Cold Fury

Harshing your mellow since 9/01

Category: Tards

“Catastrophe”

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And coverup.

In 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage.

“When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence official.

From around 2009 to 2013, the U.S. intelligence community experienced crippling intelligence failures related to the secret internet-based communications system, a key means for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide. The previously unreported global problem originated in Iran and spiderwebbed to other countries, and was left unrepaired — despite warnings about what was happening — until more than two dozen sources died in China in 2011 and 2012 as a result, according to 11 former intelligence and national security officials.

The disaster ensnared every corner of the national security bureaucracy — from multiple intelligence agencies, congressional intelligence committees and independent contractors to internal government watchdogs — forcing a slow-moving, complex government machine to grapple with the deadly dangers of emerging technologies.

More than just a question of a single failure, the fiasco illustrates a breakdown that was never properly addressed. The government’s inability to address the communication system’s insecurities until after sources were rolled up in China was disastrous. “We’re still dealing with the fallout,” said one former national security official. “Dozens of people around the world were killed because of this.”

Now guess on whose watch this disastrous fiasco occurred. Go on, guess.

This is simply stunning. A rollup of networks across the world — an event that began in Iran, where the Obama administration would soon enough be negotiating its much sought-after “nuclear deal framework,” and ended with numerous deaths is the kind of thing of which intelligence nightmares and national-security disasters are made. One’s first instinct is to look back and see who was CIA director during that period: Leon Panetta (Feb. 2009-June 2011); Michael Morell (acting director, July-Sept. 2011); David Petraeus (Sept. 2011-Nov. 2012); Morell again (acting, Nov. 2012-March 2013); and finally John Brennan, who served out the remainder of the Obama administration.

In other words, a lot of churn during what we now know was a tumultuous time. Oddly enough, one important national-security position experienced exactly zero churn during these years, that of Homeland Security adviser. Which chair was occupied by John Brennan, until he stepped in at the CIA.

I emphasized the incompetent asshole Brennan above, just because. But it can’t fairly be said that the buck stopped with him; it went much higher than that, of course.

The fact is, networks get rolled up all the time, especially when the controlling agency becomes complacent, or goes to the well once too often. Communication methods must always be reassessed — especially when they seem to be working — and changed. But the Obama administration’s cavalier attitude toward security basics is nonetheless shocking, and evidence of the rank amateurism with which the Obamanauts approached foreign policy and national security.

Gee, imagine my surprise. Walsh also notes that the story finally surfaced on Nov 2, and sarcastically wonders why it “got mighty little attention from the national media.” He knows quite well, and so do you.

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Anomalies aplenty

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Codevilla runs down the curiouser-and-curiouser case of fake-bomb fallguy Cesar Sayoc.

During my years with the Senate Intelligence Committee, as I worked to repair this country’s counterintelligence operations, I sometimes lectured our intelligence community’s leaders on the principles of counterintelligence analysis. Prominent among these is that close attention to an event’s anomalies—to things that don’t seem to quite fit—can reveal more about the event than everything else about it. In other words, if in fact the event contains a lie, it may lead you to understand the deepest truths about that event.

The obvious account of the bomb drama is that devices were mailed or delivered to prominent critics of the Trump Administration to hurt them or to frighten them into silence.

Not originally knowing anything about who mailed those devices, or why, and assuming that the alleged perpetrator was a competent person who would have covered his personal tracks well—the way that the Soviets had deceived U.S intelligence analysts for a decade about their nuclear command post—noticing anomalies, in this case the ways in which these devices and their deliveries don’t quite fit the obvious story, was the best way of grasping the truth of the matter.

Although it is usually prudent to assume the opponent’s intelligence and rationality, the analyst had to keep in mind that an assumption is only just that.

The devices could not have caused harm, and were unlikely to have caused fear first, because they were unlikely to reach their supposed victims. They were sent through the U.S. Postal Service, which advertises that it checks all packages for explosives, or were delivered to places protected by the Secret Service or known to have other, serious security measures. A rational perpetrator would know that. By the same token he had to know that the undelivered packages were sure to draw the media’s attention.

Nothing about the devices themselves fit the main story of harm and fear. First, they were made of PVC pipe—grossly insufficient for containing an explosion to lethal force. Second, whereas package-bombs are set to go off when the package is opened, these contained outside timers, apparently unconnected to what may or may not be detonators.

But though incapable of hurting the recipients, were they meant to frighten them into silence? Believing that things so obviously harmless could frighten persons protected by world-class security beggars belief. In short, these devices’ anomalies lead the analyst to conclude that they were meant to look like bombs, aimed at a credulous press, just as the Sharopova wind tunnel was aimed at credulous intelligence analysts.

Hence, counterintelligence analysis’ first hard conclusion: Whoever the perpetrator was, he acted to harm some and help others politically, by leveraging the media. But if the devices were meant to ignite a media frenzy, who were the intended victims and who the beneficiaries?

Read it all; he doesn’t take his analysis quite where one might initially assume, and I think he makes an error in his central premise which you guys will probably be able to identify easily enough yourselves. His conclusion, though, I am in complete agreement with. Seeing as how said conclusion—that the effect achieved was the exact opposite of the intended one—is so, we can expect this fiasco of a fuckup to disappear from the national radar pretty quickly now.

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“Can’t you see that this is something that is not really up for debate?”

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This guy says he’s a “progressive,” but I have to say I have my doubts.

Recently, I arrived at a moment of introspection about a curious aspect of my own behavior. When I disagree with a conservative friend or colleague on some political issue, I have no fear of speaking my mind. I talk, they listen, they respond, I talk some more, and at the end of it we get along just as we always have. But I’ve discovered that when a progressive friend says something with which I disagree or that I know to be incorrect, I’m hesitant to point it out. This hesitancy is a consequence of the different treatment one tends to receive from those on the Right and Left when expressing a difference of opinion. I am not, as it turns out, the only one who has noticed this.

“That’s a stupid fucking question,” answered a Socialist Alliance activist when I asked sincerely where they were getting what sounded like inflated poverty statistics. “If you don’t believe in gay marriage or gun control, unfriend me,” demand multiple Facebook statuses from those I know. “That’s gross and racist!” spluttered a red-faced Ben Affleck when the atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris criticized Islamic doctrines on Bill Maher’s Real Time. Nobody blinks an eye when Harris criticizes Christianity, least of all Affleck, who starred in Kevin Smith’s irreverent religious satire Dogma. But Christians are not held to be a sacrosanct and protected minority on the political Left.

So how and why have these activists become so intolerant and horrible to deal with? Part of this hostility can be explained by a wilful ignorance and incuriosity about ideas with which they disagree. Every so often, a progressive friend will peruse my bookshelf in a thought-police sort of fashion. What happens next is fairly predictable. Once they realize that Malinowski’s Melanesian epic The Sexual Life of Savages doesn’t include any erotic pictures, they will turn their attention to the Ayn Rand collection. “Why do you have these?” they ask with an air of indignation, holding up a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. “Have you ever read her?” I will ask. “No,” they reliably respond.

Hm. Doesn’t believe in gay marriage or gun control. Reads Ayn Rand. Would seem to have at least some sympathy for the Christians relentlessly persecuted by the Left. Looking back over the piece again, I realize that he never actually says he’s a liberal or “progressive” at all, contrary to my opening assertion; it’s just an impression I somehow came up with on my own, and I would seem to have been in error. Oh well. If I inadvertently slandered the guy unjustly, I hereby offer my humble apologies. No one who isn’t one would want to be called a Progressivist, that’s for sure.

Be all that as it may, he makes a whole slew of most excellent points throughout—such as this one:

According to these academics and others like them, not only should people be punished for not conforming to the new politically correct consensus, but conservative opinions opposing punishment for non-conformity should also be punished. A 2012 study, conducted by Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers and published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, found that progressive faculty openly admit to discriminating against the conservative minority when it comes to job promotions and grant applications.

Given the current environment, conservatives would be advised to simply abandon academia if they know what’s good for them. On the other hand, it is a problem when a student goes through university where each and every course is taught by a left-leaning professor. For conservative students, the toxic and hostile university environment needn’t cripple their intellectual development. These students arrive at university with conservative ideas and will naturally seek out and read conservative authors in their own time to balance out the latest application of progressive doctrine to which they are subjected in class. The most ambitious will be familiar with both Rand and Marx, Keynes and Hayek, Galbraith and Friedman, Krugman and Sowell, Picketty and Peterson. But we ought to worry about the progressive student who arrives with progressive ideas, and is then showered in class with more of the same and reinforces them in their own time. Such students live in a much smaller cultural universe than the cosmopolitan intellectual world through which the conservative will be made to travel. This isn’t to deny that bigoted reactionaries on the opposite side of the spectrum also inhabit a tiny intellectual space. But that does not excuse the closing of the mind at a university.

Nothing can; intellectual curiosity and flexibility are the very heart and soul of a properly-functioning institution of higher learning. Unfortunately, that isn’t what our universities now are, and that isn’t by accident, either.

This article, of which you will want to read the all, is a deep and thoughtful one and covers a lot of ground. For me the big takeaway is probably this, most especially the part I put in boldface:

In his remarkable book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt recalls a telling experiment. He and his colleagues Brian Nosek and Jesse Graham sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms ‘liberal’ (ie: progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. “The results were clear and consistent,” remarks Haidt. “In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals.” Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don’t hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives. This he calls the ‘conservative advantage,’ and it goes a long way in explaining the different ways each side deals with opinions unlike their own. People get angry at what they don’t understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don’t understand.

