GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Worst. “Elite.” Class. EVAR

A fuse that forever smolders, without igniting a goddamned thing.

Thirty-seven billion more dollars for Ukraine? (That’s thirty-seven thousand millions of dollars, by the way.) Bringing the total this year to a click-or-two over ninety billion (ninety-thousand millions), on top of whatever Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX company funneled through that sad-sack international money laundromat — soon to be the darkest backwater of a European failed state since Field Marshal Melchior von Hatzfeldt of Westphalia left Bohemia a corpse-strewn wasteland after the Battle of Jankau (1645).

It really doesn’t matter how much more money we pound down that rat-hole, you understand, because by the time various parties — the weapons-makers, Volodymyr Zelensky, sundry members of the US House of Representatives, the Biden family, the World Economic Forum — are finished creaming off their fair shares, poor Ukraine won’t have enough cash-on-hand to replace six fuse-boxes in Zaporizhzhia.

Against this backdrop, the USA enters a holiday season near-death spiral as unspooling scandals battle a collapsing economy for supremacy of the alt news sites. Case-in-point: the aforementioned FTX monkey business, a metastasizing tumor of the body politic. This complex fraud will smolder for a few weeks before it explodes into an extinction-grade event for the Democratic Party.

Uh huh, I’m entirely confident our brand spanking new Repugnican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy will get RIGHT ON ALL THAT. Who knows, we may even see Miss Lindsey Graham start another of his “blue ribbon panels” to get to the bottom of the whole shit-circus.

The Bankman-Fried extended family is the quintessence of Woke aristocracy. Dad Joe Bankman and mom Barbara Fried are both law professors at Stanford. She also acted as a money-bundler for the Democratic Party and ran two non-profit “voter registration” orgs (against the IRS laws which only permit non-partisan organized voter registration). Brother Gabe Bankman-Fried headed a non-profit named Guarding Against Pandemics (funded by Sam), which lobbies Congress to construct new platforms for medical tyranny. Aunt Linda Fried is Dean of Columbia U’s Public Health school, and is associated with Johns Hopkins, which ran the October 2019 Event 201 pandemic drill (sponsored by the Gates Foundation) months before the Covid-19 outbreak.

Sam’s girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, ran the Alameda Investments arm of the FTX empire (that is, FTX’s own money laundromat). Her dad, Glenn Ellison, is chair of MIT’s Econ School. His former colleague on the MIT Econ faculty, Gary Gensler, who specialized in blockchains there, is now head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency that Sam Bankman-Fried was attempting to rope into a regulation scheme to eliminate FTX’s crypto-currency competitors. Caroline’s mom, Sara Fisher Ellison, is an MIT econ prof specializing in the pharmaceutical industry (fancy that!). Caroline Ellison is currently on-the-run.

The sum total of all this professional and academic accomplishment is also the quintessence of Woke-Jacobin turpitude in service to a political faction that seeks maximum moneygrubbing while acting to overthrow every norm of behavior in the conduct of elections, and perhaps in American life generally. That’s some accomplishment. It’s also a lesson in why the managerial elite of our country are no longer trustworthy. They have gotten away with crimes against the nation for years, which has only made them bolder and more reckless.

And concomitantly, more “elite” too, in a Ruling Class circle-jerk that never, ever ends. As George Carlin once quipped: It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. Moar Carlin, from that same routine:

[Transcript]  “There’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the REAL owners, now. The REAL owners, the BIG WEALTHY business interests that control things and make all the important decisions — forget the politicians.

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. YOU DON’T.

You have no choice. You have OWNERS.

They OWN YOU. They own EVERYTHING.

They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they’ve got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.

They gotcha by the BALLS.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want — they want MORE for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They DON’T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting FUCKED by system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that.

You know what they want?

They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

It’s a big CLUB. And YOU AIN’T IN IT.

You and I are NOT IN the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe.

Good honest hard-workin people — white collar, blue collar — doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-workin people CONTINUE — these are people of modest means — continue to elect these RICH COCKSUCKERS who don’t GIVE a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU.

THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU — AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL. You know?

And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care… that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day.

Because the owners of this country know the truth — it’s called the American Dream…‘cuz you have to be asleep to believe it.”

More words of wisdom from another old white dude.


Update! It’s turtles Ruling Class corruption, all the way down.

GOP establishment leader and Speaker of the House pretender, Kevin McCarthy used FTX cash to defeat conservatives in 2022, as the corrupt, globalist-tied crypto exchange funded the establishment wings of both parties. Now, McCarthy is feeling the heat, as conservative members of Congress, and the voters they’re accountable to, are demanding answers for the GOP’s failed “red wave,” which looked more like a pink trickle.

Throughout the midterm campaign season, GOP establishment leader Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) used his Congressional Leadership Fund political machine to inject massive amounts of cash into House races nationwide. In doing so, he targeted GOP primary races and even general elections vs. Democrats, in which America First conservatives, aligned with President Trump, were on the ballot.

Millions of dollars worth of the campaign money came straight from corrupt crypto exchange FTX and its top executives.

Along for the ride on McCarthy’s scheme were GOP lobbyist Jeff Miller, described as one of McCarthy’s “closest friends,” and Brian Walsh, an establishment strategist who McCarthy brought in to take down Madison Cawthorne after the young Representative blew the whistle on DC drug use and Capitol Hill pervert parties.

As they often do, over a month ahead of the 2022 primaries, The Washington Post, notoriously used for decades as a uni-party communication rag, openly admitted that McCarthy was using left-wing oligarch money to “sway” the GOP field in favor of his establishment agenda.

Conveniently for McCarthy and the establishment, the piece wasn’t published until after the last of the GOP’s nominating primaries had ended.

“Conveniently.” Well, I guess that would be one word for it, yeah. I can think of several much-less-polite others, right off the top of my head.

4

Preview of coming attractions

Not that they’re at all attractive, natch.

Now that the Left has secured its power, expect the Left to exercise it.

This will manifest in numerous ways but perhaps the most directly felt will be at the pump, shortly – where we can expect the cost of gas and diesel to increase, suddenly – to the point of unaffordability for many. Especially people who do not live in or near cities.

The point of this being to nudge them out of the country, long a percolating desire of the Left.

Superficially, it will be done as a way to nudge people into EeeeeeeeVeeeeees – which are said by the Left to be “zero emissions” vehicles that rely on “renewable” and “clean” energy. Claims that are as false as they are disingenuous (it not being a question of ignorance about those those claims being false). But never mind that, for the moment.

At this moment, it is necessary to at least triple the current cost of gas and diesel – in order to make driving gas and diesel-powered vehicles – including hybrids – financially impossible for most people. In order to make an EeeeeeeeVeeeee seem – per Pete Buttigieg – the “affordable” alternative to them.

Never mind the cost of the EeeeeeeeeVeeeeee itself, as opposed to the cost of gas or diesel fuel.

The point being to make the EeeeeeeeeeeVeeeeee look – just plausibly enough – to the not-too-numerate – as being a way to “save money” vs. spending it on gas and diesel made very costly, indeed. That will be the sell. The hook will be that – even if you can afford to spend what it takes to buy an EeeeeeeVeeeee – you will have difficulty using it.

Unless you live in or near a city.

Do you think it’s possible the people nudging us into EeeeeeeVeeeeees might just do that? In order to nudge people who don’t live in or near a city to move out of the country? If you don’t suppose it, you probably haven’t read about it. Urban planners – as they style themselves – who are all of the Left – have for the past 50 years-plus been planning to use their power to curtail what they sneer at as “sprawl.” By which these Leftists mean you not living in or near the city – and so under their control – but rather as far away from it as it is economically and practically feasible for you to get away from it.

