GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Lifestyles of the rich and royal

Last Friday’s Eyrie post on the pseudo-food Our Betters are demanding we adopt (WE adopt, mind you, not them—never them) closed with this:

The moral of the story: Trust not in governments or their “experts,” for they are dishonest and motivated primarily by financial considerations. Eat what you like, with moderation, variety, and common sense always foremost in mind—ie, don’t make a pig of yourself. As a rule, your Grandma was a lot more knowledgeable and intelligent about such matters than FederalGovCo will ever be, with the added benefit of wishing only the best for you, always.

Ahh, you stammer, but…but…but Our Masters want only the best for their subjects, too! They love us and care about us and take care of us too, just like Grandma did, you scree. They’re human beings just like you and I are!, you squeal.

But is all that really true? Have a look and decide for yourself.


Rest assured that there will be NO vat-grown “meats,” NO reconstituted insects, NO artificial, lab-created, or bargain-store anything at all adorning the platters in the above photo—each of which probably cost more than your car did when it was new—when dinner is served. And it’s a lead-pipe cinch that if some lowly Serf Class soul like you or I wandered into that room by mistake, armed security personnel would have you in a headlock with your arm bent up between your shoulder blades and speed-marching towards the exit quicker than you could gasp “Bob’s your uncle!” in stupified agony.

In a short story titled The Rich Boy, Scott Fitzgerald said it best:

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

And not in a good or admirable way, either. In fact, as the last image broadly suggests, they are bipedal pigs, bloated with self-importance and unfounded conceit; blinded by their obsessive neuroses; overawed by their own putative lordliness, good taste, and superior intelligence. The world will be incalculably improved on the frabjous day when every last individual in the above picture is dangling limply by his/her/its neck from a nearby tree or lamppost.

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Strange doin’s

Looking like the Friday Eyrie post is gonna be a little late, I fear. I was texting with a good friend of mine just now, and we got to talking about how bad girls are the only kind worth having, so I suggested that he and his wife Holli—DEFINITELY a bad girl, one of the best I know—ought to read my old Tough Chicks post, linked in the Greatest Hits section above. I clicked over to it myself, just to make sure it was still there and that the code wasn’t corrupted all to hell and gone, when what to my wondering eyes did appear but an unexpected mystery-glitch: the main text is in red all of a sudden, for no good reason I can see.

Went through all the other Menu Bar links and sure enough, every damned one of them is the same. So I’m trying to suss out what the devil might have brought on this sudden red-shift; I know for a fact it wasn’t that way a week or so ago when I made another addition to the Mike’s Iron Laws page, but damned if even that one ain’t all in red now too. Weird, weird, weird. So instead of completing the Eyrie post, I’m gonna spend the next cpl-three hours trying to chase down just what exactly might be going on with that, and correcting it.

Apologies for the Eyrie delay, but this is exactly the sort of thing that can keep me awake all night, lying there staring at the ceiling trying to figure it out. If you happen to click one of those Menu Bar page links and it looks different to you, be sure to let me in the comments, ‘kay? Back in a bit…

Update! PHEW! Fixed it, although I’m not quite sure how I did it, what the problem was, or why it popped up out of the blue like this. After Viewing Source in my preferred browser and closely inspecting the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mess the WP-functions script makes of the “head” HTML for an “a href” tag inadvertently left open or something—my prime initial suspect, since I have active-link text set up in the stylesheet to display in red—I dumped a few lines of superfluous-looking code from the “Give till it hurts” area, inside the “body” tag of the Single Page template, and hey, presto! All is back to normal and copacetic, near as I can make out. Probably tomorrow for the Eyrie, or perhaps early-early in the mawnin’.

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Disillusioned, disabused, disenfranchised

Scales are beginning to fall from people’s eyes all over the place.

Maybe This Latest Blatant Ballot Box Stuffing Scandal Will Be the Last Straw
Whether it’s because they have no fear of consequence or because they really are that stupid, Democrat operatives regularly stuff ballot boxes in full view of cameras. The pattern is nauseatingly familiar at this point: First, Big Left’s candidate comes from behind to win an election with a handful of mail-in or absentee votes. Then, video, sworn testimony, and/or official complaints of ballot harvesting and ballot box stuffing emerge. The matter is referred to law enforcement, which opens an investigation.

And then…nothing.

In the film “2000 Mules,” rampant ballot harvesting — which is illegal in Georgia, one of the states featured in the film — was documented. The matter was referred to Ga. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whose office launched an investigation. “If Georgia’s investigation into organized ballot harvesting leads to actual arrests and punishment, it will be a great day for America,” I wrote at the time. “We are all weary of lengthy investigations that go nowhere and accomplish nothing, but perhaps this time will be different.”

