GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

STABILITY NOW, STABILITY NOW!

To tweak a fine old Frank Costanza phrase just a little.

Stability in American politics, as has existed since about 1896, has been maintained by a rough equality in popular support between the two major parties. That equality has never slipped very far. During “landslide” election years, what has mattered most was not the party affiliations of America’s politically involved citizens, but a general sense that one party was “underperforming.” That’s why the key phrase of the Eighties was “Reagan Democrats.”

That stability may be a thing of the past. The reasons are several but easy to understand, once one actually looks past party labels:

  1. Left and Right no longer respect the same core values.
  2. One side no longer concedes the moral legitimacy of the other.
  3. The only bipartisanship in federal politics is about excluding “outsiders.”

Some of that is self-explanatory. “Core values,” which are synonymous with “ultimate goals,” must be shared by the parties to a negotiation if they are to reach an amicable compromise. A writer on negotiation once said during a lecture that “Winning a negotiation is like winning a marriage.” That’s a good way of approaching the matter. Any parley that involves “winning” and “losing” is about arranging a cease-fire, not a compromise.

The aim of the Left these past four decades has been an ever-more-open desire to eliminate the Right as an acceptable political family. That’s a credo of open warfare. It’s a great distance from the attitude that must prevail in a peaceful polity. And of course, that sort of “war footing” on the Left must evoke a matching attitude from the Right, which is slowly coming to be the case.

The total-war attitude comes through in the statements from the leading figures on Left and Right. They have the flavor of eliminationism, the desire to see the other side utterly destroyed and ground into the dust. Along with that goes a “no rules and no limits” mindset that gives rise to amoral tactics, measures of a sort decent persons would regard as foul play, in the drive for victory.

The veneer of “collegiality” in federal politics is easily penetrated, except when the well-established mandarins of both sides band together to exclude those not of “their sort.”

Given the most recent developments, it’s plain that the longstanding symmetry in American politics has been broken. There is no longer peace between the allegiants. There is only the struggle over who shall prevail.

Indeed so. So let’s make sure we win, by any means we must resort to—because the alternative is too horrible to even contemplate.

Hoochie mamaaaa!

1

Reality is cold, harsh, and tends to be uncooperative

First blood? Don’t anybody look now, but the Left already done drawed it.

Skull-Stomping Sacred Cows: Reality Isn’t Nice. It’s a 2×4 to the Teeth.
Sam Culper posted a comment on FB recently, in light of the protests-turned-riots in Berkeley, and elsewhere, asking, “What happens when the black bloc (“anarchists”) get AR’s?” A legit question, all things considered, and one deserving of serious consideration, which we’ll get to in a moment. The problem that arose, which I, in turn, confronted in a FB post on the MG FB page, was that the responses to Sam’s questions were retarded. Seriously. The comments read like the locker room bragging of a bunch of 13 year olds, after PE class, about the hot dates they’d had last Friday night.

Seriously….these ranged from “Open season on liberals!” type macho posturing, to “they’re just a bunch of cowards who can’t do shit in a stand-up fight!”

Here’s the reality. I am going to share my response to the commentary, from Facebook, then I’m going to discuss some harsh truths that are the 900-pound guerrilla in the room (see what I did there?).

“So, I saw this come across my FB feed today, from Sam. I’m going to address it, because there’s a whole bunch of fucking stupid in the comments. Since I’m reasonably certain some of those commenters are also subscribers here, it will probably be wasted effort, but I’m willing to give it a shot….

Comment on Sam’s page: ‘Battlefield pickup: Plan for it. Make sure your people know how to clear them, get them into duffle bags, and into your supply channels to be re-issued as necessary. You may keep ammo as needed to replace expenditures, but the rest goes to the S4 for caching and resupply.‘

My response: While technically about the closest thing to a legitimate response I saw, this is ridiculously optimistic. In all of the classes I’ve taught, over the last half-decade plus of teaching through the MG blog,including the auxiliary and support classes, nobody—NOBODY—has even come close to having anything near an organizational footprint that this answer would matter too…except the Left.

Comment on Sam’s page: ‘This is what I have been chatting with some friends about for a few months. Particularly the myopic ones who don’t understand that the hapless morons will eventually be armed and given some level of training to escalate their own surge. Arming these ppl is not the next move, but it’s not far off.‘

My response: Dunning-Kruger much? “Hapless morons?” These “hapless morons” are off their fucking couches, engaging in the physical violence that the Right yammered about for the last eight years, without doing fuck all. I’m not condoning it, and certainly not supporting it, but intellectual dishonesty about skill at organization, and willingness to engage in violent direct-action is going to get a whole fuckton of “prepared militias” killed dead…and there ain’t no fucking restart to this game.

Comment on Sam’s page: ‘They maybe (sic) psychologically conditioning the left for kinetic operations, but it takes years to build capability and capacity. They maybe (sic) ten years out if they started today.‘

My response: Bullshit. They could go hardcore tomorrow, and be effective, at least for some time. They’ve got organizational infrastructure in place. They’ve got leadership cadre and numbers. They’ve got the will to get violent, right now. What they don’t have is their puppet masters handing them guns and ammo…yet. Sam’s right. It’s an ugly potential that is probably not far off. Ten years? You’re fucking dreaming.

As I’ve argued before here many times—as history has demonstrated over and over again—no one does himself any favors when he underestimates his enemy. Being former military and a tactical-training instructor, MG knows this inflexible truism as well as anybody, probably better than most.

It’s easy to sit in your lounger, with your laptop across your knees, and pontificate on the false motivations of the Leftist activists. “Oh, they’re just attention whores!” “Oh, they just want their safe spaces!” “Oh, they’re just useful idiots being played.” “Oh, they’ll quit as soon as the money stops.” There’s a very real problem with that though, and it’s called underestimating your enemy. If you don’t believe that a dude who is out, in wintertime, in a protest/riot, and eating some riot cops baton, as he receives a solid washing with “hickory shampoo,” is not a dedicated True Believer, you’re deluding yourself.