The car – not the EeeeeeeVeeee – made that possible.

People who didn’t want to live anywhere near the crowds, the costs and the general diminishment of life that attends city life for all who are not rich enough to afford a handsome townhouse (or swanky condo) in the best part of the city but who had jobs in or near the city were able – via the car – to live very far away from all of that because it was feasible as a practical matter and affordable as a financial matter. They could avoid city life. Could live a much larger life than was economically possible in or near the city, where they could not afford the handsome townhouse or the swanky condo – nor the expensive private schools for their kids, either (so as to keep their kids away from the pathologies that afflict in-city government schools).

The upshot is, they want the country, the nice houses, the wide-open spaces, for themselves and their kind. Not…not…not YOU PEOPLE, ick!

1

No harm, no foul, please keep moving along, thank you for your compliance

Divemedic says he, for one, is relieved at this most reassuring news.

The agency that is in charge of ensuring that our elections couldn’t be tampered with, the CISA, has declared that our election systems were, once again, completely secure. There were no shenanigans in this election. No siree, we are on the job, and can assure you that everything is in tip top shape over here. Everything is just as secure as it was in 2020, when it was revealed that the CISA was working with leftist lobbying groups and leftist corporations to lock down the most secure election ever. Ever.

If you don’t believe this, you are a threat to US security.

Think of that “threat” designation as the signal honor it so truly is, DM.

2

The Long March triumphant

Humble apologies to the esteemed and estimable Robert Spencer, whose typically excellent “election” post-mort I found nearly impossible to hew to proper fair-use strictures with.

John Della Volpe, a hard-Left pollster and author of a deathless tome entitled FIGHT: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear & Passion to Save America, is claiming that his favorite age group saved the midterm elections for those who love skyrocketing inflation, open borders, rising crime, international ridicule and brinksmanship, and accelerating authoritarianism. Della Volpe tweeted,

“One thing I know already. If not for voters under 30 … tonight WOULD have been a Red Wave. CNN National House Exit Poll R+ 13 65+ R+ 11 45-64 D +2 30-44 D +28 18-29 #GenZ did their job.” He added, “& young #millennials :)”

If Della Volpe’s numbers are correct, and 64% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 really voted for Democrats, then one thing is clear: the corruption and politicization of our educational system has worked.

What he is crowing about is the apparent fact that the voting group with the least life experience and the most recent subjection to the Leftist indoctrination that dominates America’s educational system ended up voting as it was brainwashed to do. Gee, that’s terrific, if you like evidence of the success of the relentless propagandizing of a vulnerable and impressionable captive audience, but neither John Della Volpe nor anyone else should be proud of it. What it shows is not that the Leftist case is compelling or persuasive; it shows that patriotic Americans have been far too complacent in allowing public schools to become centers of Leftist indoctrination and hatred of our own nation and heritage.

People have awakened to this in large numbers in recent years as the Left has, as always, overplayed its hand. Angry parents began showing up at school board meetings in large numbers to protest the imposition of race-hate propaganda, aka Critical Race Theory, in public schools, as well as the presence of outright and unmistakable pornography in the guise of “gender-affirming” literature. This got so embarrassing for the Left that Gestapo chief Merrick Garland, that indefatigable foe of “white supremacists” (as soon as he can find any), actually sicced the FBI on those parents as if they were a terrorist threat.

But this endeavor has been going on since long before Garland first put on his jackboots and resolved to destroy the republic. In the 1960s, Leftists began what Communist activist Rudi Dutschke indelibly dubbed “the Long March Through the Institutions.” In China, Communist leader Mao Zedong began the Long March in 1934 to evade nationalist forces; the term, however, came to be associated with his slow, steady, patient rise to power, culminating in the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949. The Long March Through the Institutions was the same kind of slow, steady takeover, as Communists, leftists, and their allies gradually gained control of America’s colleges and universities, its primary and secondary educational systems, its popular culture, and above all its ever-growing federal bureaucracy.

This has created a situation in which those who oppose this multifarious and all-encompassing establishment are universally derided virtually everywhere one turns: in what are supposed to be objective and impartial news broadcasts; in lessons at every level of the educational system about the nation’s history, present condition, and future prospects; in movies, popular music, and more. All of the late-night comedians who host talk shows are part of this camp, and they hobnob with the political elites, and yet they still posture as if they were plucky outsiders going up against a stultified and stultifying entrenched orthodoxy.

I myself, along with many of you folks as well, know all too well that the origins of fascist Amerika v2.0 are to be found in our warped and corrupted “education” establishment, from K-12 right up through the universities and colleges, all of which was long since coopted successfully in accordance with Gramsci’s brilliantly sinister thesis. Unless and until this has been addressed and rectified, there can be no real hope for America That Was, nor for those of us who cherish her still.

I did somehow contrive to leave the closing ‘graphs out of my excessive excerpting, so as to provide y’all at least SOME “rest” you could click on over and read. But hey, it wasn’t easy.

1

Cope-out

JD Rucker sneaks a peek at life in post-truth America.

Many are saying this is Donald Trump’s fault. Those who are saying that and jumping on the DeSantis bandwagon are falling into a trap. That’s NOT to say I’m against DeSantis or for Trump for 2024. I like them both and have challenges with both of them as well. But the rising anti-Trump sentiment is being manufactured by the powers-that-be, and it has very little to do with Trump himself.

The powers-that-be didn’t just see this election as a way to salvage Democrat power. The bigger fish that they wanted to fry was us. MAGA Republicans, America First patriots, Trump supporters…whatever you want to label those who supported people like Mastriano, Lake, Don Bolduc, Tiffany Smiley, and other America First candidates were the real targets. They want us splintered. They want the GOP Establishment to continue to manage our side of the political fence for the Uniparty Swamp.

This election was mostly about shutting us up and making us fall in line with Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the GOPe power brokers. This isn’t about Republican versus Democrat. This was about protecting the powers-that-be, the globalist elite cabal that manages the Biden-Harris regime and the Uniparty Swamp.

The problem I didn’t anticipate, this problem that is manifesting very clearly now, is that I thought they’d have to stick their necks out too far to steal these elections. They did stick their necks out even further than they did in 2020, but my fatal mistake was not realizing there would be so few willing to call them out for it. I didn’t realize until now that the false narratives were already pre-planned. They are busy herding the vast majority of Republicans into an anti-Trump, pro-DeSantis election post-mortem debate and far too many are willingly being led to that ideological slaughter.

For the past five years, I’ve been doing whatever I can to stay just below the radar. Call me a coward, but I’ve always tried to stay in my own little corner of digital conservative media, content to not get too far into the spotlight for fear of my family being targeted. I refuse to speak lies or to go along with the mainstream narrative, so I figured I’d speak the truth to a relatively small audience, big enough to feed my family but not big enough to draw the ire of cancel culture, the Deep State, or the Principalities and Powers. I figured if I wasn’t really a threat that I wouldn’t get raided at 4am by the FBI.

If you suspect the red tsunami didn’t happen because the powers-that-be wouldn’t allow it to happen, then please know that you’re not alone. There will be those on the left but especially on the right who will tell you that you’re mistaken. They’ll say you’re just coping. They’ll point to a dozen different reasons why the red tsunami failed to materialize, but stolen elections aren’t among those. They’re wrong, and many of them will know they’re wrong which means they’re lying to you. Stay firm with your beliefs. Express them if you have the courage. But one thing is certain. The gloves need to come off. Our nation is in jeopardy and far too few are willing to do what it takes to save it.

