Category: Culture Of Incompetence

GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

To laugh, and to cry

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Pretty funny one, if bitterly so, from Kurt Schlichter.

America Is Becoming a Joke

Becoming, Kurt?

The United States just lost an F-35 as part of its campaign to reduce itself from the greatest superpower in human history to a pitiful punchline. Ah, the magic of leftism – only it can make a great country like America ridiculous. From an inability to find its fighters to an unwillingness to defend its borders or prosecute criminals – with the exception of conservatives framed for the crime of conservativing – our country has become the Three Stooges without the dignity.

The first question that arises from the mystery jet is not what happened – we can safely assume it was some manner of gross incompetence – but what the plane’s pronouns were. We had the spectacle of the Marine Corps high command dragging itself away from one of its drag shows to ask regular folks if they could pretty please give the jarheads a hand finding their wayward fighter. They couldn’t even spin this fiasco effectively and brag about how their not being able to detect the $100 million aircraft just goes to show how darn good our stealth tech is. No, instead it was just exactly what it sounded like. We can’t keep track of our jets. The only ones happy about it had to be the Navy, since this was a welcome respite from the mockery it earned smashing its destroyers into other boats. Our Army – with its colonels running sex kennels – used to recruit with slogans like “Be All You Can Be,” and now it would probably be better off with “We Suck Less Than That Other Service That Lost The Jet.”

Over on Capitol Hill, where the People’s House that you get sent to jail for peopling inside is located, we have the Republican Charlie Browns once again teeing up to kick the football held by the Democrat Lucys. Yeah, this time will be different! The GOP has only had the better part of a year to get ready for this debt ceiling thing and to plot out a course of action to get some concessions. But have they? Ha! Why win when you can lose?

And on the Senate side, our minority leader keeps freezing up like a Windows blue screen as everyone explains how it is perfectly normal for McConnell to stand there rebooting every time someone puts a mic in his mug. And, of course, there’s Chumley the Congressman insisting that the august institution conform to his desire to dress like a guy playing $2 blackjack hands at Circus Circus on a Monday morning.

We have a president who sounds both like English is his second language and that he’s gotten into the cooking sherry. We have a vice president who, if not for fractured cliches and bizarre cackling, would not be speaking at all. Biden takes the short stairs to get up to the short bus, which is what Air Force One now is. Hey, at least they haven’t lost it. Yet.

Heh. I especially like that “what the plane’s pronouns were” bit. He carries on in like vein from there, all of it good, juicy stuff. Best of all, he resists the urge to start up with the usual blibbering in the last two ‘graphs about how we’re gonna vote so hard we kick their sorry asses black, blue, and purple in the 2024 presidential “elections,” yo! Maybe Col Schlichter has at last outgrown all that airy-fairy horseshit.

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Hey, did somebody misplace a Turducken?

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It would seem so, yeah.

Search for missing F-35 Lightning II fighter jet continues after pilot ejects during ‘mishap’
U.S. military officials are searching for a missing F-35 jet after a “mishap” caused its pilot to eject on Sunday afternoon.

Joint Base Charleston said on Facebook that the aircraft was a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II belonging to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. The pilot ejected safely and was transported to a local medical center.

The base is working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to help locate the missing aircraft. Emergency response teams have been deployed to find the jet.

“Based on the jet’s last-known position and in coordination with the FAA, we are focusing our attention north of JB Charleston, around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion,” Joint Base Charleston said in a statement on Facebook.

Anyone with information about the jet’s whereabouts is urged to contact JB Charleston Base Defense Operations Center at 843-963-3600.

That strange sound you hear is hilarity, ensuing. For his part, BCE has a question.

Let me get this straight…
An 80 million dollar aircraft
Known as the “Flying Turducken” or “The Turd”
80 fucking million dollars, and they don’t even have the fucking thing LoJacked!?!
My car is fucking LoJacked FFS.

Not only that, but as I recollect, commercial airliners; boats/ships of a certain size both civilian and military; tractor-trailer rigs; and even most cars nowadays are all equipped with some sort of locator-beacon/tracking device or another. Have been for years, in fact. Yet somehow, a fully-tricked-out, state of the art, next-generation air-superiority fighter—supposedly the very best Amerika v2.0 can design, build, and deploy, the very tippy-top of the top of the line—ISN’T?

Naah, not sketchy AT. ALL. Now look, everybody, over there: SQUIRREL!!!

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The Over the (Capitol) Hill gang

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Ron Hart has way too much fun making sport of our enfeebled gerontocracy.

