religion which is savagely antithetical to every last principle this pathetic joke of a nation used to proclaim.

City officials quickly interrupted Bauer to tell him he could only comment about the noise ordinance.

“With all due respect, this is a religious issue,” Bauer responded.

One would think so, perhaps. But ask the FBI anytime yet another known-wolf Muzzrat drives a truck onto the sidewalk to crush the infidel about his possible motive and you’ll quickly find out different.

The revised ordinance approved on Tuesday night listed 14 exemptions to the city’s noise regulations, including one that covered “bells, chimes or carillons…while being used in conjunction with religious services.” The revised ordinance also said that the call to prayer already was exempt from the noise control regulations under state law.

I’ll let Cristina say it for me:

The Islamic call to prayer should never be allowed in any city in the United States.

Amen.

It is a total nuisance and it is also a way for the Muslims in the community to show their dominance, forcing a city with Christians, Jews and perhaps agnostics to be subjected to Islam.

It is every bit of that, yep. Unfortunately, shamefully, this is just another in a lengthening list of wars we lost a long time ago. And in war there ain’t no do-overs.

In case you didn’t know, Paterson is but a short drive from a certain place in lower Manhattan some of us used to refer to as Ground Zero. A thing happened there also way, way back in antiquity—a seemingly major event at the time which has now been totally forgotten. In the fall of 2001, that was; you could look it up if you’re interested, I suppose. But hardly anybody is anymore, so why bother?

*spit*

WORLD ENDS

Posted on March 20, 2020March 20, 2020 by Mike

Women, minorities, and…transgenders hardest hit?

Though medical facilities may soon become overtaxed for everyone, the coronavirus pandemic has shed light on how transgender people’s care can be treated as “non-essential.”

Quoth the Ace:

Well I think I have all the “light” I need on this matter. Their surgeries — butcheries, really — are absolutely “non-essential” and so, through a complex process called “calling things what they are,” have been deemed “non-essential.”

I know that the idea of calling things what they are is anathema to some.

Heh. Okay, back to the original turdball of an article.

For transgender and gender non-conforming people, gender-affirming surgeries are life-altering procedures, which, for many, can greatly reduce gender dysphoria and improve their quality of life.

Uh-huh—right up until they kill themselves, as is disproportionately their wont.

Annnnd that’ll be plenty enough of all that, I’m sure. Note that the link above is to Ace’s takedown, not to Vice’s execrable twaddle. You’re welcome.

A man of the people

Posted on March 16, 2020March 16, 2020 by Mike

Senile Uncle Gropey is so inept and out of it he can’t even fake being one with conviction anymore.

Think about the image his latest confrontation projected, of a guy who sweats while he works getting an incoherent, finger-wagging lecture from a pompous clown steamed that this peasant isn’t on his knees genuflecting before the Democrat Demigod of Dover. There once was a time when the Democrats styled themselves as the party of the working man – for all his myriad flaws, Biden’s crustacean competitor Bernie Sanders at least pays lip service to the workers – but that day is long past. Begone, you dirty-nailed cis-trogs, with your uncurated ideas of gender identity and upper body strength.

The Democrats are now the party of the Pumpkin IPA-sampling hipster, the woke tech tool, the militant diversity consultant, and the cat-fancying public school teacher whose husband went out to get her some Diet Coke when she was 48 and never came back.

Oh, and the buried lede was that “his sons” hunt and own shotguns. His good son, by all accounts a decent guy, passed away, leading to the other son Hunter getting with his ex. So, that’s awkward. And now we learn that the Stripper Tapper is strapped, that the guy who got booted from the Navy for drugs is packing? Is that even legal?

It doesn’t matter. We all understand that the rules that apply to us don’t apply to moronic mandarins like Gropey Joe or to their relatives like Hunter, the Snortunate Son.

And that’s how the Democrat establishment wants it. Or, rather, that’s what it wants to return to. By rallying around the tattered banner of Joe Biden, the Democrats have forfeited the chance to offer the candidate of change. Rather, they seek to offer the candidate of change back, back to the ineptly managed national decline of the Barack Obama years. If Joe Biden wins, he will not serve – he will be out in the Rose Garden frying bugs with a magnifying glass while a brainless trust of Obama retreads gets to work transforming all of America into Scat Francisco.

