Alternative History

Moar Verdict fallout

Posted on May 31, 2024May 31, 2024 by Mike

Leave it to the ever-brilliant CatTurd to hit the Vichy GOpers with it like a brickbat to the kisser. It’s another damnable “Read more…” Tweet, so I’ll just skip the embedding and cut straight to the transcription chase.

Catturd ™

@catturd2

Dear Republican Party

@GOP

…

I don’t want to hear another damn word about Ukraine.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about Israel.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about GAZA.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about Taiwan.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about any other country except the USA, you America-last war pigs.

The fascist Democrat Party has completely destroyed our country from within, we have a wide open border, and they’re shitting on the Constitution while you spineless, coward losers get rich on insider trading, rage tweet, and talk about your “principles.”

They’re literally arresting their political opponents and their lawyers and having kangaroo communists show trials – and you pitiful, worthless losers are doing absolutely nothing.

If you don’t have balls to fight for freedom – RESIGN!!!

At this late date, there’s little if any point to wagging my fingers in anybody’s face concerning the fact that the GOPe’s notorious unwillingness to show fight isn’t due to any lack of balls, but to the fact that they’re actually complicit. No matter; CatTurd’s general sentiment here remains valid, and the point is still worth making. Updates to follow…

Update! Our blog-bud Aesop brings the pain, bruise, and agony (to quote the inimitable American Dream, Dusty Rhodes) perfectly.

The meaning of today’s verdict is actually quite simple:

The Democrat Party hereby announces that they have formally seceded from the United States Of America.

This announcement, therefore, makes them nothing less, at best, than seditious criminals and rebellious traitors, and as such, liable to hanging or shooting on sight, wherever and whenever found, top to bottom, and coast to coast.

The only open question is not any longer whether there will be an open, shooting civil war, but when it will commence being a range with the firing line fully open in both directions.

That’s not an incitement to anyone, nor intended as any such thing; it’s merely a statement of facts.

Whether the nation rises up as one and purges the rot, or doesn’t, there is an immutable Truth smacking us all in the face:

America That Once Was Is

ABSOLUTELY IRRETRIEVABLY OVER.

It didn’t die of natural causes.

The Democratic Party Killed It.

All that remains to be seen, from now going forward, is whether We, the People, have the stones to hold them and their members accountable for the murder, round them up, and begin the mass hangings or shootings on sight such a calculated and treasonous criminal act demands.

If not, this was the moment when we began our irreversible slide into being Amerizuela, with all the trimmings, for years to decades.

Absitively, posolutely, indubitably so. You don’t have to like it, and when it comes right down to the nut-cutting, you really, really shouldn’t. You DO have to admit the inescapable truth of it, and disport yourselves accordingly.

And speaking of the Best Dressed Man in Wrestling, well, what the hey.

Y’know, I watched Dusty wrestle for years until his retirement from the ring, whereupon he joined Mean Gene Okerlund in the WCW broadcast booth as a blow-by-blow announcer, and I swear I think he was actually more entertaining on the mic than he was in the squared circle. Which, y’know, is really saying something.

Updated update! Don Surber, too, knows the score.

Of course they will send him to prison
Of course they convicted him. There is no justice in New York City. The Mafia proved that a century ago when it bought off the judges. The corruption runs deep and putrid in the city that never sleeps. Alvin the Chipmunk Bragg ran for prosecutor on a platform of letting criminals run rampant and bringing Donald Trump down. No one should be surprised by the 34 cries of guilty by a jury of liberal sheep.

New Yorkers love living in swill. They brag about their swill city and its diversity and rightly so.

There are black victims of violent crime. There are white victims of violent crime. There are Asian victims of violent crime. There are Hispanic victims of violent crime. There are Jewish victims of violent crime.

New Yorkers laugh and mock the victims because the city sides with the bad guys. Criminals no longer have to post bail. Businessmen who take out loans and repay them with interest, however, must post millions of dollars in bond to appeal a ridiculous verdict.

The clean and relatively crime-free city that Rudy Giuliani bequeathed to New Yorkers has gone back to rot.

New Yorkers are responsible for this. This is the life they chose. They elect the corrupt and communistic.

Judge Juan Merchan does their bidding because most New Yorkers hate decency and they hate the rule of law. This is a city that honors a career criminal and drug addict — George Floyd — while making the author of the Declaration of Independence a pariah.

All perfectly true and accurate, no argument to make from here, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that though: nowadays, it applies not just to NYC alone, Don. Not by a long yard, it don’t. Surber waxes even more depressingly prophetic from there, before finally collapsing in an exhausted heap on the old reliable standby. To wit:

Judge Merchan deliberately gave Trump a trial riddled with errors that demand an appellate court to overturn him.

That won’t happen because everyone knows John Roberts is a pawn of the deep state and the trio of justices that Trump appointed to the high court fear the mob will go after their kids and their loved ones. That fear is well-founded. Why would a lower appellate court even take the case on?

Judge Merchan will put Trump in prison. He has to or the DNC’s checks to his daughter won’t clear the bank.

The state will proceed to confiscate all of Trump’s property — including Mar-a-Lago which will trigger a decades-long legal battle between Florida and New York, which will end when Floridians foolishly elect a Democrat governor.

The only hope the nation has left is to elect Trump president on November 5.

Dude, SRSLY?!? All the power, all the Überstadt muscle being flexed, the unabashed, in-your-face lawlessness and brazen criminality, extending from the Oval Office all the way down to the most benighted, semi-sentient shitlib NYC juror—yet somehow, some way, you think Trump is going to win the next sure-to-be-rigged “election”? Sorry—agreeable though it is to idly imagine, I still just can’t quite see it happening; as comforting fantasies go, it’s the pure, the blushful Hoppocrene. If that truly IS the only hope we have left, then in practical terms we have no hope at all.

Update to the updated update! It occurs to me that, even now, “What next?” is the wrong question. What Real Americans need to be asking themselves (and each other) is, “Okay, what the hell are we gonna do about this shit?” Think proactive, not reactive, people. Although defense might sometimes forestall defeat, it’s offense that wins the game. That mindset has been axiomatic with every great football coach since Vince Lombardi, every great general since at least George Patton.