Even though Joe Biden could throw himself a successful surprise party, he is not the only one aging out in Washington. Senators Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein are on their last legs. They have too much power for their parties to let them step down. Along with Biden, they have become Weekend at Bernie’s politicians.

Propped up by their lobbyists, staff and benefactors to perpetuate their power for the benefit of those who bought and paid for them, our gerontocracy shuffles on.

Maybe I am too hard on lobbyists. We need them. Who else would pay $550,000 for Hunter Biden’s artwork? “Three Dogs Playing Poker while Smoking Crack” art is in the eye of the beholder.

It probably does not matter how mentally impaired those in Congress are (Senator John Fetterman of PA comes to mind). With votes dictated by their party leaders, D.C. is shirts and skins; everyone votes as they are told along party lines. For years now, there has been no real debate or intellectual swaying of opinions.

Yet it seems none of these folks will let go. Power is too seductive and too compelling. When I worked in Washington while attending Georgetown, folks called Washington “Hollywood for Ugly People.” I did not get the joke until troll Alan Greenspan married NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell.

Henry Kissinger said it best: “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Let’s face it, few politicians have any other marketable skills. The difference between a prostitute and a politician? No one would walk up three flights of stairs at one in the morning to spend time with a politician.

Biden has the ability to hide his own Easter eggs, which then begs the question: who is running our government? Elected politicians or this permanent political class in Washington, D.C.? Clearly, with the actions of the DOJ, FBI, DOD and the medical/industrial complex, it is our unelected Deep State.

Forget term limits, what we need are hard and fast AGE limits for all Mordor on the Potomac ProPols. It’s no more than fair; if Americans in certain occupations other than politics can be required to retire at (usually) 70, then why shouldn’t politicians be subject to same? Say, forcible retirement at 65 and, for any who have been roosting in DC for a period of more than ten (10) years, a mandatory spend-more-time-at-home-with-your-constituents age of no more than 50.

As Insty quips: “Caligula sent a horse to the Senate. We just send part of the horse.” Myself, I think Caligula was really onto something there, although Glenn’s imputation would suit me just fine also. I mean, could it really be any worse than what we have now?

The real solution, of course, is to remove the excess of power, prestige, and bribe-money from the current seat of national government: disperse the federal bureaucracy entire out to various locations in the once-again-Sovereign States, then shrink FederalGovCo itself drastically, thereby removing the source of all temptation for the diseased, power-and-control-obsessed fucksticks who scramble to get themselves into position to succumb to it. But alas, that’s just another item on the long, long list of things that ain’t ever gonna happen, I’m afraid.

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America That Was: what happened?

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From Dream Factory to Dystopian Nightmare.

America was once the world’s dream factory. We turned imagination into reality, from curing polio to landing on the Moon to creating the internet. And we were confident that more wonders lay just over the horizon: clean and infinite energy, a cure for cancer, computers and robots as humanity’s great helpers, and space colonies. (Also, of course, flying cars.) Science fiction, from The Jetsons to Star Trek, would become fact.

But as we moved into the late 20th century, we grew cautious, even cynical, about what the future held and our ability to shape it. Too many of us saw only the threats from rapid change. The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Great Downshift in technological progress and economic growth, followed by decades of economic stagnation, downsized dreams, and a popular culture fixated on catastrophe: AI that will take all our jobs if it doesn’t kill us first, nuclear war, climate chaos, plague and the zombie apocalypse. We are now at risk of another half-century of making the same mistakes and pushing a pro-progress future into the realm of impossibility.

As with almost every problem in the Western world, if you want to find the roots of what Pethokoukis calls the Great Downshift there’s but one place you need to look: cherchez le shitlib, mon frere. Sounds like another likely candidate for Mike’s Iron Laws, I believe.

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MYOB, serf

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Know what quite possibly the best thing of all is about living in a free, open society? Gotta be the total transparency on the part of our dedicated, conscientious public servants, who always see to it that their employers are kept fully informed about what the government Of, By, and For The People is getting itself up to.

Regrettably, this is assuredly NOT that society.

IRS special agent killed at Phoenix gun range during training exercise
The FBI is investigating after a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service was killed at a gun range at a correctional facility in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the shooting happened at the firing range at the Federal Correctional Institutional in Phoenix, located near Pioneer Road and Interstate 17 in north Phoenix. Aimee Arthur-Wastell, spokesperson with the FBOP, said the range was being used by multiple federal agencies at the time.

