The First Amendment: as dead as all the rest of ’em

To the surprise of precisely no one, Mordor on the Potomac kangaroo court rules that, in Amerika v2.0, there is no right to freedom of speech.

A Bad Day for America
As many of you already know, a Washington, DC jury today found the Defendants (Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg) liable for defamatory speech and reckless disregard of provable facts. Putting aside the monetary damages, the real damage done by this case is to every American who still believes in the First Amendment.

The precedent set today, and as alluded to by Justice Alito when the case was petitioned before the U.S. Supreme Court, means that disagreement and/or criticism of a matter of public policy — the founding principle of this country — is now in doubt. And should you choose to give voice to any dissent, you can brought before a jury, held responsible, and fined.

Think this is just rhetoric? Consider, Mark Steyn is a member of the media. As such, he is supposedly afforded First Amendment protections. If a member of the media is no longer protected, what do you think that means for every day citizens? And it doesn’t matter if you are in DC or Montana — anyone can file in the jurisdiction of his or her choosing.

Gee, what ought Real Americans to do about that, I wonder? I can make an excellent guess at what we actually WILL do, alas. And it disgraces us far worse than the liberty-haters on that DC jury have just disgraced themselves, although those morons are much too goddamned stupid to know they have—or care, either. Further details:

The D.C. Circuit Court has ruled: Commentator Mark Steyn and space blogger and sometime PJ contributor Rand Simberg, after 13 years of legal maneuvering funded by a dark money group…

…are indeed liable for defaming Michael Mann by reporting on the way he was lying about being a Nobel laureate and engaging in a concerted effort to defame other climate scientists — including accusing Judith Curry of sleeping her way to the top, using statistical methods to generate the results he wanted (research malpractice for mere mortals).

For which he was awarded $1 each from Steyn and Simberg in compensatory damages.

This would be a laughable award, except the jury then piled on punitive damages: $1,000,000 from Steyn and $1,000 from Simberg.

Mann’s attorneys made a play for the D.C. jury and cashed in.

As will most other shitlib liars who go venue-shopping and end up hitting the big Wheel of Juridical Fortune jackpot.

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SO, how’s that 15-20 buck an hour minimum wage working out for ya, anyway?

NOT. TOO. GOOD.

McDonald’s CEO promises ‘affordability’ amid backlash over $18 Big Mac combos, $6 hash browns
McDonald’s CEO admitted the burger giant’s sales have taken a hit as jacked-up menu prices have turned off core customers — and signaled the chain plans to focus on “affordability” this year.

The Chicago-based fast-food behemoth — which has lately taken heat over a Big Mac combo meal priced at nearly $18 — said its global same-store sales in the latest quarter had grown just 3.4%, falling short of the 4.7% growth Wall Street had expected.

The lackluster quarter — which the company also blamed on conflict in the Middle East that has slammed franchisees overseas — sent McDonald’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange tumbling nearly 4%, to $285.97, at Monday’s close.

“I think what you’re going to see as you head into 2024 is probably more attention to what I would describe as affordability,” McDonald’s chief executive Chris Kempczinski said on a Monday earnings call with analysts.

In particular, low income customers making less than $45,000 per year have largely stopped ordering from McDonald’s. Pummeled by inflation, they’re eating at home more frequently as grocery prices come down, Kempczinski admitted.

Last week, a McDonald’s outpost in Connecticut got slammed over its “outrageous pricing” after a customer was charged $7.29 for an Egg McMuffin — and nearly $5.69 for a side of hash browns.

Over the summer, a franchisee in nearby Darien, Conn., was called out for charging $17.59 for Big Mac combo meal. That location also sold a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Bacon meal that came with fries and a soda for $19, according to viral posts.

Experts have also warned that fast food prices could climb even higher as minimum wage hikes are implemented across the country. California’s $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food workers goes into effect in April.

McDonald’s and Chipotle both announced that they would be hiking the prices of menu items at Golden State locations beginning this year.

Because of COURSE they will. Why wouldn’t they—actually, how could they NOT, if they want to continue to exist and turn even a piddling profit? In the era of Bidenflation and a worthless paper dollar, the idiot protesters demanding fifteen bucks an hour are going to protest themselves right out of a job and onto the unemployment rolls before it’s all said and done, which serves them right if you ask me. May they all have joy of their foolish choice.

