Category: The Ruling Class

Our “betters” and their folly

GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Pathocracy

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Kuenstler coins a note-perfect descriptor for the greedy, grasping, and patently insane central Leviathan-state in Amerika v2.0.

Memorial Service
An anxious silence falls over the land this Memorial Day as we discern increasingly that those we put in charge of this shape-shifting thing called the public interest are running out of trips to lay on the people. Something grotesque is revealing itself: a bankruptcy not just of money but of national purpose, meaning, and legitimacy. You realize this day, with a breaking heart, that your country has been stolen by psychopaths.

Brace for impact. We’re already off the road and now it’s only a matter of how this vehicle comes to a stop in the ditch. Then, it’s a question of how each of us emerges from the smoldering wreckage. The main thing, though, is clear to everyone: What we were riding in is no more. We’re out there stumbling around in the dark, in shock, trying desperately to assess our whereabouts and what has happened to us.

Now, the trouble with being ruled by psychopaths is that they don’t care about other people. They are actually incapable of imagining the lives of others, especially the fact that these others care about each other, and what happens to them. You may have noticed, for instance, that the psychopath Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) went to Ukraine last week and declared, “Russians are dying. We have never spent money so well.” Only a couple of months ago, he called for the assassination of Vladimir Putin. He stopped short of dissing Mr. Putin’s mother.

Pathocracy always marches toward totalitarianism because pathocrats can’t imagine a management of public affairs by a people who care about each other (and their country). Therefore, everyone must be subject to incessant coercion and punishment, especially for their thoughts (and especially for thoughts of opposition to pathocracy). However, there are certainly more people who care about each other than there are psychopaths in America. I’m not a big fan of quantification but, for the record, psychiatric meta-analysis estimates that 1.2 to 4.5 percent of the population displays psychopathic personality disorders.

How that tiny fraction of the citizenry came to take charge of our affairs is surely the big mystery of the moment. My guess is that under conditions of economic-social-and-political collapse, the people who care about each other become preoccupied with their mutual caretaking duties while the psychopaths, unburdened by such cares, can go about other business — such as plunder, murder, and the sowing of chaos.

Sometimes in history, the pathocrats are simply overthrown by the majority of humans with functioning emotional equipment. It’s not easy, though, because in most other places around the world, the pathocracy become the sole owners of the guns and have armies and police at their disposal to put down revolts. That’s not quite exactly the case here in the USA with our Second Amendment to the Constitution. The putative president, “Joe Biden,” cracked some time ago that anyone seeking to oppose him better bring some F-15 fighter planes to get the job done. As the good book says: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

This Memorial Day is the pregnant moment before history gives birth to new and astounding events. Everyone senses it. The rough beasts are out there slouching across the fruited plain. Attend to your duties courageously, as those before us did, who we remember today.

Amen to all that.

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Another GOPe “win”

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Doesn’t even rise to the customary level of a Pyrrhic victory, so they’ve really outdone themselves this time.

McCarthy’s debt-ceiling deal with Biden comes up short on his vow to rein in IRS
Kevin McCarthy trumpeted a debt-ceiling deal Sunday, but increasing debt another $4 trillion with minimal concessions is nothing to boast about.

To be fair, the House speaker has a razor slim majority and Republicans don’t control the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his sidekick Lindsey Graham have announced that the only thing they care about is Ukraine.

But McCarthy’s one dealbreaker should have been his promise to defund President Biden’s massive $80 billion to turbocharge an already weaponized IRS.

This was the totemic centerpiece of his pitch to become speaker.

It was the most memorable promise of the Republicans’ midterm campaign to win back the House.

It struck a chord with voters, wary of funding a new “army” of armed IRS agents to harass middle-class families and small business owners and abuse their powers to target political dissidents, Soviet-style.

“Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy vowed.

“You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”

Actually, Kev, it’s my own belief that the government should just stick to its Constitutionally-prescribed remit, which consists entirely of:

  • Securing the national borders
  • Providing for the common defense
  • Regulating interstate commerce
  • And otherwise just leaving me the fuck alone, forget about all that “helping” bushwa

But that’s probably just me, I do admit. Anyhoo, guess what happened next. Go on, guess. I DARES ya.

“Promises made,” the newly minted speaker said Jan. 9, banging the gavel on the first bill of the Republican-controlled House. 

What about promises kept? 

In the debt-ceiling deal outlined Sunday and due to be inked later this week, McCarthy has allowed the lion’s share of that extra IRS funding to remain unmolested: preserving $78.1 billion of the $80 billion. 

As rebel GOP Rep Dan Bishop put it: “So there will be 85,260 more IRS agents rather than 87,000 to eat you alive. Big win.”

A-yup, that’s about the size of it. Perfectly typical of the in-cahoots Vichy GOPe swine, though.

Overpromising and underdelivering is what turns voters off the GOP. 

True enough, I suppose. What it also does, though, is expose beyond possibility of further debate just who exactly they really are, and what exactly it is they’re really doing.

You don’t mount a powerful six-month fear campaign about 87,000 new, armed IRS agents ready to break down people’s doors, and then meekly capitulate at the first sign of resistance. 

Even if those fears were exaggerated, your credibility rests on delivering a lot more than 2% of what you promised. 

Ahh, but that statement assumes some things that are decidedly NOT in evidence with the Vichy GOPe swine: one, that they have at least some integrity, and two, that they give a tinker’s damn about any perception of “credibillity” among an electorate that they assume won’t be paying attention to what they’re doing in the first place. Just, y’know, to name two of ‘em.

Much more yet to this fine if somewhat bitter-tasting article, of which you should read the all.

(Via Sefton)

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Show trial, on trumped-up charges, in kangaroo court

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Serving up a rancid platter of greasy, unpalatable “justice,” Amerika v2.0 style.

‘It’s Fairy Dust’: The Proud Boys Case Goes to Jury
The fate of five men who supported Trump and protested Joe Biden’s election on January 6 lies in the hands of a biased D.C. jury.

A marathon January 6 trial besieged by scandal, controversy, and acrimony is now in the hands of a Washington, D.C. jury. After nearly four months of back and forth, the government and defense attorneys made their final pitch during closing arguments this week in the multi-count case against five members of the Proud Boys.

The drama surrounding the trial, both inside and outside the courtroom, is worthy of a Netflix series: shocking revelations of numerous FBI informants, deleted government evidence, outbursts from the bench, colorful defense attorneys, last-minute accusations of an assault on police, a mysterious “attack plan” sourced to a former intelligence operative, and concerns over a jury stalker, to name a few.

At the center of the drama are innocent men held behind bars awaiting trial as the January 6 Select committee conducted televised hearings portraying the Proud Boys as one of the masterminds behind a “domestic terror attack” the Biden regime compares to 9/11.

Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Joseph Biggs, and Dominic Pezzola have been incarcerated under pretrial detention orders since early 2021 on various counts, including conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. By the time jury selection began in December, the defendants had been in jail for almost two years awaiting trial. Rehl, Pezzola, and Biggs are military veterans with no criminal history. (Biggs is a Purple Heart recipient.) Enrique Tarrio, the group’s leader, was arrested on similar charges in March 2022.

