Life in a once-great nation

The Over the (Capitol) Hill gang

Posted on September 7, 2023September 7, 2023 by Mike

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.

1

America That Was: what happened?

Posted on September 7, 2023September 7, 2023 by Mike

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

Missive from the Valley of the Shadow

Posted on September 4, 2023September 4, 2023 by Mike

When it comes to writing about politics, Mark Steyn reminds us he’s still the baddest mutha in the Valley.

So no, I haven’t been reading a lot of Trump indictment analysis by Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz… They’re all great legal minds, but how naïve do you have to be still to think that America has anything recognizable as a “justice” system? I have the advantage of Andy et al in that I’m a Canadian who has been in a mere civil lawsuit in the District of Columbia that is now entering its twelfth year. When you turn the calendar on Year Twelve, you know it’s a racket – and all that’s happened over the last decade or so is that the racket’s gotten more shameless and cocksure.

My DC rubbish is a First Amendment case, so you can imagine how impressed I am, eleven years on, by my so-called rights under that Amendment. Trump’s is also a First Amendment case, and perhaps a more consequential one – because there won’t be a First Amendment if a politician can be charged with conspiracy for disputing the results of American elections, which objectively are among the crappest in the world, by comparison with Norway, Bostwana and most other functioning or even semi-functioning polities.

“More shameless and cocksure”? Perish the thought, Mark! Why, everyone knows they’re afraid of us, literally pissing themselves with terror at us! Right? RIGHT?

In a pig’s eye. Which is all the more reason not to take their shit, but to spit defiantly in their fucking faces at any and every opportunity, lest they turn out to have been perfectly correct in their assessment of whether or not they ought to fear us…because we ourselves proved them to be.

Indeed, if you think the central issue is not Ukraine or the next variant but the suffocating corruption in which the most powerful agencies in the land behave ever more openly as organs of a one-party state, you’re sticking with Trump because the permanent state’s weekly indictments of him are the most outrageous embodiment of the problem.

These are not normal times: in the years ahead, ever greater corruption – political, judicial, bureaucratic, technological – will be necessary to constrain the people’s choices to the shriveled offerings of the Uniparty. So, if you reckon it’s bad now, wait till next time. GOP primary voters seem to get that at least. The real GOP “suicide mission” (to use John Hinderaker’s phrase) is pretending that any of what’s happening right now is part and parcel of politics in a long-settled society of self-governing citizens.

Whatever their “suicidal” inclinations, the base seems to get that – and they’re disinclined to be told by their betters to pretend otherwise.

From his lips to God’s etc, and may it ever be thus.

Tons more rich, buttery goodness in between the excerpted passages—TONS—every last word of it vital, must-read material, as has always been Steyn’s wont. Thankfully, despite his recent health issues, Mark is still with us, for the nonce. Alas, though, as is true of all of us, someday he won’t be. No matter when it might come, that blackest of days will be upon us far too soon. For Mark Steyn’s is a truly irreplaceable voice, and the righteous cause of human liberty will suffer a staggering blow thereupon.

5

Lies, damned lies, and government statistics

Posted on September 1, 2023September 1, 2023 by Mike

The Biden Economic MIRACLE!™ continues apace, God help us all.

Warning, this link is to CNN, and it is pure regime-promoting propaganda, discussing how a major downward revision in new job creations is actually good news, because it beat expectations on how badly the Bureau of Labor was going to have to adjust its previously published fabrications. Or something to that effect.

”America Added 306,000 Fewer Jobs Last Year Than We Thought” [CNN Business – 8/23/2023]

Link not transcribed, of course, because fuck CNN, that’s why. Onwards.

Despite the spin, there are a few hard numbers I’d like to extract:

US job growth during much of the past year was weaker than previously projected by a little more than 300,000 jobs, according to new federal data released Wednesday.

As part of the agency’s annual benchmark review of payroll data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down March 2023’s employment gains by 306,000 positions.

This means that 306,000 fewer jobs were created over the 12 months ending March 2023. How significantly was the data overstated?

When spread through the prior year, that amounts to about 25,000 fewer net jobs added per month, meaning that the average monthly job gain for the 12 months ended in March 2023 was nearly 312,000 versus 337,000, BLS data shows.