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Q & A

Q: Is there anyone on this entire planet more dishonest, more despicable, more just plain old loathsome than ***”pResident”*** Faux Jaux “Pedo Pete” Biden?

A: NO. No, there most certainly is NOT.

DISGUSTING: Joe Biden Calls Grieving Mother of Killed Soldier and Misleads About Beau Biden Again
Chalk this up as another story that dumbfounds me, with Joe Biden once again fibbing to a grieving military family about how his son, Beau Biden, died.

As RedState reported, three U.S. Army soldiers were killed in Jordan in late January after an Iranian-backed group attacked it with drones. The deceased have been identified as Sergeant William Rivers, Specialist Breona Moffett, and Specialist Kennedy Sanders. Good Morning America broadcast the call Biden made to the family of Specialist Sanders in which he proceeded to mislead them about his son’s death, something he’s done in numerous calls to Gold Star families.

How many times does this need to be explained to the president? It is tragic when anyone’s child dies, and that includes Beau Biden. With that said, there is no comparison between a parent losing a child in combat and having a child pass after a long battle with cancer. When a person goes to sleep one night thinking their child is fine and then wakes up the next morning to find out their child has been brutally killed, that does something different to a person. That is not the type of pain and suffering anyone should compare themselves to unless they’ve experienced it first-hand.

Joe Biden got to be at his son’s bedside. He was able to say his goodbyes and plan for what was coming, both emotionally and practically. The parents of these killed soldiers will never have that opportunity. So no, Biden hasn’t “been there,” and no, Iraq was not how he lost his son. To this day, there’s no actual evidence that burn pits used during the conflict caused Beau Biden to develop cancer. There’s not even any evidence Beau Biden had any extensive exposure to them. He died of cancer half a decade after leaving the military.

Still, the president has repeatedly stated as fact that his son “died in Iraq” or some variant of the claim, making it sound as if he were killed in combat. It’s gross, and it long ago became stolen valor.

Bad as it is, this is still but one example from a long, long litany of Faux Jaux’s abominable crimes. Does it get even worse, though? Oh, just gimme a goddamned break, willya?


Note ye well, the three dead soldiers were killed only after 150+ similar attacks in the ME against US troops perpetrated by Iran, all of which went unanswered by our slowly-putrefying Commander In Thief. And remember, that’s just since Israel went after Hamas in Gaza post-10/7, mind. But now, Faux Jaux has the boldness, the narcissism, the unmitigated fucking gall to make this latest one all about his son Beau in the course of “comforting” the families of the dead? Bonchie closes his piece with a regrettably asinine statement:

I don’t know what needs to happen to get Biden to stop doing this, but his handlers need to get a hold of it. It’s not acceptable for the President of the United States (or anyone) to continually lie about something like this.

You may not know, Bonch, but I certainly do: Bribem will not stop “doing this” until he’s stumbled and staggered on off to join Hell’s Own Choir Invisible, not before. And even then, he’ll probably pester the lesser demons, fallen angels, and other permanent residents to utter distraction with his endless lies, self-serving misrepresentations, and tall tales. If Eff Joe Biden wasn’t already going there for all the other things he’s done over lo, these many years, the congenital lying would be enough to guarantee him a prominent position in Hell all by itself.

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Congresswoman Ilhan “Omar,” D-Mogadishu

Oh, fret not, she’s representing her constituents and her country all right. It’s just that her constituents aren’t Americans from her Congressional district in the state formerly known as Minnesota, and her country isn’t what we sometimes mistakenly refer to as the United States of America.

I’ve Been Identifying Ilhan Omar as ‘D-Mogadishu’ for Years. It Turns Out I Was Right.
Ilhan Omar rocketed to notoriety a few years back by warning that some American officials have dual loyalties. As it turns out, she was one of them.

Back in 2019, the winsome and patriotic congresswoman had the courage to declare, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says that it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” She was talking about American officials who supposedly had loyalty to both the U.S. and Israel, but on Sunday, a video appeared on X showing Omar telling a Somali crowd that they all were “Somalis first, Muslims second.” Nothing about being Americans. And that was the least jarring and offensive part of the speech.