The FBI specified that the agent was there for “routine” training when they were killed, but didn’t offer specifics as to how the agent was killed or if anyone was in custody.

According to Phoenix police, officers who responded to the area found a person shot, later determined to be the IRS agent. The agent was taken to a hospital with serious injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear if the agent died en route or at the hospital.

According to Arthur-Wastell, no FBOP or firing range employees were injured.

“To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, details of the ongoing process will not be released,” the FBI said in a statement. “Findings of the FBI investigation will be turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona for review.”

Phoenix police remained on the scene assisting the FBI, which took command of the investigation.

Arthur-Westell directed all inquiries regarding the incident to the Department of Treasury’s Office of Inspector General, which as of Thursday evening had not responded to a request for comment.

And there you have it—that’s it, the news “report” in its entirety, nothing redacted,  expurgated, or left out by little old moi. Not a jot or tittle therein of anything resembling actual information, other than  that one of our notional “employees” went to the range and then “was killed”—somewhere, somehow, somewhen, who really knows? Inquiring minds would surely wish to know more, but in Amerika v2.0, inquiring minds can just go suck themselves a fat dique for all their “public servants” give a shit.

From the notable lack of interest on the part of our dogged media establishment in pursuing things any further, one can safely assume that no Ultra Mega Mucho MAGA Americans© whatsoever were involved. As such, expect this story to disappear quicker’n lightning, no further elaboration sought or neccessary, as far as They’re concerned.

Multiple indictments of one Donald J Trump for causing this “tragedy” to follow, naturally.

Via Insty, who quips: REMEMBER, ONLY TRAINED GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS CAN BE TRUSTED TO USE FIREARMS SAFELY. Yes, if there’s any reasonable takeaway here, that would have to be it.

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Power failure

Posted on      by     

Coming all too soon to an aging, overburdened, decrepit electric grid near you.

A Silent Threat to the Energy Transition: America’s Broken Infrastructure Policy
So much of the conversation focuses on the tired and misleading narrative about Oil & Gas villains vs. Renewable heroes. The true enemy of our sustainable energy future is the nation’s broken infrastructure policy. We could greenlight every renewable project in development today and innovate every piece of technology needed to meet our climate goals, and it wouldn’t matter because we lack the ability to utilize and store the energy we create.

Infrastructure isn’t top of mind for most people, but it has gotten more attention in recent years, particularly after Congress passed the massive $1 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021. The legislation included funding for everything from airport repairs to clean drinking water. It also contained the largest investment in clean energy transmission and the electric grid in U.S. history – $65 billion – to be used for new transmission lines for renewable energy, advanced transmission and distribution technologies, and research hubs for next-generation technologies, including carbon capture and clean hydrogen.

But what good are new transmission lines and next-gen technologies if they never make it past the black hole of red tape, interminable delays, supply-chain problems, and exploding costs that derail so many energy projects?

Much of the U.S. grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, and over 70% of it is currently more than a quarter-century old. But age isn’t the grid’s only problem. The U.S. power infrastructure was built to bring energy from where fossil fuels are burned to where the energy will be used. The nation’s electricity industry, meanwhile, grew via a patchwork of local utility companies whose targets were to meet local demand and maintain grid reliability.

Emissions-free energy sources like sun and wind are, by nature, intermittent. They’re abundant only in places where the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and therefore need to be stored and transmitted to other locations where there is demand for power. 

Along with the need for new ways to transmit and store sustainable energy, the existing grid will need a major upgrade as demand for electricity rises to meet the needs of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other replacements for conventional energy sources. A modernized and expanded grid “will be the backbone of the energy transition – and a requirement of any realistic decarbonization pathway,” according to a 2022 report by McKinsey & Company.

There is no silver bullet to fix this complex set of issues. But it’s clear we need a strategic approach to infrastructure investment, and fast. Part of that investment needs to come from Washington in the form of comprehensive policy and regulatory reform, which is the single biggest blocker to private investment and healthy competition in the energy sector. 

Simply put, building energy projects is complicated. Who pays for what is even more complicated, as processes, permitting, payment, and incentivization are all misaligned. Current policy doesn’t support the buildout we need; in fact, it slows it down and exacerbates the problem. Without policy and regulatory reform, we’ll continue to pay more and more to maintain our quality of life. Even worse, we’ll never reach the finish line in the race to a sustainable energy future.

I’ll say it yet again: funny, innit, how almost all of our contemporary woes have their origins in the same place: a greedy, grasping, over-powerful central goobermint?