Gropey’s fractured fairy tale about his sons and their shotguns doesn’t matter, and not only because of the legal issue Kurt cites. It’s a baldfaced lie to begin with, the standard-issue subterfuge every gun-grabbing Democrat-Socialist wannabe tyrant trots out whenever it seems necessary to soothe the rubes who might be getting Woke to the con. Whenever a Democrat-Socialist goes out a-huntin’ and a-shootin’ and a-rooty-toot-tootin’, it’s strictly for photo-op purposes, nothing more. Unfortunately for them, these manufactured propaganda events always wind up looking about as natural, spontaneous, and sincere as Fauxcahontas appears to be in her own damned home:

HILLARY!™‘s and Gropey’s on-again, off-again Southern patois; Fauxcahontas’s risible down-home drawl expressing her sudden, TOTALLY UNSCRIPTED desire to “grab myse’f one a’ them thar BEEERS!”; Ogabe’s comically oafish mishandling of a gun clearly altogether alien to him; assorted Democrat-Socialist snake-oil salesmen lifelessly reciting fork-tongued protestations that they’re hunters themselves, that “no one is coming to take your guns,” that they “support” the 2A and have a lifelong familiarity with and respect for firearms, only to reveal a comprehensive ignorance of any and every aspect of the topic in the very next breath—NO American concerned about his fragile, already-eroded 2A rights ought to believe a single word out of their yaps.

Not ONE WORD. Not EVER.

Pussified snowflakes triggered, piddle themselves in fwight

Posted on March 8, 2020March 8, 2020 by Mike

Too, too funny.

Colorado Congressman Ken Buck wanted to have a little fun and made a 2nd amendment video using a gun he mounts on his wall.

“I have just one message for Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, if you want to take everyone’s AR-15s, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C. and start with this one? Come and take it. #2A,” he said.

Enter Congresswoman Haley Stevens who apparently felt “threatened” and called the Sergeant at arms on the guy.

“Your congressional office is not your private home. It is a public space. This behavior is threatening and unacceptable,” Haley wrote.

“I feel unsafe with this in my place of work. I have been in contact with the Sergeant at Arms to express my concerns,” she added and she was serious.

Beto O’Rourke decided to join in, and responded to Stevens’ post with his own message on Twitter.

“This guy makes the case for both an assault weapons ban and a mandatory buyback program better than I ever could. These are weapons of war that have no place in our communities, in our politics or in our public discourse,” he commented.

The wall ornament has been rendered entirely nonfunctional; the bolt has been removed, and even at that sports a trigger lock too, for some reason. In other words, the thing is as harmless as newborn kittens, unless maybe you snatched it off its hanger and used it as a club or threw it at somebody or something. Dana Loesch offers another damning detail before kicking Blotto’s ass up between his shoulder blades over that “weapons of war” horseshit:

Buck’s inoperable rifle has hung on his office wall since 2015 without incident — ever since the Capitol Police inspected it and gave him the all clear to hang it.

Oh for crying out loud. These aren’t “weapons of war” anymore than my .38 revolver is a “weapon of war” or a bolt action rifle is a “weapon of war.” Buck and his inoperable, wall-mounted firearm have threatened fewer people than O’Rourke drunk-driving his automobile down the highway, but you don’t see O’Rourke calling for “common sense automobile ownership.” Also — there is no such thing as a “mandatory buyback.” That phrase is BS for “stealing people’s lawfully-owned personal property and paying them off with their own tax dollars,” a.k.a. double thievery.

“Weapon of war”? Hell, Buck’s decorative installation isn’t a weapon at all, in any meaningful sense. It’s a statement is what it is—no more, no less. Admittedly, it should come as no surprise that cringing cunt-farts like Blotto, Stevens, and the rest of their pig-ignorant, cowardly gun-grabber compadres are crapping themselves over its mere presence despite its status as wall art. But it may well be that the idea of anybody freely making “statements” like Buck’s frightens them much, much more.

End game? Ain’t none

Posted on March 8, 2020March 7, 2020 by Mike

Too much: never enough.

There simply is no stopping point or ideological boundary line for the left.  There’s no point where the general liberal consensus says, “OK, we’ve arrived at our destination.  Hallelujah, we’re here!  We’re now liberal enough!”  Just when you think they’ve finally reached the point of maximum possible craziness, they march on.

For this reason, I foresee that many more liberal icons will be destroyed in the future, simply because at some point in their lives, they made the mistake of thinking, “The here-and-now is pretty much where we’ll stay.  The here-and-now is the end point of our liberal ideology.  The actions or comments that are appropriate and safe today will always be appropriate and safe.”  Nope.  The leftward drift will continue ad infinitum, such that acts that seem OK and reasonable today will soon be viewed as evidence of some unpardonable sin that is treasonous to the cause.

Bernie Sanders is not the left’s political end point, either.  He may seem extreme today, but in the not too distant future, we’ll look back at Bernie with nostalgia for how quaintly midstream he was.

What, you mean the way opposition to gay “marriage” went from being a perfectly reasonable, near-unanimous sentiment to unalloyed Nazi genocide in about, ohhh, twenty minutes or so?