If you think that some twenty-something kid, who just saw his buddy take a bean bag round from a PD riot gun, in the dick, and then ignored his friend’s screams, to continue advancing, is not dedicated, and a True Believer, you’re fucking stupid.

If you think POTUS is going to magically save you? You’re dumb. Large urban areas and entire states are telling the federal government to go fuck itself on the immigration issue (and granted, the states are wrong on this one, but that doesn’t change the fact that this—as I mentioned, in detail, in Forging the Hero—is symptomatic of the collapse of the American Empire.) Things are not normal, and if you’re still stuck in your normalcy bias about “Make America Great Again,” you’re WAY behind the learning the curve.

I’ve talked with a number of friends in recent days; police officers and public services personnel, in large urban areas, across the country. None of them are taking this shit lightly. A fireman friend, from a major urban enclave on the east coast, that has been the scene of a number of ethnic conflicts in the last year or two, posted the following on FB recently,

“They are organized, they are violent. The cops aren’t shooting back because when some Tumblr shit biscuit doxxes them, their kids will be targets. Molon Labia and snowflake bluster isn’t cutting it anymore.

I’m a fucking fireman and have had body armor issued. That should say something very loudly and clearly.”

A cop friend told me, in private conversation, “Yeah, man. It’s serious. We know it can kick off at any moment. Sitting in your cruiser, at a stoplight; writing a citation, sitting at lunch. We just have to be ready to rock, all the time.”

Another cop friend, “Man, I’ve upped my off-duty EDC to three twenty-round mags for the Glock, and I keep eight loaded mags for the AR in the plate carrier behind my seat. It’s getting weird out there.”

So, if THEY get it, why don’t you, Mr. Expert Prepper/Survivalist?

This is not about being a tough guy. This is not about the questionable PSYOP value of talking shit with social media memes about the opposition. This is about knowing, and understanding, the realities of the battlespace.

Another thing I’ve harped on repeatedly of late: we CAN NOT know what shape the coming conflagration will take, until the thing is upon is, literally all around us. Until such time, most everything other than actual planning and preparation is just speculation and idle blather—sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Via Bitter Centurion, who adds:

It’s like I said in my last post: the abject lesson here is that none of us are the people we thought we were. For better or worse. It’s easy to talk about what you’d do if ‘X’ happened, perhaps because you envisioned ‘X’ being a certain scenario with a high probability of taking place. It’s easy to picture that in your mind, and maybe even do your necessary prep work if you were so inclined. But it’s entirely another thing to be in the moment when ‘X’ happens. When you get called up to the plate, figuratively speaking, and have your convictions, skills, principles, and mettle tested and the results are final in the sense that you only get ONE chance at bat and there aren’t any do-overs.

Many years ago, I was told by a combatives instructor that “in a crisis, we do not rise to our expectations, but fall to our level of training”. It’s true, but I’d maybe take that a step further and say that your level of training ought not to just include simply raw skill and rote knowledge, but also your preparedness and will to act. 

I have to wonder how many of the ‘red pilled’ people out there envisioned a critical strike from the OPFOR, in this case the scam-demic, as being how that would have played out? How many people expected this sort of ‘crucible’, for lack of a better term, to be manifested in what took place over the last three years? I’ll be honest, I didn’t.

I have to point out that, in my last post, it was absolutely not my intention to come off as an asshole to anyone – especially people who caved and got the poke ‘n smoke for their reasons. I don’t doubt I ruffled some feathers and pissed a few people off, and if that’s the case, well, that sucks but I won’t apologize for it. The reason I won’t apologize for it is because it is LONG past time we in the ‘redpilled’ community start being fucking honest with ourselves and with each other. There is FAR too much bullshit and bravado out there that we, both veteran and green horn alike, tend to muckle on to because it maybe stokes our morale or our egos. I believe the term the cool kids are using today is ‘Hopium’. Not only that, but I am a huge believer in not writing cheques with our mouths that our asses can’t cash – something that people on the conservatard ‘right’ are VERY notorious for.

How does that quote go? You can deny reality, but you can’t deny the consequences of denying reality. Likewise, you can lie to your friends, family, and even yourself, but you can’t deny the consequences of lying to your friends, family and yourself.

I wish I had the answers to all this, but I’m not gonna bullshit you – I don’t. What’s more, I don’t think anybody else does either, if they’re being honest. But…maybe we need to be honest with ourselves. If we know what the threats out there are, if we know what’s at stake, then what are we (meaning you as an individual) going to do about it? How far are we willing to go? That’s not something I can answer for anyone else but myself, as is the same for anyone else.

All the same, I’m not going to sit here and wax ‘tacticool’ about ‘resistance this’ and ‘from my cold dead fingers’ that. It’s all bullshit anyway. What really matters, all that really matters, is what you plan to do when you hit the red line—YOUR red line—and you’re faced with the moment of truth.

That’s about the size of it, yeah.

Anatomy of a Great Schism, v2.0

ZMan has a look in on all this Trump/DeSantis nonsense.

Ron Versus Don
The basic argument from the DeSantis partisans is that he has a chance to win the general election, while Trump has no chance. More important, DeSantis knows how to govern, which he has proven in Florida. There is no doubt that he has been a great governor for Florida. He also has a very friendly state legislature, which makes it simple for him to get things done. There is no data to suggest he has a better shot against Biden than Trump, but that is the claim.

The truth is electability has never been a factor in these races. Most voters are not like most Republican politicians in that they do not negotiate with themselves. They vote for the candidate they like, not the candidate that a conservative commentator swears will be acceptable to the Democrats. Even if their preferred option has no chance in the general, most voters will go for the guy who speaks to them. It turns out that most people are decent and honest, not scheming weasels.

That is the argument for Trump. Despite his faults, and he has many, he represents those decent and honest people. He is a symbol, more than a candidate. Supporting Trump is about opposing the people who rule over us. It is as close as we get in America to class warfare. Trump’s voters are the great unwashed, the forgotten Americans who hate what has happened to their country. Trump is not the solution, but he makes noise on their behalf. That is enough.