Let me do the math. The BLS overstated new job creation by 8.0%. That is not a rounding error or a minor miss, it’s a significant and deliberate government lie. And of course, since it is policy at BLS to publish false, inflated figures to help Democrat administrations, it is safe to assume that the revisions are also false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is simply trying to adjust their falsified data reports enough so that they can somehow, sort of reconcile to surveys of actual employment. They have to do this to set the benchmark before the next round of completely bogus jobs reports is released.

How persistent is the jobs report fraud? Take a look at this graph from Zero Hedge, which shows that every month so far in 2023 the BLS publishes an overstated jobs report, which the regime media dutifully touts as a sign of great economic progress under President Biden, and then that same monthly report is later adjusted downward without media fanfare.

The July report was the first one this year to report under 200,000 new jobs, which means that the actual number is going to be even lower than the already disappointing 187,000 jobs reported.

Damned seditious violent treasonous MAGAT bastige, spreading all those damnable lies about our fine government and media establishments. Where’s our fine, upstanding FBI and their paramilitary SWAT teams when you need ‘em for another of their patented late-night, home invasion-style raids, anyway?

2

1

Chevy’s in the Driveway, and Oliver Has a New Song

Posted on August 22, 2023August 25, 2023 by Barry

Another good one, mixed with dogs and Chevrolet’s. The man is the real deal.

Via: Gateway Pundit

Controversy! My wife informs me that some places call the song “Brink of War”.

I have checked his youtube channel and “I Want To Go Home” is correct.

1

Power failure

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Mike

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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Dissing the franchise

Posted on August 12, 2023August 12, 2023 by Mike

In his latest Substack post Glenn suggests something I’ve been in favor of myself for years now.

Vivek Ramaswamy Channels Robert Heinlein, and Me
Raising the voting age, and demanding a commitment

So Vivek Ramaswamy is channeling a weird mix of me and Robert Heinlein with his new voting age proposal. (Hey, he could do worse).

The proposal is that the voting age should be raised to 25 by constitutional amendment (necessary to overcome the 26th Amendment, passed in 1971, which set the voting age at 18). Younger people could vote, but only if they had served in the military or as first responders, or if they could pass the same test given to foreigners applying for U.S. citizenship.

The first part of the proposal echoes a column I wrote some years ago about raising the voting age. After some unfortunate events at Yale and the University of Missouri, I wrote:

To be a voter, one must be able to participate in adult political discussions. It’s necessary to be able to listen to opposing arguments and even — as I’m doing right here in this column — to change your mind in response to new evidence.

This evidence suggests that, whatever one might say about the 18-year-olds of 1971, the 18-year-olds of today aren’t up to that task. And even the 21-year-olds aren’t looking so good.

We tend to treat voting as an act of self-expression, but it is also, in a sense, an act of violence. It is both a sort of proxy for violence, measuring the size of the forces on either side of an issue, and it leads, eventually, to real violence, since voting establishes the mechanism for passing and instituting laws that will eventually be enforced with violence. (As my old law professor Stephen Carter says, when you want a law passed, you say that you’d be willing to kill the people who don’t obey your wishes. That it’s at second hand, through the institution of government, doesn’t make it less violent, just less obvious.)

So we want voters to be reasonably informed, and capable of mature judgment. (At present it looks as if a college education may often actually make them less capable of mature judgment).

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in his famous novel Starship Troopers, envisioned a society where voters, too, had to demonstrate their patriotism before being allowed to vote. In his fictional society, the right to vote came only after some kind of dangerous public service — in the military, as a volunteer in dangerous medical experiments, or in other ways that demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice personally for the common good. The thought was that such voters would be more careful, and less selfish, in their voting.

That seems to be at the core of Ramaswamy’s proposal for letting people with military or first responder service vote sooner. Military service is a sort of “expensive signaling” of one’s willingness to serve the nation even at high personal cost. Such people are, on average, likely to be more public spirited.

The part of Ramaswamy’s proposal that I’m least enthusiastic about is the citizenship test. America had those sorts of tests before, and in the abstract they sound fine, even laudable. But historically they were applied/graded very unfairly, so as to disadvantage marginalized groups (chiefly, but by no means exclusively, blacks) and keep them from voting. I have no faith in the institutions that would apply and grade such tests today.