In June 2022, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves indicted all five with seditious conspiracy, a rarely used post-Civil War statute, accusing the men of “oppos[ing][ by force the Government of the United States and by force to prevent, hinder, and delay the execution of any law of the United States.” Evidence was gleaned from more than 500,000 messages, which included FBI informants and unindicted co-conspirators, posted on Parler, Telegram, and group texts; virtual meetings and interviews; and video clips of the defendants’ movements before and at the Capitol on January 6.

“These defendants and their co-conspirators were motivated by a shared refusal to accept the results of the 2020 Presidential Election,” Graves’ office wrote in a brief last week laying out the conspiracy’s timeline. “In the weeks following that election, the defendants—in their roles as leaders and members of the Proud Boys—publicly and privately expressed their rejection of the results and their beliefs about the necessary response.”

Two cooperating witnesses and multiple FBI agents and police officers took the stand over the course of several weeks to detail the defendants’ alleged plot to strike “the heart of our democracy,” assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe said on Monday. “Their success was only temporary. The Constitution survived.”

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Stop it, man, you’re killing me over here.

The conspiracy, Mulroe explained, can be “unspoken, implicit, a mutual understanding, or a wink and a nod”—a laughably broad definition for an offense akin to treason.

“It’s fairy dust,” Steven Metcalf, Pezzola’s attorney, told the jury Tuesday morning. Pezzola is charged with using a riot shield to punch out a window pane that day. Metcalf asked how a “transfer of brain power” between men who didn’t really know each other resulted in a near-coup on January 6.

The government’s case, Nordean’s defense attorney Nicholas Smith told the jury, was held together by “paper clips and rubber bands.” He warned that any convictions on the conspiracy counts would set a grave precedent. “Is every riot a conspiracy?”

Nah, not at all; only the ones not planned, managed, and perpetrated by Communists are. Those ones aren’t “conspiracies,” “insurrections,” nor even “riots” at all, really. Perish the thought. What those are is “mostly peaceful protests” thrown by “patriots” in defense of “Our Sacred Democracy”—an entirely legitimate exercise of their guaranteed right to free expression and non-violent protest, however much assault and battery, destruction of private property, arson, and looting might occur.

Everything else is fair game for indefinite detention in solitary confinement without benefit of charges, legal counsel, or a swift and fair trial in open court by a jury of their peers. It’s spelled out right there in the US Constitution, clearly and specifically, if you care to look it up yourself. Thus:

But, of course, all government shenanigans are condoned in the courtroom of Judge Timothy J. Kelly. The Trump appointee and former Justice Department lawyer has acted as an extra prosecutor, giving the government near carte blanche discretion in this case. Nearly every ruling leading up to the trial favored the prosecution.

He repeatedly denied the defendants’ release from jail at the Justice Department’s request. As evidence mounted that Trump supporters cannot get a fair trial in the most Democratic city in the country, Kelly refused to move the trial to another jurisdiction.

How these soulless, bought-and-paid-for judges and prosecutors can look at themselves in the bathroom mirror every morning without slitting their own throats from shame and remorse for the unspeakable atrocities they daily commit against all that’s right and decent is way the hell beyond me. Pity not only the J6 victims, but all Real Americans who fall into the clutches of this twisted, evil system.

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TRUMPGASM!

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After furiously auto-diddling themselves for six frustrating years with no relief, the Leftard cat-ladies and girly-men have finally achieved one, and the pleasure is so intense they’re positively giddy from it.

Did They Light Up a Cigarette Afterward?
The New York Times enjoyed its long-delayed tantric Trumpgasm so much today that it rolled out the full-page banner headline format usually reserved for the commencement of world wars. (They took the banner down before seven o’clock this morning.) For many of the cat-ladies employed as “reporters” at the once-august paper, it was the first Trumpgasm they’ve ever experienced in a lifetime of emotional displacement, over-eating, and furious knitting of pink polyester hats for the crusade to root out patriarchal wickedness.

This fulfillment of a years-long psychodrama, starring the feared and loathed occult persona of a gold-coiffed “Daddy” figure who once presided in the political household, came at the hands of dragon-slayer Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, archetype of the many long-oppressed victims worked to death in the bilges of our slave ship of state — now turned righteous Woke deliverer of cosmic vengeance!

This oh-so-satisfying climax, of course, is brought to you by the party of hoaxes, flimflams, and mandated death shots, so it’s amusing here on the sidelines to see The Times’s op-ed writers squirm with post-coital pleasure underneath the full-page Trumpgasmic headline. The lead editorial declares: “Even Donald Trump Should Be Held Accountable”— overlooking the utter absence of accountability that has been the norm in every recent insult to the nation’s dignity from wholesale and repeat election fraud, to six years of lawless depravity in the FBI, to overt support of Antifa and BLM street havoc, to the forced, deceitful administration of deadly “vaccines.”

Such pleasure! Such passion! Such carnal bliss! Imagine how hard they’ll get off from watching the eventual Trump perp-walk and incarceration on live TeeWee. Why, it’s ever so much better than the erotic frisson they get from enabling pedophile “transgender” degenerates to proselytize and recruit the children of Normal Americans in defiance of the express wishes of their hapless, helpless parents! As sweetly satisfying, as deeply thrilling as that surely was, Drag Queen Story Hour for eight-year-olds simply could never hold a candle to this!

Oh god oh god oh god, harder, faster, deeper oh pleasepleasepleeeeaaase don’t ever stop!!!*

Heh. What a classic old vid, no? Plenty of folks don’t know it, but Offspring frontman Dexter Holland’s genius is by no means limited to the field of music: among several other interesting achievements, he also holds a PhD in molecular biology from USC, no shit.

Be that little digression as it may, let’s not short-dick another thrill-producing aspect to this development for these hedonistic Leftwit pleasure-seekers: the destruction of the long-moribund Republic, and its final descent into for-real Banana Republic-dom.

End of the Republic

Is the title of this piece apocalyptic hyperbole? I wish it were. But everyone in the country and most of the people in the wide world know that Donald Trump has not actually been indicted for the crime of giving hush money to a prostitute. He has been indicted for the crime of opposing the Leftist elites and challenging their control over the political system. For the first time in American history, a politician – indeed, a front-running presidential candidate – has been indicted in order to destroy his political chances. Americans used to take pride in the fact that such things didn’t happen in the United States of America. But that United States of America is over.

Donald Trump has been indicted on the thinnest of charges. House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, and House Administration Committee chairman Bryan Steil recently wrote a letter to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, the destroyer of the republic, pointing out that “even the Washington Post quoted ‘legal experts’ as calling your actions ‘unusual’ because ‘prosecutors have repeatedly examined the long-established details but decided not to pursue charges.’”