Both camps are right in the same way that two people who have different favorite ice creams are right, even though they disagree. There is no empirical argument in favor of either guy as it is purely a matter of opinion. Pedro Gonzales is mad at Trump for not being the savior he hoped for in 2016, so he is has jumped on the DeSantis side, while Scott Greer still loves Trump and now hates DeSantis. Their arguments in favor of their guy are cognitively meaningless.

That said, we can assess the electability claim. The place to start is the 2020 election broken out by electoral votes. All of those national polls that people wave around are meaningless as we pick presidents by indirect election. In the last election, Biden won 303 electoral votes, while Trump got 235. The threshold to win is 270. There were a lot of shenanigans in the 2020 election, but they were repeated in 2022, so we have to treat them as a feature, rather than a bug.

He goes on to do some juggling with the state-by-state math of the thing, and the sum of the equation is necessarily neither pretty nor reassuring.

What this tells us is the odds for a Republican win are awfully long. They have to win states that are mostly in the other camp by default. Then they have to defend their own states, some of which are trending the wrong way. The Yankee invasion of North Carolina is turning the state into Virginia. Texas is slowly becoming California as those weirdos arrive in droves. Barring some sort of black swan event, Joe Biden will cruise to victory in 2024 no matter his opponent.

What this says is that the choice for Republicans is not centered on electability, but who they prefer to see lose in 2024. The neocons and conservatives prefer to see Trump lose, but they are so full of hatred of white people now, they will root against him in the primary, even if it works against their interests. The DeSantis fans are coming around to the same view, thinking that Trump is some sort of bad juju that must be exorcised in order to return to the 1980’s.

For dissidents, it is a different question. DeSantis is a good governor and it would be better if he finished the job and set an example for others. We do not need another too nice to win loser presidential candidate. Trump is a crazy man who sends the bad guys into paroxysms of vengeful hysteria. He was a lousy president, but he has proven to be a great wrecking ball. His revenge tour, especially if he is indicted, will be the mother of all crap shows. A good time will be had by all.

I’m with him on that. Read on to the very end; Z’s conclusion—“there is no path forward in the current system”—is dead accurate, as well as damned unsettling. I wish there was a credible counterargument to be made, but honestly, there isn’t. No honest, genuine candidate intent on real reform will ever again be “elected” President. Should one somehow manage an end-run against the rigged process and prevail, against all odds, he will be thwarted by the Shadow State apparat entire right from Day One. If you want Unity, well, you’ll certainly see some then—all you ever wanted to see of it, and then some.

Update! Bill is slightly more optimistic—at least, this is what passes for optimism in these dark, parlous days.

I think this is probably right, at least for America right now. But I don’t think the current situation will maintain for that much longer. There are too many systemic, technological, and generational forces at work reshaping our nation, and it is by no means certain that the nation as presently constituted will survive them, especially since they will be coming to a head over the next six years or so. 

Which means that we may have only one more “normal” election cycle before all hell breaks loose. So don’t place any long-term bets on what that red and blue map says today. It may not even exist for the 2026 and 2028 elections. And although we can’t see them clearly (yet), I have to assume there is a whole flock of black swans flapping around out there, looking for places to come home to roost.

Yep. In times like this, the one and only thing we can know for sure is that we won’t know for sure until we find ourselves right smack in the middle of it. Not a particularly cheering thought, but it’s the best we’re going to get. As all the cool kids like to say nowadays, it is what it is.

If that isn’t what the cool kids say, please don’t tell me, aiight? Ahem.

6

Auguring in

Trump underestimated the nature and scope of the evil he’s up against, severely, and now they’re finally going to get him.

Trump’s Attorney: Trump Will Surrender To Authorities If He Is Criminally Charged
Former President Donald Trump will surrender to law enforcement officials if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment he allegedly made to porn actress Stormy Daniels, according to Trump’s attorney.

The remarks from attorney Joseph Tacopina come in response to a report from NBC News that said federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were analyzing security assessments and making plans to prepare for the possibility that Trump will be indicted as early as next week.

Fox News reported that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office asked for a meeting with law enforcement officials to “discuss logistics for some time next week, which would mean that they are anticipating an indictment next week.”

Tacopina told the New York Daily News that if Trump is indicted, “there won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office.”

Tacopina later told CNBC that they “will follow normal procedures if it gets to that point.”

“Normal procedures”—BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thou fool. From Trump’s Truth Social feed, via Barry (no direct link, since I don’t have an account there and have no interest in signing up for one, so the link is to Barry’s comment—thanks, Bar!):

OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE…

Page 2: NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

Which, without violence, is simply not on the table. When Trump goes to prison, I don’t expect him to last very long before somebody Epsteins his ass. Next, Melania, Don Jr, and the rest of his family need to be continually checking six, because you can be sure they’re next in line for the exact same treatment from the Überstadt.

And then…well, we shall see what we shall see, I suppose.

The evidence is all in, a surfeit and then some of it, the case closed once and for all. This is yet another reminder that, just as I’ve said over and over: clearly, they do NOT fear us. They need to be reminded—forcefully, explicitly, and beyond all doubt or debate—that there might still be good reason for them to. Until such time, it’s only going to get worse.

Update! Another reminder, for Trump, his family, and pretty much everybody else.

‘Nuff said.

Updated update! Dave Renegade sums it up quite well.

The lines are still being drawn in terms of a civil war but only as action is concerned. The lines defined by the division sowed by the other side to weaken and take over the Republic are entrenched. Once the first shot is fired, the people who have been marginalized, have had their country, rights and Liberty stolen, and their health attacked will not stop. This is not a call to action; this is just reality. How do you feel about this illegal government and out of control justice system? This is no longer a rhetorical question.

We may not be able to stop what is coming but we surely do not have to submit to an evil tyranny.

Amen to that, brother.