In the days following our Founding the franchise was limited to landowners, based on the idea that, pace Heinlein, they’d earned the right to vote via having what one might call skin in the game. After reading Starship Troopers about, oh, a dozen times, the relentless drumbeat advocating endless expansion of the franchise started to clang quite discordantly in my ear. The problem we have, it seemed to me, isn’t that not enough Americans vote, but that way too many of them do.

And most of them do so ignorantly, almost blindly, without even the most cursory of nods towards researching the candidates, the relevant issues, and the positions on said issues espoused by a given candidate. They pull the lever for the name that’s most familiar to them—or the incumbent, depending on the particular voter’s level of awareness—and go home congratulating themselves on having done their civic duty so nobly, so selflessly. Then, they forget the whole ordeal until another four years have flown by.

Well, bollocks to all that rot. With millions upon millions of complete stupes voting not their convictions or the issues they care most about, but based entirely on who they’ve seen on TeeWee the most during the month or so they’ve actually been paying any attention to politics whatsoever, is it any wonder the Republic is in the dire shape it now is?

Bottom line: Limbaugh used to rail about “Low Information Voters,” but it’s my carefully-considered opinion that no healthy polity ought to allow those Low-Infornation types to vote in the first place. If it does, it won’t BE healthy for very long. Most of these LIVs couldn’t tell you who James Madison or John Jay was, much less what the guy running for their State House or Senate thinks about anything.

But hey, he’s the one with the nice hair and smile, right?

WelpLostMyJob

Pshaw. I know, I know, just another of the myriad things that ain’t ever gonna happen, not a snowball’s chance of it. But still—I’m right just the same, and you damned well know I am too.

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Music for Mike

Posted on August 12, 2023August 14, 2023 by Barry

When I finished high school in 1971 a young man could get a job, get married, have children, and with some hard work and showing up to the job on time every day have a nice life. I have friends that did just that.

It’s not likely anymore, as most of us probably know. And this song which is going viral as they say makes the point pretty damn well.

Hat tip – Sundance at the Treehouse

And a nice update –
1) now the #1 song on US iTunes charts
2) In just four days, the video of Anthony singing Rich Men North of Virginia has amassed more than 20 million views on Twitter, and millions more across other social media platforms.

Oliver played in NC today

Rich Men North of Richmond

Update 2:
Oliver has 9 spots in the iTunes top 20, including #1, and 4 of the top 5
Resonates. There are more of us than there are of them

Oliver ITunes Sensation

5

Dark daze

Posted on August 3, 2023August 3, 2023 by Mike

No, nobody is coming for your guns wood stoves charcoal grills air conditioning gas stoves ICE-engine cars incandescent light bulbs. That’s just another silly-assed right-wing Conspiracy Theory, that’s all.

If you like your light bulb, you can’t keep your light bulb. The Biden administration is seeing to that. Well, to be fair you can keep whatever incandescent light bulbs you may currently own, but you won’t be able to replace them. That is because today is the day when the ban on the sale and manufacture of most incandescent light bulbs officially goes into effect. From here on out, your options will likely be limited to LEDs and fluorescents.

The funny thing is that this is not exactly news. People have known about it for years, and although it occasionally popped up in news stories or your local radio host’s “stack of stuff,” no one enforced it. I remember years ago when the word first came out that incandescents were on the hit list; my wife and I went to the local home improvement store and bought a small stockpile. Since there are only two of us and we don’t use that much power, we still have most of them. I have yet to hit the area stores to see if the shelves have been cleaned out by light bulb hoarders.

National Review notes that the Democrats passed the bill to ban the bulbs by phasing them out in 2007, and then-president George W. Bush even signed it into law. Obama tightened up the standards on incandescents to speed the process up. Trump rolled the whole affair back, and Biden resurrected the effort last year.

I recall reading years ago someplace that the ban came about due to GE pressing FederalGovCo hard for one during the Dubya reign of error, saying that incandescents had become so cheap they couldn’t make any real money off ‘em anymore. No, I ain’t gonna go hunt up a supporting link, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

So light ’em if you got ’em. Ads appearing on the back channels of the web advertising incandescent light bulbs should be arriving any day now. DOE enforcement officers may be kicking down the doors of the last mom-and-pop hardware stores to confiscate stockpiles of outlaw bulbs. You could be walking down the sidewalk and hear a whisper from the shadows, “Psst! Hey, buddy. Wanna buy a light bulb?”