Omar was speaking in Somali, and the translation was made by someone who clearly opposes her; however, in response to the controversy that her statements sparked, she didn’t take issue with the accuracy of the translation, but only with its interpretation. To a certain extent, Omar is right about this. She is being criticized for saying, “We Somalis must have the confidence in ourselves that we call the shots in the U.S. The U.S. government will only do what Somalians in the U.S. tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else.” 

That sounds terrible, but an Omar defender on X contended that it was innocuous: “Omar says she is representing the interests of Somalis in the United States, which is a legitimate task, as a Congresswoman in any democratic system.” Commenting approvingly on that post, Omar herself added: “It’s not only slanted but completely off, but I wouldn’t expect more from these propagandists.”

All right. Certainly, a representative should stand for the interests of his or her constituents. Everyone acknowledges that. But Omar was speaking in Minneapolis and yet says nothing, at least in the available video, about fighting for her constituents’ interests in the United States. Likewise, she says nothing, as you’d expect, about fighting for the interests of the U.S. itself. Instead, she says that the U.S. government “must follow our orders and that is how we will safeguard the interest of Somalia…Sleep in comfort, knowing I am here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the U.S. system.”

In the speech, Omar said of herself: “The woman you sent to Congress is working day and night to protect your interest. She knows your plight and that of Somalia. I am as concerned about Somalia as you guys are. Together we will protect the interests of Somalia.” 

That’s swell, but members of the U.S. House of Representatives take this oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Do you see anything in there about protecting the interests of a foreign country? Neither do I. Ilhan Omar has the dual loyalties that she has claimed supporters of Israel have. In the wake of the release of this speech, many are calling for her to be expelled from the House à la George Santos, and she should be. But given the left’s tendency to circle the wagons and defend its own no matter what, that is about as likely as Old Joe Biden uttering a coherent sentence.

Expelled from the House? She ought to be expelled from the goddamned country and sent straight back to the shithole whence she slithered and slimed her way to our shores, with a quickness. But none of us should be holding our breaths waiting for it. Lest we forget:

The repellent Ilhan Omar—a traitor to this nation condemned by both her words and her deeds, and who is in this country illegally—will not be censured, expelled, impeached, or deported. There’s a reason for that, a most shameful one: it’s because WE are the ones who failed to learn the lessons of the Black Hawk Down incident, not her. Clearly, she learned and understood them completely.

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Another “food desert” mirage

So first, this happened.

In-N-Out has never closed a location, until now. It cites crime as the problem
New York CNN—In-N-Out is permanently closing one of its restaurants for the first time ever, announcing that its Oakland location will soon shutter because of rampant crime in the California city.

The burger chain said in a statement that “despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our customers and associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft, and armed robberies.”

The location, which has been open for nearly two decades, will close on March 24. It’s the city’s only In-N-Out and is near the airport.

Crime has indeed substantially increased in Oakland: Burglaries were up 23% and motor vehicle thefts were up 44% in 2023 compared to a year prior, according to Oakland Police Department data obtained by CNN affiliate KGO-TV.

In-N-Out said in a statement that while “several” of its locations have relocated in its 75-year history, the Oakland closure is the first restaurant it has closed.

“We feel the frequency and severity of the crimes being encountered by our customers and associates leave us no alternative,” said Chief Operating Officer Denny Warnick, in the statement.

Notably, Warnick said its Oakland location was “busy and profitable,” but it can’t ask its customers or employees to “visit or work in an unsafe environment.” Affected employees, which amount to about 100, will transfer to a nearby restaurant in San Francisco or receive severance.

Then, the reliably-brilliant and hilarious Hodge Twins decided to have way too much fun with it, as is their wont.

Heh. Excellent rip, fellas.

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Justice, (well) done

Served up piping hot.

The Chickens Come Home to Roost for Chuck Schumer As Pro-Hamas Radicals Target His Daughter
Chuck Schumer and his daughter found themselves on the receiving end of pro-Hamas extremism on Friday evening. While the two ate dinner for Shabbat, “protesters” showed up at the apartment building shouting for a “ceasefire” and accusing Schumer of killing children.