One of the primary reasons the Confederacy’s Robert E Lee believed deep in his soul that his breakaway nation was foredoomed to ultimate defeat was the various cold, implacable realities that forced him and his boss President Jeff Davis to adopt the strategic defensive, rather than the offensive they both greatly preferred. The two great men discussed this very issue many times over the course of the war; neither of them was happy about it, but they never managed to find a way around their dilemna.

The Tytler Cycle

Posted on May 23, 2024May 23, 2024 by Mike

A refresher course on how history just keeps on repeating itself.

WTF is Happening to America & What Are You Going To Do About It?
The title of this piece is a question I always hear (and ask). What the fuck is happening to this country?

From listeners, neighbors, friends, family, and even those whom I despise on the opposite end of the political spectrum, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that this country is a complete mess. The natural follow-up question is, how did we get here?

It’s not hard to answer.

It simply took 248 years for our government to bloat itself to what we are witnessing today. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.

Our founders understood this, and Benjamin Franklin wondered aloud when Elizabeth Willing Powell asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” They knew what we are experiencing today was inevitable. That government naturally evolves to seek unbridled growth and total power over the people. What no one knew was how long it would take to lose it, and here we are today, in our lifetimes, living through what may very well be the end of our constitutional form of Republic unless we decide to “keep it” and “keeping it” my friends, is not a foregone conclusion.

To understand this requires a glance back to the work of Lord Alexander Tytler, a Scottish historian who lived between 1747 and 1813. Tytler wrote what has been referred to over the centuries as the “Tytler Cycle,” outlining the eight stages of a democracy or a democratic republic such as ours. His words were prophetic indeed. He believed that every society began in bondage and progressed through the stages below:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

He professed that our form of government’s average life is 200 years.
While the Roman Republic survived nearly 500 years before its collapse, we’ve outlived his theory by 48 years. Washington, under Democrat leadership, is pushing us through stage seven en route to its goal of total control, or as Tytler put it, bondage. We are closer than at any time in our history to our eventual disintegration.

This is the “fundamental transformation” of America referred to by Marxist Barack Obama.

Indeed so. Seems like there oughta be some way we could thank the slope-shouldered sissymary properly for that, but then that’s where the second half of the title question comes in, I suppose.

Another one they aren’t making any more of these days

Posted on May 18, 2024May 18, 2024 by Mike

That would be gifted actor, horseman, Marine veteran, Hollywood stuntman, ranch hand, jazz singer, blacksmith, and world-champion poker player Wilford Brimley.

Anthony Wilford Brimley (September 27, 1934 – August 1, 2020) was an American actor. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and working odd jobs in the 1950s, Brimley started working as an extra and stuntman in Western films in the late 1960s. He became an established character actor in the 1970s and 1980s in films such as The China Syndrome (1979), The Thing (1982), Tender Mercies (1983), The Natural (1984), and Cocoon (1985). Brimley was known for playing characters at times much older than his age. He was the long-term face of American television advertisements for the Quaker Oats Company. He also promoted diabetes education and appeared in related television commercials for Liberty Medical, a role for which he became an Internet meme.

Brimley joined the Marines in 1953 and served in the Aleutian Islands for three years. He also worked as a bodyguard for businessman Howard Hughes as well as a ranch hand, wrangler, and blacksmith. He then began shoeing horses for film and television. At the behest of his close friend and fellow actor Robert Duvall, he began acting in the 1960s as a riding extra and stunt man in westerns. In 1979, he told the Los Angeles Times that the most he ever earned in a year as an actor was $20,000. He had no formal training as an actor, and his first experience in acting in front of a live audience was in a theater group at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theater.

His first credited feature film performance was in The China Syndrome (1979) as Ted Spindler, a friend and coworker of plant shift supervisor Jack Godell (portrayed by Jack Lemmon). That same year, he appeared in the Robert Redford/Jane Fonda feature film “The Electric Horseman” cast as simply “The Farmer” while assisting Redford and Fonda’s characters evade troopers while transporting the horse in a cattle hauler. Later, Brimley made a brief but pivotal appearance in Absence of Malice (1981) as the curmudgeonly, outspoken Assistant Attorney General James A. Wells. In the movie The Thing (1982) he played the role of Blair, a biologist among a group of men at an American research station in Antarctica who encounter a dangerous alien that can perfectly imitate other organisms.

Brimley’s close friend Robert Duvall (who also appeared in The Natural) was instrumental in securing for him the role of Harry in Tender Mercies (1983). Duvall, who had not been getting along with director Bruce Beresford, wanted “somebody down here that’s on my side, somebody that I can relate to.” Beresford felt Brimley was too old for the part but eventually agreed to the casting. Brimley, like Duvall, clashed with the director; during one instance when Beresford tried to advise Brimley on how Harry would behave, Duvall recalled Brimley responding: “Now look, let me tell you something, I’m Harry. Harry’s not over there, Harry’s not over here. Until you fire me or get another actor, I’m Harry, and whatever I do is fine ’cause I’m Harry.”

It was Brimley’s showstopper star-turn as AAG James J Wells (not James A Wells, as Wiki erroneously has it above) in Absence of Malice that sent me down the Wilford Brimley rabbit hole today, after re-watching Brimley’s riveting performance on YewToob. Interesting thing about the apparent James J/James A flub: Brimley’s character may very well have been James A in the script (don’t know, didn’t check), judging from what appears to be his momentary hesitation when giving his name as James J in the AoM final cut:

Note ye well that Mr Brimley, a relatively unknown bit-player-cum-character actor at the time, just walked in, sat down, riffled some papers, opened his mouth, and proceeded to steal the entire film from screen titans Paul Newman and Sally Field, without so much as breaking a sweat. By God, that there is what you call acting, bub. Ahh, but how very typical of Wilford Brimley: Kurt Russell, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon—running scenes with all of these fine actors and many more, he refused to be intimidated or overawed, nonchalantly holding his own with all those marquee names, making it look not just easy, but effortless.

More rich, buttery Brimley goodness from AoM:

One more time:

Over the years I must’ve seen Absence of Malice about, oh, I dunno, forty or fifty times—enough that I’ve long since had every word of Brimley’s dazzling five minutes or so of screentime towards the end down by heart, anyway—and still ain’t no way tired of the flick. If you’ve never seen the movie, I urge you with all my heart not to let another sun go down before you rectify that gap in your cinematic education. They ain’t making movies like Absence of Malice anymore, nor actors like Wilford Brimley, nor sturdy, versatile, by-God American men like him, for that matter.

