The most ethical Congress in history; draining the swamp
Not sure where I ran across this one—it’s been just sitting quietly on my desktop for days now, waiting for me to make some P-shop adjustments and then put it to good use here—and I can’t say I know who this Langan fellow might be, either. But I dunno, the part I highlighted in blue just tickled me no end.
Don’t hold back, Chris, tell us how you really feel.
3News FLASH from Dan Gelernter. And also, y’know, moi.
We’re coming up on another election of national importance—the Virginia governor’s race is November 2. My friends are hopefully suggesting on social media that this will be the election that turns things around, where the full anger of the common folk at being bossed around by autocratic overlords finally manifests itself and we throw the bums out.
Mind you, they were saying the same thing with the same hope about the California recall election. And I said at the time, weeks before the vote was tallied, there was no point in hoping that patriotic anger would outbalance the massive machinery at work behind the scenes: Your votes didn’t matter in the 2020 presidential election, they didn’t matter in the California recall, they won’t matter in the Virginia gubernatorial election, and they won’t matter next year.
And the national circle-jerk goes right on a-circling, the self-perpetuating wank-a-thon producing the usual tedious and unsatisfying climax at the close of another “Election” Day. After another late-night disappointment, conservative commentators awaken Wednesday morning to feign astonishment that the desperately longed for conservative “wave” petered out on them yet again—UNEXPECTED!™—without ever generating enough kinetic energy to finally curl over at the top and forcefully crash onto the encrusted slime and filth we so desperately hoped might at last be washed away from these shores. Hopefully, the ever-phantasmagorical “wave” election might usher the ugly detritus far out to sea, whence the disgraceful blight would then gradually dissipate into nothingness—the whole sorry mess scrubbed from memory as thoroughly as the incoherent, puzzling nightmare you had two weeks ago, a chaotic brain-jumble brought on by the highly questionable shellfish you optimistically had for dinner before turning in.
The commentariat, rising to the challenge of duty and responsibility, blearily springs into action once more to flog analyses and explanations of how such a befuddling thing could possibly have occurred, against all odds and in contradiction of the very latest polls—or, for the more brazen pundits, peddling the shopworn claim that the latest stinging defeat was in fact a momentous triumph for Repugnican candidates who will never be either sworn into the offices they sought, or be heard from again. EVER.
Dan does a quick fly-by past the 2020 dumbshow before moving on to describe the three crooked legs of the election-fraud stool.
So what’s the situation now? Vastly worse. This huge Time-documented conspiracy only half-expected to get away with stealing the election from Donald Trump. They discovered unexpected allies in three vital places: First, the courts, including the Supreme Court, refused to hear a single case of election fraud on the merits. They dismissed all the cases for lack of evidence or standing, which was much safer than letting the plaintiffs present their evidence in court.
Second, the Department of Justice was happy to say they’d found no evidence of election fraud, without drawing attention to the fact they hadn’t been looking. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to any investigation at all: How many of you are aware that it was the relentless pressure of private citizens in Yuma, Arizona, who provided photographic evidence that the Justice Department couldn’t ignore, which led to indictments (so far two public) for vote fraud in the 2020 election? But even as the government was forced to charge the little people who were getting paid to collect ballots and cast them illegally, they assiduously refused to investigate where that money came from. Perhaps it came from a well-funded cabal of powerful people?
But third, and most important by far, the thing that ultimately renders our elections meaningless is people like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. They are the most important allies in the conspiracy to steal our elections, precisely because we expect them to be fighting on our side. Fraudulent elections cost Republicans seats—cost Republicans the presidency—so why wouldn’t the most powerful people in the Republican Party be fighting just as hard as they could to expose fraud and pass laws requiring in-person voting with ID?
Here’s the secret answer: These people hate you. Sure, they’re willing to pay lip service to America as a great nation, to churchgoing values, and so forth. But they’re really just Democrats with different special interests: They want to funnel all your money to military contractors instead of environmentalists. People like Donald Trump interfere with that. People like you interfere with that. Because you want the government to mind its own goddamned business. And, on that issue, Mitch McConnell is united with Senator Chuck Shumer (D-N.Y.) against you.
These people live for power. They exist for the pleasure of spending your money to retain that power. And, now that they’ve managed to separate that power from public accountability by legalizing mail-in, no-ID, drop-box, multiple-ballot, and similar voting practices, you think they’re going to give all that up?
Of course not. The power, the perks, the ill-gotten gains will all have to be taken from them. Like it or not, that can only be accomplished forcibly. Coming up next: The Flinch.
There is no solution to this problem short of a Constitutional Convention that restores our elections to their original format: Voting on election day, and in-person. Until we make that happen, there is no point in hoping the next election will be magically less fraudulent than the last one. That is precisely what the Mitch McShumer crowd wants you to do: hope. Hope is an excuse not to act. Don’t take it.
After repeated tries, this hail-Mary pass just might take the prize for Worst Play yet. Just who does Gelernter imagine will be in charge of planning, managing, and overseeing this Con-Con, anyway? Why, the very professional politicians who are most endangered by any fair, open, and honestly-conducted one, that’s who. He gets everything perfectly correct, right up until this sentence: “Until we make that happen, there is no point in hoping the next election will be magically less fraudulent than the last one.” He’d have done much better to omit the opening clause, starting instead at “there is no point” etc and continuing from there. Dan starts off nicely, earning himself a solid “A for Effort” only to close out the semester with a failing grade.
I’ve mentioned previously that, while I wouldn’t be so presumptious as to deride or condemn foljks who doesn’t feel the same as I do about it, I absolutely, positively WILL NOT waste my time voting in American “elections” from here on out, no matter who the candidate might be. In my opinion, it’s far more productive to refuse my endorsement and consent via participating in a process I know from the git-go is nothing but theater, a complete fraud. I see no possibility of anything useful or positive resulting from it, with plenty of negatives in the pan of the scale—beginning with my tacit acceptance of the insult to my intelligence that willing complicity in my own disenfranchisement amounts to. Anybody out there who DOES perceive any constructive aspects of continuing to act as if the “election” grift retains a single scrap of credibility is welcome to have at it, and more power to ya. Perhaps you’re right about which is the better approach. Could be I’m full of shit; I have been before, just once or twice. But whether I am or I ain’t, I am fully and firmly OUT.
Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful, as Little Richard used to say.
Bottom line: a deeply corrupt system can never be reformed by resort to the rules, procedures, and bureaucratic entities created and controlled by that very same corrupt system. It’s such a simple, transparently obvious waste of time as to beggar belief that otherwise intelligent people could be oblivious to it. What’s under discussion here is the restoration of order, decency, and rationality using the pointless and wrongheaded expedient of making civil, adult appeals to the malefactors inflicting disorder and insanity a-purpose, using those things and more besides as the weapons to utterly destroy the advocates of civility and rationality they so viscerally loathe.
We’re well past the point where moderate means can be of any use whatsoever. Only radical measures can avail us now. Too many of those able to clearly identify the problem and even recognize the iron-hard seriousness of our plight are nonetheless not yet ready or able to make the final, terrifying leap into full acknowledgment of the one non-negotiable imperative: That Team Liberty MUST prevail, no matter how terrible the measures required to gain ultimate victory over the soulless abominations presently waging all-out war against us.
Update! The view from Oz looks very, very familiar, don’t it?
There was no violent revolution. No overthrow of the government. No military coup. But the results have been as dramatic as the changes that occurred in the past when the communists or the fascists took power.
Prime ministers have come and gone. Elections have been held. Such events no longer seem to have any significance. You cannot point to any of those prime ministers and say, “it was all his fault.” Under each new prime minister both countries have lurched further in the direction of totalitarianism. Whether Labour or the Tories have been in power, or in the case of Australia Labor or the LNP, has made no difference whatsoever. The process of creeping totalitarianism has continued, slowly but inexorably. It’s clear that elections no longer matter at all.
It’s clear that whoever is in charge it’s not our politicians and it’s not our elected governments. You really don’t need to be a crazed conspiracy theorist to have noticed that.
Liberalism has been abolished. The individual has never been less important, and has never had fewer rights. What matters is the state and the corporation. The individual exists to serve the state and the corporation.
If we stubbornly insist on disagreeing with either the state or with the private corporations who rule society in conjunction with the state, our opinions are ignored. If we continue to be stubborn we are silenced. Dissent is not permitted. Individuals do not have the right to act for themselves, speak for themselves or think for themselves. If you try it on the internet you’ll be banned from social media, or (more likely) you will simply be shadow-banned. You’ll be silenced and you won’t even know it’s happened. In Britain you’ll probably be arrested.
And you don’t have to break any actual laws, because social order is now maintained by the state and by corporations to whom the law and legal rights are irrelevant. If you dissent in any way, even in a way that is technically quite legal, you will be silenced.
Liberalism didn’t fail. It was overthrown by a new ideology which for want of a better term we can call neo-fascism. Nothing matters but the state and the corporation. The individual is irrelevant. Individualism is now an anti-social act that will get you into deep trouble. We learn to obey the state and to obey its corporate partners.
1984 is already here but we pretend it isn’t that bad because the reality is too painful to face.
The irony is, the harder we resist facing reality, the more viciously reality will rub our noses in it.
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2Be still my beating heart.
Democrats Melting Down: GOP Flips Long-Held Blue Seat in Iowa Special Election
Happy Wednesday. How are things going for Democrats today? Let’s review a handful of headlines. (1) Out of Iowa, a legislative seat that has been in Democratic hands for decades is no longer blue. Over the summer, Republicans won back a state senate seat in affluent, suburban, Trump-hostile Connecticut. Last night, they picked off a different sort of district. Trump carried it, but it had remained blue at the state legislative level, even in recent cycles with Trump on the ballot. Change.