The scene was a familiar one, with crazed Hamas supporters spending the months after the October 7th attack in Israel harassing people and shutting down infrastructure. All in the name of blood-thirsty terrorists who murdered babies, raped women, and beheaded people on camera because they are just so darn “oppressed.”

My feelings about this specific situation involving Schumer are complicated.

Mine aren’t, not even slightly: FUCK him, his whole family, and the horse they all rode in on. Right in the liver, with a rusty railroad spike.

What kind of deranged psychos picket the apartment of a Jewish woman, screaming for a ceasefire with genocidal lunatics, just because her father is a senator? There’s nothing right and good about that, and the protesters themselves should be maligned and condemned.

On the other hand, Chuck Schumer wanted this. He has spent years excusing antisemitism in his own party, refusing to call out bigots like Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar. In lieu of that, he’s blamed all the world’s ills on nebulous, nearly non-existent “right-wing extremists” and “white supremacy.”

When you feed the alligator, I’m not sure you deserve much sympathy when it bites your arm off.

Exactly, precisely so—which is why my sympathy for steaming, stinking pieces of dung like Schemer is not just limited, but entirely nonexistent. He and every other conniving, double-dealing shitlib like him can all die in a fire, screaming, for all me. Protesters showing up at their homes shouting at them is but a mere tithe of what they actually deserve. To paraphrase one of my dear old grandma’s go-to aphorisms, you lay down with Jew-hating Muzzrat terrorists, you get up with fleas. So be it, then.

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Law of the Jungle (bunny)

Don’t like stores closing in your dangerous, lawless shitholes? Stop looting them blind and broke then, you parasitic assholes.

Today’s fearless probe into the wilds of cause-and-effect reasoning comes from Roxbury, Massachusetts:

As this CBS “journalist” summarizes the issue: “Why do you think Walgreen’s is targeting black and brown neighborhoods?”

She refuses to ask anyone about rampant looting putting this store out of business.

“Predominantly black neighborhood.” Okay, got it. The residents of that neighborhood will now have to travel a bit further to find a Walgreen’s to loot shop at. And as those residents are “predominantly black,” this constitutes racial discrimination.

But protesting residents exercised a bit of subtlety:

“What happens to our seniors and our single parents that have no way to get to a Walgreen’s or another pharmacy anywhere near their home?”

He managed not to mention either rampant shoplifting or race. And yes, it will certainly inconvenience the locale’s senior citizens, but do they have an enforceable right to a pharmacy within walking distance? But wait: there’s more! Hearken to the Reverend Minard Pepper:

“So we think it’s insensitive, it’s unjust…Why do you think they target black and brown communities? I think because they get no push back.”

Well, there is the possibility that shoplifting in predominantly white districts is far less: a tolerable degree of what liquor store owners have traditionally called “spillage.” But once again, there’s no mention of either theft or race. One more, from former Boston NAACP president Michael Curry:

“The communities where they’re closing these pharmacies are communities where people are, uh, desperately impacted by disease. You know, two or three times higher rates in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, where life expectancy can be 15, 20 years less.”

Such awareness. Such compassion! I wonder if the thieves who’ve driven Walgreen’s out of this “predominantly black” neighborhood ever stop to think about the burdens they load onto their sick neighbors. My bet is on “no.” Where’s yours?

These black “civil rights activists” are fully aware of why Walgreen’s is closing those stores. They simply don’t want to acknowledge the facts of the matter. That would indict “their people.” It would suggest that if there’s a solution – which is unclear, as battling shoplifting has always been a difficult and expensive undertaking – it would take the form of law enforcement. But no, we can’t have that in “predominantly black” Roxbury! That would be racist.

Such closures are occurring wherever there’s a high enough percentage of blacks. And in every case, “civil rights leaders” – almost always black – step to the microphones and cameras to denounce it. But they seldom mention the plague of shoplifting. Neither do they mention the ceaseless propagandization of young blacks against law enforcement and the rights of property owners, nor the simple cause-and-effect dynamic that makes whites and businesses flee from the blacks who prey on them.