Anybody else thinking, as I just was, that the AAG Wells character, in fact pretty much all the G-men in the above climactic scenes, represents another long-gone American totem: the competent, reasonable, and trustworthy public servant? Not to mention Sally Fields’ newspaper reporter, who, although she lost her way temporarily and compromised her professional ethics in pursuit of a red-hot scoop, nonetheless proves herself to be basically decent in the end, deeply regretful for betraying her integrity and resolved that she will NOT let it happen again.

As Wells says of the DA ensnared in Michael Gallagher’s clever trap: “Yeah, he’s a nice guy, he just forgot about the rules.” When the dust has settled, the wayward but basically well-meaning are chastened, the corrupt and malifecent made to face serious consequences, and AAG Wells has somebody’s ass in his briefcase, as promised.

Today, though, is there anyone left among us so naive, so unworldly, that he seriously expects such unflagging virtuousness from his “public servants,” even in a fictional movie? Yep, the past is a different country all right.

Constitutional course of instruction

Posted on May 14, 2024 by Mike

Roth Renegade discovers one of Porretto’s favorites, the uncompromising champion of human liberty Lysander Spooner.

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the Constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind any body but themselves.

It cannot be said that the Constitution formed “the people of the United States,” for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of “the people” as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as “we,” nor as “people,” nor as “ourselves.” Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any “posterity.” It supposes itself to have, and speaks of itself as having, perpetual existence, as a single individuality.

Moreover, no body of men, existing at any one time, have the power to create a perpetual corporation. A corporation can become practically perpetual only by the voluntary accession of new members, as the old ones die off. But for this voluntary accession of new members, the corporation necessarily dies with the death of those who originally composed it.

Legally speaking, therefore, there is, in the Constitution, nothing that professes or attempts to bind the “posterity” of those who establish it.

S’truth, strange though it may sound to contemporary ears; no less august a personage than Thomas Jefferson himself implicitly affirmed this thesis years before, with these stirring words:

God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.

The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state.

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.

Bold mine, and a hearty amen to that.

Orange Man BAAAAAD

Posted on May 10, 2024May 10, 2024 by Mike

That consarned Trump, what a repulsive sicko pervert he is.

Stormy Details of Past Affairs: When a President Watched As His Aide Had Sex With a Girl
Most of what follows aren’t rumors. It’s not a Stormy Daniels, “she said- he said” allegation. There are multiple witness accounts. The president had quite a sexual appetite, beginning with his loss of virginity at 17 to a Harlem prostitute. After he was elected president, he arranged for a tryst with a 19-year-old White House intern. It lasted a year – perhaps because the teenage intern aged out. There were other interns and at least one famous movie star.

The president watched, and a Secret Service agent observed as the president’s Special Assistant was “banging a girl on the edge of (the) pool” just feet away. One would think that the media would spend days, if not weeks reporting those details if they could verify that Trump was that president.

S’awright, we all know he did it. That, and much, much worse, even. Why, the putrid demon-fiend said “grab ’em by the pussy,” for Christ’s sweet sake!

But he wasn’t. That president was the mythical King of Camelot, the icon of the Democrat Party, and an equal to Lincoln in stature. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was that adulterous cad of a chief executive.

John Kennedy couldn’t keep his pants zipped and reportedly looked at his watch while he gave his sexual attention to extra-marital partners. From start to finish — 15 minutes was all the time they got. Then, out the door. It wasn’t a secret. His wife knew. The Secret Service knew. Reporters knew. J. Edgar Hoover knew and threatened to use Kennedy’s trysts as political blackmail. But JFK was the golden calf.

Ahh, the exalted, golden days of holy Camelot, when D卐M☭CRATs and their pet Enemedia poodles ruled the DC roost with benevolence and skill, and none dared question or defy their absolute right to do whatever they pleased. Enlightened, evolved, compassionate, “mostly peaceful,” sensitive: t’was a better age, a better America, and a better President, that’s for sure.

A washed-up porn pin cushion and her story about blacking out and not remembering what happened should never have seen the light of day or the inside of a courtroom. Her new claims that it wasn’t “about the money” and her insistence that she was an apparent unwilling victim are equal parts garbage, legally irrelevant, and clearly intended to prejudice the 12-person jury. The scandalous testimony Judge Merchan allowed has been, without doubt, utterly irrelevant to the case at bar. Merchan is sheep-dogging a kangaroo court, a political show trial that the KGB’s Lavrenty Beria would be proud of.

I got your attention by leading with a false suggestion. Misdirection. That’s what the prosecution is doing in Manhattan. Trump wasn’t “banging” interns. And this trial isn’t about Daniels or her claims. It’s [supposed to be] about business documents. But the prosecution got what it wanted. A false suggestion that Trump may have raped Daniels.

Orange Man bad.

The Manhattan trial and the blatant misconduct of the trial judge have made it crystal clear for Americans. This isn’t about what Trump did or didn’t do. It’s about getting Trump.

Well, I mean, DUH. The only question remaining now is how much more of this arrant horseshit Real Americans will put up with before they finally get up off the couch, raise up on their hind legs, and strike back at their antagonizers.

The greatest irony of all is that Bad Back Jack’s radical-supply-sider tax cuts were more draconian than either Reagan’s or Bush’s cruel, heartless, ruinous ones in percentage terms, yet elderly shitlibs nevertheless drench their Depends to this very day in rapturous memory of the self-serving, womanizing, election-buying rich-boy heel that was taken from them far too soon. Go figger. Worked a treat at stimulating a stalled economy too, in all three instances. Then again, tax cuts almost always do, regardless of who implements them—almost as if there might be some sort of symbiotic, mutually-reinforcing relationship between them (for more on that curious, inexplicable conundrum, please see this post).

Put-up job

Posted on May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 by Mike

Waitwaitwait, you mean to tell me that the whole thing was all just a DO(I)J swindle all along?!? That Meinherr Garland’s DO(I)J really, truly is as marrow-deep corrupt and partisan-politicized as some of us have been insisting for years? Why, I can’t believe it. I WON’T believe it.

The DOJ’s Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid
New disclosures in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage case against Donald Trump reveal the FBI tampered with evidence to create the infamous photo–and DOJ has lied about it for nearly two years.