Even the New York Times on March 9, in an article about how criminal charges were pending against Trump, that “hush money is not inherently illegal.” Working hard to justify the looming pseudo-legal banana republic action of arresting the sitting president’s principal opponent, the Times suggested that “the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that because the money silenced Ms. Daniels, it benefited his candidacy.” So the whole thing rests on a novel legal theory. Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA tweeted: “Alvin Bragg lowered 52% of criminal charges in NYC last year to misdemeanors. He just bent over backwards legally to raise the charges against Trump to a felony. WITCH HUNT!!”

That it certainly is, and worse. Former TV and radio host John Cardillo warned: “Don’t downplay the severity of this indictment. There’s still another GJ in NYC, one in GA, and a federal one connected to the Special Counsel investigation. We are watching the political weaponization of our entire criminal justice system. This is a constitutional crisis.”

Much more is coming. Many are saying that the indictment hands Trump the election of 2024, but it’s actually designed to do just the opposite, and the designers are not stupid people. The objective is to prevent Trump from being able to run in 2024, or failing that, to make it impossible for him to win. The average American still has unreflective confidence in our institutions, and will assume from the very fact of Bragg’s indictment, and the others that are certain to come, that Trump must be some kind of criminal. The flimsiness of the cases won’t matter. The public perception will be formed, and that could be enough in himself to make sure that Trump doesn’t return to the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Then if all this legal harassment somehow fails, there is still the ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots, and all the rest of the new system that has been carefully put into place and will ensure that neither Trump nor any other dissenter from the Left’s agenda will have a chance to win in 2024.

America’s descent to banana republic status has now been confirmed, but it has been coming on for a very long time. Old Joe Biden signaled it on Sept. 1, 2022, in his infamous red-and-black speech, when he declared: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” For the first time in the history of the United States, a sitting president, such as he is, declared that his principal opponent and his opponent’s supporters were criminals who were outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse. Now the ruling Leftists elites have taken the next step in indicting Trump. After that will come various measures to treat his supporters as if they were terrorists.

This is a dark day for the United States.

Indeed it is. And so much the better for any Trump-horny shitlib. What’s not to like here for such “people,” prithee tell? It’s all deliciously tantalizing grist for the America-hater lust-mill. No wonder they’re all springing a stiffy and splooging in their Underoos over this. I’ll let my old chum and hard-rockin’ colleague Mike Ness have the last word.

For those who might not know already, Ness is a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist his own self, of course. What the hell, he’s a punk-rock musician and celebrity, born and raised in Lost Wangeles, so what else would one expect? I still like the guy; he was always really good to me, despite our glaring political differences.

NOTE: I had originally written this intending it to be today’s Eyrie post, but since Substack doesn’t allow video embeds for some reason, I brought it over here instead. So now I gotta scramble around and find something to write about over there, since IMHO the video embeds sorta pull the whole thing together and make it sing, so to speak.

*Why yes, as a matter of fact I DID write pR0n for a living for a brief spell back when I was in NYC, why do you ask? I make no apology for that; don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful, but as my friend Chris Pfouts pointed out when he first hooked me up with the job, almost all of the Great American Writers from the 20th century on did the same at some point, right up to and including Hemingway and Fitzgerald themselves. Being nothing anywhere near their league, I figured I wasn’t above resorting to erotic fiction for pay myself, if that’s what New York would require of me in order to keep body and soul together.

So there.

The “free trade” falsehood

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The implicit question: how much does it cost if it’s free?

An American System for America Prosperity
The ideology of global free trade is not American—nor is it the free market system. America had the highest tariff rates in history at the same time we saw the greatest economic expansion in history.

Our founders understood that America could not be independent and strong if we relied on other nations for our manufactured goods. They understood the United States had the natural resources, the technology, the labor force, and ample customers at home to support domestic industry and be largely self-sufficient.

As an example to his countrymen to “Buy American,” George Washington wore a suit of American-made cloth at his inauguration in 1789. “I hope it will not be a great while before it will be unfashionable for a gentleman to appear in any other dress. Indeed, we have already been too long subject to British prejudices,” he wrote. Washington believed the United States could manufacture as well as farm, and he instructed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to come up with a plan to develop industry on these shores.

Hamilton’s plan, detailed in his 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures, called for tariffs that would raise revenues and protect infant American industries against predatory competition, and government procurement contracts to encourage American manufacturers.

The American System, also called the American School of economics, guided U.S. national economic development from the earliest days of the republic, through the Civil War, and into the better part of the 20th century. It built the United States from an agrarian frontier society into the world’s largest economy and greatest industrial power.

The American System had three basic tenets to promote domestic industry. The government would:

  • use tariffs to discourage imports, and leverage the purchasing power of government to give preference to domestic producers;
  • invest in roads, ports, dams, canals, and turnpikes—then called “internal improvements,” now called infrastructure—to facilitate commerce; and
  • regulate credit to spur economic development and deter speculation.

Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1789 as its second piece of legislation. The opening section reads, “It is necessary for the support of the government, the discharge of the debts of the United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures that a duty be laid on goods and merchandise imported.”

The tax on imports raised revenue to fund the government and prevented foreign goods from smothering our own infant industries. Tariffs were the nation’s primary source of revenue for its first 150 years. Consider: we taxed foreign industries, not our own.

In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton delivered his Report on the Subject of Manufactures to President Washington. It laid out the plan for the federal government to nurture the growth of domestic manufacturing industries in the United States rather than allow the new nation to depend on manufactured goods from abroad.

Hamilton declared: “Not only the wealth; the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation…ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means to Subsistence habitation clothing and defence.”

A diversified economy of agriculture, merchants, and manufacturing would provide opportunities for Americans of all skills, “furnishing greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other,” Hamilton wrote.

Hamilton’s report stood in contrast to “free traders” who believed America should confine itself to farming, export raw materials, and buy manufactured goods from Great Britain.

NOTE: I am not an economist, nor have I ever played one on TeeWee. That said, I hadn’t realized before just how recent the Neocon obssession with “free trade” really was until I read this fascinating piece, nor had I known just how adamantly most if not all of the Founders were opposed to any such notion, ditto for several of our later Presidents such as Lincoln and McKinley. Buck Throckmorton, via whom etc, has this to say about it:

Principled Free Traders™ have often been the target of my writing, not because of my having a deep ideological hostility to free trade, but because they have used the term “free trade” as a false-flag for their globalist hostility to US sovereignty, and for their open contempt for working-class Americans.

Unlike 1990s-era free trade, which was promoted as being about reciprocal, barrier-free trade, America’s 21st Century Principled Free Traders™ have advocated for unilateral surrender to foreign mercantilism. (Mercantilism is the economic theory that a country’s wealth increases by having a surplus balance of trade, using protectionism as necessary to ensure the favorable trade imbalance.) Principled Free Traders™ favor unrestricted access to the US market for products made in hostile, authoritarian countries, while gladly accepting that those countries maintain tariffs and prohibitions on importing products from the US.

After doing a learn-to-code grave dance on those working class Americans who lost their middle-class lifestyle, Principled Free Traders™ argued that it was all cool, because products made by cheap foreign labor (and slaves) gave Americans more spending power.