Thank merciful Heaven, we’re all saved!! Yep, things are gonna be a lot different in Mordor on the Potomac from now on, just you wait and see.
91
1Two sets of laws, two sets of beliefs, two sets of outcomes. See if you can spot which one of them is nothing but arrant, evil horseshit.
Our Representatives, Not J6 Protesters, Defile the ‘Sacred’ U.S. Capitol
Here is how Joe Biden’s Justice Department recently described the actions of Robert Reeder, a Maryland man whose life has been ruined since he was charged with four misdemeanors related to his participation in the January 6 protest: “The attack on the U.S. Capitol…was one of the only times in our history when the building was literally occupied by hostile participants,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Rothstein wrote in an August filing. “The Defendant chose to be a part of the desecration of the Capitol rotunda. The Defendant stood in the center of the rotunda, where Ruther (sic) Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln, among others, lied in state. What the Defendant chose to record and celebrate at that place, at that time, was antithetical to the events that most Americans associate with the Capitol rotunda.”“Indeed, his very presence in the Capitol rotunda that day was a desecration of hallowed ground.”
Now, for credentialed D.C. insiders like Joshua Rothstein, that undoubtedly is true. After all, Reeder, unlike Joshua Rothstein, did not attend Columbia Law School. Reeder was a FedEx truck driver until the company fired him after his arrest and now he can’t find another job. As he said during his sentencing hearing last Friday, he is “radioactive”—so he cannot afford to throw himself a 40th birthday party like Joshua Rothstein just did. Rothstein’s party, held at a rented-out D.C. restaurant, was complete with truffles and monogrammed cookies and attended by former Homeland Security director Jeh Johnson and other Beltway bigwigs, Politico reported.
In fact, Robert Reeder, thanks to people like Josua Rothstein and his journo pals, doesn’t have many friends any more. Reeder’s teenage son, who shares his father’s name, doesn’t want to go to school; he’s bullied because of his father’s involvement on January 6, even though Reeder didn’t attack anyone or vandalize any property.
Reeder’s family and neighbors have abandoned him, too. As Reeder tearfully explained to a federal judge on Friday, even his church told him to stop coming because he was a distraction. “That’s tough because it was my support group,” Reeder told Judge Thomas Hogan, who ignored Reeder’s desperate plea for compassion and sentenced him to three months in prison for pleading guilty to one count of “parading” in the Capitol building—a place Hogan described as “sacrosanct.”
Rothstein, who wanted Reeder in jail for six months, told the court Reeder walked around like “he was a congressman” on January 6.
While it’s true Reeder did enter the Capitol building twice, he acted nothing like a United States congressman.
The official congressional record does not show Reeder as a co-sponsor of Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion boondoggle—a figure closer to $5 trillion according to some analyses—that will raise at least $2 trillion in new taxes and redistribute the windfall to Democrats’ pet projects including paid family leave, child tax credits, free college, expanded health care coverage, and “clean energy.”
Robert Reeder isn’t responsible for a wide open southern border that threatens our safety and our sovereignty. There’s no evidence he consented to deploy millions of U.S. troops and spend trillions of U.S. tax dollars on failed foreign wars that culminated with a humiliating exit from Afghanistan resuling in the murder of 13 American servicemembers while leaving behind $80 billion in weaponry and artillery.
He didn’t participate in two preposterous impeachment trials against Donald Trump, one of which was a ruse to cover-up the Biden family overseas racket before the 2020 primaries, or the vile character assasination of a Supreme Court justice nominee.
He didn’t marry his brother to commit immigration fraud, repeatedly lie to the American public about an “abundance of evidence” to prove Trump-Russia election collusion, scream “we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker” after being sworn-in to Congress, encourage people to publicly harass Trump officials, or bend a knee in the “sacred” Capitol building to honor George Floyd. There is no statement from Reeder condemning America as systemically racist and supporting a new federal holiday to collectively repent for George Floyd’s death.
Joshua Rothstein was wrong when he claimed that January 6 was the first time the Capitol had been invaded by “hostile participants.” With the exception of a handful of decent lawmakers, the “sacred” ground of the Capitol building is occupied by “hostile participants” every day—congressmen of both political parties, who hold American citizens such as Robert Reeder and the other 630-plus January 6 defendants in open contempt. Those representatives have done far more irreversible damage to the country than a few thousand Trump supporters could ever do—and, unlike January 6, their rampage is ongoing.
If this obscenity doesn’t leave you absolutely sick with fury, please consider having someone nearby check to see that you still have a pulse. Because frankly, I don’t see how any Real American possibly could.
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332What, you thought things were gonna be different this time around?
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is asking Gov. Ralph Northam to waive the witness signature requirement for absentee ballots cast by mail in this fall’s election.
The board voted 9-1 for the proposal by Chair Jeffrey McKay to send a letter to Northam, with Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, the board’s only Republican, casting the only vote against the motion.
McKay said that waiving the witness signature requirement – as was done during the 2020 election – is necessary due to the continued threat of COVID-19.
Herrity said that waiving the requirement would be a “blow to election integrity.”
Uhh, hate to have to be the one to etc and all, Pat, but “blow(s) to election integrity are the whole fucking point. TTPTB have but one interest when it comes to election integrity, and you can bet your sweet bippy it does NOT involve finding ways to secure and/or maintain it. Bayou Pete has questions.
So, what’s going on here? Let me ask a not-so-rhetorical question.
Question: Why would you change the security rules for mail-in ballots in the middle of an election that’s already under way?
Most likely answer: Because you’ve looked at the ballots that have already been received, and realized that you’re losing.
That’s what I’m sure is going on here.
And you would be correct, sir. Pete backs up his case with a little historical perspective:
Liberals and progressives often try to model the U.S. on Western European countries, but you never hear them arguing that we should adopt their voting rules. There is a reason for that. Banning mail-in voting or requiring people to use photo IDs to obtain a mail-in ballot is quite common in developed countries, especially in Europe.
These countries have learned the hard way what happens when mail-in ballots aren’t secured. They have also discovered how hard it is to detect vote buying when both those buying and selling the votes have an incentive to hide the exchange.
France banned mail-in voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and voters cast multiple votes. Mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people.
The U.K., which allows postal voting, has had some notable mail-in ballot fraud cases. Prior to recent photo ID requirements, six Labour Party councilors in Birmingham won office after what the judge described as a “massive, systematic and organized” postal voting fraud campaign. The fraud was apparently carried out with the full knowledge and cooperation of the local Labour Party. There was “widespread theft” of postal votes (possibly around 40,000 ballots) in areas with large Muslim populations, because Labour members were worried that the Iraq War would spur these voters to oppose the incumbent government.
In 1991, Mexico’s election mandated voter photo IDs and banned absentee ballots. The then-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party had long used fraud and intimidation with mail-in ballots in order to win elections. Only in 2006 were absentee ballots again allowed, and then only for those living abroad who requested them at least six months in advance.
If concern about voter fraud with mail-in ballots is delusional, it is a delusion that is shared by most of the world. Even the countries that allow mail-in ballots have protections, such as government-issued photo IDs. But Americans are constantly assured even this step is completely unnecessary. Without basic precautions, our elections are on course to become the laughingstock of the developed world.
“On course to become,” is it? For any forthright, halfway knowledgeable soul, it’s a bit late for indulging such a Pollyanna-ish point of view. This is why the usual late-stage reports of Repugnicans “closing the gap” in the (rigged) polls—thereby “narrowing” and “heating up” the “race”—are so drolly amusing, at least to me. Throw the increasingly common “don’t get cocky” trope into the mix, and the whole charade is just 24-karat comedy gold.
Contrary to received wisdom, establishing a modicum of integrity and trustworthiness in the fraud-rife American “election” system would not be a complex task, neither expensive nor beyond the capability of mere humans. All it would take is a little unambiguous, no-nonsense legislation:
And then we could…uhh…well, actually, that’s it. Nothing more than just those three little things. All dead simple, low-cost, and totally fair. All comprehensible, all very easily implemented. Take these three easy-peasy steps, which would take little to no time, and you will have un-fucked American “elections” pretty much completely. Congratulations are in order for you; you have just successfully re-installed a quite valuable thing, an essential component that hasn’t been part of the broke-down American electoral machine since before the days of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall at least: credibility.
Unless and until these common-sense reforms have been effected, voting in American “elections” expecting anything but more of the same shite is a mug’s game, the Founding concept of self-government and the primacy of the expressed will of the people no more than fantasy. There’s a word that pops unbidden into mind:
Definition of gossamer (Entry 1 of 2)
1: a film of cobwebs floating in air in calm clear weather2: something light, delicate, or insubstantial
And there you have it. Describes the overall situation pretty nicely, I think.
Tinkering around the edges of the current system in trivial ways—the approach favored in those few states where any reform at all has been undertaken so far—is NOT enough to fix this. Simple and obvious as they are, the three options laid out above are in fact revolutionary changes, which partly explains the fierce howls of outrage at any mention of them from the malefactors profiting from the present wretched dysfunction. However unhinged the opposition to it, though—and however devious and dishonest the hidden motives behind it—nothing short of revolutionary measures will get us out of this. Thus, our national kabuki production will creak and totter on, strutting and fretting its hour upon the stage, signifying nothing. Until one day, suddenly—UNEXPECTEDLY!!™—the badly-needed revolutionary reform occurs, after which it will be heard no more.