LOL, it was no different. Raffensberger declined to proceed without one of the film’s producers, election integrity non-profit True the Vote, giving up the name of a confidential source, which they refused to do. One source — out of the mountains of data and evidence the group provided — was the excuse for halting the investigation. The last I heard, Raffensberger’s office was suing True the Vote. Meanwhile, more elections have occurred in the district without any arrests or serious addressing of the problem.

Now a new video is making waves in Connecticut, and once again, I’m hoping that this is finally the last straw that forces an actual enforcement action.

As the saying goes, hope is not a strategy, Athena dear, sorry. At this point, anybody who isn’t deeply, deeply cynical about “elections” in Amerika v2.0 simply isn’t paying attention. And no, cynicism isn’t a synonym for strategy either, but it’s a logical first step towards the anger that might conceivably lead to Real Americans getting off their duffs and devising one. So in the end you might be cynical, sure, but the question now is: are you cynical ENOUGH?

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Nice campaign you got there, Bobby, be a shame if anything happened to it

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: RFK Jr, Elon Musk, and any and every other national figure with the outrageous temerity to cross The Power absolutely MUST keep their heads on a swivel, checking six 24-7-365.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted the shocking news on his Twitter/X account 23 minutes after midnight on Saturday morning:

I’m very grateful that alert and fast-acting protectors from Gavin de Becker and Associates (GDBA) spotted and detained an armed man who attempted to approach me at my Hispanic Heritage speech at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles tonight. The man, wearing two shoulder holsters with loaded pistols and spare ammunition magazines was carrying a U.S. Marshal badge on a lanyard and beltclip federal ID. He identified himself as a member of my security detail. Armed GDBA team members moved quickly to isolate and detain the man until LAPD arrived to make the arrest. I’m also grateful to LAPD for its rapid response. I’m still entertaining a hope that President Biden will allow me Secret Service protection. I am the first presidential candidate in history to whom the White House has denied a request for protection.

The Epoch Times reported Friday night that the LAPD “received a call at around 4:30 p.m. reporting that a male was in front of the event venue with ‘a badge on their lapel, a gun, and a shoulder holster, and claimed to be a U.S. Marshall [sic].’”Breitbart noted, also on Friday, that “the man arrived at the event and claimed to be employed by the organizers. Campaign security officials, however, did not recognize him, and detained him until police arrived. The man was found to be carrying a handgun and ammunition. He will likely face charges of impersonating a police officer or federal agent, and possibly unlawful possession of firearms.”

That’s about all we know at this point, but it’s enough to send a chill down the spine. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s father and uncle were both assassinated in two of the most famous and traumatic incidents in the history of the United States. Back in July, RFK Jr. himself announced that “since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.” He added: “Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days [sic]. After 88-days [sic] of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request. Secretary Mayorkas: ‘I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr is not warranted at this time.’”

Is a guy claiming to be a U.S. marshal and/or employed by organizers of a Kennedy event and carrying loaded pistols and spare ammunition magazines a serious death threat to the candidate? The possibility cannot be discounted at this point. And in his July tweet about not receiving Secret Service protection, Kennedy said that he had given the agency a “67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well-established security and safety risks.”

The guy was as big a threat as the Shadow Men in charge decided they needed him to be. For the moment, they seem to have felt that a shot across RFKJr’s bow would be sufficient. Next time, who knows?

A Labor/Management proxy war a-brewing?

Personally, I’m just rooting for casualties.

There was once a time when I would have been aligned with management for a variety of principled economic reasons, but with the executive suites of US auto companies now full of radical leftists who see their role as being extra-governmental agents whose role is to help install a global eco-communist order, they’ve lost me. My principles do not require me to support any party, company, or principle that will result in a loss of my liberty.

This battle between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three auto executives is effectively a proxy war between those of us who wish for a future with gas-powered cars and those who want a future with electric vehicles only. The autoworkers’ future depends on survival of gasoline vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (“ICE”).

Unfortunately, the UAW’s leadership has done terrible harm to the rank and file by continuing to aid and abet Democrats, who in turn are seeking to destroy the traditional American auto business by legislating it away with EV mandates. And remember, the ultimate goal of “the EV transition” is not to get people out of ICE vehicles, it’s to eliminate mass-market car ownership altogether. There is no future for auto workers in the world the left is trying to take us to.

But finally, there is some awakening among the UAW and its leadership that there is no place for them in the green new future of the American left.

Just a reminder – the “Inflation Reduction Act” that failed America’s union workers was really the Green New Deal, and had nothing to do with inflation.