Quoth moi, from one my very own song lyrics: A hundred miles an hour/Ain’t no brakes. To wit:

I didn’t know I was writing about “liberalism” when I came up with that one, I promise I didn’t. And yet it works just the same, in this case anyway.

But see (just to meander a bit further afield here), that’s the magic of songwriting: one’s audience can individually glean many different meanings, including contradictory ones, from the self-same set of words. And they will, to. Shoot, if I had a nickel for every time some female walked up to me after a show or some other place to sassily proclaim “You wrote that one about ME, didn’t you? I KNOW you did!!” I’d be…well, I’d be something other than a failed musician, at the very least.

Never mattered a bit whether I actually knew the dame or not, seemed like. She would always know, of a rock-solid certainty, that SHE was the one I’d had in mind throughout the wearing struggle of the creative process—humbly begging the favor of The Muse via downing shots of whiskey and staring endlessly at a blank sheet of paper—when all I had really been doing was just trying to cobble something together that at least rhymed half-decently and wasn’t too embarrassingly trite, nonsensical, or just plain goddamned stupid to be performed onstage night after night and/or distributed internationally on thousands of CDs.

But hey, what the hell do I know, right?

Sign o’ the times

Posted on February 29, 2020February 29, 2020 by Mike

The Long March continues.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The U.S. Air Force changed lyrics in its service anthem by dropping gender references that exclude women.

The change announced Thursday by the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, is designed to make the service friendlier to women, The Gazette reports.

“Our song must reflect our history, the inspiring service and accomplishments of all who’ve served, and the rich diversity that makes today’s Air Force indisputably the strongest and most capable in the world,” Goldfein wrote in a message to airmen, cadets and academy alumni.

The change originated when female Air Force Academy cadets asked Goldfein why the anthem’s third verse hailed the bravery of men, but not women.

The third verse is meaningful to cadets at the academy near Colorado Springs, where it is sung after sports victories, but students took issue with the third line: “To a friend we send a message of his brother men who fly.”

In the new version, the line is changed to read, “To a friend we send a message of the brave who serve on high.”

Other gender references in the song remain, including “at ’em boys, give ‘er the gun.”

My first thought was to vent some spleen over this trite silliness, but then I realized how very difficult it’s becoming to even give a shit at all these days.

Blago gets some

Posted on February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 by Mike

A shiv for Barky.

Convicted former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went on Fox News in his first post-release interview and held very little back about Barack Obama’s involvement in the scandal that put him in prison, while the first black president was never held accountable.

Appearing on “Watters’ World” with Jesse Watters, Blagojevich was quickly asked about the 2008 Senate-seat-for-sale scandal, in which Blagojevich had negotiated appointing an Obama-approved candidate, in exchange for a cabinet position.

“Did you ever talk to Barack Obama about this Senate seat? Did he have any knowledge about what was going on or not?” Watters asked.

“President Obama began the whole conversation because he sent someone to me as a middleman, a mediator — not unusual in politics — on the night he was elected president to say that he’d like to talk about his choice for the Senate and to see what I might be willing to ask for,” Blagojevich told him. “Political horse-trading, not what those corrupt prosecutors said it was.”

“So it was Barack Obama’s understanding that his liaison was going to work with you to appoint the guy that was going to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and Barack Obama, incoming president, wanted to know what was going to be in exchange for the seat, is that what you’re saying?” Watters asked.

“Yeah, he was basically, you know, asking whether—the emissary that represented President-elect Obama was interested in a candidate for the Senate, and he asked what would you be interested in, those kinds of things, and we began a discussion over the telephone on what we might or might not ask for as part of a horse deal. It was routine politics, not anything corrupt or illegal like they tried to say it was,” Blagojevich replied.

The host then asked whether money was involved as part of the deal.

“I never said that there was money in exchange for the Senate seat. We talked about Cabinet positions, we talked about, frankly, federal money for the state of Illinois to address some of the issues we had in our state, we talked about ambassadorships,” Blagojevich explained.

No need to be so crude as to discuss a direct exchange of money, seeing as how once you get the seat the money will follow just as surely as night follows day. Blagojevich can deny that these backroom deals are illegal all he likes; hell, he may even be right about that. No doubt they’re every bit as common as he says too, just another part of the begrimed fabric of end-stage American political decay. But such “horse-trading” is indubitably corrupt, as well as sordid and dishonorable—all in all, completely contrary to the phony “not a whiff of corruption” facade so laboriously constructed around Ogabe to cloak his squalid history.

Blago hints at plenty more dirt and old-school Chicago sleaze yet to come. Hopefully he can get it all dished up before his shocking “suicide.”

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