Wheels within wheels within wheels update! Might this be what it’s really all about? Twitchy says it’s right on cue.

Did somebody in the Biden network decide to give Rob Reiner and the anti-Trump Resistance an early Christmas gift? Also this could indicate that Biden and the “justice” department (with help from New York libs) really want Trump to be the GOP nominee. However, the Left’s narrative has gone from “Trump committed treason by colluding with Russia to steal a U.S. election” to “OK, maybe not but he did pay some hush money to a former adult film star.”


Could be, could be. The one thing we know with absolute certainty about these filthy swine is that we can put nothing whatsoever past them. There is no trifling, petty skullduggery to which they will not stoop, no low too low for them to sink to. Anyone still kidding themselves that, “Oh, they wouldn’t DARE do this or that,” for any conceivable value of “this or that,” is hereby formally urged to just wake the fuck up already.

5

Wish in one hand

Shit in the other. You know the rest of it.

Majority of Voters Want Buttigieg to Resign

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday found that most American voters want Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to resign after the East Palestine, Ohio disaster. Buttigieg received criticism after telling a reporter he was on ‘personal time’ when asked when he would visit East Palestine. The Biden official eventually visited East Palestine, Ohio, albeit one day after former President Donald Trump.

51 percent of registered voters answered yes when asked, “Should Buttigieg resign as a result of how the Transportation Department handled the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio?”

The Rasmussen Reports poll data showed 68 percent of Republicans, 51 percent of Independents, and 35 percent of Democrats believe that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg should resign due to his handling of the East Palestine Ohio Train derailment.

In response to the poll, Congresswomen Lauren Boebert (R-CO) endorsed the sentiment in a tweet. “51% of Americans want Pete Buttigieg to resign from his position as Transportation Secretary. Proud to be cosponsoring a resolution calling for exactly that. Pete’s incompetence & disregard for the American people has no place in our government,” Boebert wrote.

“No place”? In OUR government? With all due respect, you must be joking, ma’am. Incompetence and disregard for We Duh Peepul is the very bones and sinew of FederalGovCo—it’s what the goobermint is, what it does. Nowadays, those things amount to a de facto job requirement, really.

Maybe Ms Boebert has her heart in the right place with this toothless, ineffectual resolution, I couldn’t say. Maybe not. But if she sincerely expects it to amount to anything more than the usual DC smoke-and-mirrors dumbshow, much ado about nothing whatsoever, then she’s delusional, and is about to be extremely disappointed with the results she gets: zip, zero, nada, a big fat stinking zero.

3
1

Of sowing, and of reaping

Bitter fruits of a poisoned tree.

The predictable economic fallout of lockdown policy
The decision to lockdown the world had consequences and we’ll continue to see them unfold for some time. Can we really expect those who caused these problems to save us from them?

Lockdowns caused unprecedented disruption to the world’s economy and global supply chain, and the largest upward transfer of wealth in history.

Widespread business closures due to lockdowns caused mass layoffs of, primarily, hourly wage workers with little to no savings. Then the government spent money that we did not have so people could pay their rent and not starve. And then they did it again.

Of course, this caused inflation. Then the Fed raised interest rates to halt the inflation.

And now we are experiencing the ensuing disaster that is unfolding in real time. And the little guy is left holding the bag whether through exorbitant pricing of basic necessities like milk and eggs or small business investors wondering when and if they’ll be able to extract their money from SVB to pay their employees and vendors.

No, I’m not a banker. But it’s easy to see what happened and that’s the rough outline in the simplest possible terms.

You can’t shut the world down and think there will not be consequences. You just can’t.

As some pitiful handful of us warned at the time, no, you most certainly can NOT. Contra the vainglory of our über-arrogant Ruling Class dolts, an incomprehensibly complex, first-world economy can’t be simply turned off and then back on again, like a light switch. Why, whodathunkit? Those shouting-at-a-brick-wall warnings went all unheeded, when we who issued them weren’t being vilified outright, by the selfsame panic-ninny pissants now mewling for “amnesty” for themselves from those of us who had the right of it all along.

Um, yeah, NO. Sorry, not fucking happening; not from here it ain’t, not now, not ever. As a practical alternative, may I suggest that you all go take yourselves a flying fuck at a plate glass window instead. I do SO look forward to seeing how well that works out for you, truly I do.

All of this happened — lockdowns forcing small business closures — while corporate employees worked from home and screeched “we’re all in this together” while ordering Uber Eats, watching Netflix and working kinda, sorta sometimes. And of course, while continuing to take their salaries and bonuses and stock payouts. And continuing to do so to this day.

No company dared speak out against lockdowns. I can’t think of a single one. Instead, they laid people off with “empathy”, gave them two weeks salary and continued advocating in support of lockdowns — or at the very least going along with them, staying silent — knowing that the bill was coming.

Why didn’t ANY companies say anything against lockdowns when they knew what was inevitably coming?

Because the “woke” view — the this is what good people do view — was: lockdown forever until no covid. That was caring. Anything else was “only caring about money,” being greedy, racist, eugenicist, evil. And companies, whether they agreed with lockdowns or not, were burnishing their image as good and caring.

But in reality, the actual empathetic position would have been to challenge the logic and efficacy (or better said: assert the illogic and ineffectiveness) of lockdowns. And to advocate for opening. To let people work. To allow everyday people to earn a living, just as those in corporate were, as C-suiters were. Executives and corporate leaders shouted Stay home save lives! while staying home where they could carry on with their jobs and doing nothing to ensure that others could actually carry on with theirs.

And now the FauxVid-hoax chickens are coming home to roost, heavily settling, claws-out, onto the shoulders of the just and the unjust alike. As was always inevitable—a fact which bestows not even the coldest of comfort upon those of us who saw it all coming, right from the very beginning.

And so here we are. Millions were pushed into poverty globally, all in pursuit of zero covid, or at the very least avoidance of a respiratory virus as the only thing that mattered. It’s the insane myopia that got us here, and now there’s a panicked scrambling to ensure that it doesn’t get even worse for regular folks than it’s already been.