As for me, the reality is that I’ve historically been more of a reciprocal free trader – what many of us called “fair trade” – than a protectionist, thus my contempt for the globalists who actively sought to harm America in the name of free trade.

Our founders and our greatest Presidents agreed that that the US must never be dependent on foreign countries for food, provisions, or the ability to secure our national defense. And even the Father of Capitalism stood for economic nationalism.

I’m proud to be an economic nationalist if the alternative is “free trade” that is designed to harm Americans.

Amen to all that, my friend. Funny, innit, how very much of the Vichy GOPe/Uniparty/Neocon agenda does indeed seem designed to damage AINO rather than to help, their indignant protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

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Did The Enemy just blink?

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Doubtful, since ultimately, they’ll be back for another bite as sure as the sun rises. Nonetheless, as you’ve all no doubt heard by now, there were indeed some seriously, umm, interesting developments yesterday and today in the ongoing persecution of President Donald J Trump.

Hold Everything: Now Trump Will Likely NOT Be Arrested, at Least on Tuesday
Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that he would be arrested on Tuesday, and the nation has been agog at the prospect of the Leftist establishment crossing the rubicon of arresting its principal opponent on flimsy charges and demonstrating before the entire world that the American republic is now the American banana republic, in which foes of the regime can expect the full weight of corrupt government authority pushing back against them for daring to dissent.

But now it turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has Trump in its sights, just may be stepping back from the brink: Business Insider reported Saturday night that Trump’s indictment is “on hold” until one more witness testifies Monday afternoon.

That’s about all that has come to light, as the relevant authorities are being quite closemouthed about this whole thing. Insider says that “a source with knowledge of the investigation” told them on Saturday night “there is one more witness.” The indictment is apparently not a certainty until this witness testifies.

But who is this witness? The Insider’s source wouldn’t say, and so all that we’re told is that “a separate source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told Insider that the witness is not Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former CFO, who is serving a five-month sentence for admittedly masterminding a payroll tax-dodge scheme at the Trump Organization.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, whose betrayal of his former client started this whole business about Trump having paid hush money to a porn star (which is what he might be arrested for, not any of the literally dozens of other crimes that Democrats have claimed he has committed over the last few years, up to and including trying to overthrow the government of the United States), “has told reporters he expected to be the grand jury’s final witness when he testified last Monday and Wednesday.” So whoever is slated to appear on Monday is a surprise witness.

Insider notes that the grand jury “could conceivably reach a vote” on whether or not actually to indict Trump for trying to buy a hooker’s silence “by the end of Monday’s three-hour session,” but that’s not likely to happen, as “experts” say that “there are several steps between the final testimony and the vote.”

More on the scumbag Cohen’s erstwhile colleague, who was to testify today.

BREAKING: Ex-Michael Cohen attorney set to testify MONDAY with new ‘exculpatory’ evidence that could VINDICATE Trump
Yeah about that Trump arrest? Guess what: a lawyer who worked for Michael Cohen has apparently contacted Trump’s current attorneys with information that he says is “exculpatory” in the puffed up case against Trump in New York.

Here’s more from the Washington Examiner:

A lawyer who once worked for Michael Cohen is reportedly expected to testify Monday before a Manhattan grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump.

Robert Costello is expected to deliver testimony following a request from Trump’s lawyers as prosecutors weigh possible criminal charges against the former president, the Wall Street Journal reported. Costello gave advice to Cohn during an FBI raid on his home and office back in 2018. Prosecutors have also requested Cohen remain available Monday.

Costello’s testimony is significant because he previously recounted that Cohen told him that he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels in order to protect Melania Trump and that Cohen sought a pardon from Trump, per the Wall Street Journal. Cohen has already waived the attorney-client privilege with Costello.

“already waived the attorney-client privilege”

Uh-oh, buddy. That’s gonna bite you right in the butt, dummy, lol. Oh and by the way, Costello was also an attorney for Steve Bannon at some point. Not sure what that has to do with anything but it’s interesting.

Gonna be a very interesting week all over, y’all.

It would seem so, yeah. Back over to Spencer for the sobering last word.

The Left’s reaction to Donald Trump’s political career has from the beginning been a classic case of a conviction in search of a crime. Charging their foes with bogus crimes is a venerable and tested Leftist tactic, going back to Stalin’s trials of his former Bolshevik comrades, whom he forced to confess to various fabricated charges of subversion in order to justify his executing them and consolidating his power as an unquestioned autocrat.

In the U.S., the Democrats enjoyed tremendous gains in both houses of Congress and won the presidency on the strength of Watergate, and they’ve never forgotten that lesson; in fact, tarring their opponents as criminals on bogus charges has become a cornerstone of their political strategy. And that is a prelude to treating them like actual criminals, complete with arrests, handcuffs, and perp walks. Whether or not it comes Tuesday, it’s coming.

Yep, count on it. I repeat: as sure as the sun rises. It’s so for Trump, it’s so for Trump’s family, and it’ll be so for any and every other nonconformist, pro-American dissident with the temerity to defy the D卐M☭CRATs and run for Prexy, let alone somehow find a way to overcome the ironclad Margin Of Fraud and win.

I do hope Ron DeSantis is watching all this very carefully, and bearing closely in mind that it’s exactly what will be done to him too should he accede to the intense pressure he’s getting from the Left, the NeverTrumpTards, and the other Vichy GOPe shitstains to run for the useless show-office. He’s perfectly within his rights to do so if he likes, and there’s not a thing wrong with that, I still maintain. But he’d be a damned fool to, if you ask me.

Update! For my money, JJ has the right of it. Mostly.

While Spencer’s observation is certainly true, the state of the nation today is markedly different from the Watergate era. Divided as we were even back then, there was still a level of trust in the institutions and traditions of the American governmental and legal system, as well as in the media, and even with diametrically opposed views on the issues of the day, still at least a modicum of respect for those with whom you disagree and the commonality of nation and heritage. Today, that has all but vanished on every front. In fact, an overwhelming percentage of the American people believe that we have a two-tiered justice system that favors those in power and the Left in general.

Whatever the calculus of the junta in going after Trump, they will only succeed in making him into a martyr. I have not been sanguine about a Trump candidacy in 2024. My biggest negatives are his age, his puerile name-calling against DeSantis, and most distressing, his making the theft of the 2020 election the central pillar of his campaign. He’s had some flashes of brilliance with his trade package and his intent to go to war against woke-ism in all its forms. But so far, his negatives outweigh the positives. YMMV, but I think a lot of people are feeling this way about him.

But that said, I have always thought of him as the leader of a movement that goes way beyond mere electoral politics. In fact, it’s kind of strange to read Miranda Devine’s analysis insofar as the Democrat calculus of preferring to face Trump rather than DeSantis for fear of him wiping the floor with Biden or whoever, since they regard Trump to be a pushover. Considering they have all but institutionalized election fraud in the key swing districts and states they stole in 2020, what does it matter who is running?