Is there some sort of kickback or business deal tied to the ban on incandescent light bulbs? Possibly. I certainly wouldn’t put it past our elected and appointed officials to game the system. MRCTV has reported on Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s connections with the EV industry, and we know that the Biden administration is in bed with the solar industry. But overall, I suspect that this is being done because it can be done. This is one more rule, one more law, one way to remind you that there is nothing that the Uniparty can’t control, even if it means something as small as your light bulbs.

Can, and most assuredly will—for exactly as long as we sit still for it and let it happen, and not one micromillisecond longer. Until such time, they’re only just getting started, really.

1

The only way through it

Posted on August 2, 2023August 2, 2023 by Mike

Is to just do it.

We’ve been subjected to a lot of outrageous political double standards, but the one that says Democrats can deny – and even actively undermine – elections all they want, but Republicans go to jail for doing the same, might just be the one that tears the Republic apart.

It is very dangerous to teach a large number of people that elections are a joke and the political system is permanently rigged against them. The double standard on “election denial” is broadcasting that message with painful intensity. It’s almost gleeful mockery of democracy.

There’s basically nothing the Left can’t do to question, challenge, and undermine elections. Much of what Trump just got indicted for was a matter of widespread and open discussion on the Left after 2016. No threat of criminalizing such talk was made.

As if anyone really needed it, we’re getting a nice sneak peek at what hyper-politicized government crusades against “disinformation” will look like. Trump gets indicted, but dozens of “national security experts” who spread disinfo about Hunter’s laptop suffer no consequences.

At this point, a meme I hijacked from our good friends over at WRSA seems pretty apropos.

IfOnlyGOPe

Ahhh, if only. Onwards.

Democrats can do anything to win, by hook or by crook, and when they manage to lose even with ballot harvesting and “fortified” elections, they can undermine the election or actively sabotage the incoming administration. None of it will ever be treated as a crime.

Dems are even branching out from denying and undermining elections to go after other branches of government, as in their recent breathless campaign to undermine the Supreme Court, and even physically endanger justices they don’t like.

Our Republic has pulled itself off the mat after quite a few beatings, but this is the double standard we may not survive – turning elections into a “heads we win, tails you lose” joke. It fits neatly into the crisis of politicized and weaponized government agencies.

It’s an existential crisis when the permanent State uses its vast power and money to thwart elections that might threaten its interests – or to silence people who complain about its incompetence and malfeasance, very much including our Third World election process.

It’s looked for a good long while to me as if the way out of this mess has been reduced to but three options: Civil war, revolution, and/or national collapse and/or partition of some sort. Mind you, We Duh Sheeple won’t necessarily be the ones who get to decide which road to take—after the supine, even craven response to the FauxVid trial-run, we probably don’t deserve to be, can’t be trusted to be—but it seems to be narrowing rapidly to one (or perhaps some combination) of those three seriously unappetizing alternatives.

The above excerpts are from a Doc Zero thread, so of course you’ll want to read all of it.

Update! After a quick scan-through, I see that the preceding Hayward thread is well worth your time and attention as well.

The Hunter Biden saga illuminates the Biden family’s rapacious corruption, and even worse, the corruption of federal agencies to protect them. Also, it’s further evidence that we must shatter the elite bubble and force them to live in the America they made for the rest of us.

Of COURSE the corruption angle is huge, arguably the story of the century in American politics. Socialists claim they can create an all-knowing mega-government run by honest, selfless geniuses – but what they always deliver is a corrupt sewer state run by greedy mediocrities.

There are no big, honest governments, and every one of the many, many embarrassing tales of mega-corruption must be spotlighted to keep proving it, over and over again. The most important goal of civic reform today is shattering the pernicious illusion of Honest Big Government.

Hunter Biden is an absolutely perfect example of what socialism actually delivers: a privileged elite of boundless greed and degenerate morality, milking cash out of the trillion-dollar state by peddling influence and selling protection, insulated from all legal consequences.