The gloves do most certainly need to come off, for good. Which doesn’t necessarily have to involve shooting, even yet, but most likely will at some point. Be all that as it may, there can be no doubt that our “elections” are indeed rigged, either through direct ballot tampering and fraud or via the modalities I mentioned earlier: decades-long Leftist indoctrination of our kids in the government schools and universities; propaganda relentlessly blasting forth from every pop-culture/entertainment media outlet; and the myriad fabrications and falsehoods promulgated by Fake News “journalists.”

6

“This is the most important thread you can read following what happened last night”

So sayeth the fine folks over at Not The Bee, and they might well be onto something.

Some post-election thoughts:

1- Everything I have been saying about democracy was vindicated last night. The fact that such a massive number of people voted for more of the same after two years of horrific mismanagement shows that it is unfit to choose its own leaders.

2- Public education and its consequences have been a disaster for the American people. Any Christians that still think sending their children to public schools is a morally neutral choice are choosing national suicide.

2a- The damage is probably already irreversible at this point. The D’s staved off what should have been a bloodbath through the youth vote. The boomers and Xers can no longer counterbalance the pozzed generations electorally.

3- With such an advanced level of moral degeneracy, the best thing for the world is that American global influence wane rapidly, and it probably will. Our unique flavor of degeneracy seems to be bound up with a commitment to incompetence, and our global hegemon cannot last long.

Ahh, the elusive silver lining shows up at last. But Jefferson’s fabled “reign of witches” will NOT just “pass over” on its own; it will have to be ushered out, and quite forcefully. In the contemporary context, Jefferson’s profound wisdom doesn’t meet the case, as the rest of the passage shows (emphasis mine):

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

What will it avail us to retain our principles, once all else is lost? Jefferson seems to have had the sequence exactly backwards this one time.

At this historic moment, it strikes me as surpassing strange that Jefferson, of all people, would counsel reliance on “luck” and “patience” instead of bold, vigorous action in defiance of corruption and raw tyranny. After all, this is the same man who also told us this:

What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

One of these quotes is NOT like the other. Ah well; Thomas Jefferson, great as he inarguably was, was only human too. And no human can be right EVERY time.

4

SSDD

FLA aside, as of now it appears that the over-ballyhooed “Red Wave” has pretty much fizzled. No matter, really; after all, it’s not as if anything would’ve changed all that much anyway. In American “elections,” real, meaningful change is never on the ballot.

I fear that, having won a majority, congressional Republicans will comfortably settle into doing what they do best: keeping the chairs warm for the Democrats. Republicans have held majorities in both chambers simultaneously with the presidency from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2017 to 2019. This is a cumulative total of six years they’ve had free rein to enact their agenda. What do they have to show for it? Other than a couple tax cuts and trade deals, nothing.

Did they reform education or break the teachers’ unions? Nope. Bush gave us No Child Left Behind. Did they reduce the bureaucracy? Nope. They expanded and empowered it, with the grotesque Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and star chamber FISA courts (now weaponized by the FBI to target American citizens on behalf of the Democrats). Did they secure the border and begin seriously deporting illegals? Nope. When they do discuss immigration, they push “comprehensive” reform (i.e., amnesty) alongside their Democrat counterparts. The last Gang of Eight four Republican representatives were Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake. Need I say more?

When Donald Trump unexpectedly won in November 2016, along with a majority in both houses, Republican leadership had over two months to draft legislation (or, better yet, dust off legislation they should have already drafted) that they could have had on Trump’s desk on January 21st. By February, they could have had the wheels in motion to secure the border, repeal ObamaCare, drain the bureaucracy, reform education, and forward a myriad of solutions that they’d been campaigning on for the entire Obama presidency. Instead, they had absolutely nothing ready to go.

Trump’s many accomplishments were achieved despite the Republican Congress. The wall construction, Middle East peace deals, deregulation, energy independence, destruction of ISIS, Operation Warp Speed, strangulation of surrender to Iran, and Paris nuttery were largely done via his constitutional authority as President. He also singlehandedly converted more minority voters than any other Republican in living memory.

But nothing enrages narcissists like exposing their utter uselessness. McConnell opposed Trump not because of policy or ideological differences, but because Trump publicly humiliated him by displaying his expendability on live TV for the nation to see. McConnell never forgave him for this slight. Trump has been out of office for nearly two years, but McConnell continues to nurse his grudge by pulling money from any Republican candidate deemed too “pro-Trump.”

Assuming they win, newly-minted senators Masters, Holduc, and Tshibaka will be in no mood to take marching orders from McConnell, nor likely will Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, or J.D. Vance. Facing original Tea Partiers Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee, and other true conservatives like Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst, and Josh Hawley, the RINO clingers must realize that a steadily growing permanent class of younger senators are edging them out the door.

Bizarrely enough, it looks like Uncle Fester and/or his terrifying Quato-lump has in fact prevailed, 49.4 to 48.1 with 90% reporting, over Doc Oz in Pennsy. Take a moment to just let THAT sink in. Here, let’s have the Hodge Twins help us all out with choking it down.


Bad, bad juju for sure. This is without doubt a defeat which is going to be impossible for Oz to ever live down, a full-bore scream-dream from which the poor guy will be jolting awake awash in flop-sweat for the rest of his haunted life. The bill for laundering his sheets is going to go through the roof.

But we have to be on them like white on rice. The Left is willing to lose a Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema in one election if it means possibly electing a True Believer the next time around. They play the long game well. We are gradually learning to do the same, but we need to keep up the pressure.

In the meantime, Joe Biden’s veto pen shouldn’t be an excuse for our new majority to do nothing. For the next two years, the Democrats should be up to their eyeballs in congressional subpoenas. Investigations should be launched against Alejandro Mayorkas, Anthony Fauci, Mark Zuckerberg, Merrick Garland, the Dobbs leaker, and everyone who had any operational-level decision-making with Russiagate, the Hunter laptop coverup, the COVID lockdowns, and the Mar-a-Lago raid. They should subpoena the release of all security video from January 6th, so the American people can see for themselves what happened.

Republicans should withhold funding for the FBI, IRS, and DoJ until after they’ve removed political weaponization from their procedures and provided transparency to prove it. They should withhold Pentagon funding until it reprioritizes battlefield readiness over political witch hunts and pronoun lunacy.

And Joe Biden should be impeached. Twice.

Uh huh. I say again, don’t let’s any of us be holding our breath etc etc. This next bit, however, is spot-on.

Our representatives need to be periodically reminded that their authority is temporary, conditional, and exists not by birthright, but as the privilege of a private citizen. We have the power to ensure that they earn, and continue to earn, what we’ve given them.

Indubitably so. Would that we might trouble ourselves to make use of it now and then.

2

Amerika v2.0’s energy future: ain’t none

As laid out by our senile, decrepit, corrupt old pervert of a Pretend pResident.

Biden Keeps Promising To Make Energy More Expensive. Believe Him.

Precisely so. After all, it’s the only thing the rat-bastard has ever said that was actually true.

Yes, we’re going to make energy more expensive.

That’s Joe Biden’s closing message for 2022. “We’re going to be shutting these [coal] plants down all across America and having wind and solar,” Biden told a crowd in deep blue California on Friday, arguing that it was “cheaper” to generate electricity from wind and solar.