It is the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.

A few weeks after the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the Department of Justice released a stunning photograph depicting alleged contraband seized from Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate that day; the image showed colored sheets representing scary classification levels attached to files purportedly discovered in Trump’s private office.

Included as a government exhibit to oppose Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to vet the 13,000 items taken from his residence, the crime scene pic immediately went viral—just as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the unprecedented raid, intended.

At the time, even regime-friendly mouthpieces questioned the need and optics of the raid; the photo helped juice the DOJ’s justification for the storming of Trump’s castle.

“[The] question of whether Trump had classified material with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort has captured the public’s attention. The photo published by the government appears to answer that question quite affirmatively,” Washington Post resident fact checker Philip Bump wrote on August 31, 2022.

Yeah, well, y’know, the Washington Post. That would of course be the longtime regime house organ Washington Post, after all. Fake News doesn’t come any more Fake Newsier than them. Onwards.

Some of Bump’s colleagues were more hyperbolic. An ex-CIA officer told ABC News the cover sheets indicated the highest level of secrecy, which in the wrong hands could have resulted in murder. “People’s lives are truly at stake. Without being melodramatic, anything that helps an adversary identify a human source means life and death,” intelligence expert Douglas London melodramatically warned in reaction to the photo.

The New York Times insisted the photo was consistent with how the FBI handles criminal investigations. “[It] is standard practice for the F.B.I. to take evidentiary pictures of materials recovered in a search to ensure that items are properly cataloged and accounted for. Files or documents are not tossed around randomly, even though they might appear that way; they are usually splayed out so they can be separately identified by their markings,” reporters Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman wrote on August 31, 2022.

Except…that is not what happened.

And it most certainly wasn’t, as the article goes on from there to detail. Highest possible kudos for the indespensible Julie Kelly for yet another marvelous real-journalistic coup de main. The woman is like a fucking machine.

Rockin’ in the free world state

Posted on May 1, 2024May 1, 2024 by Mike

Not to restart the whole “DeSantis is a Deep State boll weevil” discussion, mind; certainly, he’s amply demonstrated himself to be an extremely ambitious ProPol at best, which is in no way a compliment. That said, though, he does just keep on doing good and worthwhile things as FLA Guv, if only in spite of himself, perhaps.

Ron DeSantis wants to teach young people about communism. He should use rock ‘n’ roll
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has written a bill that requires teaching on the history of communism in Florida public schools, beginning in the 2026-2027 school year. DeSantis wants students inoculated against the evils of Marxism.

It’s a great idea. One suggestion — use rock ‘n’ roll in the lesson plan.

Rock ‘n’ roll is an exciting, popular art form geared toward young people. It also has a proud (and largely ignored) history of anti-communism.

In their book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, who both work for the libertarian outfit Reason, reveal the often hidden history of popular music as a weapon against totalitarianism. In the chapter “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” they detail how the music helped defeat communism.

As Welch and Gillespie note, Vaclav Havel and the leaders of the 1960s revolt against communism in Czechoslovakia were deeply influenced by American rock and roll, particularly the band the Velvet Underground. A group of young Czech hippies formed the group the Plastic People of the Universe, named after a Frank Zappa lyric, and were soon banned by the government. A fan of the Rolling Stones, Havel saw and heard in rock and roll “a temperament, a nonconformist state of the spirit, an anti-establishment orientation, an aversion to philistines, and an interest in the wretch and humiliated.”

It’s an exciting piece of history. DeSantis should add it to Florida’s new pro-freedom curriculum.

A sound idea all around, to my way of thinking.

Police story

Posted on April 28, 2024April 29, 2024 by Mike

The great Ken Layne tells it as only he can, a personal reminiscence that provides a bracing look back at the kind of old-time cop we all used to respect, trust implicitly, and admire—a noble breed which has become all too rare in Amerika v2.0, alas. They used to be the norm rather than the exception in America That Was, but tragically for us all, America That Was is no more.

Ripley
Ripley was a Riverbank cop for a good long while until he went to work for the Sheriff’s Department around 1985 or so. He was one of those old skool small town cops, Officer Friendly if you will. Him being called out for something did not mean automatic arrests of everybody involved would be made “to let the courts sort it out”.

He was one of those cops that actually took the time to listen to both sides of a dispute, would pull over to help a motorist make minor repairs rather than just calling a tow truck, and would even give you a ride home instead of automatically arresting you if you had a little too much to drink provided you weren’t so fucked up you were driving on the sidewalk and giving whiney-ass sober citizens a reason to complain. On top of all that, he had a great sense of humor.

That’s not to say he took shit off of anybody. He treated people the way they treated him.

Real Pancho was drinking at Sanchez’s Cantina one night and shooting the shit with Tony, the owner. Things got a little spirited between a couple of the customers, and the shit spilled out into the street. Rip was either called or was just driving by and stopped to break it up. After he got everything settled and turned to walk back to his patrol car, one of the drunks slapped at the back of his head. Rip spun around and dropped him with a hard right. Real Pancho told us later, “That motherfucker went from Andy Taylor to Buford Pusser in 1.5 seconds flat, homie.”

A bunch of us were sitting around drinking beer one Friday evening and his name came up, then everybody started throwing out theories on why he was so damned lenient, everything from compassion and understanding to being a local boy to whatever. George burped and said, “Y’all are overthinking this. Rip just hates paperwork with a passion, is all. He’d rather drive around in his patrol car than sitting in the station filling out arrest reports.”

Rip had a soft spot for anybody that worked out at the ammo plant, having worked there himself during the Vietnam war before enlisting in the Marines to go kill commies. As a matter of fact, on my very first day at work, the line boss I was working for told me to keep my work badge in my wallet with my driver’s license and if Officer Ripley pulled me over, hand him both and I’d probably get off with just a warning.

He wasn’t lying, either. A couple weeks after I started there, I rolled through a stop sign at about 10 mph and was pulled over by Rip, the first time I had ever laid eyes on him. As I was digging my license out of my wallet, he saw my work badge and forgot all about my traffic infraction. We spent the next 15-20 minutes talking about the plant and the mutual friends and acquaintances we had.