Speaking strictly for myself, I haven’t the least intention to provide my tacit endorsement via participating in it. But YMMV, as always. Those who choose to continue participating in American election theater, for whatever reason, are perfectly welcome to do so; they can expect no opposition, interference, or condemnation from me. But maybe it would be better for all concerned for those folks to acknowledge, if only to themselves, the shadowy presence of the con artist behind the curtain, director of the whole sorry show. If real reform is ever to take place, such a quiet, internal admission of the unreality and ultimate pointlessness of the whole sham could show us a way forward. In the meantime, I’ll rerun my instant-classic meme.
There history goes again, rhyming.
The fate imposed on (LTC Stuart) Scheller is eerily similar to the fate of Colonel Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish French officer who was scapegoated for the crimes of their military establishment and elite officer class.
Dreyfus, despite his rank, was an outsider, as is Scheller.
Dreyfus’s case was built around a traitor who was covertly feeding intelligence to the German enemy. The French military refused to believe that one of their favored officers, one with close access to the elites, would do such a thing. So, they went in search of a sacrificial goat. They found it in Dreyfus.
In America’s case, the hullabaloo about Scheller distracts attention away from General Milley who, without authority, contacted the Chinese enemy to assure them that he would give them prior notice should his Commander in Chief, the President of the United States, give an order to attack them.
In Dreyfus’s case, the guilty party was a treasonous officer named Esterhazy and it took an incoming head of the French military intelligence, a diligent officer named Georges Piquart, to reveal the real culprit as Esterhazy.
By that time, the Jew Dreyfus has been publicly demoted, shamed, and shipped off to Devil’s Island, a penal colony off the shores of distant French Guiana in South America.
When the military ruling class was given overwhelming evidence of the guilt of Esterhazy, and their incompetence and cover-up, they shipped Piquart off to a North African battlefront in the hope that he would be killed. When he wasn’t, he was imprisoned.
When Marine Colonel Scheller spoke out publicly to demand accountability after thirteen American military personnel had been murdered in Kabul, the top Pentagon officials did what the French did: they relieved him of his duty and confined him to solitary confinement as the French did with Georges Piquart 123 years ago.
When rumors began to circle implicating Esterhazy in the treasonous incident, the French military court hastily held a show trial that acquitted Esterhazy of all wrongdoing.
Despite the banishment of both Dreyfus and Piquart, news circulated about a miscarriage of justice and the evidence of a national cover-up in the top ranks of the French military establishment.
I took a courageous journalist, Emile Zola, to write an article in a leading French newspaper titled “J’Accuse!” in which he defended Dreyfus and accused the hierarchy of a cover-up.
As a result, Zola was accused and convicted of libel, but he escaped to Britain to continue his righteous campaign for justice for Dreyfus and Piquart.
That’s what always seems to happen with these round-robin railroadings and ass-covering coverups: they go on expanding and expanding until they become too big to be contained. And that’s when TPTB grow desperate enough to start taking down people who weren’t involved at all in the original issue. Which cruel perversion of the very concept of justice TPTB doesn’t give a fig about, natch, every last one of them being soulless, merciless vampires whose sole desire is to remain tightly clamped to the neck of the Body Politic, so to speak, sucking away forever. Anybody, even the most peripheral figures, who becomes a credible threat to their supply of Serf blood is gonna see ’em get REALLY mean.
Which leaves only one option open: STAKE the motherfuckers, right through the heart, cut off the head, and burn the corpse to cinders. So to speak.
Dreyfus was shipped back to France to face yet another trial by the same establishment. In 1899, he was again court-martialed and found guilty.
By this time the mood had changed in France and, days after the trial, Dreyfus was pardoned by the French president on all charges. However, it took another seven years before Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated into the French army, fully twelve years since he was publicly shamed.
It took individual men of courage to face down the political and military establishment in France to change the public mood and restore justice for both Dreyfus and Piquart.
How many courageous individuals, how many years will it take, to bring justice to Lt. Colonel Stuart Scheller and expose the rotten hypocrisy in the top ranks of the Pentagon and the White House?
Dunno; how many ash stakes, machetes, and torches can said individuals tote with ’em to LeJeune, then on up to Mordor on the Potomac? Because we can’t call the job well and truly done until the entire coven of vampires has been wiped out.
So to speak.
9The dirty little secret about government is that its purpose is not really to make the lives of citizens better but, rather, to accumulate power at the expense of citizens. Not sure about that? Ask yourself, how many government agencies have put themselves out of a job because they succeeded? There’re a few that technology left behind, like the Steamboat Inspection Service; others that served their purpose, like the Defense Homes Corporation; while others were merged into other agencies like the General Land Office, subsumed into the Department of Interior. In our history, there have been fewer than 100 federal agencies that have actually been shuttered, and most of those existed in the early 20th century to deal with the Depression or the two world wars.
According to the Federal Register, the federal government has 457 different agencies. That’s 457 agencies covering virtually every aspect of American’s lives, most of which are staffed by unelected bureaucrats, all of whom spend your money and many of whom write regulations that carry the force of law which the government’s police power enforces. This includes everything from the State Department to the Geographic Names Board to the International Broadcasting Board to the ATF.
And that 457 is misleading. While it includes a dozen organizations tied to Defense, there are dozens more agencies that come under it that are not listed in the Federal Register such as the DoD Education Activity or the Office of Naval Research. Wikipedia lists a more realistic, but still lacking, 1,500.
The American government has become a leviathan. It’s everywhere, involved in virtually every aspect of American’s lives, and it’s perpetual, regardless of its record of dismal failure.
The government spends $30 trillion over half a century and reduces poverty by 1%. The government spends more on education than virtually every nation on the planet yet 85% of the students in its biggest (and most minority-filled) school districts fail basic reading and math, the building blocks for success in our dynamic society. And we’re supposed to believe government works for us?
American governments spend more money on education and social programs than anything else, more than the GDP of most countries. Yet even as they fail, year after year, decade after decade, the funds keep growing, regardless of their catastrophically abysmal track record.
And that tells you everything you need to know about the nature of governments. Their goal isn’t to solve problems. They’re not here to make life better for citizens. Their goal is not to protect the lives and liberties of citizens. No, government is the Borg. Its raison d’etre is simple: Grow revenue and increase power for itself and unions.
Proof? Despite the fact that the United States has 3,143 counties in 50 states spread out over 3,796,742 square miles, nine of the twenty richest counties are in a circle less than 100 miles across with Washington DC at its center. And what is the industry that drives that wealth? Finance? No. Entertainment? No. Steel or autos or high tech? No. One thing: Government power.
Accumulating power is the fundamental nature of government, and our Founding Fathers understood that which is why they gave us the Bill of Rights and particularly the 9th and 10th Amendments. For the first 150 years of our nation, those guardrails stood relatively firm, but today they are simply gone. Sadly, America has become so detached from our Constitution that 90% of what our government does is unconstitutional.
Oh, I wouldn’t say “detached from our Constitution,” exactly. With at least twenty to thirty percent of the country completely in the dark about what it says and what it means; another fifty percent implacably hostile to everything it represents; and fully one hundred percent of the gott-damned goobermint ignoring it—on the rare occasions when they aren’t actively striving to flush it down the toilet altogether—what chance does the poor, dear old thing have, realistically?
31Aesop contends that that’s how the Perfumed Princes are fucking up in their campaign to crush LTC Scheller for the heinous crime of speaking the ugly truth about them right out in front of God and everybody.
We read where some folks commenting are all doom-and-gloom worried about the future prospects of Lt. Col. Scheller, USMC.
Bitch, please.
As if.
The way you “protect” someone like this, with balls the size of church bells, is hand him a bayonet, and then get out of his way.
If they were smart, they’d simply drop all charges, separate him from service post-haste, and grant him a full pension, and hope he just goes off and plays golf. But they’re not that smart.
I hope he’s right about all that, I truly do, and in a just world he surely would be. Unfortunately, this is most definitely NOT such a world, nor anything even close. Which means that it’s no better than even-money odds that they’ll just quietly Epstein him, and hope nobody notices.
And that, my friends, will open a whole ‘nother can of worms, one they’re gonna enjoy even less than the one they have now. Read it all to find out how well THAT might work out for ’em.
Harbinger of doom update! Well, this tears it. The poor guy is well and truly cornholed now.
A growing number of conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill are rallying to the cause of a Marine lieutenant colonel jailed this week for his outspoken and repeated criticism of his superiors and what he said was their failure to take responsibility for mishandling the chaotic final days of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Yep, he’s definitely hosed. Any time “conservative lawmakers” declare themselves to be in your corner the fight is officially over, and you lost.
4We all knew it was coming. Which, far from quelling the anger out of fear of possible consequences, ought to stoke the fire from Hot, But Manageable right on up to Killing Rage.
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, the Marine officer whose meteoric rise to internet fandom began with a video criticizing military leadership over Afghanistan, is currently in the brig, his father told Task & Purpose.
“All our son did is ask the questions that everybody was asking themselves, but they were too scared to speak out loud,” said Stu Scheller Sr. “He was asking for accountability. In fact, I think he even asked for an apology that we made mistakes, but they couldn’t do that, which is mind-blowing.”
He said that his son is expected to appear before a military hearing on Thursday.
“They had a gag order on him and asked him not to speak,” the senior Scheller said. “He did, and they incarcerated him. They don’t know what to do with him.”
After this story was first published, the Marine Corps issued a statement confirming that Scheller has been sent to the brig.“Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. is currently in pre-trial confinement in the Regional Brig for Marine Corps Installations East aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune pending an Article 32 preliminary hearing,” said Capt.Sam Stephenson, a spokesman for Training and Education Command. “The time, date, and location of the proceedings have not been determined. Lt. Col. Scheller will be afforded all due process.”