I’ve noted this before more than once here, but it bears revisiting now and again: the technology of the distant, long-dead past can never be adequate to meet the energy demands of modern industrialized economies.

The earliest-known references to windmills are to a Persian millwright in AD 644 and to windmills in Seistan, Persia, in AD 915. These windmills are of the horizontal-mill type, with sails radiating from a vertical axis standing in a fixed building, which has openings for the inlet and outlet of the wind diametrically opposite to each other. Each mill drives a single pair of stones directly, without the use of gears, and the design is derived from the earliest water mills. Persian millwrights, taken prisoner by the forces of Genghis Khan, were sent to China to instruct in the building of windmills; their use for irrigation there has lasted ever since.

The vertical windmill, with sails on a horizontal axis, derives directly from the Roman water mill with its right-angle drive to the stones through a single pair of gears. The earliest form of vertical mill is known as the post mill. It has a boxlike body containing the gearing, millstones, and machinery and carrying the sails. It is mounted on a well-supported wooden post socketed into a horizontal beam on the level of the second floor of the mill body. On this it can be turned so that the sails can be faced into the wind.

The next development was to place the stones and gearing in a fixed tower. This has a movable top, or cap, which carries the sails and can be turned around on a track, or curb, on top of the tower. The earliest-known illustration of a tower mill is dated about 1420. Both post and tower mills were to be found throughout Europe and were also built by settlers in America.

To work efficiently, the sails of a windmill must face squarely into the wind, and in the early mills the turning of the post-mill body, or the tower-mill cap, was done by hand by means of a long tailpole stretching down to the ground. In 1745 Edmund Lee in England invented the automatic fantail. This consists of a set of five to eight smaller vanes mounted on the tailpole or the ladder of a post mill at right angles to the sails and connected by gearing to wheels running on a track around the mill. When the wind veers it strikes the sides of the vanes, turns them and hence the track wheels also, which turn the mill body until the sails are again square into the wind. The fantail may also be fitted to the caps of tower mills, driving down to a geared rack on the curb.

Interesting enough as a historical study, no doubt, but there’s a reason windmills were in the main abandoned: because, as civilization progressed and technological advances were achieved one after another, something much better came along to replace them. As, y’know, tends to happen over time. As for solar panels, they are by no means anything new either.

It all began with Edmond Becquerel, a young physicist working in France, who in 1839 observed and discovered the photovoltaic effect— a process that produces a voltage or electric current when exposed to light or radiant energy. A few decades later, French mathematician Augustin Mouchot was inspired by the physicist’s work. He began registering patents for solar-powered engines in the 1860s. From France to the U.S., inventors were inspired by the patents of the mathematician and filed for patents on solar-powered devices as early as 1888.

Take a light step back to 1883 when New York inventor Charles Fritts created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold. Fritts reported that the selenium module produced a current “that is continuous, constant, and of considerable force.” This cell achieved an energy conversion rate of 1 to 2 percent. Most modern solar cells work at an efficiency of 15 to 20 percent. So, Fritts created what was a low impact solar cell, but still, it was the beginning of photovoltaic solar panel innovation in America. Named after Italian physicist, chemist and pioneer of electricity and power, Alessandro Volta, photovoltaic is the more technical term for turning light energy into electricity, and used interchangeably with the term photoelectric.

…That same year (1888), a Russian scientist by the name of Aleksandr Stoletov created the first solar cell based on the photoelectric effect, which is when light falls on a material and electrons are released. This effect was first observed by a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz. In his research, Hertz discovered that more power was created by ultraviolet light than visible light. Today, solar cells use the photoelectric effect to convert sunlight into power. In 1894, American inventor Melvin Severy received patents 527,377 for an “Apparatus for mounting and operating thermopiles” and 527,379 for an “Apparatus for generating electricity by solar heat.” Both patents were essentially early solar cells based on the discovery of the photoelectric effect. The first generated “electricity by the action of solar heat upon a thermo-pile” and could produce a constant electric current during the daily and annual movements of the sun, which alleviated anyone from having to move the thermopile according to the sun’s movements. Severy’s second patent from 1889 was also meant for using the sun’s thermal energy to produce electricity for heat, light and power. The “thermos piles,” or solar cells as we call them today, were mounted on a standard to allow them to be controlled in the vertical direction as well as on a turntable, which enabled them to move in a horizontal plane. “By the combination of these two movements, the face of the pile can be maintained opposite the sun all times of the day and all seasons of the year,” reads the patent.

Uh huh…on each and every day the sun is shining, which is nothing like every day, not anywhere in the entire world. Then we get into the storage end of the solar-power equation, ie, batteries. Which, despite some genuine improvement over recent years, is a whole ‘nother kettle of expensive, unreliable, not-ready-for-prime-time fish, other than on a very small, private-home scale.

Ironic, is it not, that the very ones who have for so long insufferably claimed to have a corner on plumping for “new ideas” and “fresh concepts” and “progress”—even going so far, in their boundless hubris, as to misnomer themselves “Progressives”—are the selfsame ones who today insist that “the way of the Future” is to regress to the dim and distant past. Back to the Harsanyi piece for the sad, sorry denouement.

In California, which not only leads the nation in “clean energy” production but is leading the rest of us into rolling blackouts, residents pay 24.62 cents per kilowatt-hour for energy, around double the national average. There are only three other states where residents fork 20 or more cents over, the isolated Hawaii and Alaska and the frack-banning New York. The price of a gallon of gas in California is around two dollars over the national average, at $5.458. In Texas, it’s $3.173.

The president also forgot to mention that affordable natural gas, propelled by technological efficiencies like fracking, is as much a reason for the struggles of coal.

After West Virginia’s Joe Manchin groused about Biden’s denigration of his state’s top industry , the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “walked back” the comments, contending that the president’s “remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.”

How they were distorted, she did not say. The statement stresses that the president understands that “the men and women of coal country built this nation” but that, yes, we must shut down the coal industry — as well as the oil and gas production. Biden is sorry that you’re offended. “Our goal as a nation is to combat climate change and increase our energy security by producing clean and efficient American energy,” the statement falsely goes on to say. Wind and solar, both victims to vagaries of the weather, aren’t, by any definition, “efficient.”

The kerfuffle, as with most debates over gas and oil, is confusing. The administration’s stated goal — one of the major policy planks of the Democratic Party — is to deliberately, through mandates or bans or taxes or contrived “markets,” make fossil fuels prohibitively expensive to force a “transition.” Biden’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice promises that a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions will exist no later than 2050. California has banned new gas-powered cars by 2035. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, supported by virtually every Democratic Party presidential candidate last time around, is far more extreme.

None of these climate plans can be implemented without the effective nationalization of the energy sector and the banning of fossil fuels. Solar, after decades of mandates and subsidies and cronyism, accounts for around 3 percent of the national portfolio. Both wind and solar need to be propped up by fossil fuel generation. In anything resembling a functioning market, “clean energy” loses, not only to oil, gas, and coal, but also to nuclear power.

Well, they need to be propped up by sustainable, plentiful fossil fuels if one assumes that the shitlib goal is to provide energy sufficient to heat and cool American homes, keep American fridges and freezers stocked and the sustenance within them unspoiled, invigorate our economy, and just generally keep Western Civ moving forward efficiently and affordably. Unfortunately for us all, there is no discernible sign to date that any such thing is their actual goal. Quite the opposite, in fact.