United Auto Workers (UAW) members feel as though the Democratic Party abandoned them, a former president of the union said ahead of a potential strike.

“I think there’s a segment of the Democratic Party that sees itself as serving corporations rather than the common good.… We’ve had a lot of disappointments,” King said.

To be fair, that faction of the Democratic Party that is “serving corporations“ is actually in service to corporate agents of Klaus Schwab and the anti-humanity tyrants at the World Economic Forum.

As to the specifics of the union’s demands, a 36% pay increase over the next five years is not that outrageous, considering the double-digit inflation that shows no sign of abating, and which has eaten away at so much consumer purchasing power. (I’m talking about actual inflation, not the fabricated inflation rate published by the Department of Labor.) What amounts to 7% yearly wage hikes does not keep up with Biden’s inflation, and since the Big Three auto companies are such cheerleaders for Biden and his radical policies, the least they can do is offer their employees wages to keep up.

Buck Throckmorton goes on to rightly lambaste Ford CEO and all-in Green weenie Jim Farley for his lavish compensation:

Let’s look at Jim Farley, who as CEO of Ford is aggressively destroying the company. He’s also doing what is normal for executives aboard a sinking corporate ship – grabbing as much for himself while he still can.

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley received nearly $21 million in total compensation in 2022…

The total compensation package that Farley, 60, earned last year included a base salary of $1.7 million, $15.1 million in stock awards, and nearly $2.8 million in bonuses. He received nearly $1.4 million worth of other compensation in the form of perks like the use of private aircraft and company vehicles.

That marked a 93% increase from 2020, when he became CEO.

This, mind, while Farley gleefully pimps useless coal-powered vehicles that are losing over 32k per unit for the company, and the near-zombified car company he’s looting sinks like a rock under the weight of its shitlib execs’ obedient folly. As Throckmorton pithily observes:

A 93% increase over two years for the CEO seems a lot more excessive than the 36% over five years being requested by the rank and file.

Farley has no moral authority to criticize his labor force for seeking wages to keep up with Bidenflation while he is looting the company and re-allocating the company’s equity from shareholders to himself.

If auto manufacturers can’t afford to pay higher wages that keep up with inflation, then they can’t afford obscene executive pay.

In this blue-on-blue battle between organized labor and globalist eco-communists, I favor the side that is currently the least threat to me, which is labor.

Pretty much, yeah. There could well be an additional long-term bonus for siding with the unions in this instance: by expressing support for them, Real Americans stand at least some chance of inspiring Big Labor to rethink a few pertinent things, like for example where exactly welding themselves to the D卐M☭CRAT Party has really gotten them.

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“No evidence” of Bribem Crime Family corruption

Of course the D卐M☭CRATs are screaming their throats raw and bloody about the rotting rutabaga’s impeachment; as we all know, they will always and forever remain in pluperfect compliance with both Mike’s Iron Law #4296-54e, addendum 67, and Mike’s Iron Law #462. But don’t think for a minute that they’re the only ones squealing like stuck pigs.

GOP Rep. Ken Buck Slams Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Absurd” Impeachment Remarks – Says There’s No Evidence Linking Joe Biden to a “High Crime or Misdemeanor”
In an interview with former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on MSNBC, Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO) expressed strong disagreement with fellow Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over her “absurd” calls for impeaching President Joe Biden. Buck argued that there is currently no evidence linking Biden to a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

On Saturday, Marjorie Taylor Greene said that “our country deserves for Congress to vote for an impeachment inquiry for very important reasons, not a rush impeachment vote.”

When asked by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki about his position on launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, Rep. Buck said Greene’s remark is “absurd.”

“Marjorie filed impeachment articles on President Biden before he was sworn into office more than two and a half years ago. So the idea that she is now the expert on impeachment or that she is someone who should set the timing on impeachment is absurd,” said Ken Buck.

Buck, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, claimed that there is currently no evidence linking Biden to a “high crime or misdemeanor” and thus, no grounds for impeachment.

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden -if there’s evidence linking President Biden- to a high crime or misdemeanor, that doesn’t exist right now, and it isn’t really something that we can say, well, in February, we’re going to do this. It’s based on the facts. You go where the facts take you,” Buck added.

Bold Hoft’s, I assume. MTG fired back at the Vichy GOPe loyalist, good and hard.

In an X post, Greene responded to Buck’s allegations, saying, “When is Ken Buck going to announce he’s a Democrat? The amount of shilling for Joe Biden is astounding. Almost like he’s hoping Joe is going to appoint him for something.”