(After publication the Marine Corps confirmed that Scheller is accused of the following offenses under the UCMJ: Article 88: Contempt toward officials, Article 90: Willfully disobeying superior commissioned officer, Article 92: Failure to obey an order, and Article 133: Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.)
I am not a Marine, nor do I play one TV, but for me the charges break down like this:
Stipulated: in time of peace—more importantly, with a military whose flag-rank officer corps has NOT been corrupted stem to stern by the crippling toxins of political correctness, partisanship, and self-dealing—LTC Scheller’s defiance would amount to insubordination, and the harm done to respect for the chain of command would indeed warrant the harshest punishment.
Unfortunately, that is no longer the military and flag-rank officer corps we actually have. If it were, it’s doubtful in the extreme that Scheller would have felt the need to do what he did in the first damned place. To my way of thinking, the burden of criminality is properly on the shoulders of the reprobates **cough-cough Obama cough-cough** who purposefully perverted the higher-officer corps wholesale, and the ladder-climbing, ass-kicking scoundrels who acceeded to positions they were wholly unworthy of a result of said perversion.
It isn’t LTC Scheller who should be sitting in a cell awaiting trial and punishment. It’s his accusers. Scheller’s real crime was his courage, and his inability to just sit back and keep his mouth shut in the immediate presence of the brazen outrages, the raw treason, to which he was forced to bear witness. Yon says:
One who Surrenders to the Machine vs Warrior who Stands
LTC Scheller is essentially a prisoner of war at this point. Not by letter of the law, but in essence.Scheller is the first POW in the unfolding civil war. A Marine officer taken by Marines.
Notice the narrator misses the point of self-sacrifice. It’s all about career.
The longer Scheller fights, the more support he gathers. The harder the war-losers punish Marine Scheller, the stronger this leader becomes. This true Marine can flip the script and suddenly outrank this tormentors through elected office, and/or power of the pen.
It’s only over if he quits. If Scheller goes Honey Badger, they are in for torn flesh.
I support this True Marine, Lieutenant Colonel Scheller. This Officer put his country first.
Indeed. The shameful attempt at a political lynching of this good and honorable Marine cannot stand. Every Real American has a personal obligation to meet the standard he so bravely and selflessly set to make damned sure that it doesn’t. Torn flesh is but a down-payment on the debts his tormentors have incurred.
8Denninger blows the whole sordid mess all to hell and gone.
What was not proved was that Trump won. But what was proved was that there is no honest assertion that can be made that either of the two Presidential candidates in serious contention won. The margin of victory is within the margin of dispute and it has been proved that electronic records critical to validate what occurred throughout the election process were deliberately destroyed by persons(s) who had physical access to the systems in question, with at least one such person being allegedly identified by security camera footage.
There may well be more here — but what’s been discovered thus far and proved (and for which the evidence is now in the public domain) shows that:
- The election in Maricopa County for federal offices, including President, was not conducted in accordance with Federal Law.
- The results, based solely on the count of duplicated ballot envelopes (people who voted more than once), which exceeds the margin of victory for the Presidential Office, are not able to be confirmed since once duplicate ballots are removed from the envelopes it is impossible to identify them. Maricopa county claimed no such duplicates exist. We now know more than 17,000 in fact do exist and the envelopes still exist. What we cannot prove one way or another is whether the ballots inside those envelopes were counted and, if only one was counted, which one was counted. We thus have no way to know who won.
- The persons running the election have made materially false statements on an intentional basis about the equipment never being connected to the Internet.
- The persons running the election both deliberately destroyed data related to the election in direct violation of Federal Law and, as a separate and distinct offense, attempted to cover up that destruction and identification of the person who did so. This act, standing alone, demonstrates intent to tamper with the election results.
- The vast majority of said deliberately destroyed data was not recoverable and likely is not recoverable.
By forensic evidence, not presented and unrebutted, the outcome of the election in Arizona was falsely certified.
What’s the remedy for this?
That’s a separate debate — but that this one county alone did in fact corrupt their election, did so intentionally, and did so in such a fashion that at this time it not possible to know what the result actually was is not subject to reasonable dispute.
It never really was, in any realistic or honest sense. As I said the other day, though, it STILL doesn’t matter. What DESPERATELY needs to be owned up to at this point is that there is no longer ANY possibility of “reasonable dispute,” because our adversary is not amenable to reason, and is supremely uninterested in “dispute” by means of honest, respectful debate. Don’t get me wrong here; “dispute” there will be, for sure and certain, but it ain’t gonna be what anybody would ever call polite. What it’s gonna be is bloody, brutal, and unrestrained. Hey, that’s obviously the way they want it, so that’s the way it has to be. Just this once, I am all in favor of giving them what they want—in fucking spades, all they want and then some, until they choke on it.
Happily, a stolen election isn’t the only sordid mess Karl tosses a fragger into the middle of.
Once Upon A Time…*
…in a not-so-tiny nation called Spain, a nursing home had a nasty virus get into it.It was March of 2020. The nasty virus was called Covid-19. And this nursing home, like so many others all over the world, was full of elderly, morbid people. The mean age of residents was 85 and 48% were over 80 years old. It was a killing field, like so many others…..
Within three months 100% of the residents had caught the virus. Not presumed to have — proved to have.
How do we know this? Because almost every one of them seroconverted. All but three out of 84 of them, to be precise.
Think about that last sentence for a second.
Almost every one of them seroconverted.
How’s that possible? Many of them died, right? You can’t seroconvert if you’re dead.
No. Not only did nearly none die none went to the hospital either because they rapidly figured out how to stop the virus from killing people–and did exactly that.
You would have thought this would have been all over the news.
Nah, not at all. Their primary interest is in making sure news like this is covered up, not in reporting it frankly and objectively so Duh Peepul can know the truth. That’s what makes them “journalists,” see.
Read all of these two posts, natch, and kudos to Karl for his usual fine work on ’em.
11Right from the opening paragraph, this article is proof that some things never change.
On September 1, 1939, Brigadier George C. Marshall took the oath of office as the 15th U.S. Army chief of staff, a post he held until November 1945. When the ceremony ended, General Marshall confided to his aide de camp, “There is enough dead wood in the Army’s officer corps to light several forest fires.”
Marshall was more right than he knew. If the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps fought shoulder to shoulder with the French Army in 1940, American arms would have suffered the same fate as the French and British Armies—total defeat at the hands of the German Wehrmacht. This fact was made painfully obvious 14 months after the Second World War broke out.
In February 1943, 11,000 German troops smashed through the 30,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army’s II Corps at Kasserine Pass. The U.S. commander, Major Gen. Lloyd Fredendall, a swaggering blowhard, was relieved and sent home. It was not the last time that a cigar-chewing imitation of a real general would fail in action against the German onslaught, but the experience strengthened Marshall’s intolerance of general officer failure in action.
Today, the task of finding senior military leaders with character, competence and intelligence is immeasurably harder than it was in Marshall’s day. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, the American media’s adulation for four stars transformed general officers such as Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Allen, and Austin into instant celebrities.
Four stars now automatically become part of a mutual general officer admiration society, that cheers even mediocre performance in general officers chosen for high command, because, like “made men” in the Mafia, senior leaders agree not to turn on their peers. Eliminating failed general officers, even when failure is found out the hard way in action, is deemed dangerous to a promotion system based on nepotism that presents itself as infallible.
Political leaders are of no help.
Quite the opposite, I’d say, of course and as always.
The point is that General Mark Milley is not an isolated example. He’s the product of an environment that has existed for nearly 30 years, if not longer. Behind Mark Milley stand another two dozen four stars ready to take his job that are indistinguishable from him in their attitudes and career patterns.
Is the situation hopeless? History answers with an emphatic “No.”
After the defeat of the U.S. Army’s II Corps, General Sir Harold Alexander, Eisenhower’s British deputy, commented on Fredendall to his American allies, “I’m sure you must have better men than that.” Eisenhower agreed. Major Gen. Patton, a man who but for the outbreak of WWII would have retired as an obscure cavalry colonel, replaced Fredendall.
As the author says, the correct answer to the question “is the situation hopeless” is “an emphatic ‘No,'” and always will be. As such, the question is immaterial. The question that matters is: Are we up to the challenge of doing everything required of us to prevail over the exigencies that make the situation APPEAR hopeless? That question is strictly pass/fail, and will NOT be graded on a curve.
Update! This might look to be unrelated at first glance, but I assure you it ain’t.
Mike responds to a post of mine from yesterday, and finishes with:
Yes, the whole system is rotten to the core, to the point that it can never be fixed or restored via traditional, peaceful means. AS ZMan put it, a system that is immune to voting is not going to be fixed by more voting.
I agree with this, of course. And while my assessment may sound bleak, I still believe it to be accurate. People, especially patriotic Americans, have been willing to swallow damned near anything to avoid admitting to themselves just how bleak the situation actually is. Why? Because if they do admit it, they then are face to face with the next question: What the hell do we do about it?
And that is a very painful question, because there are no good, painless answers. Oh, sure, you can gargle a big glass of normality bias and pretend that voting gooderer and harderer will fix things. Or that some deep counter-Qspiracy is going to defeat the Ruling Class and its Deep State. But that, of course, is simply denying the reality you have to admit and confront in order to deal with it on a personal basis going forward. That’s the thing, see? It’s going to hit you personally, whether you want it to or not. It won’t go away just because you ignore it, or tell yourself it’s not really what it looks like.
Read on to find out just how very related it is. In fact, the thing that sometimes makes me sit up a little straighter and rub my eyes in awe and wonder is how deeply interconnected all the issues confronting us are—yet another of those things that, once seen, cannot be UNseen.