That’s not to say he didn’t write us tickets if we pushed it. We got a couple warnings but if we continued to misbehave, we got a ticket with him bitching about it so much we almost felt bad for putting him on the spot. “Now here I am trying to do my damnedest to be a decent human being by not holding y’all to the literal letter of the law, but do you appreciate my kindness and good will? Oh nooooo, you test my patience time and time again. I gave you a warning for speeding, then not a week later I see you blasting through town endangering law-abiding citizens and Mexicans. I’m gonna introduce you to my Maglight if you keep this shit up. Sign here.” It was hard to hold a straight face while he was ranting.

He was welcome out at my place and showed up quite a few times with his wife Jeri and sons. They fit in well anyway with about half my friends knowing him their entire lives. He wasn’t Rip the cop when he was there, he was just Rip the local guy. He left his job at work.

People smoking weed wasn’t an issue because he was usually gone by dusk along with others that brought their kids, and back then we didn’t smoke dope around kids. I doubt anybody would’ve put him on the spot by firing up a doobie anyway even if there were no kids around.

His youngest son pulled a trigger on a real gun for the first time out at my place, and him and his boys came out fairly regularly to hunt pheasant or dove when the seasons were open.

Rip’s story is a long ‘un, and also one of the best damned reads you’re ever going to see. It pains me no end to see my daughter’s terror and dread at every interaction I’ve had with po-lice in her presence—there’s been a fair few, none of them at all adversarial and/or confrontational, all of them relaxed, casual, even cordial.

True story: once, when we were pulled over for some piffling infraction or other (a busted taillight bulb, I believe it was), the poor kid actually burst into tears as I was talking with the cop—gasping for breath, shoulders heaving, great sobs racking her little body. The cop was horrified, and tried his dead-level best to calm her down, speaking directly to her in soothing Daddy-voice tones to assure her she didn’t need to be afraid, that he’d never dream of harming a beautiful little girl like her in any way, that his job was to help people like us, not to hurt them. Finally, he gave the effort up as a lost cause, apologized profusely to me, and we all went our separate ways. I felt sooo bad for the poor guy, I really did; it was perfectly obvious to me that he was a loving parent himself, the thought of any child actually being terrified of him just absolutely wrecked the man.

A few days later, I went so far as to go to the Belmont PD HQ and ask to see Officer Whateverhisnamewas (I had caught his name from his shield and jotted it down afterwards so’s I wouldn’t forget), whereupon the SGT on front-desk duty that day brought him out and I offered my thanks for his going so far above and beyond the call etc to be such a sweet, caring guy with my distraught daughter. He blushed to his roots at that, saying t’was nothing, he meant what he said about helping people like us being part of his job, the part he himself found most satisfying of all.

I then told him I honestly had no earthly inkling as to where her reflexive fear of cops might’ve come from, that I was working diligently to teach her otherwise. In my considered opinion, the blame for Madeleine’s mystifying breakdown couldn’t fairly be laid at his doorstep, I said, reassuring him that I bore him no ill will whatsoever over the episode.

After that, we chit-chatted idly about this, that, and the other for a few more minutes—turns out he was a drawling, born-and-bred scion of good ol’ Gaston County like I was, a natural kinship which gave us plenty to discuss—then shook hands warmly and again went our separate ways with a smile on our faces, a skip in our steps, and a song in our hearts.

I have this longtime habit, see, of going out of my way to talk to cops I cross paths with in my daily round, having had many friends, neighbors, and family members who served on one force or another since I was but a wee bairn. I’ve tried to instill in her from early on the idea that cops are not too terribly different from the rest of us workaday schlubs: some of them fine folks, some of them obnoxious pricks, but in the main just regular people who have a difficult job to do, about like anybody else is/does.

I want Madeleine not to shy from the police quaking with fright as if they were the Loch Ness Monster, Nosferatu, or the Wolfman with a badge and a gun, but to treat them just as she would anyone else, taking them as they come, reserving judgment unless and until they give cause to dislike and shun them as toxic assholes. In my extensive experience with them, act as if cops are actually, y’know, human beings and they’ll usually respond positively, granting you the same small courtesy in return.

This is just another of many thorny parental dilemmas every caring Mom and Dad worthy of the name must carefully consider, then choose the course of action that seems best for their child based on the information at hand, which is usually incomplete. As such, it greatly disturbs me to think that—what with today’s militarized police kitted out as soldiers in full combat gear including Level IV body armor, automatic battle rifles, and even tanks (!!!), faces concealed robot-like behind Next Generation Integrated Head Protection System helmets, NOD goggles, and opaque face shields, champing at the bit to engage their Enemy (to wit, US) and vanquish him utterly—by urging my kid not to fear, distrust, or abhor cops I might be doing her a serious disservice at best, possibly putting her in real danger at worst.

As I’ve said so many times, when we passively allowed marauding Lefty wreckers to take our country from us, many fine things were lost in the suicidal shuffle that were very much worth holding onto. Compassionate, dedicated cops of Ripley’s stripe who deem personal integrity, selflessness, and strict attentiveness to duty to be sacrosanct would definitely be one of those things. LESSON TO BE LEARNED: In the next iteration (if any) of the Former USA, after the grassroots uprising I call the Coming Unpleasantness© has concluded and the dust has settled, perhaps We The People will be more willing—better prepared mentally, physically, and materially—to fight, truly fight, to keep them.

Yes, that of necessity means violence, bloodshed, and war, and what of it? Real Americans realize that our freedom, our heritage, our traditions, our very society itself are all worth paying any price to maintain them. The simpering, pusillanimous wretches who preemptively foreswear violent action in defense of our unique American birthright have in effect surrendered already, mewling shamefully in favor of lawsuits, Congressional investigations, higher court decisions, and “elections” as if there was any credible hope in all that endless, proven-futile meat-beatery. So to hell with them then, sayeth I.

Capsule summary

Posted on April 25, 2024April 25, 2024 by Mike

A Sarcastica sum-up.