“This is the same guy that wrote a book called ‘Drain the Swamp’, who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry,” Greene told CNN. “I really don’t see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach…It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?”

Oh, he’s doing his job all right, Marge. It’s just that his job is in no way, shape, or form the one you think it ought to be. As for the shitstorm of “no evidence” bushwa, I’ll just let the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability handle that one.

There is mounting evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his family’s influence peddling schemes, including while he served as Vice President. However, Democrats and their corporate media allies continue to ignore this overwhelming evidence as they seek to distract the American people from the Biden family’s corruption. Below are over 20 examples of Joe Biden’s involvement.

1) In July 2023, former Biden business associate Devon Archer described how Joe Biden was “The Brand” and was used to send “signals” of power, access, and influence to enrich the Biden family from foreign sources.

2) Devon Archer alone was aware of at least 20 times in which then-Vice President Biden spoke on speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates. Democrats would have Americans believe that these phone calls with then-Vice President Biden were simply to discuss the weather.

3) In February 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden dined with oligarchs from Russia and Kazakhstan who funneled millions of dollars to Hunter Biden and his business associates.

4) In April 2015, then-Vice President Biden dined with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates, including Ukrainian Burisma executive Vadym Pozharsky. Burisma was then being investigated by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin for corruption.

5) Then-Vice President Biden had coffee with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associate, Jonathan Li of BHR, in Beijing and wrote a college letter of recommendation for his daughter.

6) In 2015, then-Vice President Biden hosted Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and other business associates at the official residence of the Vice President. The topic of discussion was filling the top seat at the United Nations. The Kazakhstani government official who wanted the U.N. position attended both dinners at Café Milano with then-Vice President Biden.

7) Using the pseudonym “Robert L. Peters,” Vice President Biden was informed by his staff of a call in 2016 with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. Copied on that official email? Hunter Biden, who was sitting on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma.

8) On December 4, 2015, Biden business associate Eric Schwerin wrote to Kate Bedingfield in the Office of the Vice President providing quotes to use in response to media outreach regarding Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Later that day, Ms. Bedingfield responded to Mr. Schwerin saying, “VP signed off on this[.]” According to Devon Archer, after a Burisma board of directors meeting in Dubai on the evening of December 4, 2015, Hunter Biden “called D.C.” to discuss pressure that Burisma asked him to relieve.

9) In May 2017, James Gilliar, a Biden family associate, emailed Hunter Biden and other associates to formalize how they would divide the profit from their deal with CEFC, a Chinese Communist Party linked energy company. Gilliar indicated Joe Biden would receive 10 percent, which has been confirmed by former Biden family associate, Tony Bobulinski.

10) On May 20, 2017, James Gilliar told Tony Bobulinksi, another business associate, “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face[.] I know u know that but they are paranoid[.]”

When you’re as thoroughly and wholly corrupt as Jaux Buyhim has been known to be for so many decades, having someone claim you AREN’T corrupt amounts to a direct, personal insult. It’s like you did all that grifting for nothing—slaving tirelessly away at becoming the very best in your chosen field, only to have people deny you credit for all your diligent effort.

An aerial view of Lyin’ Jaux’s Delaware “house”:

BidenFormerMansion

That’s his former home estate, he’s since moved on to more “modest” digs. This is one of his numerous current domiciles, all purchased “honestly” on a Senator’s 174k yearly salary:

BribemMansion

If I’m not mistaken, and I could be, this is the house where he “securely” kept all those purloined classified documents he had no business whatsoever to be handling. Being a career politician is nice work if you can get it, no?

“No evidence”—shyeeaaah, right. Who you gonna believe, Mr and Mrs America, all those scuttling, scurrying Swamp critters or your own lyin’ eyes?

Update! Need I remind you of what the second item from Article II, Section 4 is? Not that Faux Jaux isn’t patently guilty of all of them, of course. But that second one surely ought to be plenty enough all by itself to put his balls in a vise.

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Sic semper tyrannus

Peters’s title is so good it’s worth a link all by itself.

We Will Not Comply Our Way Out Of This
Complying with “mask” mandates only assured they’d be complied with – for years.

There is a lesson in that somewhere.

The Left figured out that passing laws is a slow, tedious and unreliable process. It is even harder to get around laws already in force – as for example the ones in New Mexico that recognize the right – as per the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and so very much the law in every state – that citizens who aren’t criminals have the lawful right to carry firearms.

How to get around those – and other inconvenient – laws?

The same way that laws prohibiting the wearing of “masks” (which in better times, only criminals wore when entering stores and could be prosecuted for doing it) and the legal right of people who aren’t by law supposed to be in prison to move freely and go about their business, as well as the constitutional right to gather together to peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances and to gather together to worship, etc. were simply waved into functional illegality by declaring an “emergency.”