Indeed they don’t; they don’t understand much of anything, nor do they wish to, nor can they even conceive of any necessity for it. Neither do they consider such blockheaded, smug arrogance any kind of failing or flaw—something not to be proud of, but corrected. There’s no longer any reasoning, discussion, or honest debate to be had with them; the intellectual wall is complete, and cannot be breached or scaled.

They must be crushed. It’s almost certainly going to be bloody. And that’s all on them.

(Via Insty)

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Axl WHO again, now?

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You didn’t expect anything less from Hollywood celebs, I hope.

he message from the aging rock star about the California Republican was succinct:

“F*ck Nunes.”

Those gripping words were tweeted earlier this year by Axl Rose, the frontman for Guns N’ Roses. The rocker apparently was miffed after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) suggested that the Obama administration spied on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. (Rose’s appetite for destruction isn’t just the title of his band’s most popular album: During a concert shortly after the election, he beat an oversized pinata depicting the new president.)

The profane tweet by Rose—who now looks like the homeless love child of Sam Kinison and Ethel Merman—earned nearly 30,000 likes.

Rose is one of many celebrities hoping to dump some cold November Rain on Nunes’s reelection next month. The lawmaker who President Trump on Thursday saidshould get the Medal of Freedom for “what he has gone through and his bravery” is a top target of the Left for leading the investigation into the biggest political scandal in U.S. history: The weaponization of the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to infiltrate a rival presidential campaign and undermine an incoming administration.

Hopefully resulting in justice at last being served on Obama, Her Herness, and the rest of the Coup Clux Clowns, with all and sundry being fitted for some nice orange jumpsuits with inmate ID numbers stenciled on.

If this seems like overkill, it is. Celebrities are running cover for congressional Democrats and Obama loyalists terrified at what the Nunes investigation will yield. They are trying to bully him into backing down; his opponent confirmed that if Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) replaces Nunes as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee next year, Democrats would begin investigating Nunes himself.

But Hollywood’s intimidation tactics against Nunes aren’t working. He continues to pressure the president to declassify documents related to so-called FISAgate, and his committee will soon postthe transcripts of more than 70 witnesses who were interviewed about their role in the scandal. An outspoken critic of Rosenstein, who signed the final FISA application on Page, Nunes and some of his Republican colleagues have threatened to impeach him for blocking congressional demands for information.

While Nunes has raised the ire of the Left, he has earned the respect of the president and many rank-and-file Republicans. Making sure Nunes’s investigation continues after the midterms should be a key talking point for party leaders over the next few weeks. Celebrity outrage at Nunes underscores how serious and damaging this scandal is for the Democrats. Otherwise, just like the Clinton email scandal, everyone will get off the hook. Again.

Such a dismal outcome would be proof positive that not only is the Deep State real, it’s also pretty much invincible.

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White on white

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Re the hilarious irony attendant to the previous post, Porter spells it out for the obtuse.

The truth is if you’re not really looking you won’t find much about Portland in which to take offense. It’s when you tune into the ambient noise that the inputs become ugly. That’s because Portland isn’t just a liberal town. It’s a red or dead one. It’s a place where Maoists, Bolsheviks, and Khmer Rouge can be safely nurtured without fear of hostile intrusion by humanity.

What that means in practice is that a visitor from Earth is as likely to see a lunatic woman stepping over homeless on the sidewalk while shrieking to no one about heartless Trump, as they are a riot of unemployed black-clad baristas unselfconsciously smashing the city’s progressive retail outlets. I have seen both.

That’s why I found the following two tweet-embedded videos so unsurprising.

In them, antifa takes it upon themselves to commandeer a public intersection and scream racial profanities at confused or disobedient motorists. By racial profanities, I obviously mean anti-white.

In the first video, an obese middle-aged moron whose legs can not be seen because they are camouflaged in cut-off shorts confronts a driver who is so fascist that he actually tried to drive on public streets. Understandably enraged, the communist plumbs the vast empty expanse of his brain for the most vile insult he can imagine to hurl. And there it was.

You’re a Little Whitey, Aren’t Ya?

I hope liberal parents will be content in the knowledge of their 1.3 children suffering that sneer for a lifetime.

Though perhaps realizing he had unerringly pinned the tale on the Nazi, the perceptive pylon repeated his accusation multiple times. White! White! White! You’re White! screamed the white.

I understand there is no more hideous pejorative to the leftist mind, but to the swarms of extraterrestrials that cloud the Oregon skies, this act of militant idio-supremacist moral preening must seem like ample enough reason to turn this planet into a bauxite mine, and move on to more intelligent locales.

While white men screaming “white man!” at other white men as an insult is a stupidity difficult to exceed, his ‘comrades’ certainly weren’t dissuaded from the attempt. In another intersection hijacking, an elderly driver induced antifa’s crusaders to attack his car at not one but two traffic lights. Would you guess this attack was triggered by the driver dragging Tom Robinson by the neck to a lynching tree? Well, it was nearly that bad: he was dragging his own old white body through a green light. And that, Atticus Lenin, is even more raysis.

In the sidebar Tweets, he elaborates:


And then a commenter unleashes this astute observation:

The older I get, the more I see it as a spiritual problem. I heard a talk by a priest where he describes a consistently unnecessary negative attitude as a mindset that is only different in degree from those in hell.

These people are practicing for hell and it’s terrifying. From a human perspective, I do legitimately pity them, and I’m not being sarcastic. Their internal world is entirely thirst, itch, dryness, insecurity, bitterness, self loathing. Even their jokes aren’t really jokes, just mean spirited punchlines lacking either structure or joy.

That doesn’t excuse the need to restore order and restrain their violence by a long shot. You can’t have violence running rampant. But it’s all to say it’s a spiritual problem at heart. Argument by itself is not going to work. This is why we’ve failed reaching them, at least in part. They’re looking for meaning, and lower taxes and slogans (but libertarian or conservative) is not going to cut it.

Nothing is. Well, except maybe actual edged weapons. And projectile types, too. And maybe, at some further point, canister, grapeshot, and a few good helpings of time-on-target. Which is probably a good thing, since it’s become nigh impossible to parody them, and they’re so self-righteously thick they’re oblivious to mockery.

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Weak tea

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Lefty’s next move.

Fresh off getting their britches kicked over the Kavanaugh nomination, the American left has come up with yet another scheme to stymie the GOP and strangle the MAGA program in its cradle.

This is the product of John Burton, an Obama acolyte and political activist who, harnessing the crowdsourcing process (the “Wiki effect”), has signed up an army of amateur volunteers to examine the records of dozens of vulnerable GOP candidates with the intention of publicizing these findings in a string of October surprises.

Burton is an ex-banker who worked for the Obama campaign as an opposition researcher. After Donald Trump was elected, he joined the “Resistance,” according to his own words, out of guilt that he’d allowed Trump to be elected.

He immediately organized a telephone campaign in which, shortly after the inauguration, 78,000 callers contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee demanding an investigation into “Russian collusion.” Some sources give him credit for the Mueller investigation, which is arguable, to say the least.

Burton then applied himself to organizing “Citizen Strong,” a 501(c)(4) “grassroots” outfit dedicated to ending the Trump menace. Anticipating the 2018 elections, he has organized 16,000 volunteers who have been searching the net for “damaging material” on GOP candidates. Citizen Strong is targeting three Senate races, 22 House races, and 133 state legislative races in 13 states. The effort has been financed by what even his supporters call “dark money.” (It should also be mentioned that one of the individuals involved is an evident Russian immigrant named “Tanya.” Another is named “Vlad.” You’d really think they’d know better.)

The purpose is to unleash all this material prior to November 6, throwing GOP electoral efforts into chaos and delivering the seats in contention to the Dems.

Oh noes, whatever shall we DO?

A few examples of Citizen Strong’s exposés have already been released (though nothing on the chief target, Dana Rohrabacher, accused of – you guessed it – Russian collusion). They are less than world-shattering. We’ve been informed that the wife of Wisconsin state rep. Tyler Vorpagel, who has voted for welfare reform, was collecting unemployment while working on his campaign!!! It may come as news to J.P. Morgan alumnus Burton – as well as his Russian comrades-in-arms – that unemployment compensation is not welfare. It’s a form of insurance, paid for by workers while employed. We can be sure that Wisconsin’s middle- and working-class voters will know the difference.

Similarly, Representatives Mike Bost of Illinois and Dave Schweikert of Arizona will be pilloried for staying at Ritz-Carltons or the Waldorf while traveling – a silly piece of class warfare that might agitate Occupy activists but few others. Political offices do come with some privileges. This should be news to nobody.

The rest is of much the same tenor – all of it reaching, exaggerated, and essentially empty. Citizen Strong may have come up with something earth-shattering, but thus far, there’s no sign of it. Simply repeating “Blasey Ford” and underlining that this is the same type of operation – which it is – should negate the bulk of it. Mentioning such names as “McCabe,” “Strzok,” and “Page” would not be out of place.

It almost seems as if they’re so dispirited they’re just phoning it in now. If this is all they have, no wonder so many of them are pushing so hard for violent revolution. But the one thing we know for sure?

We can rest assured that there will be plenty more coming.

Yep. They’ll never stop; no matter how pathetic their efforts become, no matter how low they stoop, they’ll always find a way to stoop even lower.

Too bad for them that there’s no unseeing the ugliness and contempt for the country and its Normals that they’ve shown us the last two years. This sort of hamhanded, feeble sleaze—and sheer batshit lunacy, of course—is now all they have left. Sprinkle that with the suffocating stench of eau de loser wafting off of them, and…well, sorry, but I don’t see it changing any minds.

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A new low

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The question rings out: Can they really BE this dumb? And the answer comes instantly back: Oh, quite a bit dumber than you think, even.