2

The Great Divide

Fran gets down to the nitty-gritty of it for us.

Well, it’s finally here: Election Day 2022. Until late this evening, those of us unwilling to break the law can know very little about what’s taking place. Unfortunately, there are quite a few who are willing to break the law. Whether they can cheat sufficiently to retain their grip on the federal Leviathan will be the determinant of much that follows. They managed it in 2020; we must not assume that they can’t do it again.

It’s part of the cleavage that has riven the American people into two mutually hostile camps.

The division isn’t principally a matter of ideology, or of attachment to particular government policies. It’s mainly about self-concept.

We in the Right mostly adhere to the original conception of the United States as The Land of the Free. There are a few paternalists among us, but the great majority of us simply want to be left alone in our private pursuits. In consequence, what we want from government at all levels is to stay the BLEEP! away from us. Keep your cotton-pickin’ hands off our wallets and stick to keeping order in the streets. We can manage our own affairs without your “help.”

Over there on the Left, they’re mainly persons who hold “an assumption of differential rectitude” (cf. Thomas Sowell). They regard themselves as our moral superiors. In their minds, that entitles them to boss us around. Questioning their self-assessment provokes behavior decent persons would prefer not to face. However, not questioning their self-assessment allows them to assume that we’re okay with having them run our lives.

This cleavage in the American people is bringing about a cleavage in the nation. It’s assumed a fairly definite geographic shape. Those preponderant in one region are looked upon with disdain (at best) by those preponderant in the other. The current trend in intra-national relocations is slowly but steadily reinforcing that division. It’s also providing grounds for intensified intra-national hostilities. If you needed something to lose sleep over, you’re welcome.

None of this should be news to any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch. The driving processes have been at work for decades. What matters most is the division between the moral visions of Red and Blue America. Yes, such divisions have existed before. But never has one side preached to itself that its superiority justifies the subjugation of the other by any means necessary.

A hell of a thing, innit, when those whose sole desire is to be left alone to live as they see fit must contend with a fanatical, über-arrogant opposition whose Prime Directive is that it must never, ever leave anybody alone. Really, though, the hell of it is that only one side can legitimately lay claim to being the contemporary representatives of the vision laid out for America by its Founding Fathers in the DoI and the US Constitution. Which goes a long way towards explicating the visceral, frothing opposition to those things, as well as the Founders themselves, on the part of the Goosesteppin’ Left.

The long, dark road

A sneak peek at Schlichter’s new book, We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America. All boldface in the excerpts mine, by the way.

Will America Fall With A Bang Or A Whimper?
Radio host and writer Kurt Schlichter’s latest book, ‘We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America,’ games out many scenarios that could lead to the country’s collapse with illuminating and even amusing results.

Although entertaining on its own, Schlichter’s crash course in classical history has a deeper point that applies to today. Like Rome, America will fall, but this fall won’t be anything sudden or even perceptible to most people. He explains that America’s fall will probably “be a transformational change. … The old ways can simply stop meeting the needs of the present, and something different replaces them.” For the past three decades, Schlichter charts the mounting corruption of the American government, the departure from constitutional limits, and the growing unrest among Americans, particularly conservatives. Even if these problems are fixed, the system will be different than it was in the early ’90s.

Even though President Trump turned away from this apparent trajectory somewhat, Schlichter acknowledges that Trump’s administration suffered from personnel issues for his first two years, and then was sunk by Covid-19 and trusting the experts. Now, “when Biden was sort-of elected, the Democrats pushed hard as they could to the left even though the voters had seen fit to literally provide them the barest imaginable legislative majority.” Consequently, certain checks on political abuses like the Electoral College, election integrity measures, the filibuster, and the authority of elected officials (vs. unelected technocrats) are being challenged or eliminated.

This brings Schlichter to today’s precious present in which an ascendent leftist elite imposes its will on a resistant population. Indeed, the global response to Covid offered a taste of this, as national governments stripped populations of most of their freedoms in the name of public health. What distinguishes the U.S. from other nations, however, is that Americans have the right to bear arms. For Schlichter, this is the ultimate check on power: “They [Americans] understand that the decision to allow or disallow any act by the government ultimately resides with themselves.”

Americans like to tell themselves that cozy lie, but absent a credible and somber threat to resort to those sharply-curtailed 2A rights if and when they must, all the guns ever made add up to no more than empty bluster, easily laughed off by our tormenters as just more hot air expelled by unserious, contemptible blowhards.

This leads him to think that a time will come soon when violence breaks out. He grants that quite a few things will need to happen before this happens: “What this [a civil war] means is that for America to reach a state of tyranny, there must not only be massive and systemic violations but, simultaneously, the elimination of any meaningful ability to address those wrongs, either under the Constitution or otherwise.

Um. I really don’t have to point out the gaping hole in the premise here, do I?

It’s at this point that Schlichter’s role as polemicist turns into one of a prophet, forecasting a variety of outcomes in the near future. First, he describes an America captured by the hard left, which brings tensions to a breaking point. Unfettered by the constitutional checks and balances, the Democrats would wreck the economy with uncontrolled deficit spending, permanently restrict individual freedoms, and refuse to enforce laws on protected classes. Any modicum of prosperity, peace, and stability would immediately be lost in an anarchic frenzy.

Huh. Maybe I do at that. Kurt speaks as if those “massive and systemic violations,” the intentionally rubbled economy, uncontrolled deficit spending, &c are mere grim but as yet unrealized future possibilities, instead of having long since come to pass, every last one of them.

Assuming none of these prognostications come to pass and the center holds for a little while longer, Schlichter concludes that Americans will have three choices: restore the constitutional order, elect a right-wing authoritarian leader, or elect a left-wing authoritarian leader. Since he discussed the last option already, he spends some time on the second option, the conservative authoritarian. He likens this to the reign of Augustus Caesar, which, at least in the beginning, had many things going for it. In one fell swoop, an authoritarian leader could fix the problems of crime, immigration, woke indoctrination, energy and water shortages, and people like Ilhan Omar holding office. However, as Schlichter concludes, “Yes, an authoritarian can make the trains run on time for a while, but that kind of regime has to derail eventually.” A few decent emperors may have succeeded Augustus, but none of them were quite as effective.

I’ve been leaning towards Option 2 for a good while now myself, albeit reluctantly. The wise old quip about socialism—you can vote your way into it, but must shoot your way out—holds equally true for all other flavors of authoritarianism. That stipulated, in order to undertake any truly serious effort to restore American Constitutional liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we must first rid ourselves of the insidious threat to freedom and individual self-determination posed by our “Enemies, domestic” on the Left. And there’s only one sure way to achieve that most laudable of goals: by suppressing Leftists and Leftist cant ruthlessly, ferociously, every time and everywhere they dare to rear their ugly heads.

I’ve often stated that I have no good or easy solutions to propose for this crippling conundrum; this is not an admission of intellectual shortcoming or inadequacy on my part, mind. It’s simply because it’s become my firm belief that, at this late stage of the game, there ARE NO good or easy solutions left to us. Henceforth, every choice will be difficult, costly, and damaging in one way or another.

At each and every turn, we readily descry a path fraught with hazard, uncertainty, pain, and wretchedness. Through a perfectly natural human reluctance to confront the ugly reality of our situation, to relax into comforting fantasy about where we now are and what we now must do, we have painted ourselves into a very tight corner indeed.