Of COURSE that corruption slid easily into outright fascism over the past generation. It was only a matter of time before the mega-State began using its corporate Little Partners to skirt the Constitution and exert compulsive force against the people.

A-yup, you’ll never regret looking in on the good Doctah now and then.

Updated update! A Substack column I just recently became a free subscriber to ties both the above topics—the destruction of America That Was, and the FauxVid “dysfunction test”—neatly together, with a pretty little bow on top, and with the ongoing shit-typhoon of bogus Trump indictments thrown in for added spice.

Recent election interference from a weaponized Department of Justice intent on keeping Donald J. Trump from ever returning to the White House has horrified conservatives, independents, legal experts, and anyone with principles who cares about fairness, justice, and equality under the law.

They cannot fathom the banana republic transformation happening before their eyes, out in the open, and they weep for Lady Justice, who as I wrote after the shambolic New York indictment, “…hasn’t just been robbed of her blindfold, they’ve bent her over and invited every sick spook over for a gang bang.”

Watching conservatives’ confusion about recent election results and the political persecution of their favorite candidate is like watching the double-masked lockdowners waiting for Fauci to give them their next orders, except they’ll tune into the usual conservative commentariat who will never tell them the truth or risk losing their platforms that extract millions of dollars and billions of minutes of attention from these poor souls who just want their republic back.

You know the names: Bannon, Levin, Crowder, Hannity, Posobiec, Bongino, Beck, Shapiro, and the kid from Turning Point with down syndrome.

As they get their attention devotees to offer their labor to enrich their media empires, they further engender their rage while distancing them from reality.

What reality?

The reality that anyone with half a functioning brain could see coming since they orchestrated a domestic coup against Trump and spent four years undermining his Presidency.

The reality that conservative pundits failed for years to disclose to their loyal flock—Trump is not permitted to ever return to the White House. It doesn’t matter if he’s polling at 99% with all voters, he simply has two choices: Prison, or a plea deal that prevents his name from appearing on the ballot in 2024.

By George, I think he’s got it!

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No reason it can’t be both

Posted on July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 by Mike

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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Bang for the buck

Posted on July 25, 2023July 25, 2023 by Mike

I’ve said several times that, after the tampering/rigging/fraud debacles of ’20 and ’22, the only interest I’ll have in national “elections” going forward will be for their entertainment value, nothing more. Which, for 2024, is already looking as if it might turn out to be much higher than anticipated.

Good news, everyone! Mitt Romney (D, but R when necessary-Utah) has a plan for victory in the 2024 presidential race. That plan involves forcing Trump out of the field of candidates. Romney outlined his pathway to victory in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. While bemoaning the fact that Trump will likely be the nominee, Romney holds out hope that The Donald can be defeated, provided the race is narrowed down to two contenders before Trump “sews up” the nomination. For that to happen, the mega-donors and influencers in the GOP must convince those candidates who do not have a realistic chance of winning to drop out of the race.

HA! To rejigger that great Morpheus line just a wee mite: Mitt, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

He concedes that this may be easier said than done, but the risk of having expendable candidates in the race is just too high:

There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu has observed, “It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.”

Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.

Romney suggests a drop-dead date of Monday, Feb. 26. That is the first business day after the contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. He goes so far as to suggest that donors to lower-tier candidates extract a pledge from them that they will drop out if their prospects are dim after the fateful Monday.

Keep in mind that this is the same guy who was singing the praises of hot dogs just last week. And a man who has not shown his face at a single state or county GOP convention since he ran for Senate. I should know. I’ve been to more of them than he has.

Man, talk about your no-hopers—if ever there was one, it would have to be Mittens Romneycare, whose only real rival in terms of manifestly-doomed pResidential runs was recently-anointed grifter and pedophile Faux Jaux Bribem. As for Too Old Jaux, just a wweek or so ago his handlers announced his intention to conduct his “campaign” for re-“election” from his sarcophagus in the palatial basement of his Delaware home mansion palace, being far too frail and decrepit to actually come outside and attempt to move around any without the risk of falling and breaking his hip yet again.

Which jacks the entertainment value straight up to Everest-level heights.

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The problem with cities

Posted on July 16, 2023July 16, 2023 by Mike

Is that eventually, one way or another, their problems become our problems.