That tactic is now being expanded – most recently by the Governess of New Mexico, Lujan Grisham. She has declared an “emergency” and on the basis of that decree, has suspended – presto! just like that! – the lawful right of non-criminals to carry their lawfully possessed firearms in public in Albuquerque and Bernalillo counties. She has thus waved into a state of de facto “criminality” tens of thousands of New Mexican gun owners.

And it’s not just those who have the legal right to carry a gun who are in the crosshairs – and it’s (not) just New Mexicans, either.

This is about using “emergency” powers to render “illegal” anything the Left does not like and decides to make a “crime.”

Jefferson – there is a monument to him in Washington, D.C. – said that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. He wanted it to be the motto of the United States (it is the motto of his own state, Virginia).

Tyrants must be defied.

Whether in New Mexico or Virginia or any other place in America – which is supposed to be a country in which tyrants have no place.

The way, then, to respond to the tyrant who currently rules by decree in New Mexico is to ignore her decree – and defy her to enforce it. Upon thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of law-abiding, peaceful people who will not abide being treated as “criminals.”

Let her – let them – try to arrest everyone. It won’t work because it cannot work. The tyrants will have to back down.

Yes, it will take a few brave souls willing to risk being arrested on “charges” that have no basis in law. But those few will show it can be done – and give courage to those not quite as brave, who will follow their example and – by doing so – make it impossible to arrest everyone.

If this would only have been done three years ago with regard to “lock downs” and “mask” mandates, we would not be here, right now.

Perhaps this is how it starts, right now. It is how we put an end to it, right now.

We can only hope and pray so. Question is, does the spirit of defiance to all tyranny—to any and every meddlesome, priggish busybody, great or small, who would dare to even dream of impinging on our God-given rights and liberties—still live in American hearts, enough of them at least to turn the dismal tide at long, long last? Or has the spirit of defiance been extinguished—that most quintessentially American spirit, more so than apple pie, hot dogs, and baseball—a spirit so boisterously integral to who the American people once were, how they thought of themselves deep down in more felicitous times—after many decades of flaccid, unresistant acceptance of ever-more-naked oppression?

Very soon now, we will know. May our answer be one we can take pride in, rather than heap disgrace upon ourselves, our forefathers, and our posterity with.

Speaking strictly for myself and nobody else, I did not comply last time they tried this stupid shite; I for damned sure and certain won’t be complying this go-round, nor any other. But that’s just me—as a lifelong contrarian and naturally-obstreperous Rebel Son whose dad gleefully said of him a blue million times that he’d argue with a stop sign, I tend to be ornery like that sometimes.

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Tac-Civ

Whilst sifting through the comments on the magisterial Brandon Smith piece I mentioned earlier today, I ran across a link to a site I hadn’t heard of before: Tactical Civics. The index page features what amounts to a mission statement:

Taking America back, one county at a time.

“TACTICAL CIVICS™ is We the People finally enforcing the magnificent Law that our forefathers left us. And unlike politics, TACTICAL CIVICS™ needs only half of 1% of the People to take responsibility.”

This republic of sovereign States, founded in the Name of Jesus Christ and blessed for centuries, is now under Communist occupation by D.C., Beijing, and many state palaces.

The massive fraud in the 2020 election, combined with the criminal COVID-19 hoax were the work of criminals in the Deep State, DNC, Communist county machines and governors, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Communist China, Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS…destroying our economy and keeping Americans in concentration camps with no communication between us.

Hm. Sounds pretty good so far, they seem to have the right idea about things. From T-C’s welcome-aboard page:

Before you begin here, We need to be clear.

TACTICAL CIVICS™ teaches the sovereign/servant relationship stipulated in the United States Constitution. We The People are the sovereign. Those employed by We The People are the servants while completing those terms of office or publicly-funded careers.

Simply put, one cannot be the Employer and the employee simultaneously.

Consequently, TACTICAL CIVICS™ has made it policy that while completing a servant-sector term of office or career, a person is ineligible for membership in TACTICAL CIVICS™. Once having completed the servant-sector term, thereby having returned to the sovereign sector, please join us!

To retiterate, if you are currently working for any public agency, service, school, office, etc, you are ineligible to join our member organization for the reasons we explain in Chapter 1 of our book, The Great We-Set™, available HERE.

Any individual not currently a member of the servant sector is vigorously encouraged to join us in this mission.