The Repubs continue to threaten us with a loss in November to a senile clown with their circular firing squad and other antics ………3 Soros backed Negroes with a combined integrity of a street corner heroin dealer are prosecuting persecuting (like him or not) our former President like third world shitholes do, while the media cheers them on for ratings and future lucrative book deals…………our coward-and- chief, who spends more time at home (where not subject to official call and visitor logs) than he does in the oval office, can’t regularly make it past 12 noon without a visit from Dr. Feelgood (yeah I said it) shits his pants and lies his ass off and has gone to shouting like a South American dictator about his opposition on the campaign trail………..we are being reassured of the fact throwing $80K a year at an elite institution of higher learning can produce just as many idiots as intelligent people…………and let’s not forget 185 pound trannies beating up 15 year old girls in their own school restrooms. But if all that doesn’t make you want to drink yourself into a stupor, Taylor Swift’s new album is being criticized for being poorly written……….OH THE HUMANITY!

BUT, on the upside, congress agreed to throw away send out more of your tax money and the Ukrainian civil service employees are assured of their 4 weeks of paid vacation and Zelinsky’s ol’ lady can take her regular summer Paris shopping trips.

That about covers it, I believe.

Ask A Silly Question Part the Eleventy Million Bajillionth

Posted on April 22, 2024April 22, 2024 by Mike

This time, it’s our esteemed colleague Buck Throckmorton asking:

THE MORNING RANT: Why Do Intelligent People Continue to Rely on Government Data That is Known to Be False?
—Buck Throckmorton

A: INTELLIGENT people…don’t. Which, of course, Buck knows already, thanks; inflation and unemployment numbers, FaxVid deaths, Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™, “baseless claims” of election rigging, “mostly peaceful” BLM riots, “insurrection” sans torches, pitchforks, or firearms—it’s all a web of deceit, disingenuousness, and/or baldfaced lies.

The only reliable assumption regarding the pattern of falsified reporting from government agencies is that everything they report is false and intentionally misleading.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

S’truth. Which in a way is a good thing, ‘cause these days hardly anything else is.

It could never happen here

Posted on April 20, 2024April 20, 2024 by Mike

Got news for ya: it already did.

BREAKING NEWS: Seventy-Two Killed Resisting Gun Confiscation In Massachusetts. National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a Para-military extremist faction.

Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw. Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement, which has been blamed for a number of terrorist acts, including the destruction of valuable cargo that had been located on ships in the Boston harbor.

Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group’s organizers as “criminals and cowards” issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government’s efforts to secure law and order.

The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons after Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week.

Thank goodness history never, EVER repeats itself, right?

“A devastatin’ blow to our antiquated systems”

Posted on April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 by Mike

One of the all-time greatest scenes in the history of the cinematic art.

A blazing campfire way out in the boonies; a handheld camera shooting from the back seat of a scarlet 68 Chevy Impala ragtop purchased specifically for the purpose, rolling along at no more than 25mph so as not to jostle the cameraman overmuch; gorgeous, gleaming, one-of-a-kind Harley Panhead choppers; joints with actual, no-shit weed in ‘em for purposes of artistic verisimilitude; three immensely talented, daring actors improvising the dialogue in real-time, as they went, unscripted and unrehearsed.

Folks, it just don’t get much better than this.

The Captain America and Billy bikes were designed and built by the somewhat unlikely team of Cliff Vaughs and Ben Hardy, which is a great story in its own right.

When The Easy Rider concept was quickly made into form, Peter Fonda set out to get him a couple of bikes for the movie. There’s lots of controversy about who built these bikes. Some say Dan Haggerty, who was in the movie. The guy who painted the bikes, his son says it was him (his dad, that is). Some say it was Peter Fonda.

But the guy who built them was a guy named Ben Hardy. Ben was an African american man who knew Harleys, and knew what he was doing. When Cliff Vaughs was asked by Fonda to oversee the building of the bikes, Vaugh’s turned to Hardy who was well known (if you were black) in Los Angeles as the go to guy to build a killer bike, and do it right.

Peter had only one thing he wanted on the bike. He wanted Captain America to have a flag on his gas tank. Beyond that, the design was left to Vaughs. I gotta think tho…Peter was an experienced rider, and Dennis hopper wasn’t. That had to have come up in the conversation somewhere, because the Billy bike was a much easier bike to ride. I had a fat boy that was really close to the same configuration, and my brother has a friend with a Billy Bike replica. They’re easy bikes to ride. The captain America bike? Cut that steering head off and rake that bitch out like it is, throw in those long forks with no front brake and see how you fare. You don’t give that kind of bike to a beginner.

It was Cliff who actually first offered the name “Easy Rider” to Fonda. It was a term he used in the day. Whats an Easy Rider? that depends on who you ask. In the 1900s it meant a freeloader. A guy who mooched off you. To Dennis hopper, it meant a man who lived off the money of a whore. He got it from an old Mae West movie. Whatever cliff meant by it, I’m not sure. All I know is he redefined the word. To this day I think it is associated to Harley riders. Maybe because of cliff, but most definitely because of the movie. When you say Easy Rider, I think of the movie. I think of Harley’s.

Vaugh’s quickly took the idea to Ben Hardy. Peter bought four 1950’s panhead police bikes from auction, and got them to Hardy and Vaughs. Jim Buchanan fabricated the frames, the engines were built by Hardy, Dean Lanza did the paint (his son is adamant he built the entire bikes). 2 bikes were for filming, 2 were for the final sequence of the movie, which I’m fucking assuming you know about, otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. Hardy went to work, and the rest is history.

It is at that, it surely is, and not just biker history alone. A pic of Hardy, and of his LA shop.

Ben hardy Easy Rider Bike.

Ben hardy shop-1.

The shop is still there as of the writing of the above article (mid-2012, that would be), in the same location, albeit with a new name and under different ownership, seeing as how the great Ben Hardy passed away in 1994. Betcha didn’t see all that coming, now did ya? And I truly hope you didn’t think for a moment I’d leave out one last cultural lodestone immortalized in the film.

For whatever it’s worth, I always dug the minimalistic, cut-down lines of the Billy-bike bobjob way more than the near-parodically stretched, raked, and extended 60s chopper archetype represented by the Captain America machine. Two beautiful bikes, two completely different stylistic approaches, brought together in one unforgettable movie masterpiece. Taken for all in all, Easy Rider is as 100% all-American as apple pie, hot dogs, and hog-leg Colt .45 wheelguns; it could never have happened in any other time or place.