For me, this has less if anything to do with who the candidate is in 2024 than mere distraction and above all else, retribution against Donald Trump. That’s what all this is about.

Love him, hate him or whatever, Donald Trump intentionally or not started a movement that exposed the hypocrisy and corruption that has now completely subsumed our government and much of our society. Whatever they do to him or try to do to him, what he started will not be stopped. There is no going back now to the way things were. A lot of it was a lie, and there are powerful forces and more alarmingly a great deal of the citizenry duped into or otherwise consciously supporting the transformation of America into a socialist disaster to be served up to the Davos-Brussels-Beijing Axis, or perhaps a resurgent Islamic global caliphate.

So, go ahead and slap the cuffs on Trump. It worked so well for the British when they did it to Gandhi, didn’t it?

As bitterly cynical as I’ve become nowadays, I wouldn’t expect any such felicitous outcome in Trump’s case, if only because present-day Amerikans are much too soft, too spoiled, and too cozened to display the kind of balls-to-the-wall courage Gandhi and his legions of followers did back then.

On the other hand, though, it’s become near-axiomatic among serious (ie, non-shitlib) students of history that Gandhi was fortunate in that his British opposition was civilized and reserved, and exercised forbearance and restraint—well, eventually, at any rate, after some pretty brutal beatings and mass imprisonment—in dealing with the movement Gandhi represented.

Had it been, say, Stalin instead, things might well have worked out very, very differently for Mohandas K Gandhi and his campaign for Indian national independence. And our present-day dictatorship bears a much closer resemblance to Stalin’s own than it does British PM Ramsay MacDonald’s and Chancellor Neville Chamberlain’s colonially-exhausted, war-weary nation circa the late 20s/early 30s.

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Hot gas eructation

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Tucker sets war-happy chickenhawk Miss Lindsey Graham straight on some things.

Tucker Carlson Rips Lindsey Graham’s Suggestion To ‘Attack’ Russian Jets That Threaten US Assets

Fox News host Tucker Carlson called out Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s response to the downing of a U.S. drone over the Black Sea.

“What would Ronald Reagan do? Oh, good question, Senator Graham,” Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller News Foundation said after playing a clip of the senator demanding that Russian jets be shot down. “Ronald Reagan’s two-term presidency was notable for the fact that he did not declare war on the Russian air force and therefore the United States did not go to war with Russia and millions of lives were saved as a result. That’s not a small thing.”

A Russian jet collided with an Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone Tuesday following a series of maneuvers, including dumping jet fuel on the drone. The drone crashed into the Black Sea, where Biden administration officials said measures were taken to “minimize” Russia’s ability to exploit the drone if it were to be recovered.

Graham said Tuesday that the U.S. should shoot down any Russian warplane that threatens American assets, Newsweek reported. “If you ever get near another U.S. asset flying in international waters, your airplane will be shot down,” he said.

“Lindsey Graham is telling us we have to attack the Russian air force. Why now? Well, let’s see. On Monday there was a major development in the 2024 presidential race. We sent questions to likely Republican candidates and asked them where they stood on the war in Ukraine,” Carlson said, referencing questions he sent to a number of candidates and potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.

“We fully expected that most of them would agree with Lindsey Graham and virtually every office holder in Washington, D.C.,” Carlson continued. “But, no, that’s not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened. Virtually, without exception, every Republican potential hopeful from Donald Trump, long on the record, to Ron DeSantis, to Greg Abbott, Kristi Noem, Vivek Ramaswamy and others have turned against the idea of a hot war with Russia.”

Carlson noted that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not officially declared his candidacy, described the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” between that country and Russia. Carlson also noted that liberal media outlets criticized the Republican candidates and potential candidates for their position.

“How can you defend democracy and push a war that the population doesn’t want? You can’t. So they’re panicking,” Carlson said. “Their response is really interesting. Instead of responding with arguments or reason, convincing Americans that war with Russia will benefit them in some way, they’re just pushing ahead for that war with Russia.”

Graham did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

No, I just bet he didn’t. Then again, I seriously doubt Putin suffers from very many sleepless nights worrying about what the faux-conservative Vichy-GOPe blowhard might have to say about much of anything, really. Graham has always been all hat, no cattle, expelling enough hot air to fog every window in the Pentagon on a regular basis ever since he took up his lifetime sinecure in Mordor On The Potomac. And then there’s this:

Seven Republican Senators voted on Wednesday to confirm Eric Garcetti, President Joe Biden’s nominee for ambassador to India and former Los Angeles mayor, despite his ties to individuals belonging to alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence front groups.

Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Steve Daines of Montana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Todd Young of Indiana voted to confirm Garcetti following a delay of over 20 months arising from allegations that, while in office, he helped cover up sexual assaults committed by his former aide, Rick Jacobs. The confirmation vote, 52-42, also comes just days after the Daily Caller News Foundation revealed that a mayoral fund set up by Garcetti accepted over $1 million in donations from individuals who belong to alleged CCP influence and intelligence fronts.

“We need an ambassador to India,” Graham told the DCNF.

Oh, very badly we do—so very badly that hey, why not a goddamned CCP spy-adjacent plant then, eh, Miss Graham?

What a useless fucking jackwagon.

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It was ALL a damnable lie

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Yet another one, like FauxVid, that some of us have known all along was precisely that, and nothing more.

Secret Surveillance Video Dismantles January 6 Narrative
Clips aired during Tucker Carlson’s show on Monday night demonstrate how the January 6 select committee doctored surveillance video.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired the first set of previously-unseen surveillance video captured by Capitol police security cameras on January 6, 2021 that undermines several aspects of the reigning narrative about what happened that day.

Only “several”? I strongly suggest you take another look, Jules; it undermines the entire fucking thing, actually. Over, under, sideways, and down. Stem to stern, end to end, top to bottom, start to finish. No more, no less.

Capitol Police turned over to the FBI roughly 14,000 hours of video covering the hours of noon and 8:00 p.m. on January 6 but the full 24-hour reel has been in the hands of House Democrats for two years—reportedly the footage that Carlson’s team was authorized to view.

Carlson exposed falsehoods that bolster key animating aspects of January 6 including the movements of Jacob Chansley; the activity of still-uncharged agitator Ray Epps; the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick; alleged “reconnaissance tours” conducted by House Republicans the day before; the “escape” of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.); and the overall deceptiveness of the January 6 Select Committee. “Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection,” Carlson explained. “In fact, it demolishes that claim. And that’s exactly why the Democratic Party and its allies in the media prevented you from seeing it.”

Don’t you dare miss a single word of this one, people. Anyone who does so will be derelict in his duty as a citizen, and will thereby forfeit all right to think of himself as either “informed” or “concerned,” that’s the long and the short of it.

I won’t say it’s shocking, because it isn’t, not by a long yard. What it is, is further confirmation—as if any were needed—that the so-called “American” federal government is now openly at war with not just its own people, but with every last principle this nation was originally founded upon. That really is all there is to it, no two ways about it.