4Y’all may have noticed that I’ve had very little to say regarding the various recounts, audits, and what-have-you that have been grinding endlessly on in two or three states. There’s more than one reason for that, but mostly they all come down to one thing: even if they produced iron-clad, incontrovertible proof that the 2020 “election” was stolen—which, we all already know full well that it was—well, what then? Is there a man alive so hopelessly naive as to imagine that, in acknowledgment of these proofs, Biden would bow his head in shame and contrition; mumble an incoherent, rambling apology for the “error”; then pack his grip and stumble on back to Delaware?
Of course not; the very idea of it is ridiculous. No, the “election” was indeed fraudulent; Biden is “****president****”, for whatever that’s still worth and whatever it still means to anybody; and it’ll stay that way a few more months, maybe a year, until he finally croaks and Cumala the Willie Wanker is sworn in. That’s all there is to it. If we truly do want this issue properly addressed, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. There ain’t but just the one way to do that, and we all already know what it is.
That said, though, there’s also this:
Biden Breaking Bad | Kunstler
Up this afternoon (Friday) for instance: the results of the Maricopa, AZ, election audit. The New York Times has declared a preliminary draft of the audit “a cap-gun ending to an inquiry whose backers hinted would turn up a cannonade of fraud.” Their conclusion: “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election fair-and-square. That would be momentous if it were true, but is it? Or is it just the juke of a player that typically runs zig-zags through the facts? The Times certainly has an interest in, shall we say, getting ahead of the story in its never-ending quest to control the narrative — as opposed to delivering actual news fit to print. I’m standing by to sort out the jokers from the face-cards.Basically I see this NYT piece as battlefield prep, and the revealing of the Official Line as to regarding the Maricopa Audit.
In my experience, the audit could show that half of all of Biden’s votes in Maricopa Country were fraudulent in some way or other, but the NYT and its harem of emasculated “journalism” outlets would repeat in unison, “Proof positive that “Joe Biden” won fair and square.”
Unfortunately, I’ve been worried for quite a while that the Maricopa audit results would not be nearly as clear cut or explosive as we’ve been promised.
We’ve seen a nearly unbroken string of “selling the sizzle,” but when the plate arrives it turns out to be “where’s the beef?”
We’ll know more this afternoon, but my early hunch is that the “sizzle” will turn out to be more of a fizzle.
Bill waxes even more depressed after that already-bleak assessment:
UPDATE:
Arizona audit draft report confirms Biden beat Trump in 2020
A monthslong hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 vote confirmed that President Joe Biden won and the election was not “stolen” from former President Donald Trump, according to early versions of a report prepared for the Arizona Senate.
The three-volume report by the Cyber Ninjas, the Senate’s lead contractor, includes results that show Trump lost by a wider margin than the county’s official election results. The data in the report also confirms that U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly won in the county.If this turns out to be accurate, the entire “Trump lost in 2020 because the election was fraudulently stolen” narrative will collapse and blow away within 24 hours.
At least among everybody but the truest of true believers.
Don’t buy into it. The NYT is indeed propagandizing, prepping the battlespace and shoring up the morale of their drooltard Leftist audience. But it’s all smoke…no, let’s just be completely frank here: it’s nothing more than a steaming, stinking pile of their usual horseshit lies.
Ignore the MSM: Here’s What the 2020 Maricopa County Election Audit Actually Says
“The partisan review of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election found a vote count nearly identical to what the county had previously reported,” CNN reported. Like other liberal outlets, CNN focused on the results of the hand-recount part of the audit. As we know, hand recounts may account for slight discrepancies in counting but do not address irregularities or potentially illegally cast ballots.So, let’s look into what the audit actually says.
By all means, let’s—not so much because this report or any other is going to change a goddamned thing, but just because having a look-see for ourselves is precisely what the NYT, CNNBCCBPBS, and the rest of the Usual Suspects™ would infinitely prefer us NOT do.
Follows, a bullet-point list from the draft report’s summary, and then this.
The audit team faults Maricopa County officials for not cooperating with the audit, which would have resolved many of these obstacles. “By the County withholding subpoena items, their unwillingness to answer questions as is normal between auditor and auditee, and in some cases actively interfering with audit research, the County prevented a complete audit,” the summary explains. “This did not stop the primary goal of offering recommendations for legislative reform to the Arizona Senate, but it did leave many questions open as to the way and manner that the 2020 General Election was conducted. As a result, while many areas of concern were specifically identified, our full audit results validating the 2020 General Election are necessarily inconclusive.”
While the media is claiming that the audit report confirms Biden’s victory, it does not. “There are sufficient discrepancies among the different systems that, in conjunction with some of our findings, suggest that the delta between the Presidential candidates is very close to the potential margin‐of‐error for the election,” the audit summary explains.
Why do these matter? Because, according to the state-certified results, Joe Biden barely won the state by a 10,457-vote margin. The tiny margin of victory in the state-certified results means that these discrepancies are very troubling. There were 42,727 impacted ballots ranked as “high” or “critical” severity—that’s four times the certified margin of victory. If you include “medium” severity discrepancies, there were 53,214 impacted ballots—more than five times the certified margin of victory. Overall, there were 57,734 impacted ballots.
These findings don’t prove fraud, but certainly demonstrate the potential for fraud. And these impacted ballots have not been vetted.
So, has Joe Biden’s victory been proven? Not in the least. The truth is, we’ll never know the truth about how many ballots were impacted. Of course, the mainstream media knows this, which is why, deep down in CNN’s report about the audit, it laments that the draft report “shows that Cyber Ninjas and their subcontractors are still seeking ways to cast doubt on the election,” pointing to the thousands of ballots flagged.
The bottom line: The number of ballots impacted by discrepancies far exceeds Biden’s margin of victory in the state. Both sides of this debate will claim the report validates their position, but in truth, without proper vetting of the impacted ballots, we’ll never know if the election results were legitimate.
The boldfaced bit is the main takeaway from the whole circle-jerk: WE WILL INDEED NEVER KNOW—KNOW FOR ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY CERTAIN, BEYOND ANY DOUBT—WHETHER THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN. Which is NOT the same thing, mind, as saying that we don’t already know well enough.
Election fraud is generally acknowledged to be an extremely difficult thing to prove conclusively; with an electorate as large as ours, as well as a specific power-mad party long accustomed to swindling its way to “victory” without consequence, it becomes almost a practical impossibility. There are myriad ways of stealing paper-ballot elections, which provide the most reliable results. Throw electronic voting machines into the mix and you almost guarantee widespread fraud. Mail-in ballots, with (ahem) flexible deadlines for submission? Stop it, you’re killing me over here.
Further eroding the already-thin hope of establishing the 2020 theft to the courtroom “beyond REASONABLE doubt” standard are some simple facts, among them: the voting machines have long since been reset and/or otherwise tampered with; questionable ballots have been disposed of and/or destroyed; security cam documentation of at-best suspicious activity in swing-state counting rooms has been erased, and more yet, including but not limited to:
…Arizona Senate Audit: Dominion Machines Contained Non-Maricopa County Data — From South Carolina and Washington State
…ARIZONA AUDIT: 9,589 EXCESS Mail-in Ballot Envelopes Counted by Maricopa County, BLANKS Verified and Approved
…Huge Crowds, Armed Militia Surround Arizona Capitol Amid Election Audit Results
…‘Decertify!’: Trump Supporters Explode After Seeing What’s Actually in Arizona Election Audit Results
…Arizona Auditors Say 335% More ‘Bad Signatures’ Found Than Maricopa County Initially Reported
…Doug Logan from Cyber Ninjas Speaks After Dr. Shiva – Uncovers Additional 57,000 Issues (Not Counting Shiva’s 17,000 Issues)
…Photoshopped Ballots? Arizona Auditors Say ‘Verified and Approved’ Stamp Mysteriously Present Behind Signature Blocks
…Dr. Shiva at AZ Senate Hearing: Over 17,000 Total Duplicate Ballots — Votes By Those Who Voted More Than Once in Arizona — 1.5 Times Biden’s Winning Margin
All this dubious activity, remember, from an audit in just one county, in one just one state.
In short, what we have here is typically referred to in criminal-justice circles as “a preponderance of evidence” strongly suggesting systemic jiggery-pokery, a preponderance which in turn strongly suggests its occurance in several states, if not all of ’em. It all makes the MFM’s transparent and predictable stab at nudging public opinion towards bland acceptance of the “Biden won!” lie is risible.
And none of it matters, not in the least. Here’s what does: THEY’RE LIARS. We KNOW they’re liars. That’s as solid a fact as facts come, no more worth discussing further than the proposition that, say, water is wet. That sticking your hand into the heart of a roaring fire is a VERY bad idea. That no matter how furiously you flap your arms, you are not going to fly yourself to a gentle landing after jumping off a cliff. The NYT, CNN, MSDNC, Uniparty politicians, Deep State bureauticks, ALL of them—LIARS. They have confirmed it again and again and again, not just in the context of fraudulent “elections,” but on EVERY issue.
So why in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed world would any of us believe them NOW? Or, really, EVER AGAIN? About anything at all?
I urge you, one and all: don’t. Just don’t do it. Ignore them instead; pay not a moment’s heed to a word out of their lying mouths. Above all, do NOT allow them the slightest influence over your opinions, your beliefs, or your actions.
Yes, the 2020 “election” was stolen. Yes, American “elections” in general are in no way free, fair, or honest; they haven’t been in years, if they ever were. Yes, participating in them is pure futility, utterly pointless. Yes, the whole system is rotten to the core, to the point that it can never be fixed or restored via traditional, peaceful means. AS ZMan put it, a system that is immune to voting is not going to be fixed by more voting.