Trolls, sleepers, and shit-stirring agents provocateur not welcome? Sounds even better. I’ma hold off on signing up until I’ve had time to learn more about these folks. I must confess to not being terribly adept at spotting FBI-bait and/or Fedpoasting; I’d advise my readers to be cautious as well, you just never know these days.

That said, though, if Tac-Civ is on the level they might well be onto something with this, particularly that “one county at a time” business. Far as I’m concerned, national politics is a lost cause at this point, good only for whatever entertainment value can be wrung out of it and no more. The real action from here on out is going to be at the local, county, and (in some cases) state level, I think.

Which, when you think about it, is probably as it should be. The Founders seemed to think so, anyway—a feature, not a bug.

Update! YOWZA! Also from Brandon’s comments section, a link to free downloads of all Tactical Civics’ book offerings, either individually or all together in one handy-dandy zip file. I’ll let y’all know if it turns out to be a goddamned Russky worm or ChiCom malware or something.

An idea whose time, apparently, has come

Via KT, this little slice of sarcastic slapback is too funny.


Heh. But hey, as a Person of Color myself (ALL the colors, not just the shitlib-sanctified blacque or brown), I support this. Why not? After all, it won’t be much longer before FederalGovCo will be requiring every child be tattooed at birth anyway. Y’know, with the Mark.

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The Over the (Capitol) Hill gang

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?

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.

3

Bathhouse Barry outed

The only surprising thing is how unsurprising it all is.

Some interesting sidenotes to Larry Sinclair’s tale of sex and drugs with Obama
Last night, Tucker Carlson released his interview with Larry Sinclair, the man who alleges that, in 1999, while in Chicago, he did cocaine with Obama (who preferred to smoke his) and then performed oral sex on Obama. This is a tale that Sinclair has told before. It’s worth noting because it reminds us of the partnership between the media and the Democrat party. There were also some interesting details about big tech and a strange death (or maybe a few strange deaths).

There were two interesting parts of the interview with which I was not familiar. The first was Sinclair’s discussion about how the media and big tech went after him. Some media outlets lied about Sinclair’s criminal history (which he’d been quite open about in the YouTube video he originally made), grossly exaggerating it, and then dismissed him as a criminal and a crackpot.

Others blacked out the story after the Obama campaign said that, if they reported on it, the campaign would blacklist them. They chose access over investigative reporting and honesty. They also chose it over national security. After all, a president with a secret life of drugs and gay sex is perfectly situated to be blackmailed, with huge national security consequences. But for the national political media, getting a black man into the White House was more important than America’s well-being and safety.

Sorry, Andrea, not quite: it was more important to get a neo-Communist, hard Left black man who, because of his fraught and decidedly sketchy history and/or personal inclinations, could be easily manipulated and controlled by the real Power in Mordor on the Potomac.

The second interesting thing was Sinclair explaining how, in late 2007, he reached out to the Obama campaign suggesting that the campaign stop telling all sorts of conflicting stories about Obama’s drug use. The campaign, he said, should just admit that Obama was still using drugs at least as late as 1999. Sinclair didn’t hear back from the campaign. Instead, he heard from Donald Young, who explained that the campaign wouldn’t acknowledge any sex or drug stories about Obama.

According to Sinclair, Young eventually told him that he was the gay choirmaster at the Reverend Wright’s church, the one where Obama sat in the pews for 20 years as Wright blasted America. He also said that he had a long-term “intimate” relationship with Obama. Not long after that, Young was murdered in his apartment. Young’s mother believes that it was to silence him (according to Sinclair).

Curious about this, I searched Young’s name on the internet and stumbled across an anti-Obama article from 2009. According to this article, Young was one of three gay men in Wright’s congregation who were executed within less than two months of each other. The local media suspected a gay killing rampage. However, the 2009 article suggests that they were killed because it’s possible that all three, not just Young, could have talked about Obama.

That’s conspiracy theory stuff, but if true, it would also answer a question I’ve always asked myself: If Obama was indeed having gay sex in Chicago, how was it that only one person talked? Can that many people really keep a secret? Well, they could if those who knew were getting knocked off. Then, it’s very likely that others would discover the virtue of silence.

Well, duh. Andrea Widburg, among many others, really ought to take a moment to reflect on just how many times in the last few years what she blithely dismisses as so-called “conspiracy theory stuff” has turned out—UNEXPECTED!™—to be perfectly true and accurate. As for Tucker, I’ve said it before and will say it again: he very much needs to keep his head on a swivel, checking his six 24-7-365, lest sooner or later, one way or another, he gets himself well and truly got.

My old friend Jesse Malin spells out where we now are in Amerika v2.0, right down to the name of his band.