Nitpicking update! One decidedly trivial flub-up from the early part of the movie that has always irked me disproportionately is when Billy chides Captain America for being incautious about gassing up his bike, saying “Man, all the money we have is riding inside that peanut tank.” No, gawddammit, it is NOT a “peanut tank,” Billy boy. That’s the nickname for the original Sportster gas tanks, like thus:

As any fool can see without half trying, the American-flagged receptacle adorning Wyatt’s bike is actually a Mustang tank, to wit:

The Mustang tank is so-monikered because of its origin—namely, on the pioneering Mustang mini-motorcycle, a cute li’l thang that went the way of the dodo back in 1965 after a tragically abbreviated nineteen-year run during which it somehow never found its market niche, despite a plethora of innovative technical advances such as being the first American motorcycle of any size or type to feature the now-ubiquitous telescopic-fork front suspension.

The noble Mustang name lives on in its beautifully understated fuel tank, an unforeseen legacy that’s still available for most makes of big bikes from various aftermarket companies today. It’s been a go-to favorite with more discriminating and tasteful Harley customizers since the 60s. Myself, I’ve run a Mustang tank on every Sporty I’ve owned except for the first and last ones—what is that, three of ’em, four? Whatever, I absolutely adore the things, have ever since I first got hipped to their existence by an ad in the once-glorious Easyriders magazine.

For one thing, the Mustang has a much higher capacity than the stock Sporty “peanut” go-juice tank, which holds a measly gallon or so—some .9, others 1.3, depending on the year. That translates to no more than ninety miles or so before you have to make a stop for a refill. Which, actually, was just jake with me, since an hour and a half of having your teeth rattled and your bones jarred by those old Ironheads on a daylong putt with your local wolfpack was quite enough for anybody, thanks. By the time you’d gone through your peanut tank’s capacity and switched the petcock (Pingel Power-Flo, of course; no shoddy stock PoS will suffice) over to reserve (14-15 more miles at best), you were good and READY to climb off and unkink your aching legs and back a little.

Yeah, while you glided to the nearest pump sucking fumes the Big Twin ironbutts’ unwieldy 5-gallon fatbobs would still be well over half full, so you could count on catching the usual ration of good-natured shit for your “dirt bike” or “woman’s” bike’s short legs from them. But who the hell cares what those Geezer Glide pricks think anyway? Let ‘em snigger, let ‘em chortle to their hearts’ content; their ol’ ladies will be pestering you at the bar later on for a leg-wettin’ thrill-hop packing on the p-pad (“p” for pillion, although some mischievous wags swear it actually stands for pussy, and as all Sportster riders know, neither side is entirely wrong) of your fleet little speed-demon, and everybody knows it too. When some horny, sexy biker bitch is reaching around from behind you to fondle your throbbing erection through the thin fabric of your worn, grease-stained jeans as you rip down a lonely back road, the last laugh will be yours.

Ask me how I know. Never mind, don’t, I ain’t gonna tell ya.

For another, the Mustang tank’s curvaceous good looks simultaneously offset and complement the rest of the Sportster’s no-frills, bareknuckle-brawler savagery, making what was for me a perfectly irresistible aesthetic combination. Plus, back when I bolted on my very first prized Mustang the tanks had fallen so far out of contemporary vogue as to be downright rare; almost nobody who saw mine in those days—be they old-school scooter trash or cake-eating-civilian cager—even knew what the hell it was, although they all liked it. Or they said they did, at any rate, which was good enough to suit me. I certainly did, and as the builder, owner, and rider, my opinion was the only one that mattered.

It still is, I still do, and if I had a Sporty today there would almost certainly be a Mustang tank, in flat-black rattlecan sprayed on by yrs trly etc, perched saucily on the upper frame rail between the top triple-clamp and the stiff, uncomfortable nut-buster of a seat. Or there soon would be, you betcher. Even though I’m too old for that sort of thing nowadays, hey, that’s just how I roll, people.

Another war in which there are no rules

Posted on April 12, 2024 by Mike

As we have seen, and are continuing to see. As with all other wars, there is but one way it will end: with one side victorious, the other…not.

The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It
Being middle class in America used to mean something—something socially transformative, something even revolutionary. The American middle class represented a form of national social order never before seen on this earth—cultural domination not by the very rich and very educated, or the political domination either by tyrants or the mob, but by a mass of people, relatively well-to-do, who felt themselves fortunate in their circumstances. That was what made the American middle class different from the French or English bourgeoisie. Its members believed, and the country believed, that they were the nation’s backbone, its true governing class, and its moral compass.

Throughout most of the 20th century, the term “middle class” signaled membership in an optimistic and growing group, most of whom had risen within memory from physically laborious jobs in farming or on factory floors to offices and small businesses they ran themselves. The middle class had enjoyed long periods of prosperity and stability, and each generation of politicians, on the left and the right, had enthusiastically pandered to it because they were the American majority, and it was from the American majority you could build a political consensus and a political coalition.

What were the core convictions of the American middle class? It valued its freedom and autonomy, was proudly patriotic, involved itself in its local communities, and was churchgoing without being fanatical about it. Its position at the dead center of American life was reflected in mass culture in ways that were both positively reinforcing and widespread. If you turned on any radio program in the 1930s and 1940s or any network television show before the advent of the cable era, you would likely find some benign portrait of the middle-class American nuclear family staring back at you. Providing that kind of mirroring comfort made cultural and financial sense in a country where approximately 61 percent of adults lived in middle-class households.

As Max Weber said, “A class itself is not a community.” The middle class in the U.S. has always been as much an idea as it is a definable socioeconomic category. It has also served as an ideal, a goal to achieve for the working class, which sees in the rung above them on the social ladder wonderful and achievable things like home ownership, a safe neighborhood, and retirement comfortable enough to soothe an aching back garnered from decades of physical labor.

But both the idea and the ideal are under significant threat today, and not only from economic challenges such as inflation, stagnant wages, and higher housing costs. The common understanding of the middle class as the key moderating force in our culture and politics is also disappearing. We know this from the evolution of American mass entertainment. Popular culture has moved away from the values and interests of the middle as well. In Status and Culture, the critic W. David Marx describes how, in the mid-20th century, the middle class “enjoyed its own respectable taste world of Reader’s Digest, bowling clubs, and Lawrence Welk.” Those middle-class tastes and choices were mocked by the elitists of the time; the middle class was said to be living soulless conformist existences in “little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” as the folksinger Malvina Reynolds sang contemptuously in 1962. Efforts to shock the middle class out of its complacency came in the form of supposedly scandalous works like Peyton Place that presumed to show the dark truth behind the manicured lawns of Main Street USA.