I won’t bother explaining what’s fundamentally wrong with that risible assertion. You guys all know already, and they ain’t listening anyway. Even if they were, it would be over their heads, like reading Shakespeare to a damned dog or something.

OOOPS update! Another hilariously ludicrous assertion which I don’t have to bother explaining. But it’s remarkable in its own right, because it’s Hillary!™ telling nothing but the pure, unvarnished truth, possibly for the first time in her entire miserable life, if inadvertently.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour interviewed Clinton about the joint speaking tour she is going on with Bill, where tickets to attend are going for up to $700 each, according to the Daily Mail.

“You say that you are going to talk about the difficulties that your husband went through, that you went through,” Amanpour said. “Obviously you’re going to be prepared to have questions about that moment in 1998, the impeachment, the allegations of sexual [misconduct] against your own husband.”

“Are you prepared to answer those questions?” Amanpour asked. “Is he prepared to answer them? And how do you see that similar or different from what President Trump is being accused of and Kavanaugh and others today?”

Clinton responded by saying the allegations against her husband were totally different because partisan politics were involved.

“There’s a very significant difference,” Clinton responded. “And that is the intense, long-lasting partisan investigation that was conducted in the ’90s.”

Yeah, they’re different all right, and significantly for sure: the ones against your “husband” were, y’know, true, with plenty of evidence to back ’em up.

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A run-in with THE LAW

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Well, I never!

Kavanaugh Questioned in 1985 After Bar Fight — for Throwing Ice

Why, clearly, this man does NOT possess the necessary “judicial temperament,” as the shitlibs are saying. Even though he’s been a respected judge for decades now.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (shown above left) was questioned by authorities in 1985 following an altercation at a bar after a UB40 concert, according to The New York Times. He was accused of throwing ice on another individual in a tussle at a bar along with his friend Chris Dudley (above right), who later became a player for the NBA.

Kavanaugh was an undergraduate in his junior year at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, at the time of the September 1985 incident. The New Haven Police Department questioned him and four others, but no one was arrested and no charges were filed.

“Mr. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Mr. Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him ‘for some unknown reason,’” said The Times article.

Okay, this dumpster-diving nonsense is actually getting kind of funny at this point. Can the heavy-breathing twatburgers at the NYT really think ancient-history hijinks like this matter to even the slightest degree to anybody all these years later—Kavanaugh included? Do they seriously mean to propose that having been young and perhaps a little rowdy once should disqualify one for service on the USSC as an adult? Do they really think the kind of juiceless, timid, sheltered dweebs that apparently inhabit big-city newsrooms must be the only ones making decisions regarding the laws that affect the lives of those of us who actually DO get out into the rough-and-tumble real world now and then?

Never mind that last one, it sort of answers itself.

Bottom line update! Here’s what it’s really all about:

Aside from the Left’s vicious and venal assault on Kavanaugh and his family, another ulterior motive has been at play over the past few weeks. It is “Revenge of the Nerds, Swamp Edition.” Duckie versus Blaine. Farmer Ted versus Jake Ryan. Booger versus Ogre. Except this time, dweeby Democratic lawmakers and their media Geek Squad have piled on to the SCOTUS Prom King, and it isn’t pretty. Decades of pent-up hostility for being ignored, depantsed and stuffed in lockers came frothing to the top of our national political dialogue.

Brett Kavanaugh is the guy the dorks love to hate, and they still resent him. He was a three-sport athlete and top student—”busted my butt in school,” he told Whitehouse—and obviously very well-liked. Legions of friends, both men and women, have come to his defense. Old girlfriends have attested to his character and manners. “I’ve been friends with Brett Kavanaugh for over 35 years, and dated him during high school,” wrote Maura Kane. “In every situation where we were together he was always respectful, kind and thoughtful. We remain good friends and I admire him as a husband, father, and professional.”

Sadly for the nerds, Kavanaugh’s charmed life did not end after graduation. He went on to the Ivy Leagues, worked in the Bush White House, and became a federal judge. The fact Kavanaugh is also a devout churchgoer, a volunteer at homeless shelters, marathon-runner, kids’ basketball coach, husband, and father to two beautiful little girls only made the dorks more mad. They are fuming that this party boy, and not they, will be in a position of power instead of selling cars like all party boys should be.

Kelly’s point here might seem frivolous at first blush, but I think there’s more to it than might initially be apparent. The NYT’s sniffy “gotcha” mentioned up top inadvertently reveals the deep-seated resentment and envy underlying their cheap “scoop”; the bolded part above reads like a list from the Left’s All Things Anathema handbook. And envy has always been one of the primary gears driving the Progressivist machinery. For booger-eating Lefty pencilnecks, what’s not to hate about a guy like Kavanaugh?

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“How to successfully debate a Democratic Socialist”

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First rule: don’t bother. It wastes your time, and annoys the pig.

Recently I had the opportunity to debate a Bernie Sanders supporter and democratic socialist on the radio. As the democratic socialists become more prominent, both nationally and at our dinner tables and parties, it’s very likely you will find yourself engaging in a similar debate.

Here are a few lessons I learned from my experience that can help you debate a democratic socialist.

Lesson 1. Be Prepared
My opponent came prepared. She knew that I immigrated from Communist China and have written a book on the horrors of socialist communism. Therefore, she quickly pointed out that democratic socialism is not the same thing as what I experienced in China.
She claimed that she didn’t want to get rid of capitalism, private property rights and personal responsibility. She said she hopes democratic socialism, with all the free handouts and government intervention and workers’ power, will make capitalism a better system. She treats capitalism like a puppy: cute but needing adult supervision to ensure it will behave.

Fortunately, I came prepared too. While a foot soldier of democratic socialism like her treats capitalism as a misbehaving puppy, my research reveals the leadership of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) view capitalism as their ultimate foe that ought to be destroyed. DSA’s Vice-Chair Jeff Stein, writing for Vox, declares that DSA believes in abolishing capitalism for an economy run either by “the workers” or the state.

He wrote, “In practice, that means DSA [members advocate] ending private ownership of a wide range of industries whose products are viewed as ‘necessities,’ which they say should not be left to those seeking to turn a profit…DSA also believes that the government should ‘Democraticize’ private businesses — i.e., force owners to give workers control of them — to the greatest extent possible.”

There is a clear disconnect between what socialists like my debate opponent claim about democratic socialism versus what the DSA leadership openly advocates.

And that’s also Lesson 1 in why you shouldn’t bother: they lie. Always, continually, shamelessly, without thought or care. It’s almost a reflex with them. Admittedly, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Lesson 2. Stress that Democratic Socialism Is Not New or Better
DSA leadership’s stated goals are the same goals declared by murderous communists Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and many other socialists in the past , which shows democratic socialism is not that much different from what we’ve seen before.

Here is more proof. I read my opponent the following quote:

  • “We demand profit sharing in big business.
  • We demand a broad extension of care for the aged.
  • We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living.
  • In order to make possible to every capable and industrious citizen the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education. We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents.
  • The government must undertake the improvement of public health-by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor, by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth.”

I asked her if these statements sound similar to what democratic socialists stand for, and she nodded. Then I revealed that they were excerpts from the 1920 declaration of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany, more commonly known as Nazis.

Heh. Good one. So yeah, if you’re debating them not in hopes of convincing or educating them but just to amuse yourself by batting them around like a cat toy for a bit, have at it. Otherwise, meh.

Despite my complete lack of patience for the premise—that seriously debating the smarmy, douchealicious polyps is or can ever possibly be a worthwhile use of anyone’s time—it’s a good, fact-filled article, I must say.

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Furious…and funny

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Klown Kar Koup runs over own feet.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California conceded Tuesday that she can’t attest to the veracity of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school.

“[Ford] is a woman that has been, I think, profoundly impacted. On this…I can’t say that everything is truthful. I don’t know,” Feinstein told reporters on Capitol Hill when asked if she believed the allegation.

Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has been maligned by her Republican colleagues for failing to disclose the sexual-harassment accusation after initially being made aware of it via a letter from Ford in July.

Asked why she did not make her Judiciary Committee colleagues aware of the allegation at the beginning of Kavanaugh’s vetting process, Feinstein hesitated before citing Ford’s desire to remain anonymous.

“I don’t know; I’ll have to look back and see,” Feinstein told reporters before entering the Senate chamber.

Oh, bullshit, you despicable liar. The whole thing was never anything at all but a political ploy intended to discredit Kavanaugh and hamstring Trump, and you know it better than anybody. But does it get better, you ask? Of course it does.



That’s Alexandra Miranda Vera Cruz De La Holla Cardinale Occasional-Cortex flipping the White Power Secret Handshake that nobody ever heard of until the Deranged Left’s ludicrous meltdown over it last week, having been thoroughly trolled by 4Chan’s co-opting of the hand sign sane people know as representing “OK” for just that purpose.

(Via Ed)

Mo’ funny update! Sung to the tune of the Ballad Of The Green Berets.

Bracken-Kavanaugh.jpeg


Courtesy of WRSA.

In the clutches of commies update! On a more serious note, also via WRSA:

Classic communism in play at the Kavanaugh confirmation. The communist organizations and the communists in government will do anything to keep the death cult alive, part of that is Planned Parenthood. They have sold the idea that if Kavanaugh is confirmed that he and Gorsuch will combine to eliminate Roe v Wade, this has led to the desperate attempt of Christine Blasey-Ford to derail the nomination through an accusation of teenage sexual misconduct.

What else can the communist left in this nation do, but make specious allegations against their enemy? Understand, it is in the communist playbook to lie. Lying to them is a tactic, not a sin. A talented liar is highly valuable. Look at the way they responded to Clinton when he lied about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. It wasn’t just that he lied, but the propaganda media swooned over how well he lied.