Yep, we’re living in D-generation Nation for sure and certain, and there’s no way out. No easy, non-violent way, at any rate.

3

A Republic? You can’t keep it

So much utter, utter brilliance crammed into this one it’s tough to know where to even begin excerpting it.

note that, like covid, this was not a thing that team donkey or team elephant did to us. this sort of truly epic damage is reserved for the times when the two parties agree. that’s when they are at their most dangerous. and this is what makes the illusion that you need to vote for one party to save you from the other so precarious. because when the chips are really down, they don’t. and they won’t.

you’re just waiting until the next political syzygy when the bodies all align and the pull grows too forceful for any liberty not firmly in your grasp not to be torn away.

and then you lose.

because they are not coming to save you. they are coming to rob you.

they will rob you of your property, your rights, your liberty, your privacy, your agency, and even your dignity. it’s a ruthless one way ratchet to serfdom.

and these are not “rogue comets” tearing away your atmosphere. they are smash and grabs orchestrated by feeding “leaders” a bunch of bunk to get them to commit absurdities and atrocities.

the parties are not the prime movers here. they are the patsies, the puppet-show. they are the magician’s assistant in her spangles to draw the eye away from where the trick is being done, from the place where the permanent state resides, the place where real power lies.

it comes together in terrible confluences of intelligence, regulatory, law enforcement, and bureaucratic state that command vast budgets and have near zero supervision. they have become thieves’ forests of grifters and power grabbers that stretch from EPA to FBI, DOJ to NIH, and CDC to CIA. they swirl around this idea of “homeland security uber alles” and the new fashions in fear to drive greater surrenders of agency in the fruitless societal fracture of desperately trying to trade a little liberty for a little safety.

and they penetrate everything. they determine what leaders “see” and what they “know.” they use this to set deep agendas and manipulate the course of events. when did covid get out of control in the US? right when the national security advisor sent in debbie birx to run the show. and how did she run roughshod over so many purportedly powerful people? because she had the real power behind her, the deep influence of the “deep state.”

“deep state.” it’s fun the way that term has been gaslit into some sort of “Q anon triple-tinfoil raving nutter conspiracy,” but ask yourself: who might have benefitted from such a perception? who might have put such a gambit into play? surely not the disinformation specialists who suppressed the lab leak hypothesis that they knew full well to be the odds on explanation. no, surely not…

anyone else starting to maybe see a pattern here?

like maybe this all keeps starting in the same place and going the same way?

this system is not fixable because this system is not broken.

it’s functioning as it is intended.

See what I mean? Dude just summed up my last ten years of blogging in one fell swoop of a post. Yes, you want to read all of it; trust me, it’s good enough to even make the ee cummings no-caps affectation bearable.

(Via WRSA)

3

Advice for the ages

Bayou Peter offers some, and it’s truly great stuff.

Advice from An Old Hillbilly:

  • Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
  • Keep skunks, bankers, and politicians at a distance.
  • Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
  • A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
  • Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.
  • The best sermons are lived, not preached.
  • If you don’t take the time to do it right, you’ll find the time to do it twice.
  • Don’t corner something that is meaner than you.
  • Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.
  • It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.
  • You cannot unsay a cruel word.
  • When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
  • Don’t be banging your shin on a stool that’s not in the way.
  • Borrowing trouble from the future doesn’t deplete the supply.
  • Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.
  • Don‘t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.

That’s a mere sampler, there’s plenty more at the link. Taken for all in all, it just goes to show that there really is such a thing as “timeless.”

5

Good. And. HARD

Reading these next two maddening stories, I’m more convinced than ever that no one has ever understood democracy as thoroughly as did HL Mencken. First up, a little Maui Wowie.

After President Joe Biden traveled to Maui and all-too-typically cited his own personal history in order to comfort the grieving residents of the island, where at least 115 people have been declared dead from the fire that engulfed the town of Lahaina, he was blasted on social media for his colossal insensitivity.

“Hearing you talk about your house that had a little fire, you ‘almost lost your house and your Corvette,’ there were children that were incinerated to ash, you f***king old man, you vile human being,” one man said in a viral video.

“You’re so out of touch with the common man, you don’t even know how to speak to them,” he continued. “The only way you think you can establish commonality with them is to lie, ‘The same thing happened to you no matter what the tragedy is.’ He referenced Biden attempting to commiserate with Gold Star Moms who lost their son in action by citing his son Beau’s death from brain cancer: “Your son wasn’t killed in action, by the way,” adding furiously, “Your house didn’t burn down. Your children weren’t burned to death.”