One thing is certain: carrying on under the delusional fiction that we still live in the America we grew up in—a stumbling but still essentially sound America with a badly warped but still basically functional system—will get us noplace we want to be, and gain us nothing worth having. No matter which way we finally jump or what we finally decide to do, there’s trouble up the road for sure.



2
1

The impossibility of reform

When you can’t reform it, you must either remove it, or continue enduring it until such time as your resolve hardens, your spine stiffens, and your self-respect is restored.

Break up the FBI
The Republican staff of the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,000-page report on Friday on the “politicization of the FBI and Justice Department.” While sometimes overwrought and sometimes overbroad in its claims, the report supports well its fundamental assertion that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the stewardship of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, is broken. The problem lies not with the majority of front-line agents who serve our country, but with the FBI’s politicized bureaucracy.”

Uh huh, I see. SO, get rid of Wray and Garland and all will be well then, right? Is that the basic premise here, or nah?

Garland and Wray have repeatedly stonewalled legitimate attempts at congressional oversight, sometimes (by this observer’s reckoning) almost criminally. In a Nov. 2 letter to Garland, ranking committee Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio listed an astonishing 32 outstanding requests for information (stemming from eight different inquiry letters from committee Republicans) that Garland or his agents have yet to fulfill. Likewise, Wray has failed to fulfill 38 informational demands from eight other letters.

Riiiight. And THEN what happened, eh?

Even accounting for a tendency for the minority party in Congress to make some demands for information seemingly more crafted for political “gotcha” theatre than for legitimate oversight, the recalcitrance of Garland and Wray on obviously substantive demands is an affront to the public. Instead of the transparency due in a government based on the citizenry’s consent, this behavior looks like the sort of cover-up common to authoritarian rule.

As well it might, seeing as how we assuredly do NOT have “a government based on the citizenry’s consent” anymore. For any who requires evidence in support of the proposition that we are currently under authoritarian rule, as the author of this piece seems to be waiting for: by your own standard, the first two ‘graphs ought to suffice, I should think.

For example, in light of a concerted Justice Department effort to target anti-abortion protesters, which has included dangerous use of heavily armed SWAT team raids of homes with children readying for school, Republicans have asked for department communications referring to this aggressive campaign. Garland has not complied.

“Asked for.” You gotta love that.

In general, citing numerous whistleblower reports, committee Republicans produce copious evidence of “political bias [against conservatives or Republicans] by the FBI’s senior leadership,” of a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” and of “rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.” The most familiar complaints are about the targeting of parents who dare speak up at school board meetings, the major transgressions involved in the part of the “Russia probe” that targeted former President Donald Trump (rather than just Russian election interference more generally, which was significant), and the outlandish cover-up of concerns about the laptop and international business dealings of presidential son Hunter Biden.

And THEN what happened? Anything? Anything at all? Anybody? Bueller…?

The FBI is an immensely valuable agency with thousands of good workers. Its centralized top ranks, though, have become corrupted by too much power with too little accountability. House Republicans are right to limit its abuses, and McCarthy makes sense in proposing to reduce its mission.

Stuff and nonsense, every last syllable of it. The FBI has been abusive, unaccountable, and entirely immune to oversight, reining in, and reform since its very inception, BY DESIGN. The Bureau has no Constitutional remit whatsoever, which is another confirmation of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. They would have abhorred the very idea of any such rogue, out-of-control federal agency. It’s a sad, sorry measure of how very far we’ve strayed from their original vision that it even exists at all, or ever did.

3

A Woke military is worse than no military at all

Man, this decline-and-fall business isn’t turning out to be nearly as amusing as it looks like being in all those old movies about the Roman Empire in its final days.

Our Disunity Is a National Security Threat
The military now reflects the selfishness and fragmentation of our culture. Welcome to the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial decline.

In the lawsuit challenging Harvard’s affirmative action practices, a group of senior retired military officers filed an amicus brief, which argued that maintaining affirmative action was a “national security imperative.” Those signing off include four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, six former superintendents of the service academies, and 17 retired four-star generals, including Wesley Clark and William McRaven.

A ““national security imperative”? SERIOUSLY? Sorry, fellas, but I’m gonna need you to explain to me, in detail, exactly how you arrived at THAT bizarre conclusion.

Recruiting an adequate number of troops and increasing their quality also seems pretty important. But we know that recent efforts at recruiting have been a disaster, amplified by the mass expulsion of troops who refused the COVID vaccine.

While things carried on for a while out of habit, eventually the patriotic, mostly white, rural Americans who formed the backbone of the military started doing an about face. Polls show that fewer veterans now want their kids to follow in their footsteps. Conservative Republicans, once the most stalwart supporters of the military, have lately become more critical and less trusting.

No real mystery about that. Hell, I’ve wondered for a while now what the hell any new enlistee might think he’s signing up to defend with his very life, literally, and what the hell might be keeping career soldiers in the ranks nowadays.

Declining interest in service by conservative and white Americans is not irrational. Why fight for a governing class that hates you, deems you the central political problem, seeks to humiliate you, and disrespects your ancestors at every opportunity? Why serve an American empire that pursues foreign wars like those in Iraq and Ukraine that have almost no relationship to actual national security and explicitly serve a left-wing ideology?

One might respond that military service is good even under these conditions in order to get useful training and make a living. But even under such a self-serving standard, the incentive to do so is declining, as white men within the military are subject to a rigged game, where it is harder to get ahead, and the old standards of excellence no longer matter. This will only get worse without a dramatic reset in the culture of our military and political leaders.

During the War on Terror, lavish praise for military service flowed from a widespread feeling of guilt. After the 9/11 attacks, the country wanted safety and revenge—but, other than service members and their families, very few Americans carried the burdens of war. The civilian-military gap was amplified by the increasing self-perception of servicemembers as “warriors,” rather than mere soldiers. From this romantic view of military service as a superior way of life undertaken by superior people, we see the first seedlings of a warrior aristocracy.

A constitutional republic and a warrior aristocracy are polar opposites. The European aristocracy found its origins in rewards for battlefield merit, where particular acts of bravery led to a title bestowed on the hero and his heirs, as well as land, the right to income from taxes for land-bound peasants, and exemption from taxes otherwise owed to the king.

Since every national military establishment must necessarily be representative of the broader society it both serves and is drawn from, how could anybody find any of this at all shocking? As corruption, venality, and self-absorption have gradually become endemic in American society, its military has declined right along with it, in direct proportion. How could any reasonable, rational person possibly expect otherwise? Thus:

In exchange for the prestige and perquisites of military service, one thing is absolutely essential: loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the American people. Without patriotism, the military becomes a very sophisticated gang, one that easily can be turned against the American people. Some will scoff that such a prospect is unthinkable, but one would have thought General Mark Milley undermining the commander-in-chief or a Marine selling his services to the Chinese were impossible too.

Again: shocking? Unexpected? Hardly. “Loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the American people” have all become mighty thin on the ground amongst the general populace, over many decades. In effect, the military amounts to a mirror held up to American faces, no more nor less. If Americans don’t like what they see there, the only people who can change that is…well, guess who.

 

2

It is to laugh

That, or cry, I suppose.

The inherent humor to be found in a president ordering a cut in gas production and then wondering why gas prices rise, all while blaming it on the greed of oil companies—a scenario previously demonstrated beyond doubt just a half dozen years ago by another president—is difficult to ignore.

It will be a sardonic laugh we can all have as we cool our heels and wonder why the diesel-powered trucks are not delivering the goods this winter. The scare of global warming, the supposed cause of this specific governmental overreach, will do us little good come January, but the frightening cure will likely have destroyed the most innovative economy in history—and any potential for a practical solution.