So simple, so obvious only a “liberal” Sooperdoopergenius© and the feral urban sub-primate class they’ve brainwashed into feeble, helpless dependence could fail to grasp it.

Two strategies, one issue

And only one of those approaches to handling it is sensible, Constitutionally-permissible, and non-treasonous. First, Texas Governor Abbott’s and AG Paxton’s.

BORDER SHOWDOWN: Texas to Defy Biden Admin’s Order to Give Feds Access to Park Along Rio Grande
EAGLE PASS, Texas — As of Wednesday afternoon, Army National Guard soldiers remain posted at temporary gates erected at the entrance to a city-owned park along the Rio Grande. The park was seized by order of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and closed off to Border Patrol agents unless their entrance into the area is first coordinated with state law enforcement and the Texas Military Department.

The state appears to be standing firm as a Biden administration deadline of “the end of the day” for the state to remove the gates and allow unimpeded access to the Border Patrol approaches. General Counsel Jonathan Meyer, on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, communicated it to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a letter on January 10.

As reported by Breitbart Texas, the DHS letter to Paxton was sent in response to the seizure of Shelby Park a few days earlier under a Texas statute for law enforcement and disaster relief purposes by Abbott in response to the border crisis impacting his state. The DHS letter to Paxton cited the statutory authority granted to Border Patrol agents to patrol private lands within 25 miles of the border without a warrant. The letter warned the state was impeding the federal agents with the seizure of the property and the conditions placed upon the Border Patrol for entry.

In response to the demands made by the Department of Homeland Security in Counsel Meyer’s demand to grant unimpeded access to the Border Patrol, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded in a letter on Wednesday. In his response to DHS, Paxton disputed the arguments made in their cease and desist letter, saying:

Texas allows prompt entry into Shelby Park by any U.S. Border Patrol personnel responding to a medical emergency, and this access is not “limited to use of the boat ramp,” as you say. TMD has ordered its Guardsmen not to impede lifesaving care for aliens who illegally cross the Rio Grande. To that end, TMD has erected gates that allow for rapid admission when federal personnel communicate the existence of some medical exigency.

Paxton went on to say:

President Biden has been warned in a series of letters, one of them hand-delivered to him in El Paso, that his sustained dereliction of duty in securing the border is illegal. By instructing your agency and others to ignore federal immigration laws, he has breached the guarantee, found in Article IV, § 4 of the U.S. Constitution, that the federal government “shall protect each of [the States] against Invasion.”

The battle over control of the park now finds the City of Eagle Pass, who opposes the state seizure of Shelby Park, and the federal government on the same side of the issue. When the Secure Fence Act was passed in 2006, the city battled with the federal government over the construction of the border fencing, which would ultimately leave Shelby Park inside the border fence and walled off from the city.

Then-President George W. Bush signed the 2006 bipartisan fence bill after passage with the support of 80 senators, including then-senate and future presidents Joseph Biden and Barrack Obama. Democrat Senators Chuck Schumer and Hilary Clinton also supported the measure. Ultimately, the city lost its bid to prevent the construction of a 1.8-mile, 14-foot-tall border fence was constructed.

SO. One side in this dispute—let’s call them the Real American Patriots, or RAPs, for short—seeks to re-establish and maintain the basic, fundamental right of the citizens of the great Republic of Texas to a secure, safe, and well-protected southern border. The other—let’s call them Evil America-hating Traitor Scum, or EAhTS—consists of RINO George, Pedo Pete Bribem, Ogabe, Schemer, Her Herness™, the CBP/FederalGovCo, and city officials of Eagle Pass, who seek to subject not only the decent, hard-working citizens of Texas but the entire nation to an unrestricted invasion of hordes of unvetted, unassimilated, disease-rife illegal aliens from all over the (Third) world across a wide-open, unguarded border-in-name-only.

Thankfully, though, we can trust the Republican’ts in Washington to stand up for us against the Swamp traitors of the D卐M☭CRAT Party, right? Right?

RIIIGHT?!?

Um. Yeah, about that.

McConnell Ally John Thune Pushes Senate Open Borders Deal: ‘Unique Moment in Time’
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has locked arms with President Joe Biden in calling for a deal to surrender to unlimited migration that would include tens of billions in foreign aid to Ukraine.