And still, the lockdown-ers insist, we just didn’t lockdown hard enough. And some, like Forbes, are making the case that we need rolling lockdowns from here on out.

When will we learn? The predictable economic fallout of locking down the world had consequences and we’ll continue to see them unfold for some time. It seems unlikely that the ones who created these problems are the ones who will be able to solve them.

As I’ve also insisted from the start, the lockdowns, the masks, the “social distancing”—We Duh Peepul having so readily, even eagerly, submitted to them once already—will be with us forever, to be dusted off and trotted out as and when, under whatever contrived justification, until such time as we decisively and unequivocally reject them en masse. They proved far too useful a suite of tools for the dimestore dictators, tinhorn tyrants, and midwit Mussolinis who would lord over us to just blithely discard without a real fight. Which makes the truly apposite question here not “WHEN will we learn,” but IF.

1

It begins

The wheels start coming off of the Biden Economic MIRACLE!!™ bus.

A Blip On The Radar Or The Beginning Of The End?

Despite decades of working in financial services, mostly in customer facing roles where I kissed ass and took the heat for the screw-ups of others, I don’t fully understand what happened with Silicon Valley Bank but when a top 20 bank collapses, it is big news.

As others have pointed out, while SVB is a top-20 bank it pales in comparison to the really big players like Chase and Bank of America. Chase alone has something like $3.2 trillion in assets.

Notice that the bank right below them, Fifth Third Bank where I was a branch manager at a couple of locations, has slightly lower total assets but 1,104 branches while SVB only had 16 branches but more in “assets”. This was a very different kind of bank. Still it is a significant event getting little coverage because Sniffy Man Good is President instead of Orange Man Bad. It was also another opportunity to mock The Wrongest Man Alive, CNBC’s Jim Cramer, who is so reliably wrong you could base your investment strategy just off of doing the opposite of what he recommends (not investment advice, etc)

It is amazing that someone as dumb as Jim Cramer still makes a bunch of money being incorrect.

While I would hesitate to go full Zerohedge and declare this is a harbinger of imminent collapse, it does show us again that the financial system we operate under is a Jenga tower. You can pull a piece out here and there but one of these times a critical piece will come out and the whole thing will fall.

Arthur is correct in his hesitation, but it’s a matter not of statistical inevitability but of simple semantics. The collapse is indeed not imminent; it has already started, is ongoing. Things are going to get much, much worse before they get better, and that’s assuming they DO get better, which is by no means guaranteed. It’s unlikely in the extreme that they will within the lifetime of anyone reading this, that’s my belief.

Read the rest of it; Arthur moves on from the end of my excerpt to do some very astute, clear-eyed analysis of the REAL root causes of the ongoing disaster, which are not so much financial and/or political as they are cultural. He’s right about that, too.

Big trouble update! Not good.

Wall Street’s biggest banks took quite a thrashing in the stock market Thursday as investors spooked the turmoil at Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate Capital dumped financial shares.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley – the four most valued US lenders – saw $55 billion wiped off their combined market capitalization on Thursday, Refinitiv data show.

JPMorgan, the biggest US bank, alone saw a $22 billion tumble in its market value as its stock slid 5.41% to $130.34. Wall Street heavyweight Bank of America lost $16.16 billion as its share price fell 6.20% to $30.54. Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley saw their market capitalization drop by $10.3 billion and $6.2 billion, respectively.

Among other major US banks, Goldman Sachs and Citi also witnessed significant declines in their share prices.

The selloff came amid heightened fears of contagion effects from financial distress at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Silvergate Capital. SVB’s stock crashed 60% Thursday after the company said it would sell more shares to cover a $1.8 billion loss it incurred after completing a $21 billion fire sale of its bond portfolio.

It’s becoming something of a mantra for me, so maybe I should just go ahead and make it an acronym to save myself some typing from here on out: WBBIEB. That is, Worse Before Better, If EVER Better. Pro tip: You will see this material again. And again, and again, and again. Because, y’know, WBBIEB.

1

The Passion of Big Burly Mike

Can you spot the bear-trap the writer of this piece blithely waving away the scarifying possibility of Moochelle running for Prexy in ’24 gets snagged in?

Michelle Obama Is Not Coming to Save the Democrats

I love a good conspiracy theory. Aliens, ancient builders, Bigfoot—I will absolutely click on that headline and read the latest conspiracy, no matter how fanciful or ludicrous. Everyone has a harmless personal foible, right? And in the times we live in now, shadowy government conspiracies and UFOs are no longer just for “The X Files.”

My favorite new conspiracy theory goes like this: the Democrats know they are in big trouble for 2024. They have this addled, dementia-riddled, diaper-wearing octogenarian and his dreadful wife occupying the White House, and he’s become an embarrassment. These days he makes three to four hair-curling, cringey gaffes per week, falls up the stairs to Air Force One every time he tries to trot up them to project American strength and vigor, and has been credibly accused of passing gas in front of the Queen Consort of England. But Democrats can’t abandon him before the primaries because, well, Kamala. So Biden will announce he is running again but will withdraw sometime around the Democratic National Convention so as to clear the presidential field for…

Michelle Obama.

The stench of desperation is hilarious, isn’t it? That’s how bad the field of Democratic presidential prospects is. Democrats must be pretty frantic for someone to have conjured up and floated this rumor. A recent poll indicated 72 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to run again in 2024. Biden will be 82 shortly after the 2024 election. Is this Michelle Obama rumor supposed to give Democrats hope? To keep them from abandoning Biden because just wait, Michelle is waiting in the wings to save their party from Bad Orange Man, or even worse, Ron DeSantis?

Please. I’ll believe aliens taught Bigfoot how to make crop circles in Peru before I buy this one. Michelle Obama hates politics, hates voters, and hates Washington D.C., and not necessarily in that order.