Tucker Carlson—who some on Our Side contend is variously A) a phony; B) Controlled Opposition; C) even a witting sock-puppet being used by The Enemy for steam-valve purposes, which I think is just ridiculous—has done enough in his dogged pursuit of the truth here as to have earned a Medal of Honor for meritorious, above-and-beyond-the-call service to his country. Endless kudos to him for his determination and derring-do.

I know, I know, the Medal is a servicemember-only decoration, almost always awarded posthumously (actually, that isn’t so, I only just found out). But still.

Likewise for the esteemed and estimable Julie Kelly for her tireless work on this gargantuan, monstrous case. She’s stayed on J6 like the most stubborn bulldog, and the rabbit has now been well and truly caught. Bravo, woman. You and Tucker are both admirable examples of what real, true journalism is supposed to be all about, but almost never is nowadays.

Emetic update! As Ace notes, the US has used the military to overthrow foreign governments more than once for far, far less egregious offenses against their own subjects than what it has done, and continues to do, to the J6 “insurrectionists.” So vile, so indecent, so morally abhorrent has the Amerika v2.0 regime become it could literally induce projectile vomiting in any true patriot.

Show me something update! My GOD, the balls on these faux-obstreperous pusbuckets.

GOP Rep. Ralph Norman on Jan. 6 Fedsurrection: ‘Why Is Ray Epps Not Behind Bars?’

Because big-talking Vichy GOPe frauds like you refuse to PUT him there, that’s why. Do something other than run your fat yap about it or just shut the fuck up already, whydon’tcha. Miss Lindsay Graham, Mitch The Bitch, Paul Ryan, Jim Jordan, all the rest—a great many of us are sick unto death of the braggadocious, talk-a-great-fight routine, and have no desire whatsoever to hear any more of that twipe.

Hold me back, hold me back or I’ll kick his fookin’ ass!!

Yeah, right. Put up or shut up, fuckface.

Uplifting update! Trump weighs in, and It. Is. Good.

Trump Demands January 6th Prisoners Let Go, House Select Committee Prosecuted After Tucker Carlson Releases Bombshell Videos

Trump called the dramatic new evidence one of the ‘biggest scoops’ in American journalism.

“The New Surveillance Footage of the January 6th Events sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened,” he wrote on his Truth Social media platform. “LET THEM GO FREE, NOW!”

“A whole new, and completely opposite, picture has now been indelibly painted,” he contends. “The Unselect Committee LIED, and should be prosecuted for their actions.”

In another posting on Truth Social, the former President reiterated his call for those charged for their relatively mundane actions that day to be released.

“Let the January 6 prisoners go,” he wrote in an all-caps screed. “They were convicted, or are awaiting trial, based on a giant lie, a radical left con job.

Indubitably so, Mr President.

Here’s an idea: in light of the truth finally getting out despite the dead-level-best efforts of the D卐M☭CRATs to keep it swept safely and securely under the rug, howzabout sane people all immediately just stop referring to the events of J6 as a “riot,” an “insurrection,” “violent,” and/or “destructive.” I suggest that instead, we describe all further insistence on that kind of hysterical, dishonest hype as “baseless” and “unfounded,” there being absolutely “no evidence” that they were any such thing. Y’know, take a page from their own “baseless election theft accusations” playbook, as it were.

THAT oughta tach up all the right people well past the pulse-pounding, vessel-popping redline, no?

Hell, I can even see newsrooms across the country go totally chaotic in the wake of this, as thousands of “journalists” lapse into shrieking paroxysms of grief and rage at seeing their own tactic used against them—flopping about on the floor like landed fish en masse, gnashing their teeth to the gumline, tearing their hair out in great hanks, ripping each other to bloody meat-gobbets with their bare hands in an ungovernable frenzy.

Try as I might, I’m just not seeing any downside here.

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Deception, intrigue, and coverup: the games they play

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It didn’t begin with Decomposin’ Jaux, it’s a longstanding Presidential tradition.

Deception and Failure
From Wilson to Roosevelt to Biden, and beyond.

White House physician Kevin O’Connor recently proclaimed that Joe Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” The Delaware Democrat quickly raised doubts by stumbling up the stairs of an aircraft, a feat he once performed three times on a single ascent.

Dr. O’Connor failed to reveal how Biden’s mental competence test had turned out, or even if he had taken one. As on the fitness side, the evidence is already out there.

Joe Biden is sometimes unaware of his own location and mounts a public search for people who recently died, such as Rep. Jackie Walorski. Biden is also famous for spouting gibberish beyond any comprehension, such as here, here, and here, to cite only a few.

For all but the willfully blind, Joe Biden is not mentally and physically fit to exercise the duties of the presidency. To be fair, the Delaware Democrat is not the only White House occupant ever to be in such a condition. Consider, for example, Woodrow Wilson.

From there, the tale of the malignancy Wilson’s rapid-fire sequence of three (3) debilitating strokes and his wife Edith’s all-but-official assumption of the throne in his stead is recounted, along with the polio-stricken FDR’s now-well-known infirmity and the meticulous concealment of same by shadowy, skulking minions in the government he eventually was too incapacitated to “lead.” This specific incident of that long, sordid history is one I hadn’t heard about before:

During the 1944 campaign in New York City, Roosevelt rode in an open car for more than four hours and was “seen by millions, looked cheerful, animated, conversing, waving, throwing his head back with that famous contagious laugh…It seemed evident to all that day in New York that he was as strong, as resilient as ever.” The press and the public had no clue what was happening behind the scenes.

“At points along the parade route the Secret Service had commandeered garage space,” Gallagher recalled. “As the presidential cavalcade passed the garage, the president’s car was turned out of the parade into the warmth of the heated building. Secret Service agents quickly lifted the president from the car and stretched him out full length on blankets laid on the floor. They removed his clothes down to the skin. He was toweled dry and given a rubdown. He was redressed in dry clothes, brandy was poured down his throat, and he was lifted back into the car. The pit stop was quickly done and the president was soon back in the cavalcade.”

WOW. Okay, that is some SERIOUS skullduggery right there. Now, back to our contemporary contretemps.

Call it the Pangloss presidency, an ongoing disaster proclaimed to be the best of all possible worlds. And for all but the willfully blind, a Pétain presidency is also going on in the United States of America.

In Conrad Black’s phrase, Joe Biden is a waxworks effigy of a president, physically and mentally unfit for duty. This deception is not splendid and the failure already evident. The aftermath will likely be much worse than anything that took place in the wake of Woodrow Wilson or FDR.

Well, in Wilson’s case anyway, the nation was fortunate enough to have one of the very best American Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, to come along behind him and undo nearly all the damage Wilson had wrought. Alas, with national “elections” now reduced to patent farce—locked down tighter than Dick’s hatband via D卐M☭CRAT chicanery compounded by Vichy GOPe co-connivance and Praetorian Media’s unflagging efforts in support—this generation’s Coolidge would never get within shouting distance of the Oval Office.