The retreat would hand the White House a key election year win and surrender the best leverage Republicans have had in decades to make substantive changes in border policies that could alleviate one of the American people’s greatest concerns potentially for generations.

Senate negotiators have led efforts for months to pair some sort of border security package with billions of supplemental funding, primarily to advance Ukraine’s floundering war efforts against Russia. The war has been deadlocked for almost a year, with untold hundreds of billions spent and countless lives lost.

Yet hesitancy for more foreign aid and demands for a truly substantive border package from Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) Republican House led to the search for a compromise on the two issues.

Leaded details of the deal, which essentially amount to a surrender at the border, have received widespread condemnation, with Johnson indicating he will not move that bill through the House.

On Wednesday, Biden is hosting Congressional leaders at the White House to flex his muscles and pressure Johnson to surrender.

Thune’s latest position appears supportive of Biden’s tactics, insisting that the leaked deal is worth supporting.

God bless Mike Johnson for standing firm, so far at at any rate. God damn the loathsome John Thune and all who sail in him straight to Hell for selling Real Americans and their best interests down the river—the Rio Grande, specifically.

Both links via Sefton, who heads today’s Morning Report with this image:

Heh. Good one, JJ.

Update! And while we’re making with the memes, a great one from WRSA.

Excellent questions all, especially that last. And to think, the liars STILL try to tell us that Replacement Theory is just some crazy-ass “conspiracy theory” adhered to only by mopes, dopes, losers, lunatics, and wild-eyed “insurrectionist” zealots.

Lots of good ‘uns at CA’s Thursday Early Edition, several of which will be turning up in next week’s Memezapoppin’ and Screamin’ meemie Monday posts, you betcher. In fact, the backlog on Ye Aulde Harde Drive is now so completely out of control I’m considering making tomorrow’s Eyrie offering a meme post too.

TRUMP WINS!!!

Ho hum. Not giving a moist fart about it—scanned a few headlines, skipped the articles entirely—I wasn’t gonna bother mentioning the Iowa shindig at all. Then I read Aesop’s projection for the 24 “election.”

Well well. Seems that, despite eleventy-eleven indictments for everything from overdue library books to wearing a bad hairpiece in public, Trump only beat every other GOP-lite candidate, combined, in the Iowa Cornbowl.

Fourth-place finisher Ramalamadingdong, who only trailed Trump by 43 percentage points (more than the tally totals of Jeb #2 and Jeb #3 combined), has ejected from further headfirst smashes into the brick wall, rolled over, and kissed Trump’s ass, in the bid to become the next Veep running mate.

None of that means fuck-all for the actual 2024 election. Team Poopypants’ continued Keep-Him-The-Hell-Away-From-Live-Microphones-For-Another-Year strategy, a carbon-copy of the 2020 plan, points to the re-deployment of another massive Election Steal apparatus in 2024, except likely a necessary order of magnitude larger, to counteract what looks to be an actual 70-30 Biden drubbing, were a conventional (read “factual, free, and honest”) election to be held this year.

It won’t be.

My prediction of what happens in 2024 is a re-do of 2020: 

Biden “wins” again this time, improving on his 81M imaginary votes from 2020, with a final score of Biden 972%, and Trump 49%. Nothing to see here. Move along.

An actual election scares hell out of both parties, because they know who’d win that. Just like he did the last two times. They’re morons, but they’re not complete idiots.

The Deep State would hold a motorcade for Trump in Dallas the day he wins the nomination, and the GOP would donate the convertible for him to ride in before that would happen. The FBI and CIA can be relied upon to supply the Usual Book Depository Spectators, as they both have some wee experience with that sort of thing.

But in the meantime, the spectacle of Trump single-handedly upending the entire assembled crew of GOPe midgets, every single time it’s tried, is heartwarming, in that it sets the poo-flinging monkeys from both wings of the Uniparty (that would be just about all of them) to digging in their diapers for more offerings to throw at President Trump, and highlights the desperation and blatant frothingly mad depths of shrieking hysteria to which they’ll happily succumb, in their ceaseless quest to keep their jackboots on the neck of the American people.