The classic, cynical old slogan that holds “If voting could change anything, it would be illegal” has never been more factual or relevant than it is today. It also applies to audits. Biden will be stumbling, bumbling, and mumbling around the White House—just as the overarching charade will continue to grind on—for exactly as long as we put up with it…and not a minute longer.
113And also theft.
If you break a religious rule, your conscience is supposed to punish you, if you break one of society’s rules, people cluck their tongues or shun you. But government doesn’t deal in intangibles. Break a government rule and it throws you into a reinforced concrete prison with real iron bars. It hires full-time skilled employees, at your expense, to catch you, lock you in, and watch you, plus (if you try to escape) expert marksmen, to shoot you with bullets you paid for…
The government buys all manner of things—and no expense is spared. Government has an unlimited source of income as long as the citizens have an ounce of strength left to work. Government spending is limited only by the boundaries of human greed. No one has ever found the limits of human greed, but our government is constantly exploring the frontiers, forever pushing them further outward. It is hard to believe that the politicians can actually find ways to spend all the money they appropriate, in the time allotted. Our government may have a secret bank account in Switzerland, in case it has to leave the country in a hurry.
Most amazing of all is the way a government gets its funds. It’s a new twist on an old obsession: Our money burns a hole in their pocket. When religion needs money, it passes a collection plate and lets you decide how much to give, if anything. When society needs money, a silver-haired matron rings your doorbell, and you are free to say you gave at the office. The geejy bird [government] has a better system; each year it figures out exactly how much the public will stand for—short of actual armed rebellion—and spends it in advance. Then on April 15 it says, “You pay or go to jail.” Belonging to a government is like having your credit card stolen.
The above, via Francis and somewhat to my astonishment, is from a book by Allan Sherman. Yes, THAT Allan Sherman. Fran’s lead-in:
“Taxation is theft!” rises the cry from thousands of freedom lovers. And it is so, if viewed through the lens of direct comparison. After all, what practical difference is there between the highwayman who points a gun at you and says “Your money or your life,” and the IRS agent who assesses you for some obscene amount he says you “owe,” and tells you to pay or go to prison? It’s just that the latter thief has the majesty of “the law” behind him – and did you get any say in that? I didn’t.
Me neither. Then again, in accordance with its nature, government never asks. It tells. Francis includes a few more examples of government’s thieving nature, to which I would like to append this one:
After the FBI seized Joseph Ruiz’s life savings during a raid on a safe deposit box business in Beverly Hills, the unemployed chef went to court to retrieve his $57,000. A judge ordered the government to tell Ruiz why it was trying to confiscate the money.
It came from drug trafficking, an FBI agent responded in court papers.
Ruiz’s income was too low for him to have that much money, and his side business selling bongs made from liquor bottles suggested he was an unlicensed pot dealer, the agent wrote. The FBI also said a dog had smelled unspecified drugs on Ruiz’s cash.
The FBI was wrong. When Ruiz produced records showing the source of his money was legitimate, the government dropped its false accusation and returned his money.
Ruiz is one of roughly 800 people whose money and valuables the FBI seized from safe deposit boxes they rented at the U.S. Private Vaults store in a strip mall on Olympic Boulevard.
Federal agents had suspected for years that criminals were stashing loot there, and they assert that’s exactly what they found. The government is trying to confiscate $86 million in cash and a stockpile of jewelry, rare coins and precious metals taken from about half of the boxes.
But six months after the raid, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles have produced no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the vast majority of box holders whose belongings the government is trying to keep.
Some lawyers for box holders say the government’s entire operation is a “money grab” to acquire tens of millions of dollars for the Justice Department through forfeiture. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office denied that and said some of the money it recovers will go to crime victims.
In civil forfeitures, no criminal conviction is required. The government just needs to prove that it’s more likely than not that the money or property it seeks to confiscate was linked to criminal activity.
In warrants authorizing the search and seizure of all “business equipment” at U.S. Private Vaults, U.S. Magistrate Steven Kim placed strict limits on the government, explicitly barring federal agents from searching the contents of each box for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
In the warrant application, submitted by Assistant U.S. Atty. Andrew Brown, a statement by FBI agent Lynne Zellhart assured Kim that agents’ inspection of each box would “extend no further than necessary to determine ownership” so that belongings could be returned once the government took an inventory of the property seized.
Box holder lawsuits allege that those promises were false and that agents, with no probable cause, intended from the start to rummage through the boxes looking for evidence in the criminal investigation.
Which is, of course, true.
“They pulled a bank heist in broad daylight,” Ruiz said. “They didn’t even apologize.”
Also true. Julie Kelly puts it to us straight.
The incurable incompetence, corruption, and moral rot of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on full display last week.
Within a 24-hour period, some of America’s toughest female athletes recounted to a Senate committee their painful tales of how the FBI ignored evidence that team doctor Larry Nassar was a sexual predator, and a powerful attorney who colluded with the FBI to concoct one of the most animating chapters of the Trump-Russia collusion fiction was indicted for lying to federal officials.
Overlap in the two cases is more than ironic, it’s illustrative: Michael Sussman, a lawyer for Perkins Coie, the law firm that was working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, met with the FBI’s general counsel in September 2016 to plant a false story about Donald Trump’s financial ties to a Russian bank. That same month, the Indianapolis Star broke the story of how Nassar, the longtime physician for the USA Gymnastics team, had sexually abused several female gymnasts. One victim filed a lawsuit after the FBI refused to investigate complaints made to at least two FBI field offices in 2015 and 2016.
But the FBI at that time was too preoccupied with protecting Hillary Clinton to deal with a monster who had systematically raped nearly 300 female American athletes. (As Lee Smith recently noted, the FBI “has been used for a quarter of a century as the place to clean up the Clintons’ dirt.”)
Infuriatingly, Wray fired only one agent involved in the Nassar fiasco—and the man was fired the week before the Senate hearing, six years after he first interviewed Maroney. “Someone perhaps more cynical than I would conclude it was this hearing here staring the FBI in the face that prompted that action,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said to Wray.
But what ails the FBI cannot be solved with a few firings. It cannot be solved with more congressional oversight or threats to cut federal funding. The moral rot that infects the agency from top to bottom renders the agency unsalvageable.
“This conduct by these FBI agents…who are expected to protect the public is unacceptable, disgusting, and shameful,” Maggie Nichols, the gymnast who first reported Nassar’s crimes to the FBI, told the committee.
Her description, however, applies to the entire FBI—an institution with no shame, no remorse, and no accountability. There’s no fix for that.
Au contraire, Jules, NOT true. I can think of one straightaway—a fix which I positively guarantee will do the job quite nicely, with almost no real effort, inconvenience, or delay. Very inexpensive, too, requiring nothing in the way of equipment other than 1) a box of matches for the HQ building in Quantico; 2) a jerrycan of gasoline and several cans of Sterno; and 3) some salt for the earth on which the accursed building presently stands. Throw in a few lengths of stout chain and some padlocks for the doors to keep any of the bipedal rats inside from escaping and you’ll still be well within the bounds of what most of us would deem a reasonable budget, especially when balanced against the tremendous benefit the project would bring.
For the life of me, I can’t think what on earth we’re waiting for.
Update! Thanks to Aesop for helpfully reminding me in the comments that Fibbie HQ is NOT in Quantico, as I erroneously stated above. Quantico is where the FBI Academy and training center is located. There’s also a CIA training compound and shooting range not far away from there, if I recall correctly. Which I probably don’t; my memory is NOT to be trusted these days, I’m afraid.
4America’s Ghost Government.
One reason the imperial capital revolted when Trump was elected is he was a break in the long evolutionary chain. By 2016, the people who actually run the government had come to see the president as window dressing to appease the masses. The real work of governance was done by the thousands of people who live, work and socialize in the world’s largest small town. From their perspective, he was a threat to their democracy, because their democracy had become one party rule.
A good current example of how things really work in American democracy is the case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. The judge in the case is Christopher Cooper, who is married to attorney Amy Jefress. She represents key players in the FBI Russia hoax like Lisa Page. Sussman’s lawyers are long time legal insiders serving the Democratic Party. The Lawfare Group, which was deeply involved in the Russia hoax, is helpfully providing commentary to the media.
The reason that there could never be a legitimate investigation of the FBI plot to overturn the 2016 election was everyone involved is connected to everyone who would investigate or prosecute the case. Washington is a separate society that is independent of the country over whom it rules. Again, if you imagine it as a secret club, politics makes a lot of sense. The part we see, campaigns, politicians, elections, is controlled by the part we never see, the semi-permanent ruling class.
There is also reason to suspect that many of the people working in politics are just as gullible as the people voting Republican. The FBI-organized protest last weekend looks like it was more for the people inside the wire than outside the wire. They wanted the rank and file in Congress to see the storm troopers cracking skulls and flag waving barbarians screaming for the cameras. The whole thing was an amusing flop, but it kept Ocasio-Cortez up at night, which was the purpose.
Long ago, Pat Buchanan observed that local politicians are often quite sensible, which is how they get bumped up to the House of Senate. The people supporting them hope they will be a sane voice for their interests. When they get to Washington, they quickly go native and become just another voice of the ruling class. Buchanan wrote it off to social influence, which is certainly true. The newly minted Congressman is quickly socialized into the culture and is then assimilated into the Borg.
Another reason though is the shadow government. These vast global consulting firms that operate in every western capital but are based in Washington operate like a secret society. They produce the people who get appointments in every administration, and they produce the candidates for spots on the bench. They don’t write regulations and legislation, but they develop and curate the people who do. They have evolved a system that is immune to the virus of elections.