Imploding Cities Will Drag All of Us Down — Even if You Don’t Live Anywhere Near One
There is so much wrong with America’s cities, it’s hard to see why any contributing member of society would live and/or work in one of them. Some of the issues arise from far-Left local governance while others are generated by more widespread Leftist policy. These are coupled with an organic workforce evolution, as the United States transitions from an industry-based to an information-based economy. The result is urban areas caught in a downward spiral — and, as with any sinking vessel, threatening to suck everyone nearby down with them.

First, a quick refresher on the compounding problems of urban areas. Chief among them is that big cities are dark blue, and thus they’ve become crucibles of Left-wing policy failure. Uncontrolled crime, roving drug and mental-illness zombies, and swarms of sanctuary-recipient asylum scammers are crowding out reasonable people and businesses. The normals who remain to take advantage of access to cultural events (such as they are) and restaurant variety are also subject to totalitarian social controls and two-tiered justice systems that punish them when they fight back against criminals. But no matter how desperate the situation becomes, city councils can be counted on to double down on woke policies, then double down again.

Businesses are fleeing. In the ones that remain, shopping for basic goods has become a frustrating exercise in waiting for an associate to unlock the case so you can grab a razor and some toothpaste. Add in today’s high interest rates, which make owning and running a business prohibitively expensive, and the writing is on the wall. PJ Media colleague Rick Moran reported last month that large San Francisco commercial businesses, like hotels and malls, are simply walking away from their obligations, handing the keys to the banks with which their real estate is financed. Concurrently, major retailers are declining to renew leases and are simply closing their doors, unable to break even in an atmosphere where retail theft is encouraged. This process is occurring to some degree in major cities across the country.

While we conservatives point and laugh at the plight of woke cities from the comfort and safety of our suburban and rural homes, we may want to take a moment to consider a sobering issue. The effects of the imminent collapse of the commercial urban real estate market will ripple out across the financial sector and affect just about everyone in one way or another.

Remember the mortgage-backed securities crisis in 2008? And how, even if you didn’t default on your mortgage or didn’t even own a house, the entire economy tipped into what the hyperbolic media tagged “The Great Recession” and we all suffered? So, this would be kind of like that, except the problem will start with a commercial real estate collapse.

Which collapse is happening even as we speak (so to, umm, speak). Real Americans who aren’t shitty-city dwellers have no place they can reasonably expect to find succor, either:

Don’t start daydreaming that we’ll have a Republican president by then who will refuse to bail out imploding cities, either. When you realize that everyone’s pensions are involved, you understand that not bailing out these banks and cities was never going to be an option. They have us over a barrel. So we can expect a cool trillion or two to flow from Big G’s coffers. This, while we are still reeling from the inflation and high interest rates from the last crisis, the Great COVID Overreaction Rescue Plan.

There is much to recommend city life: museums, entertainment, fine dining, varied shopping and cultural experiences, travel hubs, and excellent medical care are all steps away. A large segment of the population prefers such a stimulating and convenient lifestyle, and they would happily live in cities regardless of whether they worked at home. Enterprising landlords could convert less-used office space to living space and continue to run a profitable business. But so long as Soros DAs, activists, and city councilors keep making urban life unlivable, America’s cities will continue to circle the drain. And we’re all going to get sucked down with them.

Too bad, that, and no, it ain’t really fair. It’d be all too easy to assume that, what with the industry and manufacturing that for many years was centered in our large cities now gone the way of the dodo, the cities’ influence over and ability to affect the outlying areas might have diminished a great deal, but it just isn’t the case. As ever-larger numbers of those in a position to do so flee the urban shithole-zones, the rest of us Flyover-Country types will almost certainly be feeling the pain too—and the lamentable tendency of those big-city refugees to vote for the exact same things that ruined their own befouled nests* is only the beginning of it.

* Which tendency may or may not be apocryphal, interestingly enough, according to what you’re reading and who wrote it

Is it tyranny yet?

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Mike

Yes, it most certainly is. The Advanced stage of it, actually; we blew right by the “Intermediate” and “Beginner” levels and left them spinning Wile E Coyote-like in our dust long, long ago.