Doesn’t much matter anyway, I’m afraid; at this late date, we’re way past all that sort of thing now. Far too much has gone on, far too much let slip for far too long. No, the die has long since been cast. If this mess ever is to be cleaned up, it can only be accomplished using means and methods a good bit more drastic, direct, and stringent than mere politics.

Mad messaging skillz

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As ever, the Left runs rings around the Truth while the poor, dear old thing is still trying to get its boots on. And that, friends, is but one of several diabolical stratagems that explain how it is they keep winning.

Did You Ever Wonder How and Why the Left Is Able to Push Their Narratives Almost Unhindered?
Aren’t you sick to death of the Current Message? I know I am.

If you aren’t concerned about climate change, or whatever name The End of the World is going by this week, it doesn’t matter because you will be made to see or hear it. Or maybe the current message is Pride or Acceptance or Eat Bugs and Like It.

Actually, Eat Bugs and Like It is so January. The Current Message is Your Gas Stove Is Killing You, Your Dog, and Mother Earth, Too.

Did you notice that something that had never been an issue before, gas stoves, suddenly popped up everywhere all at once? That’s how it works. One message is repeated, amplified, repeated again, and reamplified, across every available medium.

Whatever the Current Message is, your favorite TV show will include it in a plotline. The network that airs it bombards you with similar messaging in its promotional spots. The search engine you use — and it doesn’t matter which one — promotes pages selling the same pablum and squelches dissenting views. Social media algorithms void your shares and silence your comments. TikTok, social malware unleashed by the CCP, fuels division and discontent by serving up the most dopamine-friendly content.

Normal people — that excludes you and me, gentle reader — who get their news the way normal people do, are suddenly questioning their gas cooktops. Because the ever present Current Message pounded it into their heads.

Throw in near-total control of the Shadow State bureaucratic apparatus, and…well, hey, there’s a reason I started calling it the shitlib/Progressivist Megalith a good while back, y’know.

RINOs not RINOs

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“Our sacred democracy” is…neither.

Keep in mind who essentially founded the Republican Party and was its first president. That would be Abraham Lincoln. He loved war, especially when waged to put an end to “democracy.”

Unless, of course, you are a typical Republican – who believes the South had no right to depart from the “union.” No right to form a government of its people, by its people and for its people.

Spare us, please, the cant about “slavery.” Lincoln and his Republicans enslaved us all. What do you own, exactly? Is it your home? The one you must pay the government forever in order to be allowed to continue living in it? Your car? Which you must also pay the government in order to be allowed to use? On roads you must also obtain the government’s permission to use? Can you open a business – or do business – without the permission of your massa?

Lincoln waged war upon democracy without mercy, against civilians explicitly, sending the mid-19th century equivalents of SS-Obergruppenfuhrers marching into the South to literally scorch the earth, so as to teach the recalcitrant Southerners all about “democracy.” The same kind of “democracy” that the same blue-suited Obergruppenfuhrers – Sherman and Sheridan and Custer – brought to the Indians of the American plains, after they were done with the South. The same “democracy” that Biden – and Graham – seek to further in eastern Europe.

In everywhere.

For there is nowhere on this Earth that is to be left free to decide its own course. The only course is that of modern American “democracy,” which is a philosophy both the Left and the Republican “right” agree upon. It is a philosophy that says Our Way is the only way and if you do not like it, tough. And if you resist, we will destroy you.

Even if it means destroying the world, for their world is one of unassailable power that, if lost, costs them everything. And that is why they are willing to make sure no cost is spared to preserve it – and that all of us pay it.

The take-home point here is that Republicans such as Lindsey Graham are not Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). They are the most authentic and faithful Republicans. The truest expositors of the philosophy imposed at bayonet-point upon the United States (North as well as South) that “democracy shall not perish from this Earth.”

That’s why some of us refer to it as the Uniparty—and why we really could use a true second party alternative to it.

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Who owns what

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Ace steps in it, big-time.

Mike Lindell says he will sue Kevin McCarthy for sharing the January 6th video only with Tucker Carlson. He wants a peek too.

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell says he plans to sue Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for providing Fox News host Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Lindell told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Thursday that his streaming platform Lindell-TV plans to sue McCarthy, claiming the Speaker violated the First Amendment’s freedom of the press provision and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The Trump ally said Lindell-TV is “injured by not having access” to the tapes and that the Speaker’s decision represented discrimination.

You know, there is some slight danger that the video could reveal something like camera placements which could, possibly, “compromise security.” It’s laughable to think that a professional journalist like Tucker Carlson wouldn’t be sensitive to that and redact frames that would expose that. Which makes the leftwing scaremongering about it — the claims that Tucker Carlson is going to, and they did claim this, actively assist “terrorists” to breach the Capitol “again” — completely risible.

But the possibility does exist. So you I can understand McCarthy wanting to restrict the release to someone who he can count on to avoid releasing anything that might be a security problem, and not just to anyone and everyone.

I can also understand McCarthy doing what every politician does: Delivering a friendly news outlet an exclusive scoop.

So what is Mike Lindell doing?

Doesn’t matter much what he might think he’s doing; “security,” my baggy white ass. “Camera placement,” forsooth? You MUST be joking. They’re on every damned street corner, hung from buildings, traffic signals, billboards, lampposts, and over dead-end alleyways not just throughout Mordor On The Potomac but in every half-assed urban hellscape across the blighted plain by now.

Bottom-line fact: those cameras were bought, installed, and maintained at whose expense again, now? Oh, that’s right: the taxpayers, that’s whose. Therefore, those cameras and anything captured by them of right ought to be the rightful property of said taxpayers, and Swamp Critter Kevin owes them a full and unrestricted public release of ALL the footage they paid for—full stop, end of fucking story.

Don’t anyone be holding their breath waiting for any such thing, of course; it ain’t gonna happen. There’s much too much ugly J6 evidence incriminating the Deep State there, and we all damned well know it.

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Public opinion matters

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Except, y’know, when it doesn’t. Which, nowadays, is most if not all of the time.

Even the most cynical among us still thinks that the people in charge worry about public opinion. They may have ways to fortify democracy against the voters, but they still worry about the voters. After all, no democracy can be completely fortified.

The reality is, they probably do not care at all. The people controlling the politicians certainly do not care. The unanimity of opinion among this group is why the two parties are barely distinguishable from one another. What is the main different between Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer? The people who animate the politicians have their aqendas and they do not care about public opinion. Most people get that, but they still think the pols care and they need to care.

The trouble is, there is no evidence of this. For example, it was rather obvious that the Republican Party threw the 2018 midterm to spite Trump and his voters. They could do this knowing that they would not suffer in any meaningful way. Sure, some back benchers in the party would have to transition into lobbying jobs or (gasp!) the dreaded private sector, but 90% of the caucus would do just fine. In fact, the bosses could expect to be rewarded for throwing the fight.