What this means is that voting has become pointless. A system that is immune to voting is not going to be fixed by more voting. In fact, voting provides a false sense of legitimacy to the system. The dynamic of liberal democracy is that voting not only strengthens the system, making it even more resistant to elections, but it also encourages more voting. The more that people participate, the less their voice matters and the more shadowy the true ruling elite pulling the strings.
As long as American “elections” remain the corrupt dumbshow they are at present, “voting” will remain nothing more than a mug’s game.
9That’s what Chris MacIntosh over at the International Man blog calls it, and I won’t even try to argue.
That’s quite a dramatic reversal, wouldn’t ya say? Gee, looks like maybe shutting down an entire national economy indefinitely under a false pretext might not have been such a bright idea after all. The same might be said of offering tax breaks to effectively incentivize US corporations to export all American manufacturing capacity to a hostile foreign dictatorship, too. Well, unless your real aim all along wasn’t maintaining US prosperity, security, and international influence like you claimed during election-year stump speeches, that is.
But hey, that’s all just crazy talk. Please ignore my momentary lapse into batshit-nuts conspiracy theorizing, ‘kay?
BRM Peter nutshells it for us.
If ever there was proof of the old saying that “what goes around, comes around”, it’s there. China is basically out to dominate – and, if possible, humiliate – any nation that won’t dance to its tune. That includes the United States. The map above shows that, on balance, China is doing just that. Its commercial and industrial influence now exceeds that of the USA on the world scene.
The worst thing of all, from an American perspective, is that our business leaders – our oligarchs, for want of a better word – deliberately worked towards this. They’re the ones who moved manufacturing offshore, seeking greater profits by making goods in markets with lower wage and transport costs. They built the factories that China is using today to extend its influence, basically handing to the Chinese the commercial hegemony they now exploit. America is now left holding the short stick, because we no longer have the industrial and commercial might that was the foundation for our influence abroad. We handed that to China on a plate, and the Chinese have taken full advantage. Don’t blame them for that, either – we would have done exactly the same thing if our positions were reversed.
So, when you look at the problems we’re currently encountering with a very screwed-up supply chain, consider them in the light of that map. That’s why we’re experiencing them – because three-quarters of our supply chain is out of our control, and very much in China’s control. To paraphrase President Obama, “we built that”. It’s our fault, on a national scale, for allowing our barons of commerce and industry to sell our economic prosperity out from under us for a mess of pottage. However, you’ll never get our politicians to admit that, or accept any responsibility for it. Being the finest politicians money can buy, many of them were long since bought by Chinese “contributions”. There’s plenty of evidence of that; I’ll leave you to look it up for yourselves.
There oughta be some way to see that the ProPols and their hand-in-glove corporate partners in crime pay a price for what they’ve done to us, if only we could think of what it might be.
3The very definition of treason—even before you throw in assisting the junta he works for in fecklessly providing the Taliban with all the equipment it needed to become, in a single turnkey, one-stop-shopping jump, the 26th most powerful military force in the world.
Having taken twenty years to lose the last war, the Pentagon has decided to fast-track things and pre-lose the next war:
Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict.
In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa…
“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.“
So America’s “top general” secretly pledged to the ChiComs that he’d give ’em a head’s up if his soi-disant commander-in-chief was planning anything…
There are phrases to describe countries where the military isn’t under the control of elected officials, and “republic of self-governing citizens” isn’t one of them.
As I’ve said multiple times in recent weeks, key American institutions from the CDC to the NBA act as if the Chinese have already won. The Pentagon has apparently joined them. You don’t need to penetrate Thoroughly Modern Milley: He’s his own Fang Fang.
Given that the interest on America’s debt has largely funded the expansion of the ChiComs’ military (including what’s now the world’s largest surface fleet), Milley’s offer to further hobble his own side seems a little superfluous: the Pentagon are the Washington Generals and Beijing are the Wuhan Globetrotters.
As if all of the above wasn’t plenty enough to justify stretching this filthy traitor’s neck for him until he is dead, dead, dead—and, according to the specifications laid out in plain, eminently comprehensible English by the Treason Clause of the US Constitution (1789-2020, now deceased), it most certainly fucking well IS—there’s also the small matter of the coup cabal he was/is such an important part of.
Washington (CNN)Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to “Peril,” a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.
Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, ‘was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.’
Milley worried that Trump could ‘go rogue,’ the authors write.
Oh, somebody definitely went rogue, all right. But it wasn’t Trump. Who happened to be, y’know, THE FUCKING DULY ELECTED COMMANDER IN CHIEF at the time. Which happened to make him, y’know, Perfumed Princess Millie’s superior officer. Which, y’know, used to mean something in regards to how US military personnel—yes, even its flag officers—are expected to respond to direct orders from the CinC, but apparently no longer does.
“You never know what a president’s trigger point is,” Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.
In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.
“No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.
“Got it?” Milley asked, according to the book.
“Yes, sir.”
The authors write, ‘Milley was overseeing the mobilization of America’s national security state without the knowledge of the American people or the rest of the world.’
Woodward and Costa also write that ‘some might contend that Milley had overstepped his authority and taken extraordinary power for himself,’ but he believed his actions were ‘a good faith precaution to ensure there was no historic rupture in the international order, no accidental war with China or others, and no use of nuclear weapons.’
Which is, y’know, in no way Millie’s judgment to render, nor his decision to make. Which is, y’know, the very textbook definition of “overstepping his authority.” Also insubordination, treason, mutiny, dereliction of duty, conducting unbecoming, &c—taken as a whole, as flagrant a violation of the UCMJ as can be imagined.
On further consideration, I wish to withdraw my earlier recommendation; hanging is much too good for a miserable cur like Thoroughly Modern Milley. Instead, he should be dragged behind a rusty old pickup truck, at moderate to high speed, to and fro across the entire breadth of the Great Republic of Texas, until there ain’t enough meat left on his scraggly bones to flare the nostrils of a starving boar-hog.
But let’s not anybody think for a moment that Milley is alone in his self-dealing; his grubby, careerist rumpswabbery; the utter lack of any detectable scrap of moral fiber or probity; his shockingly twisted priorities; his inordinately, umm, supple standards and ethics, infinitely adjustable according to the situation; the conspicuous absence of a sense of honor or shame. Sad to say, Millie has plenty of company in the thoroughly-tainted US military when it comes to those repellent traits.
In 2015 a report from the Strategic Studies Institute and US Army War College detailed the corrosion of ethics in the Army.
The report can still be found mentioned in various news articles and reviews that were published around the time of its release. Unsurprisingly the links from those articles to the report go nowhere. It’s been, conveniently, taken offline. But archive copies are still available for those with the stomach to read them.The message is clear. And while it’s focused on the Army, we know from other documents (such as the Congressional Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy Surface Fleet) that the rot extends beyond the Army. Observation of recent events (from shenanigans like the Air Force Academy Wikan Chapel and fabricated hate crime, Capt. Crozier forced to circumvent the chain of command and then being portrayed as an unbalanced renegade as he tried to care for his sailors, and the cynical handling – including referral for mental health analysis – of Lt. Col. Stu Scheller by the USMC) show that it’s widespread.
The premise is simple.
The “zero-defect” mentality of military promotion intersects with social experiments (with the concomitant “training” burdens) in a truly toxic manner. It is simultaneously unacceptable to have any missed requirements (such as every soldier completing every sexual harassment, anti-extremism, etc. training module.) At the same time, it’s mathematically impossible to complete all of the “woke” training and fundamental, basic military training.
So we have Navy officers who can’t drive ships and navigate, and Army officers who fudge training records as they try to balance tactical and skills training with social science requirements.
Every officer sees it and knows it. They know that their colleagues lie just as they do. And they must, if they hope to be promoted. The pressure increases as officers and NCOs pass some threshold – perhaps 7 or 8 years – on their way to a career and promised retirement benefits. The risk of making the required sacrifices without receiving the benefits is huge.
But….then they stand in front of the mirror and proclaim to their square-jawed, uber badged and ribboned selves, that they represent the pinnacle of ethical probity. Then, having recited that mantra, they go forth and state it publicly to their superiors (in rank), peers and subordinates (in rank.) And finally, with lots of chest-thumping, to an admiring public.
It’s a myth.
And it’s created a culture of endemic lying.
Anybody not already clued in as to why Amerika v2.0 will assuredly get itself a most thorough reaming in any future military conflict—any conflict more demanding than can be fought entirely by empimpled, Cheetoh-noshing fatbodies virtually piloting drones in air-conditioned comfort, from trailers somewhere in a remote Arizona or New Mexico desert, that is—that it might have the titanium-testicled temerity to foolishly involve itself in, is hereby advised to read and re-read all of the above, until it finally sinks in.
11If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.
Widespread Voter Fraud in California Reported: ‘It’s Been Happening All Morning’
Oh, it’s been happening a damned sight longer than that. Not just in California, either.
In the most predictable story to come out of California ahead of Tuesday’s recall election, voters across the state are reporting that they’ve been trying to cast their ballots only to find out they supposedly voted already.
Let’s cut to the chase. California’s universal mail-in voting system is specifically designed to allow Democrats to cheat. That’s it. This isn’t about “voter access” or Covid restrictions. It’s so operatives for the Communists — aka California’s Democratic Party — can steal ballots and send them in on behalf of embattled elitist Governor Gavin Newsom.
The risks are minimal. If someone comes in to vote in person and computers show someone already sent in a ballot, they are given a provisional ballot to “correct” the issue. But here’s the thing. If a street has 100 people on it and 50 vote, the other 50 who were mailed ballots will have their votes cast for them.
Fine and well so far. Alas, then comes the part I’ve come to think of, with equal measures of resignation and dread, as inevitable—just another of those distasteful but inexorable facts of life on this planet.