The same goes with Obama, they loved the way he looked them in the eye and lied with conviction and with the smoothness of a used car salesman. Lying well is to be aspired to. All of us rubes; the fools that we are; the hopelessly convicted believers in Christ who view lying as a sin are just easy prey. But, after all of that, if they think we believe that they are above a good lie to derail a Supreme Court nomination they are the fools.

It is not difficult to imagine Christine Blasey-Ford with all of her social justice warrior armor wrapped up in her pink hat, remembering Kavanaugh from some distant party and knowing that the proximity gives any story she chooses to make up credibility.

Actually, what she remembers a lot better is Kavanaugh’s mom ruling against Christine Lying-Whore’s parents in a foreclosure hearing she presided over as judge. But hey, I just can’t imagine any deranged Sanders-sucking commie holding a grudge for that long, can you?

If you can’t, I have a bridge in Brooklyn up for sale that I think you might be interested in. The bottom line remains: this is just another Democrat-Socialist shitshow, another Oh, We Got Him Now! moment. Like all the others before it, this one is already starting to collapse, after which it will be on to the next one.

Which makes the grovel-reflex from Benedict Arnold Republicans even more sickening than usual, including the pundit-class types who lapsed right into standard chin-pulling and handwringing over the “seriousness” of Lying-Whore’s bullshit charges mere moments after Fienswine made her dirty move. Harsanyi provides a useful reminder for the preemptive-surrender monkeys:

It’s worth remembering that these Democrat tactics aren’t only meant to sink this nomination — should they end up forcing Kavanaugh to withdraw — but also to damage the credibility of any Supreme Court featuring Trump-nominated (or, let’s be honest, Republican-nominated) justices. Democrats have been dishonestly challenging the “legitimacy” of the court throughout these hearings. They don’t want to abide by any authority that treats the Constitution seriously, because it’s often the only thing standing in the way of their coercive policies.

The Kavanaugh hearings were already an embarrassing spectacle in which Democrats ignored the rules, processes and procedures when it suited them. Yet, if Republicans refuse to hold more open hearings now, they will be accused of ignoring sexual assault. If they do hold hearings, they will be accused of attacking a sexual assault survivor, anyway. Republicans will never be able to ask Ford anything useful, because they’re mostly white men, and white men are, I’m told, perfunctorily racist and misogynist. If Republicans bring up the fact that Ford’s allegation wasn’t reported or relayed to anyone for more than 30 years — until Kavanaugh’s name emerged as a possible Supreme Court justice — they will be accused of attacking a woman. If they point out that her therapist’s notes, the ones that Ford claims prove her charge, in some ways contradict what she is now saying, they will be portrayed as a bunch of men attacking a sexual assault survivor. When they point out that polygraph tests are unreliable and inadmissible in courts, they will be accused of berating a victim.

Republicans are simply expected to nod their heads in agreement.

Which is exactly what way too many of them got real busy doing. Myself, I’ll just let McThag do my talking for me:

Dear Democrat Senators: 
You did nothing about the numerous rape allegations and escapades associated with William Jefferson Clinton.

This means that we don’t give a shit what you think about a single allegation about Brett Kavanaugh from when he was in high school.

I’ll tell you what, Dianne, even if you produce a film of him raping someone now…

I don’t care.

You beat the “give a fuck” out of me on this issue.

Hollywood’s treatment of women beat the “give a fuck” out of me on this issue.

I used to care, but you keep telling me it’s no big deal in every word and deed.

But now that it is a pro-gun, conservative Supreme Court nominee, it’s somehow different?

Yeah, fuck off.

With fucking bells on. As Aesop says:

We could not have said so much with so little if we whittled at that block of wood all day, a fact we hereby cheerfully concede and acknowledge.

I’ll put a hearty “amen” to that sentiment.

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Stolen glory

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They stepped in it. They splattered it all over themselves. Now they’re frantically trying to clean up the mess.

Legendary Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin took a swipe at the upcoming movie “First Man” late Sunday for its director’s decision not to show the planting of the American flag on the moon during the historic 1969 mission.

Aldrin, 88, who was the second man to step on the moon, behind crewmate Neil Armstrong, posted historical photos of the flag-planting and added the hashtag “Proud to be an American.”

In previous posts Saturday, Aldrin shared photos of himself wearing a T-shirt with the tagline “Buzz Aldrin, Future Martian” that shows an astronaut planting the American flag on the Red Planet.

Chazelle himself also released a statement, insisting the omitting of the planting of the US flag had nothing to do with politics.

“The flag being physically planted into the surface is one of several moments of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA [extravehicular activity] that I chose not to focus upon,” he said on Friday.

“To address the question of whether this was a political statement, the answer is no. My goal with this movie was to share with audiences the unseen, unknown aspects of America’s mission to the moon — particularly Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours,” the director added.

When he was, y’know, planting the American flag on the fucking moon. In celebration of a wholly American achievement. The Soviets got to low orbit before petering out. Nobody else has managed to do even that much. Hell, even we can’t manage it anymore. It might be a past glory, now long behind us. But it’s still OUR glory, no matter how much that indisputable fact disrupts the feel-goods of globalist shitlibs.

The article quotes Armstrong’s kids as saying they actually agree with the shitlibs on its being a “human” achievement, but who gives a stinking damn what they think? None of them have been to the moon yet either. Anytime they want to go plant themselves a UN flag up there, they’re welcome to try. Maybe Once-Great Britain, Turkmenistan, Sierra Leone, and Burkina Faso can help out.

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Where’s MY white privilege, dammit?

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Self-loathing is an essential—perhaps THE essential—component driving the modern liberal psyche.

The concept of ‘white privilege’ was popularized by Peggy McIntosh in a 1989 paper written at Harvard University and titled, “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack.” It was written as a personal, experiential essay, and it details 26 ways in which McIntosh’s skin color has been decisive in determining her life outcomes. This hugely influential paper has been responsible for the subsequent proliferation of a rigidly enforced theory of privilege throughout social movements and university classrooms. So central has this doctrine become to progressive politics, pedagogy, and activism, that to even question its validity is to invite the inquisitorial wrath of ‘social justice’ radicals. But it is for this very reason that it is important to subject McIntosh’s ideas to scrutiny. So let us return to the source and to first principles and unpack Peggy McIntosh’s knapsack…

Follows, a close examination of the tremendously large silver spoon ensconced in the gormless nitwit’s mouth from birth, a matter far more of wealth, social position, and access to a network of lofty connections than of race. She doesn’t seem interested in groveling apologetically for those things, oddly enough.

In other words, Peggy McIntosh was born into the very cream of America’s aristocratic elite, and has remained ensconced there ever since. Her ‘experiential’ list enumerating the ways in which she benefits from being born with white skin simply confuses racial privilege with the financial advantages she has always been fortunate enough to enjoy. Many of her points are demonstrably economic. One is left to wonder why, given her stated conviction that she has unfairly benefited from her skin color, there seems to be no record of her involvement in any charity or civil rights work. If she did take to the streets in support of some cause or other, she left no trace that I can see. Nor, as far as I can tell, has she spent any time teaching the underprivileged or working directly to better anyone’s condition but her own. Instead, she has contented herself with a generous six figure salary, and has not shown any particular eagerness to hand her position over to a more deserving person of color.

Very few of the people reading this article—whatever the color of their skin—will have even the vaguest idea of the comfort and privilege in which Peggy McIntosh grew up and to which she has since become accustomed. Nor will we have access to the world of opportunities that she has been fortunate enough to enjoy. But even though the lifetime of privilege McIntosh has experienced is almost certainly due to her wealth and not the colour of her skin, she nevertheless found a way to share this irksome burden with the illiterate children of Kentucky coal miners, the hopeless peasants of the Appalachians, poor single mothers struggling to make ends meet on welfare, and the vast majority of whites in the United States and throughout the world who never had the chance to attend Radcliffe or Harvard. She simply reclassified her manifest economic advantage as racial privilege and then dumped this newly discovered original sin onto every person who happens to share her skin color. Without, of course, actually redistributing any of the wealth that, by her own account, she had done nothing to deserve.

All of which means that pretty much anything you read about ‘white privilege’ is traceable to an ‘experiential’ essay written by a woman who benefitted from massive wealth, a panoply of aristocratic connections, and absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever. This alone calls into question the seriousness and scholarly validity of the derivative works, since they are all the fruit of a poisonous tree. But McIntosh’s hypothesis was eagerly embraced nonetheless, because it served a particular purpose—it helped to mainstream a bitter zero-sum politics of guilt and identity. This dark epistemology has quietly percolated through the universities and the wider culture for two decades now. It has had the effect of draining attention from a massive and growing wealth gap and it has pitted the poor against one another in public spectacles of acrimony and even violence. Even so, it was readily embraced by progressively-minded professors who might otherwise have had trouble squaring their thirst for social justice with their high six figure salaries. In the last decade, this dogma has come screaming out of the nation’s august halls of learning and into mainstream civil discourse (although to call most of what passes for discourse today ‘civil’ somewhat labours the definition). And, still, we are endlessly and forcefully reminded that to question this concept in any way is, in and of itself, racist.

That’s probably enough excerpting; it’s a deep, well-conceived and crafted piece which goes into some unexpected places and is deserving of a read in full. Good comments, too.

McIntosh’s unwelcome gift of the burden of her own misguided guilt, neurosis, and self-flagellation is one the world could have done without. Whatever happened to the notion of a becoming sense of gratitude, responsibility, and noblesse oblige as an accompaniment to the good fortune of being born into a life of wealth and privilege, anyway?