And on Tuesday, November 8, be assured that the huge imbalance of Democratic votes that appear magically when and wherever an establishment hack is in danger of losing his or her sinecure, is nothing to be concerned about. The election is not “stolen.” It is only borrowed. The software in those election machines was not tampered with, it was corrected. The names of those voters who are deceased but voted nonetheless was just a clerical error, and those who voted twice did so only by accident. Anyway, it didn’t happen, but believe us now, and it will never happen again.

How then should we describe the psychosis that gripped our nation and the world over the past two years? Wearing masks was suddenly not just a Halloween trick or treat. There are countless books about mass murderers, but the stories are usually so much the same. Nice boy. Quiet. A loner. But this one is unique. You can expect more books, but now it will be the victim’s fault—some people just didn’t Fauci fast enough! You know the litany about lockdowns, school closings, rising crime, ineffective vaccines, all of it misinformation!

But wait! What about all of those people who are still wearing masks? The overwhelming negative evidence about the social, psychological, and physical effects of wearing masks is now over two years old. And then there is the total criminal stupidity of giving children COVID vaccinations, and boosters—where does this actually end?

Speaking of children’s treats, isn’t it special that the tall muscular girl in your daughter’s gym class gets to shower with the rest of the team? You had brothers, so it was nothing new for you, but wow! You must know, don’t you, that he’s the one—I mean she’s the one—who got the team into the State championships! What can be wrong with that? Well, of course, your daughter didn’t quite reach the mark this year.  But we all have to make a few sacrifices, don’t we?

WE do, yeah. Shitlibs, freaks, headcases, Democrat Party victim-class constituencies, and sundry other reprobates never seem to, somehow.

1

Welcome to Demoworld

Where the “president” is a senile kiddie-diddler, every “election” is fraudulent, every cupboard is bare, and every day is Friday the 13th.

Horrific Biden Consequence, 20 Million American Households Behind on Electricity Bills, Pending Shutoff
Long-term CTH readers might remember in 2014 when President Obama claimed U.S. families had been paying too little for electricity for too long. As soon as Joe Biden took office, he began implementing the Green New Deal energy policy that, (a) directly forces higher costs for energy; and (b) is now creating massive problems.

Steve Cortes calls this the backside of the Biden created inflation hurricane. The backside of a hurricane is the worst because it hits from the opposite direction upon already weakened infrastructure.

The hurricane metaphor is apt because any increase in energy costs will be accompanied by the simultaneous arrival of another wave of food inflation, as the massive increases in field and crop prices start to feed into the food supply chain headed to our forks next month.

Making matters that much worse, Bloomberg is now reporting that 20 million households are now behind in their utility bills, specifically electricity bills, and the moratorium on shut offs has ended.

One in six U.S. households, that is tens-of-millions of Americans, are now facing having their electricity turned off due to lack of payment. It is certainly understandable how this horrific outcome would happen. Joe Biden’s energy policies are destroying working class families with unsustainably higher prices.

20 million households is a catastrophic level of utility default. This is a serious issue with major social implications created by the desperation of those families. Middle- and lower-income families cannot survive this level of financial pressure.

Rents are behind. Mortgages are behind. Car payments are behind. And now this report on utility bills.

Hrm. Seems to me like this might be the perfect time to order those self-same impoverished Americans—millions upon millions of whom were unable to afford college themselves—to foot the bill for the unpaid student debt of all those poor, suffering Yale-law graduates, no?

And, in the middle of all this, the Biden administration has just committed $300 billion (which we don’t have – it’ll all have to be borrowed) to pay down student loan balances. A more fiscally ridiculous, budgetarily insane, economically short-sighted decision would be hard to imagine…and just think of the inflationary pressures it will release on its own, even without considering other examples of government overreach and irresponsible expenditure.

Remember Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum? This is their vision of a future Utopia.

Yep. Must be a coinkydink, I’m thinking. Bayou Pete goes on to point us towards another extremely interesting coinkdink, duly noted over at Doug Casey’s International Man.

The term “Nazi” refers to Nationalsozialistisch, or “National Socialism,” and its overall concept was fascism – a concept that encompassed a corporatist economic system, socialist political system and totalitarian rule.

Whilst this description may seem rather convoluted, the concept was believed by Wall Street and much of the US government in the 1930s as the way of the future. So much so that they provided considerable financial and logistical support for Nazi Germany during the 1930s and even into the 1940s.

Following the war, only a handful of Germans were prosecuted for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Countless others were taken on board by both US industry and the government following the war, to educate American industry in German methodology.

For many years following the war, Nazi concepts remained under the radar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major force within not only the US, but also US ally states: Canada, Australia, the UK and, most notably, the EU.

The basic concepts are perennial in their attraction to those who seek to dominate:

  1. Create an uber class of those who are highly positioned in both industry and politics.
  2. Cripple the middle class economically, so that they no longer have the power to make their own life decisions.
  3. Offer dramatically increased dependency on the State as a relief from the economic hardship created by the state.
  4. Remove freedoms, in trade for the promise of largesse from the State.
  5. Institute a police state and totalitarian rule to ensure that the new paradigm will be lasting.
  6. Once controls are fully implemented and the populace has become dependent on the new system, begin to remove the promised entitlements.

The idea behind this final bullet point is that, once the population is thoroughly dependent upon the state, they will have lost the power to object or rebel if entitlements are removed. They are then fully dominated.

The government will have full control of every aspect of your life, plus the task of removing any obstacles to your happiness.

Sounds wonderful. Where do I sign up?

But if we stop and think for a moment, we might wish to ask a few questions.

For one thing, you give up all rights at the beginning of the deal. You will have lost all your possessions and all your freedoms. You will be 100% dependent upon the state. Their part of the deal is to be delivered on the back end.

But once you’re totally dependent and can no longer extricate yourself from the deal, there’s nothing to stop them from removing the punch bowl… Oh-oh.

Gee, whodathunkit, that all these fresh, innovative Progressivist ideas would turn out to be just the same old fascist shinola underneath a newly-repainted hood? More, and much, much creepier, can be perused at the IM link, of which you should definitely read the all.

I’ll say this much: hard times are right around the corner for us—far harder than any American alive today has ever come even close to experiencing. And all of this impending suffering and woe, every last bit of it, is the perfectly predictable result of the warped, proven-disastrous scourge of Leftism. A fine opportunity to run this Omar and the Howlers classic, I do believe.


What the hell, might’s well enjoy ourselves an encore performance of another badass Omar number, no? Happily, this one’s actually a two-fer.


Update! Deets on the Biden Bailout.

This plan isn’t just a bailout for well-off college degree holders. It’s a slap in the face for hardworking Americans.

It’s a slap in the face to the working-class father who dreamed of sending his daughter to college. He took on an extra shift at work, skipped vacations, and put off needed home repairs, all so that he could save every penny so that his daughter wouldn’t need to go into debt to go to school.

It’s a slap in the face for the recent college graduate who decided to live with three roommates and take the bus to work every day so that every extra dollar could be put toward getting himself out of student loan debt.

It’s a slap in the face for the high school graduate who decided to enlist in the military and take advantage of our country’s promise to him: You serve, we pay for your college.

With the swipe of a pen, Biden made a mockery of such sacrifices.

His plan aims to forgive up to $20,000 of student loan debt for Pell Grant holders and $10,000 for all other debt holders earning under $125,000 a year (or $250,000 for a household).