The last midterm was a similar display of indifference. If the parties really cared about the result, they would have pulled out all the stops. On the Democrat side, it was a chance to prove those election deniers were wrong. Joe Biden really was the most popular man in history. On the other side, the Republicans could have got their red wave of rebuke. Instead, both sides worked to make sure none of the populists got the support they needed to beat a system candidate.

The fact is, the political system in America reached a point where elections make no difference to the system. Over 95% of incumbents win reelection and those who lose land in cushy jobs. John Boehner now makes seven figures selling weed, after a disastrous run as Speaker. Paul Ryan makes seven figures sitting around one of the banks, making calls to Washington on behalf of the bankers. When the losers get rich the winners do not fear losing.

In the bigger picture, even a wave election does little to change the makeup of the political parties in Washington. If forty House seats change hands in a wave election, it means close to 400 remain safe. Look at the last twenty years and you see that maybe 60 Congressional districts can be competitive. Most years only about twenty seats are genuinely up for grabs. American Congressional elections are ceremonial. It is a big expensive show that means nothing.

What appears to have happened over the last thirty years is the political class has internalized this reality and they no longer care about elections. The contempt we see is not so much about public opinion, but about the lingering need to keep up appearances with regards to elections and public opinion. The leaders of both parties are increasingly irritated that they have to pretend to care about your opinion. They have better things to do than take questions from the slobs.

This reality is hard for Americans to accept. Central to the American identity is the invincibility of the marketplace. The “go woke, go broke” business reflects the enduring belief that public opinion matters. The fact that none of the woke are going broke does nothing to alter this belief. Something similar is in play with elections. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, people still cling to the idea that public opinion not only matters, but it matters to the politicians.

Even people on this side of the divide cling to this belief. The concept of the psy-op rests on the idea that the people in charge care about public opinion. In reality, the secret police just like their work. The same can be said for the busy bodies that police the internet for bad think. They are not shaping public opinion. They simply enjoy playing hall monitor. Contempt for the public and public opinion is now the coin of the realm in the ruling class.

He’s right, and deep down, in the places we don’t talk about at parties, we all know he is. One of ZMan’s very best yet, if you ask me.

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Gainless employment

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The latest in Mike Walsh’s continuing “To save America…” series.

To Save America, Abolish the Civil Service

I must say, I’m liking it already.

Over the past few months, we’ve been considering the wholly negative history of the so-called “Progressive”-era constitutional amendments, none of which did anything to improve the nation but did much to undermine its founding principles. Until the end of the Civil War, the constitution had only been amended twice since the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1791: the obscure, jurisdictional 11th Amendment, (1795), which had to do with lawsuits involving state and federal courts, and the 12th, (1804), which partially clarified the procedures for presidential elections. Then, between 1865 and 1870, came the three Reconstruction amendments, abolishing slavery (except as a punishment for a crime, such as a prison chain gang) and giving African-Americans citizenship and voting and other rights.

And then after a 43-year break, came the Progressive Era and its assault on Americans’ money and personal freedom, the radical changes in how the Senate is selected, Prohibition of a formerly legal substance, and finally the extension of the franchise to women, in defiance of all historical norms going back to the ancient Greeks, on the theory that it wasn’t “fair.” All have been proven disasters.

It’s not just the constitutional amendments that have contributed to the decline of the Republic, however: it’s also the actions of an ever-burgeoning federal government, which has simultaneously abandoned its core fiscal, executive, judicial, and legislative responsibilities, and extended its intrusive reach into almost every facet of our existence via the creation of the regulatory agencies, which now essentially control every aspect of a citizen’s public and private life.

Created by Congress, often at the urging of the president, these independent, immortal bureaucratic golems are a second form of government that co-exist with the constitutional system most Americans think we have. Being “independent,” they are at once legislative in function but also judicial in essence: their wishes have the force of law (often written by themselves), tried before administrative law judges, and enforced at gunpoint by their private police forces when necessary. They are effectively beyond the direct supervision of all three legitimate branches of government, to the extent that they now form a fourth branch of government.

Like most things involving the feds, they are largely staffed by members of the Civil Service — nearly three million employees and counting. Many, if not most, belong to one of some one hundred civil-service unions, through which they bargain with the IRS-funded government regarding their wages and working conditions; you, the taxpayer, have no say in the matter. So it’s no surprise that over the past hundred years, jobs in the “public” sector now pay better and have greater benefits, including more time off and greater job security, than do jobs in the private sector. So what if it’s become the employer of last resort for a significant portion of the population? They vote, en masse, for the folks who pay them.

I’ve been saying for years now that basically, the federal G amounts to a sort of wink-nudge employment program for Nee-grows who are too stupid, lazy, or just generally incompetent to hold down a job that’s actually, y’know, useful at all.

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More on those electric Harleys

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Thanks to Himself for hipping me to this vintage Eric Peters post, from 2018.

The Electric Suicide of Harley-Davidson

Imagine a Harley that doesn’t vibrate. No bark through the straight pipes when you push the starter button. No nothing through the pipes – which aren’t there anymore.

There is no starter button.

Just an On/Off switch.

No shifter, either. Because no gears.

All that remains is the “Harley” name on the tank – which isn’t one because it will never be used to store any gas. Might as well paint it on the side of your toaster.

Welcome to the 2019 LiveWire – Harley’s first electric motorcycle. The first of a whole line of them – intended to be ready by 2025.

They’re betting the future of the company on it.

If you have any Harley stock, better unload it.

Quickly.

Because an electric Harley is as silly as juice-bar speakeasy. It runs counter to the point.

People buy motorcycles – and especially Harley motorcycles – because they make that sound.

And also because of the smells – of gas and oil – which attend those sounds. Without which you’ve got what amounts to alcohol-free beer.

Or a girlfriend who won’t sleep with you.

Heh. Indeed. Oh, you’ll for sure be getting yourself a good fucking alright, but you won’t enjoy a single minute of it.

This is not going to end well. For the intangible reasons already articulated – a BLT without the bacon – and for other more tangible reasons.

Harleys – more than any other make of bike – appeal to the cruiser. The long-haul rider. The open road.

But electric bikes – like electric cars – are stunted by abbreviated operational range. A 2019 V-twin Sport Glide carries 5 gallons of easily and quickly replaced gas and gets 47 MPG. It thus can travel almost 240 miles – and when the tank runs low, this Harley can be back on the road in minutes.

That is freedom.

With the LiveWire, you are tied to an electric umbilical cord.

The opposite of freedom.

Yes, t’is, with cars and bikes both. Which is precisely why TPTB insists so vehemently on cramming their blasted EVs down our collective throat.

Over at Eric’s place, there are a cpl-three Harley-hating sourpuss types in the comments who scornfully profess their complete lack of concern for whether H-D carries on as an independent motorcycle manufacturer or not, and who the hell would want one of the outdated POS dinosaurs anydamned way? They’re missing the point at issue, which is, was, and shall eternally remain freedom. This ain’t about motorcycles and/or who makes ‘em. Ultimately, it’s about taking your freedom away from you, nothing more nor less. Y’know, just like with everything else.

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