If we’re all going to have to shoulder the load of stupid PC-Progtard angst, though, I’m gonna have to insist that they lay off their damned appropriation of my culture: “The Language Police Want Y’all to Adopt the Gender-Neutral, Non-Sexist ‘Y’all’.” Help, help, I’ve been microaggressed!

Seriously, though, the idea of sensible people “uniting” with such useless skinbags for any purpose at all seems fanciful beyond even the wildest science-fiction these days. Not even something as cataclysmic as the events in John Ringo’s Posleen War series could do it, seems to me. I know that whenever a gaggle of ’em goes out to attempt a “dialogue” with the Posleen in hopes of finding a “peaceful resolution of our differences,” “compromise,” and “reconciliation” with them—and you know damned well they would—I won’t be making any attempts to talk ’em out of it.

(Via KT)

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Raise your hand if you haven’t hacked Hillary!™

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Perhaps it might be easier if we tried to list all the nations that WEREN’T all up in Crooked Hillary’s illegal bathtub-gin server.

A Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington, D.C., area hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails, two sources briefed on the matter told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Chinese firm obtained Clinton’s emails in real time as she sent and received communications and documents through her personal server, according to the sources, who said the hacking was conducted as part of an intelligence operation.

The Chinese wrote code that was embedded in the server, which was kept in Clinton’s residence in upstate New York. The code generated an instant “courtesy copy” for nearly all of her emails and forwarded them to the Chinese company, according to the sources.

Okay, it’s just purely hilarious at this point. Naturally, Peter Stroke and the FBI are involved too. I repeat: how on earth did such blithering idiots ever manage to steal our country from us in the first place?

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The Great Unmasking

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Ooooops.

Thanks to the election of President Trump, we are in the midst of a process I call “the great unmasking.” American leftists and progressives have, until President Trump, gone out of their way to hide their disdain for this country and its (mostly) free-market economy. They are enraged that everything is not perfect by their lights and imagine that they could produce a much better system if only they had absolute power.  

Because the deplorables out there in the American public still cling to patriotism (ever since Karl Marx, the left has disdained nationalism as obstructing worldwide proletarian class solidarity), progressive politicians have hidden their disdain.

But Donald Trump’s election has engendered a mass neurosis we call “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which has engendered a frenzy to be rid of him. Frenzied is never a good mode of action, for it blinds one to obvious pitfalls.

That’s why yesterday, the governor of New York, speaking to a friendly group, let slip a genuine gaffe, in the meaning of Michael Kinsley’s definition: accidentally telling the truth. Nobody could ever state in public that America “was never that great” unless he believed that. That’s why the expression has a ring of sincerity when Cuomo uttered those words.

He’s a Leftard and a Democrat-Socialist (BIRM), so the only surprising thing is that he was stupid and politically maladroit enough to slip up and express his true beliefs right out loud. And even that ain’t much of a surprise, given how completely Out about such things so many of them are since we smacked ’em right in their filthy gobs with President Donald J Trump.

They hate America. They hate the white guys who founded it. They hate the white guys who held it together and made it work all along. They hate the very idea that anybody might believe it’s great (or ever was). They hate the fact that we’re no longer willing to sit meekly back and tolerate their abuse. Most of all, they hate the deeply-buried, subconscious knowledge that they’re a bunch of pussified parasites whose very existence as peurile, neurotic, self-loathing, eternally-complaining, shit-stirring brats would be measurable in minutes in the Marxist shitholes they so admire.

Nemo provides a few worthy ripostes over in Bill’s comment section. As for Koo-mo, naturally he got busy backpedaling and non-apology apologizing, for all the good it’ll do him anywhere outside NYC—where they won’t see what all the fuss was about anyway.

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MORE collusion!

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You just gotta love these gormless, hapless clowns. For certain values of “love,” natch.

A coordinated campaign by more than 100 newspapers Thursday will see publication of a wide variety of editorials, all condemning President Trump for his attacks on the press and pretty much anything and everything. (Update: Reported number now over 300.)

This is what fellow recovering journalist Kerry Dougherty so astutely calls “briar-patch-level genius.”

Here we have a president attacking the mainstream media as lying “enemies of the people” and “fake news” trying to bring him down. And over there we have a significant chunk of the mainstream media publishing a nationwide coordinated campaign of collusion to bring him down.

Trump was not elected despite his often outrageous behavior and statements. He was elected because of his outrageous behavior and statements.

They promised drastic change and profound offense to so many establishment types, especially in the East and the media, who in their self-satisfied position of power and comfort had for so long patronized and ignored the complaints and pleas of that plurality.

Had those elites of both parties paid genuine attention to flyover country’s concerns, frustrations and fears, as silly and stupid as they seem to disconnected Beltway know-it-all’s, they would not be in today’s baffling, powerless position. There would have been no need for a Trump. And by the way, isn’t it strange how a billionaire from a New York high-rise could detect the heartland’s hurt better than those elected from that region?

Actually, it isn’t strange in the least; since they are the authors of that hurt, and the perpetuators of it, it’s no more than obvious and inevitable. It’s not so much that they can’t detect it as that they hope like hell we can’t detect their disinterest in it, and most especially their role as creators of it.

Trump did not invent many Americans’ visceral dislike of the media. He’s using it, exactly as these 100+ newspapers will use their readers’ visceral dislike of Trump to influence a large audience on this day. It’s all fair game in a free society, even one as bitterly splintered as ours these days.

Many silent Americans see a Washington paper, for example, chronicling in excess of 4,000 Trump exaggerations and lies. Fair enough.

Where was that passion for lie detection during Obama’s endless reign of error when he spewed serial untruths about, among others, Solyndra, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, Benghazi’s video roots and how Americans could keep their insurance, doctor and about $2,500 in savings under Obamacare?

Oh, we all know well enough where that “passion for lie detection” was—which is a YUGE part of their problem now. Limbaugh knows it too:

Now, let’s go to this media-coordinated effort started by some editorial writer at the Boston Globe to have America’s major newspapers unite and run anti-Trump editorials today while maintaining that they are not united in opposition to Trump! While trying to maintain that they are not the enemy of the people — which, by the way, Trump has never said. He said fake news is the enemy of the people.  He never said the media in toto or the media at large. My point is they’re proving everything Trump’s alleged about ’em with this little scheme that they’re trying.

But here’s the thing about this: They’re not gonna persuade anyone. This is gonna backfire on them because you know what it’s proving?  It’s proving something very simple. It’s proving the media is biased — and of course, they maintain that they aren’t. But you can’t get a more classic definition and illustration of media bias than this.

Trump has always said the fake news is the enemy of the people, but not all the news, not the entire news media. But for some reason all these news people think that he is talking about them. Now, from a couple of days ago Little Brian Stelter at CNN: “More than 100 Newspapers Will Publish Editorials Decrying Trump’s Anti-Press Rhetoric — [Marjorie] Pritchard said. ‘We have some big newspapers, but the majority are from smaller markets, all enthusiastic about standing up to Trump’s assault on journalism.”

I can’t tell you what a majority of the American people — how big a majority — agree with Trump on this. I cannot tell you how many Americans are fed up with the media, with the unfairness, with the bias. You know it as well as I do. Maybe even better. Trump is more accessible than any president has ever been.  Trump talks to the media more often than any president ever has. Trump lets them into cabinet meetings. He lets them into little meetings that go on in the Oval Office when foreign leaders are in town.

He sometimes conducts entire meetings at the White House with the media present. He stops on the way to Marine One — the helicopter or wherever. He stops, and he’ll talk to the press for 15 or 20 minutes. He just happens to call ’em out on their BS! Trump has not spied on them the way Obama did.

All of which adds up to make their fearful caterwauling and indignant protestations over Trump’s bluntly accurate characterization of them all the more amusing. Back to Malcolm for the closer, whose own contempt for Trump is apparently uncontainable:

As part of their drift off into monopoly arrogance, newspapers in general and editorial pages in particular somehow came to think and lecture like they knew better than the readers who paid good money to read their words. They were pharmacists handing out a daily dose of the news they prescribed. Not a good attitude for any business to have toward customers, especially in an era of expanding free choices.

And now these same editors and publications will again lecture the country about the dangers and evils of the man they didn’t like 646 days ago, who punches back and got elected by millions who didn’t read those lectures then either. Other media, righteously nodding their heads, will cover it conscientiously and copiously as if it’s important medicine and of no self-interest.

By Friday, those pages will be in the bottom of recycle bins and bird cages. And in their cozy, mutual isolations, millions on both sides will feel sure once more that they’re in the right.

Ahh, but there’s the rub, see: one side IS in the right. And it ain’t the side trying to bring down a duly-elected President with lies and skullduggery, however one Andrew Malcolm (or anybody else) may feel about the guy.

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Best of times, worst of times

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Unbearable thoughts.

Anti-Americanism has the same psychological dynamic as anti-Semitism. When the anti-Semite launches into his harangue, we instinctively recoil. We recognize that he is a troubled soul. We understand that he is obsessively tracing the inner contours of a mental cage that exists beyond the reach of rationality.

The insights of Revel and Rangel suggest that the Americans who suffer from anti-Americanism must also be afflicted by an unbearable thought.

What unbearable thought? The answer is ready at hand. The Progressive project has gone from strength to strength politically in America – and everywhere it has brought ruin in its wake. Detroit was once an economic powerhouse, and San Francisco was once America’s most beautiful city. Decades of one-party rule according to the Progressive project have wrecked Detroit, and San Francisco is becoming something truly strange, a modern city overwhelmed by human excrement in public places.

Hm. Must be a coincidence, right?

How did these three beautiful and prosperous American cities morph from the best of cities to the worst of cities in only a couple of generations? Let’s look at who is in charge.