Then came the 1960s and the elevation of transgressive behavior and mores. By now, there is almost no middle-class culture to mock. Today, Marx writes, “the twenty-first century economy has skewed media and consumption so decisively toward coastal elites as to be perceived among the lower middle class as a demeaning erasure.”

This erasure is significant because it speaks to thorny issues of status and dignity in a country with long-standing anxieties about class. The middle class found it could no longer rely upon or take pleasure in its creature comforts quite so readily, or find satisfaction in achieving a certain level of social standing. As Paul Fussell observed in his 1983 book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, “The special hazards attending the class situation in America, where movement appears so fluid and where the prizes seem available to anyone who’s lucky, are disappointment, and, following close on that, envy….The myth conveys the impression that you can readily earn your way upward, [so] disillusionment and bitterness are particularly strong when you find yourself trapped in a class system you’ve been half persuaded isn’t important.”

Rather than be catered to by the elites who seek to make their living off their tastes and wants, the middle class is more likely to hear the elite talk about it as a problem: Middle-class Americans are racist, they complain too much about how expensive everything has become, and they won’t get on board either with the left’s social-engineering schemes or the populist right’s rage-driven apocalypticism.

They are told that “no human is illegal” and that their concerns about an open border are evidence of their own bigotry. They see the poor and other designated “oppressed” receive sympathetic elite attention and government subsidies and programs, and services aimed at helping them. The elite champion the rights of criminals, illegal immigrants, and destructive Black Lives Matter activists who want to dismantle the police. They tell the rest of the country that they must call the homeless the “unhoused” and ignore any quality-of-life effects from that population’s drug use or instability. When the middle class complains, the elite often chide it for having fallen prey to “misinformation” or excessive “right-wing” media consumption.

The middle class is also frequently reminded that shoplifting is a victimless crime even as they see prices rise and goods placed behind locked cabinets—or, in many cases, entire stores shuttered after being scavenged for too long by thieves who go unpunished. In January, after coordinated groups of pro-Palestinian protesters shut down traffic to tunnels and bridges in Manhattan, disrupting the lives of millions of New Yorkers, the New York Post noted how many of the protesters were students at elite colleges such as Yale and Brown, whose activities were being lavishly funded by “the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation” as well as “a Rockefeller family foundation.”

By contrast, it is the middle class that sends its children off to the military to fight wars. The middle class is overrepresented in the ranks of the enlisted compared with upper- and lower-income groups. According to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations, “Most members of the military come from middle-class neighborhoods. The middle three quintiles for household income were overrepresented among enlisted recruits, and the top and bottom quintiles were underrepresented.” They are effectively serving a country that lately has shown little tolerance for their way of life or their values.

Meanwhile, they watch politicians like President Biden transfer the student loan debt of higher-earning Americans to those in the working- and lower-middle class. A 2020 report from the Brookings Institution, using data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance “confirm[s] that upper-income households account for a disproportionate share of student-loan debt—and an even larger share of monthly out-of-pocket student debt payments.”

No wonder they feel like suckers, betrayed and frustrated because things no longer seem to work the way they should. They are being played for suckers.

As are we all—everyone, that is, foolish and/or naive enough to still believe, as patriotic dupes, in the essential righteousness of a nation which in actuality bears little if any resemblance at all to the nation its Founding Fathers—whom its middle-class posterity still nonetheless justly admire and take great pride in—brought forth originally.

None of this has happened by accident, mind. The assault on and dismantling of the American middle-class and the nuclear family which is its backbone and practical foundation is Item One in the Marxist playbook, the crucial first step without which all else is pointless and futile. The author of this extended essay knows this, natch, albeit mentioning it in no more than cursory fashion. Which, actually, is understandable; she’s hunting much bigger quarry here, and makes a pretty thoroughgoing job of its pursuit.

The FauxVid fraud

Posted on April 9, 2024April 9, 2024 by Mike

Rand Paul nails ‘em to the wall AGAIN.

The Great COVID Cover-up: Shocking truth about Wuhan and 15 federal agencies
Shame on all the federal employees who covered up these facts about COVID-19

How vast was the Great COVID Cover-up? Well, my investigation has recently discovered government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.

These officials knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID 19-like virus and not one of these officials revealed this scheme to the public. In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research.

Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Read all of it; penned by the highly esteemed Sen Paul himself, the man knows whereof he speaks and takes it all the way down to the nuts and bolts of the issue. Bottom line: 1) FauxVid was actually not “Chinese CoVid,” but “US Covid,” bought and paid for entirely by FederalGovCo; and 2) Fauci is, as some of us have said all along, the most prolific mass-murderer in human history—willfully so, as is definitionally required for the charge of murder to apply.

It is not merely “unfortunate” or “regrettable” that none of the truly evil blackguards responsible will ever pay a price for their myriad crimes against humanity, it’s an atrocity.

50th anniversary for 715 by Number 44

Posted on April 8, 2024April 9, 2024 by Mike

The incomparable Vin Scully calls the shot.

I watched Henry Aaron’s history-making moment on TeeWee with my dad; if I remember right, my folks had permitted me to play hooky from school the day he tied the Babe’s longstanding record of 714—a record most baseball people had sworn for years could never be equalled, let alone surpassed—so’s I could watch that one.

When I was growing up in Mt Holly, NC, it was de rigeur to root for A) the Washington Redskins (so naturally my ever-contrarian self was a diehard supporter of Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys), and B) the lovable-loser Atlanta Braves.

My dad took me down to ATL to see the Braves play at the old Fulton County Stadium a cpl-three times when I was a wee tyke; somewhere, I still have an old cone-shaped, cardboard Braves-logo’d popcorn container that, when all the popcorn was et, you could tear off the bottom corner and use it for a megaphone to cheer on Hammerin’ Hank and the perennially hapless Braves whilst doing the Tomahawk Chop.

Update! Just for shits and giggles I decided to go see if I could dig up a pitcher on the Innarnuts, and lo and behold!

That’s the very one I have moldering in the attic, no foolin’. As Scully said so many times after a memorable play: Whaddya know about thaaaat!

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