The Biden plan is estimated to cost American taxpayers roughly $300 billion at a time when they’re struggling to cope with record-high inflation.

This unprecedented, legally questionable action from the Biden administration begs countless unanswered questions.

The author goes on to ask a handful of ’em, but I have one or two myself: Why should these exorbitantly-priced diploma mills get off scot-free from a “crisis” they played a huge part in creating? Is it in any way reasonable or fair that they aren’t expected to pay at least some price for their prominent role in this flagrant scam?

In the end, it all comes down to this.

In reality, forgiving student loan debt isn’t just bad public policy for failing to address the root causes of skyrocketing college tuition. It is also a sign of disrespect for most Americans and a reminder that the priority for policymakers in Washington is to assuage the elite at the expense of the working class.

A country that respected its workers wouldn’t ask them to pay for college degrees they didn’t get. It wouldn’t dismiss the sacrifices of those who paid and ask them to pay again through taxation for those who didn’t.

A country that took seriously the impact of inflation on American families wouldn’t make the problem worse through poorly designed elitist handouts.

Fairness and responsibility have left the conversation when it comes to loan forgiveness, and those values have been replaced by greed and victimhood.

College is indeed too expensive, and for many it’s not worth it. Unfortunately, those who decided not to go into debt to attend college now will be forced to pay anyway.

The refusal to admit the obvious—that the federal student loan program has been a massive failure that drives up college prices—is nothing short of a betrayal of the American people.

Sorry, close but not quite there yet. What it REALLY is is a big, fat “Fuck you, chumps!” for them, accompanied by two upraised middle fingers and a hearty Bronx cheer, all courtesy of a bogus “elite” which, having grown insolent from being allowed to get away with way too much for way too long now, desperately needs a refresher course in all the reasons they ought to fear us instead.

5

Is we is, or is we ain’t?

Nailed. It.

This sort of Pollyanna drivel and half-assed “let’s don’t really fight for anything” horsesh*t is why we lost the Vietnam War. Either Gardiner should know better, or he wants to lose like that again.

If you’re going to fight this “civil war” the way you fought the War On Poverty, the War On Drugs, and the War On Communism, you’re going to get the exact same results:

Rolled the fuck up, and shitcanned by Reality.

So either this wingnut doesn’t want to win, or doesn’t think it’s an actual civil war. Thus, he’s either evil, or stupid. There’s no third option to choose there.

Wellll, I dunno about all THAT, now. Depends on how badly one wants to give the poor schlub the benefit of the doubt and just leave off at calling him, shall we say, overly optimistic, I suppose.

Which, honestly, I can’t say I do, my own self. At ALL.

I’m surprised he didn’t suggest writing a sternly-worded letter to the editor, holding a sit-in, or organizing a protest rally. Or maybe just shitting in your pants and hoping the smell will make the bad people go away.

If it’s really a civil war, and you really want to win, half-stepping half-assed half-measures aren’t going to get it done.

It’s going to take shooting m—–f—–s in the face.

Yup, that’s about the size of it. You don’t have to like it; in fact, you really shouldn’t, if you’re a normal, sane, decent human-type being. But you DO have to accept it, and that’s flat. Trust me when I advise you that you’ll want to read all of this one, folks.

Though it saddens me to have to do it, given my erstwhile fondness and respect for the PiQ (Pundit in Question, ie Kurt Schlichter), I have an Exhibit B to add to the already-airtight case made by Aesop above.

Oh, Mike Pence, you soft, naive little man. Oh, Tim Scott, you kind and friendly gentleman. I like you both. I really do. I would love you to be my neighbors. If I ran short of sugar or charcoal, you’d square me away. Not so much bourbon, but whatever. If I asked you to help me move or give me a ride to the airport, you suckers would be all in because you are nice guys. And that’s your problem and the problem of Republicans like you. You are nice guys in a time that calls for ruthless killers who want to destroy our enemies and leave them on their backs, figuratively cockroaching on the floor.

We want vengeance and victory. You want hugs. I guess that’s nice. Hugworld would be pleasant, but it’s the hardcore bomb throwers who get us to that stage by pummeling our enemies into submission. You find that unsavory, disconcerting, unseemly. You would prefer a world of comity, collegiality, and unicorns. And that ain’t happening until we warrior cons have broken our enemy – yeah, I used the “E” word – and exacted our payback and thereby ensured that their pain is so great that they will not dare even dream of repeating this nonsense again for a generation for fear of our righteous wrath.

Schlichter rattles on a goodish while with that “ruthless killers,” “destroy our enemies,” “vengeance and victory,” “hardcore bomb throwers” guff—none of which is incorrect or overstated, mind—before winding up exactly where we all knew too well he was going to.

It’s time to accept reality and embrace the suck. The suck is that we are in a fight. It’s not going to be over when we pass a few laws or overturn some terrible precedents; those are necessary but far from sufficient actions. No, we are in a long and brutal political struggle where the stakes are our liberty, and while you want to figuratively clutch your pearls and worry about whether this is who we are, we know who we are. And we are the guys and gals who want to figuratively don our plate armor, sharpen our broadswords, and get some, Knight Templar-style.

Emphasis mine, and truly, truly pathetic at this late date. “We must FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHTY-FIGHT-FIGHT!!! Just, y’know, not REALLY. “Our liberty is at stake here!” Correct, what tattered remnants of it we haven’t already lost by now. But if we can’t win it back by merely VOTING HARDERER at them, well…meh, never mind, then.

I swear, I read silly-ass shit like this and begin to wonder if perhaps we don’t richly deserve every single last morsel of the innumerable buckets of shit they’ve dumped over our heads so far.

Update! Wow. I mean, just…WOW.

In any normal circumstance, people can be reasonable and find a middle ground. A Republican and Democrat voter can sit down and have a meaningful and polite conversation about politics. Republicans and Democrats even get married to one another.

But socialists like the kind you’ve seen lately aren’t like these people. They don’t have any interest in talking with people, they want to talk at. They don’t like debating, they would rather silence and censor the opposition. They don’t see you as a person and have no trouble pardoning horrible things being done unto you by their own allies.

This should be understood if we’re to truly push back against them. They’re on a mission that borders on the religious. Politics isn’t just an interesting topic of conversation or a view that informs your vote. They live and breathe politics because it’s the avenue with which to usher in their socialist utopia. They can’t stop themselves from seeing it in everything they do, every sight they see, and every bite they eat. Everything from hair to math has political weight and they will find a way to utilize mundane objects to advantage their narrative if they need to.

I hate to view anyone as a lost cause but you’re very rarely ever going to come across a socialist who actually has anything but contempt for America and the people who support it. They view you as factless idiots on the wrong side of history. They will destroy everything you love under the guise that it’s for the betterment of the human race, but because feeding their spite with action feels good.

You are no longer just fighting over policy, you’re fighting over your existence as a free human being.

This means that when we go elect people to fight them in Washington, the people we send to fight aren’t going to make deals and try to find a middle ground with them. We need to send those willing to wage political war. They need to be willing to tear down the agencies and institutions that these people love to nest in.

None of that I find too terribly annoying; hell, most of it is true enough, really. But after going all wobbly in that penultimate ‘graph, the very last line is truly in a class of its own.

You are in a war. Vote like it.

Because see, as every historically-literate person will tell you, wars are usually won or lost through the…oh, ferchrissakes.

You are in a war. Vote like it.

I say again: WOW. We really are doomed, aren’t we?

2

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