(Via Bayou Peter)

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There they go again

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Another day, another “FBI is baffled as to what the motive might have been…” jihadist with big, big plans.

Philadelphia teen charged with planning national terrorist attack
Heavily armed law enforcement officers swarmed the Philadelphia home of a teenager who was plotting to launch a national terrorist attack, authorities said.

The suspect, an unnamed 17-year-old, was in contact with a global terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda and had access to a “significant” number of guns and was building bombs, FBI Special Agent in Charge Jacqueline Maguire said during a Monday press conference.

The teen, who was arrested Friday, “conducted general research” into potential targets that weren’t confined to one location, and they were not just in Philadelphia, she said.

Bold mine, and the only reason I find this story at all interesting. I mean, leaving aside the distinctive aroma of “false-flag SQUIRREL!!™ psy-op to distract from (insert latest BuyEm crime family scandal HERE)” wafting from this, OF COURSE the targets were “not just in Philadelphia.” Really, at this point who the hell would bother with bombing poor old Philly? That would be like bombing Baltimore or Detroit or Mogadishu or something. How could one even tell any of those places had been bombed, and if somebody did bomb one, what would look any different afterwards there?

(Via BCE)

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“A Retirement Home for American Politicians Who Won’t Retire”

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AMPO: an idea whose time has clearly come.

Only flaw I see here is this: “At AMPO, we actually let you live the retirement life without actually having to retire…in the rare event your relative does need to leave the premises to vote on America’s future we have chaffeurs ready to go, as no sane person would let someone of that age drive themselves.”

Funny, yes, but I’d much prefer that these decrepit, corrupt scum-lickers be forced into full and complete retirement—no more influence; no more power; no more graft or influence-pedding; no more preening for Praetorian Media cameras. Nothing but the continued long, slow slide into the obscurity, senile dementia, and physical helplessness they so richly deserve.

(Via Ace)

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No reason it can’t be both

Posted on      by     

And every reason to think that it not only can, but IS.

Recently, in a conversation between friends, the hypothesis was floated: what if all the burning farms, derailed trains, crop failures, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad scary nauseam aren’t really enemy action, but more a competency crisis.

As in these things happen not because big-bad is plotting against us, but because no one knows how to do the things they purportedly do anymore.

Embrace the healing power of “and,” Sarah.

To give an example: Suppose you were hired to haul buckets from a well. But when you actually get the job, you find out, no. Because of inherited systems, and what your superiors expect, you’re supposed to climb down the wall, hand over hand, and bring up water by the cupfull. And there are regulations in the works to make that by the spoonfull. However, you’ll be fully held to account if you can’t provide the amount of water the company is contracted for. You. Personally.

So, you do what you can. You fudge the books. On paper, you’re getting all this water up. Where the water goes no one knows, every one down stream (pardon the pun) from you does the same.

If this sounds like the soviet system? It is. It’s just that the directives don’t come directly and traceably from the government. (Though under the infestation of Bidentia they increasingly do.) Instead, they come from “experts” “scientists” “Studies” “marketing gurus.” And sometimes they are curtailed or made worse by agencies and regulations.

Yes, the managerial or worse “expert” class is the same that furnishes government. These are not your friends, are not meant to be your friends, and are convinced they know much more than you do.

What they know in fact is “how to manage.” But it’s not how to manage anything. They know theory of management (or whatever) derived from no reality (mostly from the writings of Marx, if you dig a little) and pushed ALL THE WAY DOWN.

It’s like — exactly like — being run by “experts” who memorized the Little Red Book. It might please those in power, but it has nothing to do with accomplishing the actual job in front of you.

No coincidence, that. The mistake Sarah makes here is one all too many of us still do: assuming that “their job” is still what the traditional American understanding of that was. Nothing could be further from the truth. Under the present-day Amerika v2.0/Soviet-style system, these people are NOT “public servants.” They do NOT “work for us,” are not in any way, shape, or form answerable to We The People; they are accountable only to their OWN masters in goobermint, whose goals are not ours.

Once you’ve accepted that home truth, it all starts to make a sad, sick sort of sense—another of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen, shall we say. Bukowski recognized all those years ago what the underlying problem is.

Apologies for y’all being forced to click over to YewToob to learn the answer, but hey, whatchagonna do. New category for this sort of thing, which I fear is gonna be populated all too quickly: Culture Of Incompetence.

Update! Well, whaddya know, after getting the dreaded “Video unavailable” nag-window in the MarsEdit post preview, the vid appears on the actual CF page, at least for me. YMMV, of course and as usual.

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