I don’t believe it for a millisecond. Michelle Obama is living her best life right now, the life she has always wanted and felt that she deserved (if her husband hadn’t been a community organizer obsessed with politics who didn’t make any money and forced her to support the family). She’s completely free of the restraint of politics. Now she can say whatever she wants about people she used to have to pretend to like. Polls name her consistently as the most admired woman in America. You think she’s giving any of that up to schmooze and take photos with donors, or hit the campaign trail in Iowa, or spend the night in one-star hotels in Pennsylvania? Not likely.

Maybe so, maybe not. But all the well-known trappings of fame, wealth, and power aside, it would be best not to leave out of our calculations the overwhelming allure of the one enticement that might prove powerful enough to turn even Burly Mike’s big ugly head, creating a 180 degree shift in whatever passes for “thinking” therein, expressible thusly: First Black Female President In US History.

2

Tyranny, straight up

As Limbaugh frequently did, one can only ask: WHO THE HELL DO YOU ROTTEN FUCKING BASTARDS THINK YOU ARE, ANYWAY?!?

Okay, maybe Rush never put it quite that way.

The U.K. Briefly Considered Killing All Pet Cats Early in the Pandemic

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little was known about the virus, the U.K. government briefly considered asking the public to exterminate every cat amid fears that the pets could spread the disease.

Lord Bethell, a former deputy Health Minister from 2020 to 2021, revealed the news Wednesday during an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News.

“Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?” he added.

Well, I can certainly tell you what I HOPE would have happened, what SHOULD have happened. But the UK being the endarkened, blighted shitrapy it’s become, I seriously doubt anything much at all would have, sad to say.

The bombshell revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight. 10 Downing Street’s own feline friend Larry’s unofficial Twitter parody account wrote: “hard not to take this personally.”

One would like to think so, surely. But then you groveling serfs didn’t raise much of a squawk about all the other things your tyrannical goobermint has taken from you over the years, now did ya?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, animals do not appear to play a significant role in spreading COVID-19 to humans, but cases of animals have been documented and most of them were “infected after contact with people with COVID-19.”

So, it’s us hoomans who pose a threat to the animals, not the other way ‘round, eh? Of course, that’s never been any obstacle to any government taking STRONG, VIGOROUS ACTION™ to save us all from something or other, now has it?

Despite this, some countries have pursued the mass culling of animals or pets in a bid to contain the virus. Hong Kong tested and euthanized some 2,000 hamsters in January 2022, after several tested positive for the virus in the weeks prior. Earlier on in the pandemic, in November 2020, Denmark culled 17 million minks over fears that a mutation could be transferred from minks to humans.

Denmark was the world’s largest mink producer and the decision was found to have no legal justification. The fallout prompted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to call a snap election in October last year after a member of her ruling coalition government threatened to withdraw their support amid the controversy.

Bold mine, because…well, y’know.

Never, ever fool yourself for a moment that there is ANYTHING AT ALL that ANY government, ANYWHERE, wouldn’t DARE to do with or to you, anytime it feels like it, for no reason whatsoever beyond that they just want to. “Legal justification”? “Moral/ethical propriety“? Scientific/medical/public-health emergency”? “Economic/military/cultural/climate ‘crisis’”? Stop it already, you’re killing me over here. Sorry and all, but that ain’t the way this works. Your pets; your charcoal grills; your gas stoves; your cars; your guns; your money; your home; your very lives—all those and plenty more are fair game, just grist for the mill.

Once the Superstate beast has been allowed to establish itself and begun to spread its leathery wings in triumph, there’s no longer a single thing that’s out of bounds. We don’t have to like it. We DO have to live with it. And as the Founders well knew, that’s never a good or pleasant thing.

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Mad messaging skillz

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.

The final straw

It’s now official: Trump really IS a moron. Either that, or he’s a damned liar, a useful idiot playing right into the hands of the Evil Left, willingly acting as their cat’s paw in his completely futile, vainglorious quest for the US Presidency. Either way, another thing is now official: I’m all done with him, and will neither endorse nor support him in said fore-doomed quest.

For God’s sake, Soros did not “endorse” Ron DeSantis
George Soros wants to destroy the Republican Party. He’s made that very clear many times. So when Trump loyalists started spreading a video of remarks he made recently purporting to show Soros endorsing Ron DeSantis over Trump for the Republican nomination I knew there was something very fishy going on.

Soros did express hope that DeSantis is the Republican nominee, but not because he thought the governor would make a good president.

He hates DeSantis just as he hates Trump. What he wants is a 3-way race for president, which would guarantee a Democrat victory.

He is convinced that if DeSantis wins the Republican nomination that Donald Trump will jump into the race as a third-party candidate and lead to a Democrat landslide in the 2024 election.

Seems obvious enough, doesn’t it? Ace spells it out even more directly:

I really do not like this level of low dishonesty. Superficially the lie works — you watch the video, you see Soros say the words.

But then two days later you see the full clip and you see you’ve been duped. Now you know the guy who put the video together is a liar, and you have a bad taste in your mouth about the candidate he’s supporting.

It’s just so stupid and it winds up boomeranging back against the candidate it’s supposed to be helping. People remember when other people try to trick them, and when other people act as if they’re fools.

Treating people as if they’re fools to be duped is treating them with disrespect.

And no, that doesn’t mean Trump is treating people with disrespect. He didn’t create this meme. (I assume.) He has nothing to do with it…unless he retweets it.

I hope he doesn’t retweet it.

Sadly, that hope turned out to be every bit as vain as Trump’s “Presidential” ones, because the idiot Trump did precisely that:



Actually, it ought to have told you something, genius. As Rand Paul once famously put it: “THEY endorsed ME, but I didn’t endorse THEM.”

But who even knows anymore, maybe the fucking stupe is just hoping we’re all too blind and/or stupid to catch onto the grift, as his newest bestest buddy Soros does. Umpty-bazillion-dimensional chess, anyone? Meh. Whatevs.

Back to Ace.