This story and others are why everyone who wants Gavin Newsom out needs to get to the polls and vote in person. Do not let propaganda and voter fraud steal another election in America.
Le groan. Do understand: I think highly of JD Rucker, usually am in agreement with his opinions and analysis, and enjoy his work, as is evidenced by the numerous links and excerpts to and from it to be found hereabouts. So I can only assume that the preceding ‘graph is actually Rucker’s way of auditioning for a position with the Babylon Bee, demonstrating his parodic qualifications by out-Bee’ing the Bee. Because if that ain’t what this is, one can only assume that Rucker seriously believes that near-ubiquitous vote fraud is best overcome by…wait for it…VOTING HARDERER!!!™
And y’all already know what I think about that stupid horseshit. For any who may not, this ought to make it clear as crystal for ya.
Democracy died on 2020-11-04, so I have been paying no attention to elections, electoral integrity laws, and all that.
But, due to normalcy bias, lots of people have:
In the run up before the 2020-11-03 election, the Democrats massively escalated all their regular routine fraud, sufficient to deal with a massive Trump landslide.
But instead of a massive Trump landslide, they got a colossal Trump landslide, so in the early hours of the morning of 2020-11-04, halted the counting, and proceed with hasty, panicked, and incompetent last minute fraud. Which last minute fraud was only applied to the federal election results, with the result that a lot of states went Republican at the state level.
And, theoretically, the states control the election process. So those freshly minted Republicans think they are onto a good thing. So, a bunch of election integrity laws.
Also, a whole lot of laws against critical race theory.
The laws on critical race theory appear to be having absolutely no effect. Law has ceased to matter. The laws on election integrity are likely to be similarly ignored. Only Republican scrutineers backed by physical violence are likely to have a significant effect on election outcomes. To attain a fair and honest electoral outcome, Republicans would need to deploy the methods that Julius Caesar and the NSDAP used attain a fair and honest electoral outcome. Such methods are likely to produce a fair election only once.
But it looks like the Republicans are going to try another ride on this merry go round. It will may well be their last ride. I count my survival prospects much better than theirs.
They’ll last exactly as long as the rotting political edifice they serve does, and not one shake of a lamb’s tail beyond that. Until such time as the debased system which shelters the whole grift is brought down, Republicrats and Demicans alike will continue the charade, gleefully cavorting amongst the rubble of the once-proud society they’ve wrecked, as always. They’re parasites, after all, and that’s just what parasites do: they keep sucking until the host is bled dry and dead.
Election fraud can never be overcome by more fraudulent elections. The only way to deal with it is by actively eradicating it. That of neccessity means actively pursuing, apprehending, and punishing those who perpetrate it, with the severity of punishment in exact proportion to the seriousness of the crime. In the case of election fraud, the damage done is truly enormous, very nearly incalculable; not only individuals but the entire society is grievously, perhaps fatally injured by it. To my mind, therefore, the appropriate let-the-punishment-fit-the-crime sentence can only be the guillotine.
However, being a compassionate, empathetic, and humane sort, I am quite willing to entertain the idea of reasonable compromise on such mundane particulars. So in the spirit of comity and respectful debate, please allow me to submit a few practical, reasonable alternatives:
There ya go. We good now? Because if need be, I can easily come up with more options.
21By unanimous acclaim.
Swiped from Aesop, who piles on bigly:
Could somebody get a big icepack for Dr. Fauci to put on the giant red handprint on the side of his face from that roundhouse bitchslap from a Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine? And maybe a crowbar, to get his glasses un-imbedded from his cheek, after he pries his own head out of his ass?
Nah, let the toxic gnome suffer, I say. I’m pretty sure Faulsi prefers his head right where it is anyway, and would resent any attempt to retrieve it.
1GVDL has more on that CaliCom “teacher” who got a little too balls-out and brazen for the local school board Commies’ comfort, thereby forcing them to take action.
Here is part of a statement from just one of the parents who spoke at the meeting of the School Board when Gipe was fired:
You guys fired Gabriel Gipe today, because y’all got caught yesterday. As people have mentioned, this guy had an Antifa flag on his wall. He had Chairman Mao on his wall. He was indoctrinating these kids every single day. He was abusing them, scaring them every single day. Where the hell was the principal? Where was the vice principals? Where were the faculty at this school? Where was the superintendent? Where was the rest of the district? Where were you [the school board]?
Fully aware and approving of it, naturally, every single bit of it. I imagine they were quite proud of their scion and brother-in-brainwashing, in fact. Gipe is by no means alone, rare, or even at all unusual. On the contrary, he has co-conspirators burrowed deep into the flesh of this entire nation—sickening it, weakening it, killing it apurpose.
You know, he was fired today. Why wasn’t he fired a year ago? Why wasn’t he fired two years ago? Why did this go on for so long? Why are you only doing anything about it now? Cause you got caught, exactly. And you guys, you’re going to be held accountable. This is because of you. Gabriel Gipe is a symptom, not the sickness. The sickness is in the district. The sickness is in the school. It’s everywhere. And people are sick of it. We’re aware of it. We know what’s going on, especially now. And we know what you’re doing and we’re not going to let this go.
Glad to hear it; you mustn’t, not ever. Because as soon as you let your guard down, if only momentarily, it all begins anew. They are eternally waiting for decent, liberty-oriented Americans to relax their vigilance; they are extremely patient, cunning, and opportunistic. They are also cowards, a cowardice demonstrated by the sneaky, contemptibly-underhanded way in which they never fail to operate. They must be dealt with exactly as the loathsome parasites they so literally are: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse or restraint. Every hand must be raised against them, until this deadly infestation is finally broken and the body politic is restored to health, its lifeblood cleansed of the societally-fatal toxin injected quasi-clandestinely by the most insidious parasite of them all: Leftworms.
7More on that eminently impeachable phone call, wherein Biden implored the imminently to be Impeached The Hard Way poobah of Shitholistan to lie for purposes of saving Faux Jaux’s crooked ass.
No, things weren’t going well, three weeks after the US abandoned Bagram Airfield in the dead of night.
Biden’s solution was to create the “perception” that all was fine. He wanted to keep the illusion going long enough to cover his Aug. 31 self-imposed deadline to withdraw US troops and have a victory lap on September 11th, when he would preen as the first president to end the forever war.
So he asked Ghani to trick up an event to make it look as if he had a plan to push back on the Taliban to reassure America’s allies who were beginning to question Biden’s timetable.
“I don’t know whether you’re aware,” said Biden, “just how much the perception around the world is that this is looking like a losing proposition…so the conclusion I’m asking you to consider is to bring together everyone from [ex-Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid] Dostum, to [ex-President Hamid] Karzai and in between. If they stand there and say they back the strategy you put together, and put a warrior in charge, you know a military man…in charge of executing that strategy, and that will change perception.”
Ghani tried to explain that the situation was dire: “Mr. President, we are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists.”
He begged for US air support. “What is crucial is, close air support…a very heavy reliance on air power.”
The Afghan army was based on the US model, which relies on air support for enemy strikes, ferrying the wounded, and so on. But the contractors who serviced Afghan aircraft had left, leaving the Afghan army exposed.
Ghani could see the writing on the wall, and fled Kabul three weeks later.
With an airframe-stressing, engine-groaning, rotor-blade-bending chopper-load of ill-gotten US gelt, do note.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country with four vehicles and a helicopter full of cash, the Russian embassy in Kabul said Monday.
The embattled leader left the presidential palace in Kabul on Sunday to the insurgent Taliban fighters who had toppled his government.
The former World Bank academic — who holds a doctorate from New York City’s Columbia University — didn’t say where he was going, but Al Jazeera reported later that he had flown to Uzbekistan.
“As for the collapse of the (outgoing) regime, it is most eloquently characterized by the way Ghani fled Afghanistan,” Nikita Ishchenko, a Russian embassy spokesman in Kabul, was quoted as saying by Russian state-owned news outlet RIA, Reuters reported. “Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac,” Ishchenko was quoted as saying.
Rumors that Ghani and his chaffeurs were laughing raucously, waving insulting and obscene hand gestures to those stranded on the ground, and shouting “So long, Joe, and thanks for all the fish!” from the open side doors of the purloined helicopter are impossible to confirm at this time. No confirmation, either, that the theme from the Benny Hill Show (Boots Randolph’s rollicking classic Yakety Sax) was blaring from loudspeakers bolted to the Blackhawk’s minigun mounts as celebratory background music. Now, back to the first piece.
This wilful naiveté of Biden and his urbane secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was designed to provide plausible deniability when everything went wrong in Afghanistan, as they knew it would. Their only mistake was thinking Ghani and his army would hang around until September 11th.
Biden’s defiant speech Tuesday was an attempt to bluster through with another fantasy — that our Afghanistan surrender was a success.
We’re supposed to pretend the Taliban is not taunting us with mock funerals or staging parades with some of the billions of dollars worth of Humvees and Black Hawks and weapons we gifted them.We’re meant to overlook the 13 flag-draped coffins that were flown home to Dover Air Force Base on Sunday.
The president probably thinks the lies will keep working since his presidential campaign was such a triumph of perception over reality. Democrats pretended that he was a candidate of sound mind and good character whose empathy, integrity and foreign-policy expertise would restore America’s soul.
They got away with it only because the media and Big Tech conspired to fool the American people.
But a new Rasmussen poll shows that voters no longer buy the delusion — a majority think Biden should resign over the Afghanistan debacle. The problem is most don’t think VP Kamala Harris is qualified to replace him.
And that is our predicament for the next three years.
Wanna bet? Because from where I sit, it’s looking more and more like the bufoonish pRetend pResident might well be nearing the end of his disastrous run, one way or another.
1
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"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." — Daniel Webster
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