By operations underway I mean things like mRNA vaccines stealthily deleting kin, friends, and public figures from the scene…decriminalizing crime…undermining the oil industry by a thousand cuts…liquidating small business…making little children insane over sex…flooding the land with illegal immigrants…devaluing the currency…queering elections — all of these things done on purpose, by the way. And if you complain about any of it, here comes the FBI or the IRS knocking on your door.

So, to make sure that a collapse of the USA comes on-schedule, there is the useful fracas created by our government geniuses over in Ukraine that creeps day-by-day toward a quick American assisted suicide. Just to remind you, here’s how that started: In 2014, the US fomented a coup against Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In short order, the Russian language was banned (despite the fact that Most Ukrainians speak Russian). A piqued Russia re-po’d the Crimean Peninsula. When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (the Donbas provinces) tried to go their own way, Ukraine shelled and rocketed them for eight years. That was the setup.

All of the above was absolutely unnecessary, you understand. Ukraine had been going about its business the best it could since 1991 as a shlub nation with an aged-out Soviet infrastructure, some US-sponsored bioweapons labs, and no energy resources. It had been collecting royalties for allowing Russia to run oil pipelines across its fruited plain — of which, a lot of gas was siphoned off in transit by bandits. Ukraine attempted to compensate for its disadvantages by being an international money laundromat, though that only benefited its oligarch class (and the extended “Joe Biden” family).

After “Joe Biden” got “elected” in 2020, and news of his family’s sketchy business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere finally dribbled out, Ukraine was turned into a giant grenade and “JB” (or persons acting on his behalf) pulled the pin. NATO was dragooned into the quarrel as backup against its better judgment. If the objective was to weaken Russia, as stated by one of our strategic geniuses, SecDef Loyd Austin, it didn’t work out. Rather, it exposed the USA as a reckless global psychopath bent on wrecking every country it pretends to help — including the major countries in NATO.

Another good outing from Kunstler which, alas, falls apart in the closing ‘graph.

Anyway, “Joe Biden’s” entire act is unspooling. He is a prank that the Democratic Party played on the American people. Sometime before Halloween he will have to exit the scene in disgrace, gruesome as the prospect might seem, with Kamala Harris anxiously draining vodka bottles as she awaits history’s call at the old Naval Observatory. That will be a fun day in the USA, all righty.

Sorry Jim, ain’t gonna happen; barring Too Old Jaux succumbing to age and general decrepitude, he ain’t going anywhere, and will assuredly be running for re-“election” next year should he live long enough to. The Repugnicants aren’t going to be impeaching his corrupt ass, in spite of an over-abundance of grounds for doing so—and, having grubbed so very desperately for several decades to worm his way into the White House, the notion that he would ever step down of his own volition is self-evidently absurd.

Saw it coming from fourteen years away

Posted on July 13, 2023July 13, 2023 by Mike

Derb looks back in bitter schadenfreude.

Back in 2009, I published a book, We Are Doomed.

The subtitle was Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. And I was pointing out to American Conservatives that they weren’t succeeding in anything because they had been too optimistic; and that the proper stance for a philosophical conservative is a careful pessimism.

So now, 14 years on, I want to discuss the question: in what direction have we gone since I published that book?

As we all know only too well, the answer to that question is grim indeed: straight down the crapper.

Follows, John takes what he calls “a quick canter through the last 14 years of our Cultural Revolution” which demonstrates that the man isn’t just a visionary, he’s a full-on fucking prophet. The issues are addressed according to the book’s chapter titles: Culture, Sex, Education, War, Immigration, and so on, well-aimed salvos on not a single one of which he missed his mark.

From the Diversity section, which holds that the real problem isn’t necessarily with “diversity” itself, rather with the preposterous surfeit of it the maniacal Left has studiously rammed down Real American throats in recent years.

I’m personally, a “salt in the stew” diversitiphile. I like a little diversity.

I grew up in mid-20th century England. The guy who sold us ice cream was an Italian!

And one of the girls in our class was Scottish, which we thought was very exotic. She had a Scottish accent.

And then, when I was in my teens, we got our first Chinese restaurant! And that was good too.

But it was salt in the stew. A little bit of salt spices up the stew. But you really don’t want to dump a whole bag of salt into your stew.

Which is what we seem to want to do.

Well, actually, it’s what some of us want to force the rest of us to do, more like.

(Via WRSA)

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