Well, I was hoping that Donald Trump wouldn’t retweet the stupid lie that George Soros had endorsed Ron DeSantis, because that would just force his supporters to defend this lie, but of course he did just that today. Of course. How could he not?

Ah, I’m sure he’ll do the right and honorable thing and retract when he finds out it’s bogus.

(LOL.)

T’ain’t funny, McGee. I’m with BCE, fully and firmly.

Art makes a good point that they’re setting (“Nikki” Haley) up for the 2028 run, as it’s looking like (for now) Orangemanbad vs Floridaman. Personally, I just want Orangemanbad to go the fuck away. He makes me tired… weary…his ‘flash in the pan’ moment is OVER and he dropped the fucking ball on ‘cleaning up the town’ like a motherfucker. He’s also too fucking old and a member of the Geriatric Brigade that seems incapable of stepping aside and enjoying all that “me!me!me” money that they sucked out of the system. If there ever was anyone who symbolizes the Degenerate Yuppie/Boomer Scum, it’s “The Donald”.

DeSantis, man I pray that he’s not running.

He needs to stay in situ, and become Dictator of GeorgiFloriBama when the wheels come fully off.

Yes indeedy, right down the line.

As I’ve said here before, when I was living in NYC I considered Trump to be little more than a tiresome annoyance, what with his constant appearances on the TeeWee, promoting himself and his various endeavors, pimping for the Clintons ceaselessly as he did back then. I changed my mind about the guy when he started saying all the right things in 2015 as a long-odds-against candidate for Prexy, and was behind him all the way even when, as President, he reneged on his oft-repeated campaign vows to “drain the Swamp” by “hiring only the best people” (*coughcough ComeyPenceSessionsBarrMattisGarlandetcetc ad infinitum ad nauseam coughcough*).

“So much winning you’ll get tired of all the winning”? Yeah, about all that…

No longer. Enough, at long last, is enough. At least, for me it is. YMMV, of course and as always.

In sum, then, to hell with Trump. And, even though he’s accomplished more of real, lasting import in his tenure as Governor than Trump managed in his one and only term as PoTUS, should DeSantis go back on his previous declaration that he wouldn’t be running, to hell with him too. NeverTrump, OnlyTrump, whatthefuckever—a pox on ALL their houses, I say.

Woke kills

Wait, you mean to tell me “diversity” might NOT be a strength after all?

A recent epidemic of airline near-misses deserves both attention and reflection.

In mid-December, a San Francisco-bound United Airlines Boeing 777-200 airliner, just a little over a minute after taking off from Maui, Hawaii, suddenly dived. It lost more than half its altitude and came within 800 feet of crashing into the Pacific Ocean before pulling up.

About a month later, an American Airlines jet crossed the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport just as a Delta Air Lines plane was accelerating for takeoff. The two aircraft nearly collided.

Then in February, a FedEx cargo jet at the Austin, Texas, airport missed crashing into a Southwest Airlines airliner by a mere 100 feet.

The same month, an American Airlines Airbus A321 was being towed out of the gate at Los Angeles International Airport and smashed into a bus carrying passengers between terminals, injuring five.

These near and actual accidents come amid a general landscape of aviation chaos.

Gee, wonder if this story has anything at all to do with it—or rather, might be emblematic of the REAL issue here.

Tucker Carlson tells the sad tale of one Conrad Jules Aska from back in 2019. Conrad is a pilot of color as you can see…

Born in Antigua he was quite the pilot….

….except for the whole “grossly unqualified and unsuited to be a pilot” thing.

“The first officer in this accident deliberately concealed his history of performance deficiencies, which limited Atlas Air’s ability to fully evaluate his aptitude and competency as a pilot,” said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt.

The report said Aska’s “tendency to respond impulsively and inappropriately when faced with an unexpected event during training scenarios at multiple employers suggest an inability to remain calm during stressful situations.

Acted impulsively you say? Of course his family tried to sue…

They claimed maintenance and poor pilot training was to blame although even at this point the NTSB realized it was pilot incompetence and error. Of course had Conrad Aska being fired for incompetence, his family likely still would have sued because of racial discrimination.

As I said in yesterday’s post, America Has Too Many Qualified Doctors And Pilots!, if you have an incompetent toll booth attendant, perhaps you get back incorrect change but an incompetent pilot? Your plane goes into the ground.

Yep. VDH sums it all up:

Many of the major airlines have established racial and gender quotas for government pilot training programs. United Airlines has set quotas to ensure half of its trainees will be minorities or women. Since 2013, the FAA has been lowering standards for air traffic control qualifications to achieve de facto race and gender quotas.

In sum, our government is playing with our lives as it prefers diversity, equity and inclusion over ensuring the best-qualified employees are hired on the basis of racially and gender-blind competitive tests and experience.

Again: Yep. In Amerika v2.0, it’s Wokeism über alles; Leftard dogma trumps all other considerations, every time, no matter what. Thus, the FederalGovCo megalith doesn’t give a toss about how many of their hapless subjects they have to kill off in order to establish that Politically Correct is, so to speak, the only way to fly.

THIS is Africa

And, as African expat Kim DuToit always says: Africa wins again.

Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, I had the opportunity to work in Senegal for several months. My very first experience in-country was that the rental vehicle wouldn’t start. While the friendly and talkative mechanic repaired the jeep, he inquired if this was my first trip to Africa. “No,” I replied. “Ahhh!” he said, “then I don’t have to explain the meaning of ‘TIA’ to you.”

But I’d never heard that term or what it meant. When I asked, he explained, saying, “This is Africa; nothing works!” Indeed, in my travels, it was much the same in Latin America and other places I have lived, worked, or visited back in the day. When I returned to the U.S. it was a joy to drop a quarter into a payphone and hear a dial tone, or find that the nearest toilet always had toilet paper at hand.

But, in 2023, in Biden’s America, the acronym takes on a whole new meaning. Last week my wife’s car wouldn’t start, and after several return visits to the dealership, the problem remained undiagnosed. The service tech apologized and said, “it’s TIA.” I asked him what that meant, and he said, “This is America; no one knows how to fix things anymore.” Talk about a reflective moment.