San Francisco has not had a Republican mayor since 1964, the height of Motown music in one of the other cities we are discussing. For the past fifty-plus years, San Francisco has been led by a procession of Democrats.

Detroit’s last Republican mayor finished his term in 1962, around the time the Supremes were singing “Where Did Our Love Go?” Now they would be singing, “Where did our city go?” Since the early 1960s, Detroit has had a succession of Democrat mayors, including Coleman Young and their famous hip-hop mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, now serving a long prison term. Michigan, similar to Illinois and California, has two Democrat U.S. senators.

Anyone see a common thread here? Cities run by liberal Democrats, implementing liberal policies, with predictable results. These are certainly not the only American cities ruined by Democrat governance – there are also Newark; New Orleans; and Washington, D.C. to name a few others.

Back to my first link for the only rational conclusion:

The Progressives’ failure is not a failure to enact their agenda. They have dominated America politically for the past century. FDR gave us really big government, and the federal government has become a scandal of fraud, waste, and abuse – a scandal that even the Big Government Press cannot keep hidden from us. LBJ declared War on Poverty – and that war was lost. Instead of eliminating poverty, the War on Poverty has made poverty more pathological, creating an underclass, often now described as “permanent,” living on government handouts. Even the Progressives’ anti-Americanism was given free rein with the election of Barack Obama, who shared their obsession with “fundamentally transforming” America. Yet wave after wave of electoral victory has not made American Progressives happy.

Whenever the voters put the Progressives in charge, the result is governmental metastasis and social catastrophe – by necessity. The left is simply wrong about how things work. It is easy to come up with programs that defy common sense. It is also possible to use governmental power to impose those programs on society. But the power of government can’t make them work.

As I always say: their argument isn’t with us. It’s with reality.

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“Democratic socialism” and equality before the law

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Incompatible and contradictory.

Observing the media hijinks and economic moronity of Democrat hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is prepared to increase taxation to unsustainable levels to pay for the socialist dream – “universal health care, tuition free higher education, and the 100 percent use of renewable energy, among other programs” – I could not help but reflect that infinity can be measured only by the extent of human stupidity.

Ocasio-Cortez, a lightweight even on the Bernie Sanders scale, is merely the latest in a long line of what we call today “democratic socialists” or “social justice warriors.” They are oblivious to the proven fact that socialism never works, that it has failed wherever it has been tried, that a centralized state and a command economy inevitably lead to rampant inefficiency, reduced incentive to compete and innovate, diminished production, economic stagnation, and ultimately to one or another version of the police state, whether the “velvet totalitarianism” that John Furedy speaks of or sheer brutal repression – in current terms, the Venezuela option. Socialism is the enemy not only of human flourishing and individual freedom, but, as we will note shortly, of the concept of equality before the law.

“Democratic socialism” is a contradiction in terms – or it is democratic in the same way as death is, reducing everyone to the same level. Socialism is no less a grim reaper than mortality. Similarly, “social justice” has nothing to do with the Western legacy of equality before the law. Clearly, people are not equal with respect to character, intelligence, aptitude, moral fiber, personal responsibility, and motivation, but they should be equal before the law. “Democratic socialism” ignores the complexity of human personality by reducing difference to a lowest common denominator just as “social justice” is dismissive of individual contributions to the well-being of the state. What such fantasy-laden constructs call “equality” is nothing but the dispensation of unearned privilege to the masses, culminating inexorably in the imposition of a featureless collective.

Socialism is a perversion of both equality and justice, the weaponizing of the law in the service of an unfeasible ideal and the progressivist legalization of outright theft, which can result only in the eventual destabilization of the state. It terminates in the society of Harrison Bergeron, in which everyone is equal only in the sense that everyone, apart from an echelon of exploiters, is equally poor, equally deprived, and equally miserable. This is not what Amos would have conceived as justice.

But it is what the Ocasio-Cortezes of the world – and they are legion – would in their risible ignorance inflict upon the rest of us, if we are lunatic enough to allow them. Florida candidate for governor Ron DeSantis is on the mark when he points to the utter folly of Ocasio-Cortez “running around saying, well, capitalism is going to die and…that socialism is the wave of the future. And as somebody who lives in Florida, I can tell you, we probably have more refugees from socialist countries – Cuban-Americans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans – then just about any state…and certainly they can tell you socialism doesn’t work. It’s a failed philosophy.”

Or, to go back to the Powerline meme collection:


Fleeing-capitalism.jpg


If socialism really IS “the wave of the future,” the future is gonna really, really suck.

Update! OG blogger Stephen fisks the living hell out of a socialism-pimping Reuters propaganda piece.

First the headline, which reads: “Once oil wealthy, Venezuela’s largest state struggles to keep the lights on.”

That headline gives the impression that Venezuela has run out of oil, but nothing could be further from the truth. The country still possesses the world’s largest oil reserves, so there’s plenty of oil wealth. It’s still right there in the ground. It hasn’t gone anywhere. The problem is that Bolivarian socialism has ruined the country’s extraction industry, but you wouldn’t know that from anything in the entire story.

Here’s the second graf:

The rolling power blackouts in the state of Zulia pile more misery on Venezuelans living under a fifth year of an economic crisis that has sparked malnutrition, hyperinflation and mass emigration. OPEC member Venezuela’s once-thriving socialist economy has collapsed since the 2014 fall of oil prices.

When Hugo Chavez took over the country in 1998 and began imposing his socialist regime, oil prices were at around $18 a barrel. Twenty years later they’ve “collapsed” to… about $70, with some temporary lows around $40 or so.

That is to say, oil prices since 2014 have averaged about triple what they were in 1998. And from ’98 to 2014, oil was mostly on an upward trajectory and routinely went for well over $100. So the question isn’t how this “crisis” was caused by a “collapse” in oil prices. The question is: What the hell did Maduro and Chavez do with all the damn money?

Here we have a story detailing Venezuela’s economic collapse, and every single problem can be explained by two words: Because socialism. And yet the only time reporter Mayela Armas uses the word socialism, it’s in the context of a “once-thriving socialist economy.”

It never WAS a “once-thriving socialist economy”—because when they went socialist, the economy stopped thriving. Just like they all do, every single time. One thing Stephen gets wrong, though: he calls this propaganda “malignantly uninformed,” but it’s more like MISinformed. Or, to be more precise, dezinformatsiya.

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Crazy, not socialist?

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Embrace the healing power of “and.”

Trump’s victory tore the mask from the Democrats leaving them nothing but rage. Formerly mainstream Democrats are quick to embrace every insane lefty position from abolishing borders to supporting Hamas, not because they understand or believe in them, but because they’re “resisting” Trump.

The socialists think they’re winning. But they’re just the guys shouting things at a crazy mob. And the mob is not really for anything, it’s just enraged. It doesn’t want to build, it wants to tear down.

Tweak a normal person’s sense of outrage and they’re moved. Keep doing it a bunch of times and you can enlist them in a movement. Do it every 5 seconds and you drive them as crazy as rats in a Skinner Box. And if you want to see a sample of the Dem Skinner Box, here are a few Nancy Pelosi emails.

“A matter of life or death,” “I’m so furious I can barely write this email,” “As if it couldn’t get worse today,” EVISCERATED,” “I’m scared”, and “DOOMED”.

Peak Outrage induces feelings of frustrations, fury, helplessness and despair.

That’s why you have lefties gathering together to scream at the sky. That’s not the behavior of committed activists building a socialist future. It’s what happens when leaders drive people crazy. Everyone has emotional limits, just as they have physical limits. The madness of Germans at a Hitler rally or Russians mourning Stalin is the end result of people reaching the limits of their emotional sanity.

Madness ensues.

The ultimate beneficiaries of Peak Outrage won’t be the socialists. Crazy people who have been mainlining hate and fear for a decade aren’t really interested in nationalizing health care. They’ll cheer socialism if there’s nothing else on the table and convince themselves briefly that they care. But what they really want is someone to liberate them from their rage and helplessness by destroying the two sources of those emotions, the reviled Republicans and their own failed Democrat leaders.

They don’t want Alexadria Ocasio-Cortez. They want to be freed of their sense of helplessness.

No reason it can’t be both—especially if they believe, as they seem to, that Miranda Veracruz de la Jolla Cardinale Occasional-Cortex can be the instrument of their liberation. This part, though, is right on the button:

The left created a monster. And it thinks that it’s riding the monster. But you don’t control monsters.

That’s what makes them monsters.

The monster that the left created doesn’t believe in things. It hates them. It’s roaring with anger and pain. The Frankensteins of the left made the monster in their social media laboratory by taking away its hopes and replacing them with fears, keeping it angry and afraid until it was ready to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice or phone in death threats to a congressman’s dog.

Socialists made the monster. As they always do. But as history shows us, monsters eat socialists. Ask the old Bolsheviks, Mao’s old pals or all the leftists shot by other leftists in the Spanish Civil War.

As always, they all assume they’ll be part of the nomenklatura in charge of things. They’ll go on thinking it, right up until they’re put up against a wall or heaved into a gulag by those who really ARE in charge of things. And that, folks, is why they’ve always been known as “useful idiots.”

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Draft horses of America, unite!

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You have nothing to lose but your harness…and a passel of whining, over-entitled parasites who don’t know their asses from an inner tube with wrinkles painted on it.

Congratulations, oh most insufferable of generations – against all odds and confounding the experts, you have still somehow managed to make yourselves even more annoying. Apparently, the hep new jive among your tiresome cohort is “Democratic Socialism,” resurrecting a poisonous nineteenth-century political death cult and putting a kicky new spin on it to make it palatable for the suckers. It’s the political equivalent of hipsters who insist vinyl records are superior because they didn’t grow up forced to crank their tunes on that miserable format.