“How dare you get up there and speak this way?” he snapped. “Your job is to go there and assuage them in a way that you talk to them about their loss, that you can’t imagine what it’s like, that you can’t imagine what it’s like never to find the bodies of the poor children who were sent home from schools. They died alone! Alone. In fear. Without their parents or guardian. The most abhorrent thing happened. You’re a disgusting, despicable bastard.”

“You ‘almost lost your cat?’ Go f*** yourself,” he concluded.

Yeah, I’d say SOMEbody ought to go fuck themselves for sure and certain. I’m just not entirely sure it shouldn’t be the whole goddamned kit and kaboodle of them. Lots of other Twitter X rips on the soulless, senile old fraud included with the article—all of them coming from the overwhelmingly liberal populace of a West Pacific island chain that “voted” for none other than Pedo Jaux Buyem in 2020 by well over 63 percent, and has reliably pulled the lever for D卐M☭CRATs in every “election” since said islands inexplicably became a state.

Not that the guy’s wrong in anything he says about Buyem, mind, be he the typical Islander shitlib or no. Hey, there’s bound to be three or four Hawaiians who ain’t, right?

In our next example of getting exactly what you voted for, and richly deserving it, the “good people” of Oakland are declaring themselves fed up too.

Sick and Tired in Oakland
The city’s NAACP chapter calls out its political leaders to do something about an “intolerable public safety crisis.”

On July 27, the Oakland NAACP published a scathing letter decrying the city’s failure to keep its vulnerable communities safe from persistent violence from high-risk offenders.

“Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities,” the letter begins. “There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime.”

The NAACP called on Oakland to declare a “state of emergency” due to the untamed spiral of crime. “Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland,” the letter warns.

Indeed, much of the crime data support the NAACP’s portrayal of disenfranchised and increasingly endangered Oakland residents. The most recent week’s Oakland Police Department statistics show that violent crimes have risen (year to date, compared with last year) by 18 percent, while overall crime is up 28 percent. The recent trend represents a major reversal from a few years earlier. Between 2012 and 2018, the city reduced gun violence by 50 percent, aided by its Oakland Ceasefire program, which implemented strategies such as “focused enforcement” involving the highest-risk individuals. In the first two years following the George Floyd uprisings, however, homicides rose 17.6 percent.

Oakland has seen radical shifts in its police department in recent years. The department is down 100 officers, according to Councilman Noel Gallo, though the NAACP states in its letter that various experts view the department as short as many as 500 officers from optimal levels. (The force’s current size is 734 officers).

Uh HUH. SO, how’s that “defund the police” bushwa you demanded not so long ago working out for ya then, idiots? From where I sit, it looks to be working out exactly as the more intelligent among us said it would from the start—and then got denounced by you as RAYCISS!!!!™ for having the outrageous temerity to say so right out loud.

I gravely doubt if a single man Jack of these maleducated ignoramii—whether they’re breathing through their mouths in Hawaii, Kalifornia, Chicago, or NYC—has even the vaguest clue who HL Mencken was, but they could all benefit from boning up on him. Because being the irascible, curmudgeonly visionary he was, he foresaw every bit of this horseshit long, long ago.

Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

An honest, reasonably intelligent soul might wish to try argue that he’s incorrect about any of that, but I can’t for the life of me see how he’d go about it without beclowning himself spectacularly in the doing of it.

Working as intended update! Joe Mannix makes an excellent point.

As the details about the disastrous Maui fire continue to unfold, many people are left wondering how the hell a foul-up this spectacular is possible. How did everything go so wrong at every level of the response? Why did Maui have to wait for water authorization? Why were the emergency sirens not activated? Why was traffic allegedly blocked from leaving on the only good road out? Assuming that all of what we’ve heard is true, how did so much go wrong?

I think that the sad conclusion is that, in reality, nothing went wrong. Not officially. Everyone likely followed every guideline, rule, regulation and requirement. Procedural compliance was probably quite good. What apparently nobody did, however, was the single most important thing: think. The environment in which they operate has been designed to eliminate the need to think and ensure compliance instead.

The purpose of the rules laid down in such great volume for so long a time is to obviate thinking. You don’t need to think if there’s a rule to cover whatever it is you need to do. Follow the rules, comply with the procedures, adhere to the regulations and you will achieve your goal or at least be shielded from any poor consequences. Nobody is to blame, because the rules were followed. The rules are there to act as a substitute for thinking. Robotic adherence to the rules – and striving to have a rule for all things – is awfully bad in situations that even slightly deviate from the context envisioned by the rulemakers.

Juat another of the many wonderful attributes of kakistocratic bureaucracy run amok. For certain values of the word “wonderful,” that is.

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