Yep. And as I always say: that’s neither accident, nor coincidence, nor happenstance. It’s part of a plan.

3

Road trippin’

“Ace” Biden pays a visit to genuflect before one of the many malefactors who own him body and soul, thanks to their having the goods on his visceral penchant for corruption, graft, and greed.

Secret Agent Man “Joe Biden” turned up in Kiev Monday morning after landing in Poland and riding an overnight choo-choo train across the Ukraine frontier to avoid the hazardous pomp of landing Air Force One in a war zone. One might try to guess the message Victoria Nuland sent her errand boy to deliver. My guess is that “JB” was there to tell Wolodymyr Zelensky the USA stands behind him one hundred percent — an obvious whopper — being exactly the opposite of the developing reality that, short of setting off nuclear Armageddon, there is really nothing the USA can do to prevent Russia from concluding our ill-conceived project on its own terms. Who better to deliver an arrant falsehood than the master, “Scranton Joe,” he who once battled and vanquished the tyrant Corn-Pop!

The heroic Biden actually flew his alternate fighter aircraft (ie, not the one he famously splashed that Zipperhead “weather” balloon with) straight into Kiev Aerodrome, executing his usual flawless three-point landing there:

SpadXVIII

Good show, Jaux! Back over to Kuenstler for the rest of the story.

Remember, last week Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, speaking out of the aperture between his butt cheeks, announced that Russia had lost “strategically, operationally and tactically” in Ukraine. This was after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced rather clumsily that Ukraine’s army was out of ammo, especially artillery shells, and the only remedy for that was for Europe to rebuild an armaments industry — which was a sideways-and-backwards way of saying… fuggeddabowdit.

Yeah, umm, about those artillery shells

CranmerUkeArty

Whew! Thank goodness the US isn’t tens of trillions in debt and can thus afford to indefinitely support the grifter currently in charge of the D卐M☭CRAT Party ATM™ in the style to which he has become accustomed, thereby guaranteeing Zelensky’s continued silence regarding all past and future endeavors with the Biden Crime Family. Onwards.

One might also suppose that, behind all this cognitive dissonance, the US would be engaged in secret talks with Russia to arrive at some face-saving device for getting out of this mess. But really, what is our leverage for that? Can we threaten to put US boots-on-the-Ground in Ukraine? That would be a little like channeling Gen. George Armstrong Custer, don’t you think? Apparently, all we’re left with is a game of pretend, using the Pretender-in-Chief as the front.

I’d also venture to say that American voters are not so enthused about this Ukraine pageant as they seemed to be last summer when the yellow and blue flags popped up on front porches at every Woked-up clam-bake from Edgartown to Bar Harbor. Our Ukrainian proxies sure seemed to be giving those Ruskies what-for along the front lines in Donbas, payback, you understand, for helping Donald Trump steal the 2016 election from She Whose Turn It Was Supposed to Be…America’s Amazonian Caesar-in-a-pants-suit, HRC.

The fall offensive by Ukraine was an illusion, alas, setting up its army for methodical decimation, now nearly complete. So, too, is all the talk of sending tanks in to save the day. And so, too, is the very existence of NATO as anything other than window-dressing on an empty storefront. If blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, as recently alleged by independent reporter Seymour Hersh, smells like an attack on our supposed ally, Germany, then how was it not an attack on NATO, in which Germany is the centerpiece? And, finally, why would Germany not be engaging in secret talks of its own with Russia, behind America’s back?

Why indeed, and who the fuck cares anyhow. Say, anybody remember back when Trump, as actual as opposed to ostensible US President, suggested extricating ourselves from the steely clutches of the long-obsolete and entirely-dysfunctional NATO—whereupon the Usual Suspects threw the Usual Hissy Fit about the outrageousness of any such “radical” notion? Good times, good times. Or, if not altogether good, at least a damned sight better than the sweat-soaked fever dream we’re unable to wake up from now.

Intrigue must be rife now throughout Europe, and Americans will not hear anything about it from its Deep State-owned news media. Is there any reason why Europe could not live with a neutralized Ukraine? Of course not. Ukraine is in uproar now simply because geniuses in the US State Department thought it would be a good way to annoy and antagonize Russia. The project was insane from inception. The main result is that Europe will no longer have the natural gas it needs at a rational price to continue being an industrial society.

One must conclude that NATO is looking for a way out of this. But there is no way out except to declare by word or deed, directly or otherwise, that NATO has outlived the reason for its existence. Any sane analysis by Europeans would arrive at the unnerving realization that the USA has become the enemy of NATO, not Russia. If all that is so, then a seismic shift is underway that will leave America hung out to dry on the Ukraine project. Germany will have to make a deal with Russia to rebuild the Nord Streams. What could the US do about that? Impose sanctions on Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the bunch? Where does that leave Western Civ?

I’ll tell you: it leaves Western Civ diminished. It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world. (Fare-thee-well hegemonic dream; hello multi-polarity!) It leaves Ukraine neutralized and no longer a problem…It leaves Russia able to feel secure in its borders and free to get on with being a normal nation…and it leaves Europe the hope that it can resume modern life a while longer with the familiar comforts and conveniences.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes, if you ask me.

Errata update! I have been reliably informed, by a source who wishes to remain anonymous, that the photo of “Ace” Biden ostensibly setting down in Kiev is factually incorrect—disinformation, as the cognoscenti like to say. As it happens, Jaux doesn’t even own a Spad XIII at all, although I’m certain that, being a man of taste and discernment, he’d surely love to. This is the true and accurate pic of America’s Heroic Savior taxiing his DR1 to a secure undisclosed revetment at Kiev Aerodrome, after dogfighting his way across all of Europe to get there.

YES!
The REAL deal!

What a man, eh? Americans are fortunate indeed to have such a one to lead their nation through these parlous times.

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