The “Democratic” part is some cunning rebranding. Just stick “Democratic” in front of something awful and it’s good-to-go. “Democratic haggis”? Yummy! “Democratic herpes”? Sexy! “Democratic Nazism?” Hey, what’s the difference? National socialism, democratic socialism? It’s really just a question of who runs the camps because regardless of the particular brand of socialism, there are always camps.

Always.

No one loves socialism quite like a moron who has never experienced it firsthand. No one hates it like someone who has seen it up close. I walked around in its ruins overseas; it’s an abattoir. My wife escaped it, though her granddad didn’t – he rotted in Castro’s prisons for nearly two decades because he refused to play ball with the reds. Then he died. Oh well, gotta break a few eggs to create a paradise where somebody else pays for your college, right?

Just remember that you are an egg.

Kurt throws some very choice words at bug-eyed Mental Giant and Future Of The Democrat Socialist Party Miranda Veracruz de la Jolla Cardinale Occasional-Cortex, too. But did he say “moron” just now? Why yes, I do believe he did. And as sterling an example as she is, the word doesn’t apply only to her, either.

Democrats are less likely to know what socialism is compared to other voters but have a much more favorable opinion of it. They stop well short, however, of thinking the Democratic Party should become a national socialist party.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 28% of all Likely U.S. Voters think the national Democratic party should officially declare itself a socialist party. Fifty-three percent (53%) disagree, while 18% are undecided.

Still, 51% of Democrats have a favorable impression of socialism, with 13% who share a Very Favorable one. This compares to favorables of 21% among GOP voters and 26% among unaffiliateds, with seven percent (7%) and five percent (5%) respectively who hold a Very Favorable opinion of it.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democrats, however, incorrectly believe the individual has more power than the government in a socialist system, a view held by just 12% of Republicans and seventeen percent (17%) of unaffiliated voters.

Never forget, folks, they’re smarterer than you. If you don’t believe it, just ask ’em.

Those under 40 have a much more favorable opinion of socialism than their elders do and are the strongest supporters of Democrats becoming a national socialist party. But younger voters are also the most likely to believe the individual has more power under a socialist system.

Liberals like socialism a lot more than moderates and conservatives do and are much more likely to think it empowers the individual. But conservatives are the biggest fans of Democrats becoming a socialist party.

Actually, that isn’t quite right: I don’t think any of us is particularly happy that that’s what they in fact have become. What we’re in favor of is them owning up to the sad fact at last. But then, socialists ain’t exactly known for their honesty, as Schlichter reminds us:

Socialism’s perfect record of failure, misery, and slaughter is kind of a problem for them, so they pivot and distract, playing an ideological shell game by claiming that what they really want isn’t socialism. Why, they just want to be more like Canada! This, of course, begs the question of why they call themselves “socialists” if they don’t want socialism. But Normals are woke; they prefer their freedom and abundant toilet paper. They know that the current socialist fad is a lie, because socialism is built on lies. The democratic socialists keep promising Denmark and Norway, but they always deliver Cuba and Venezuela.

Of course, as I’ve noted here before myself, Norway isn’t really quite as socialist as all that, and other Scandinavian countries are beginning to back rapidly away from the Great Third-Way Experiment that has impoverished them. But socialism aside, ideology aside, honestly representing who and what they are is what the Democrat-Socialist criminal conspiracy masquerading as a political party ought to be forced to try to win elections on:

But let’s look at this. Forget ideology for a second and let’s just look at some readily available facts. We have just come off eight years of economic stagnation. No economic growth to speak of. We have had tax increases out the wazoo in the past eight years, including all of the new taxes brought on by the government taking over health care with Obamacare. We had the president of the United States, Barack Obama, running around to places like West Virginia, Indiana, and Ohio and telling people out of work:

(impression) “It’s too bad, but your jobs are never coming back — and if someone tells you that your job will be coming back, he’s waving a magic wand, but what’s he gonna do? What’s Trump gonna do? Just wave a magic wand? You gotta get ready for the fact those jobs are not coming back.” So rather than have a president that inspired people, we have a president who tried to convince them that this was the new America: A nation in decline. We didn’t really deserve our robust past, and we needed brilliant people like him to manage this decline so that resources — which would be dwindling — could be distributed more fairly and equally to the population at large.

Okay. So we’ve come off eight years of that kind of thing, exactly what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to return to. In just a year and a half of a presidency that believes in American greatness, that believes lost jobs can be brought back — who believes that this economy can once again grow and that people’s incomes can increase, that standard of living and wealth can once again start going up. In just a year and a half it’s happened. Does this woman have the ability to look at facts on the ground? The government today…

Have you looked at the latest revenue that has been collected by taxes? It’s a record high. The government is collecting record tax revenue after Trump’s tax cuts! This also happens every time it’s tried. It’s simple math. More people are working than under Obama, and thus more people are paying taxes. So even per capita taxes may be down and the amount of money individuals are paying, it’s more than made up by all the new taxpayers that are happily working, whereas a year and a half ago they weren’t.

There are stories… I have a story in the Stack today that one of the big problems that employers have today is there just aren’t enough people to fill jobs that are open, and so employers are getting ready to scrub the idea that prior experience is necessary. They need work done! There’s more job openings than there are people to fill them right now. Now, where is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? She’s an economics graduate from Boston University. Does she have the slightest idea what’s going on now?

Of course not. She’s dumb as a box of hair; credentialed, but not educated; inarticulate, not bright, and entirely arrogant about all of it.

And she’s also the brightest star in the Democrat Socialist firmament at the moment—precisely as she should be. We all ought to fervently hope not only that she wins election, but that she remains in the spotlight as an avant garde leader of her trainwreck of a Party for as long as possible. Realistically, we can’t expect anything good from a NYC Congresscritter, but sending a dumpster fire like Occasional-Cortex to Mordor On The Potomac might work out even better anyway. The more she blibbers and stammers her arrant hard-Left horsepuckey, and the more Normals see her doing it, the better off we’re all going to be. She might just finish off the Democrat Socialist Party for good all by herself.

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Socialism at work

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Aww, ain’t she cute.

I graduated law school in 1999 and immediately went to work for a big law firm, representing big corporations. But I am a lifelong liberal and really wanted to put my law degree to work for social justice. I wanted to help the poor, and I was very interested in how a major city dealt with large-scale poverty reform, so I applied to work in New York City’s government.

I got a job working as a lawyer for the city in 2003, a year after Michael Bloomberg became mayor. I happily took a 20 percent pay cut because I wanted to make a difference.

I loved coming to work every day under Bloomberg. I loved the constructive discussions about how to fix the most urgent social problems — meetings that involved workers at the highest levels of government with the civil servants and case workers at the lowest. All opinions were valued. And I loved being out in the city and seeing how programs worked or didn’t work.

I felt I was making a difference.

When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York in 2014, things changed drastically. I started to hear rumblings early on. My former colleagues who were dedicated public servants were concerned by a large-scale rollback of Bloomberg’s strategic initiatives. These seemed to be based on partisan politics and black-and-white thinking as opposed to critical analysis. It was very disappointing for me since I had also voted for de Blasio.

Although I was still working in the same social-services agency where I had remained at the end of Bloomberg’s term, my job changed radically. I had no contact with the new commissioner who appeared to be disengaged from substantive discussions about social-services programs for an extremely vulnerable population. In fact, she was much more preoccupied with renovating her office — I heard her new desk alone cost thousands of dollars. She even requested that a private bathroom be built for her. She had the attitude of an oligarch and was disturbed that she had to vet invitations to galas through legal and City Hall. She wanted carte blanche to attend expensive events.

She also refused to meet with the lawyers in her department and she kept the door to her office closed and didn’t know the names of the people who worked in her agency.

Under my commissioner, there were no benchmarks, no goals and she did not hold regular meetings with her general counsel. Under her tenure, the legal unit was gutted. And there were no consequences for failing to meet performance goals because there were no performance goals.

Bloomberg wouldn’t be mistaken for a conservative anywhere but NYC, of course. But he ain’t really a socialist either, and he certainly isn’t cut from the same filthy left-wing cloth as Red Bill. Her plaintive closing wail is perfect:

My career spanned a handful of social-service agencies under the administrations of two very different leaders. I was shocked to discover that I actually preferred Michael Bloomberg’s very corporate City Hall to Bill de Blasio’s failed socialist utopia. Who wouldn’t?

Why, only some simple, dewey-eyed whelp caught up in the arrogance of her ignorant assumptions who never actually had to live in one, natch. Any bets on whether the kid still considers herself a diehard “liberal” even now, despite her up-close-and-personal lesson in how it really works? Any further bets on how many times DeBlasio gets re-elected in spite of all the damage he’s done in his tenure so far?

Yeah, I thought not.

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Lesson: ignored

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Wasn’t properly taught, nor driven home.

California Rep. Maxine Waters said that Americans should be “out in the streets screaming” about President Trump in a Wednesday interview.

Waters told CNBC’s John Harwood, “I think [Trump’s] dangerous.”

“I don’t know why people take it. I think Americans should be out in the streets screaming to the top of their voice. Do something. Make something happen,” she continued.

During the interview, she also said, “[Trump is] one of the most deplorable people I’ve ever encountered in my life.”

These comments come after Waters encouraged the harassment of Trump cabinet members in June.

Looks like the Oathkeepers, with their half-hearted, aborted “protest” at her office instead of her home, screwed the pooch sure enough. Malone again: “If you open the ball with these people you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won’t give up the fight until one of you is dead.” And yes, it should be noted that in one case we’re talking about gangsters, crooks, and violent criminals, while in the other we’re talking about…Al Capone.

(Via Ace)

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Trump babies

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London Squalling.

The “Trump Baby” balloon was the most visible symbol of the days-long diarrhea fest that the haggard and perpetually sourpussed English left dubbed a “carnival of resistance” shat out in petulant protest of the fact that the world’s most powerful man would even DARE to set foot in their resolutely suicidal nation. London’s Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan temporarily refrained from jailing indigenous Britons for saying unkind things about immigrants on Facebook to OK a permit for the Trump Baby to float, because after all it was a “free speech” issue, and he’d never think of standing in the way of free speech.

“We realized the only way to get at him was to ridicule him,” said one of the Trump Baby’s creators Max Wakefield.

Has Max ever pulled his head out of his rectum long enough to realize they’ve been ridiculing him at maximum intensity for three years and he hasn’t batted an eyelash? Does Max realize he’s constantly laughing at them while they never stop crying about him? If Trump was the baby they insist he is, do they think he could stand a minute of this shit, much less an incessant hurricane of it? And is Max so bereft of insight that he can’t see what so many others see—that he and his ilk have been publicly losing their minds for three years and predicting all sorts of implausible doomsday scenarios simply because he got elected?

In the days preceding Trump’s first-ever UK visit as president last week, the mentally disorganized and physically inactive community organizers and activists who populate the modern decaying left arranged for at least 60 separate events designed to harass, mock, malign, and dehumanize the president because, well, he harasses, mocks, maligns and dehumanizes everyone and everything that they, in their endless capacity for pious delusion, hold sacred. The pre-visit hysteria was so intense that the US Embassy cautioned American tourists to “exercise caution if unexpectedly in the vicinity of large gatherings that may become violent.”

One of the main events, the Together Against Trump march and rally last Friday, was organized by a group called Stop The War Coalition. According to vice-chairman Chris Nineman, the group’s main aim is “opposing the West.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

No need, really; that much has been disgustingly apparent for all too long now, at least to me. Yet somehow, despite “opposing the West,” not ONE of them seems to be in any great rush to shag their useless asses on off to Cuba, China, Venezuela, or some other commie shithole where they can truly Live The Dream at last. Curious, that.

As has always been the case with Trump, his fiercest critics are merely only projecting their own inner turmoil onto him. Everything they say and do is far more hysterical and childish than anything he’s ever said or done.

So why are they so hysterical if Trump isn’t?

Mostly BECAUSE he isn’t, I’d guess. They can’t touch him; he keeps right on running rings around them, he doesn’t give a tinker’s damn what they think or say, and it’s driven them all crazier’n a shithouse rat.

Again: it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the miserable tapeworms. And laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

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“A nation of immigrants”?

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Nope.

The “nation of immigrants” trope is relatively new in American history, appearing not until the late 19th century. Its first appearance in print was most likely The Daily State Journal of Alexandria, Virginia, in 1874. In praising a state bill that encouraged European immigration, the editors wrote: “We are a nation of immigrants and immigrants’ children.” In 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to the Daughters of the American Revolution: “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” John F. Kennedy would later use the term as the title of a book, written as part of an Anti-Defamation League series, so it is undoubtedly objective, quality scholarship.

But in 1874, as in 1938, and even in 1958 when JFK’s book was written, America was not a nation of immigrants. The women Roosevelt was addressing were not the daughters of immigrants but rather the descendants of settlers—those Americans who founded the society that immigrants in 1874 came to be a part of.

Concerning immigration patterns, from 1820 through 1924, 34 million new arrivals entered the United States, mostly from Europe. Throughout this period, intermittent waves of immigration were punctuated by pauses and lulls. These respites provided immigrants time to Americanize. By contrast, from 1965 through 2000, 24 million new arrivals entered the United States, mostly from Latin America and Asia, and with few if any pauses between waves. In just 35 years, America experienced nearly as much immigration as it did over a century. Nevertheless, from 1820 through 2000, the foreign-born averaged just over 10 percent of the total American population.

To claim that America is a “nation of immigrants” is to stretch a truth—that America historically has experienced intermittent waves of immigration—into a total falsehood, that America is a nation of immigrants. For the truth of the first thing to equal the truth of the other, every nation that experiences immigration may just as well be considered a “nation of immigrants.” Germans have lived along the Rhine since before Christ, yet Germany has also been swarmed by foreigners from the Middle East and North Africa. Is Germany, therefore, a nation of immigrants? A resounding nein is the answer we are hearing from Germans.

Before America was a nation, it had to be settled and founded. As Michael Anton reiterated in response to New York Times columnist Bret Stephens: America is a nation of settlers, not a nation of immigrants. In that, Anton is echoing Samuel Huntington, who showed that America is a society of settlers. Those settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries—more than anyone else after—had the most profound and lasting impact on American culture, institutions, historical development, and identity. American began in the 1600s—not 1874—and what followed in the 1770s and 1780s was rooted in the founded society of those settlers.

Settlers, Anton explains, travel from an existing society into the wilderness to build a society ex nihilo. Settlers travel in groups that either implicitly or explicitly agree to a social compact. Settlers, unlike immigrants, go abroad with the intention of creating a new community away from the mother country. Immigrants, on the other hand, travel from one existing society to another, either as individuals or as families, and are motivated by different reasons; and not always good ones. Immigrants come later to be part of the society already built by settlers, who, as Higham wrote, establish the polity, language, customs, and habits of the society immigrants seek to join and in joining must embrace and adopt.

Justice Louis Brandeis would later echo Jay, declaring that the immigrant is Americanized when he “adopts the clothes, the manners, and the customs generally prevailing here…substitutes for his mother tongue the English language,” ensures that “his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here,” and comes “into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations.” Only when the immigrant has done this will he have “the national consciousness of an American.”

Remember, Brandeis was a Progressive leading light back then. In light of the above statement, the raving madmen of our present-day Loonie Left wouldn’t for a moment consider him an acceptable SC nominee now. But then, if Trump nominated Che Guevara to the Court the NYT, WaPo, and all the rest would doubtless denounce even him as a “right-wing extremist,” too.

That’s progress, see.

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Rule One

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SJWs must be excluded, shunned, and generally avoided like the plague they truly are.

John Schnatter—the founder and public face of pizza chain Papa John’s—used the N-word on a conference call in May. Schnatter confirmed the incident in an emailed statement to Forbes on Wednesday. He resigned as chairman of Papa John’s on Wednesday evening.

The call was arranged between Papa John’s executives and marketing agency Laundry Service. It was designed as a role-playing exercise for Schnatter in an effort to prevent future public-relations snafus. Schnatter caused an uproar in November 2017 when he waded into the debate over national anthem protests in the NFL and partly blamed the league for slowing sales at Papa John’s. 

On the May call, Schnatter was asked how he would distance himself from racist groups online. He responded by downplaying the significance of his NFL statement. “Colonel Sanders called blacks n—–s,” Schnatter said, before complaining that Sanders never faced public backlash.

Schnatter also reflected on his early life in Indiana, where, he said, people used to drag African-Americans from trucks until they died. He apparently intended for the remarks to convey his antipathy to racism, but multiple individuals on the call found them to be offensive, a source familiar with the matter said. After learning about the incident, Laundry Service owner Casey Wasserman moved to terminate the company’s contract with Papa John’s.

In an emailed statement on Wednesday afternoon, Schnatter confirmed the allegations. “News reports attributing the use of inappropriate and hurtful language to me during a media training session regarding race are true,” he said. “Regardless of the context, I apologize. Simply stated, racism has no place in our society.”

Ace draws the correct lesson from this teachable moment.

Even though he was not using the word from his own lips, but rather saying what Colonel Sanders had done (without pushback), a Social Justice Warrior got offended and leaked a recording of the conversation, and now he’s out as chairman of his own company.

Never, never hire a Social Justice Warrior. They are hate machines who will destroy any venture because they get off on that. They’re never in the business of whatever business is stupid enough to pay them to “work;” they’re only in the business of hyperpoliticization, sowing division, and destroying the work of others.

Don’t hire them; if you own a business and have employed them by mistake or in ignorance of what they are, use any reasonable (meaning not legally-actionable) pretense you can come up with to remove them. Don’t mix with them in even the most casual social settings; if an SJW snowflake is present at any gathering you might happen to be attending, no matter how innocuous or apolitical its nature, leave immediately and, if possible, inform your hosts of the reason why in no uncertain terms. Any possible association with them by sane, sensible people is an invitation to disaster; unpleasant as they are, it’s not worth the risk.

Social Justice Warriors are the terminal symptoms of an always-fatal disease. Like a tumor, they’ll have to be surgically removed to the last, tiniest trace if Western culture is to survive.

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Losing it

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Of course, she didn’t have much of it in the first place.

Democratic House minority leader Nancy Pelosi appeared to mess up a chant that she started at an event Wednesday.

Pelosi attempts to rally an audience to chant “Clean air! Clean water! Clean government!” Just moments later, she messes up the chant herself in a video first reported on by NTK Network.

Her strange public behavior and occasional difficulty speaking have garnered attention online, as many notice a pattern of such flubs.

In a recent appearance, she repeatedly slurred her words, saying “soy boyn” instead of “soy bean” and “repoot” instead of “repeat.”

The minority leader has also said, “The Constitution does not say that a person can shout … yell ‘wolf’ in a crowded theater. If you are endangering people, then you don’t have a constitutional right to do that.”

Of course, the actual saying is that you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater, not “wolf.”

Who says senility can’t be funny? Via Ace,who says: “Because that’s what people with healthy brains do.” Quite true—for Democrat Socialist values of the word “healthy.”

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