A-yup, that squares entirely with my own take on the whole dumbshow: mildly entertaining, not much use otherwise. Said jackboots, as a rule, cannot be removed by simply voting them off our necks, and they’re the really important issue for us at this late date.

Dereliction of duty

Andrew Malcolm says can his sorry, diversity-hire ass. Seconded, wholeheartedly.

Secy Austin’s Blunder Was Arrogance or Stupidity – Either Way, He Needs to Go
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who presides over 1.4 million U.S. military volunteers, left his Pentagon post without notice or authorization and kept his absence a secret for almost a week. That’s called AWOL, even if you’re in charge.

Austin was a four-star general with 41 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, there is no question about his character or devotion to the service of his country.

There is, however, now a serious question about his intelligence, integrity, and, most importantly, his judgment. Colleagues describe the veteran as an intensely private person.

Sorry, you give up privacy when you take on an appointed job that’s high up in the chain of presidential succession, leading the men and women volunteers who comprise our national defense.

How’s he going to prosecute the next Bowe Bergdahl who leaves his guard post without notice and his fellow troops vulnerable?

He can’t.

He wouldn’t anyway, because he won’t want to, anymore than his ideological confrere Bathhouse Barry Soetero did. Which, regardless of his presumably honorable service wearing the nation’s military uniform, DOES call his character into question, like it or not. Right along with his (nonexistent) intelligence, integrity, and judgment.

Now that he got caught and caused a serious political uproar, we’re told his unexplained absence involved the discovery, removal of, and complications from prostate cancer. That’s a shame. But it’s an explanation, not an excuse.

No one wants to hear such news. No one wants to get shot at, as Austin was. But he kept his diagnosis, operation, surgical complications, and residence in an Intensive Care Unit a secret, even from his second in command, the president, and those gossipy toads in Congress.

That may be very human. Given his privacy penchant and the sensitivity of such a diagnosis for a man, especially one in a masculine warrior culture, that’s understandable. But it’s also quite unacceptable.

Well yeah, to normal, sane Americans who don’t despise their country and wish to see it weakened and ruined like his putative boss, Pedo Peter, does. So yes, he certainly “needs to go”—but he won’t. The unkindest cut of all is that, in America That Was, a “man” like him would never have been installed in the first damned place.

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Masks are slipping all over the place

Most. Transparent. Facade. EVAR.

Biden in dark over defense chief’s cancer for month
President Joe Biden was kept in the dark over his defense secretary’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent hospitalizations for about a month, the White House admitted Tuesday, as details of Lloyd Austin’s deeply unusual disappearance raised questions about leadership of the world’s top military.

The 70-year-old’s failure to disclose his hospitalization has prompted an extraordinary row in Washington and could be embarrassing for Biden, who faces multiple foreign crises in his reelection campaign year, including in Israel and Ukraine.

As defense secretary, career soldier Austin is personally overseeing military deployments to try and contain fallout from the Israel-Hamas war, which has sparked violence against American forces in Iraq and Syria as well as attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea.

After days of refusal to issue details, the Pentagon came out Tuesday with its first full account of Austin’s health issues, but the new transparency came too late for a clearly upset White House.

According to two of his doctors from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Austin’s prostate cancer was detected as a result of routine screening in early December.

He underwent minor surgery to treat it on December 22, returning home the following day, the doctors said, referring to a procedure the Pentagon had previously been describing as “elective.”

However, Austin was readmitted to the same hospital on January 1 due to complications “including nausea with severe abdominal, hip, and leg pain,” they said.

“Initial evaluation revealed a urinary tract infection,” while medical personnel found “abdominal fluid collections impairing the function of his small intestines” after Austin was moved to intensive care on January 2.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby made clear that Austin had not followed procedures.

“It is not optimal for a situation like this to go as long as it did without the commander-in-chief knowing about it or the national security adviser knowing about it, or frankly other leaders at the Department of Defense,” Kirby said during a briefing at the White House.

“It’s not the way this is supposed to happen…It’s not good. We want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Kirby insisted that Biden retains “complete confidence” in Austin and was looking forward to having him back at the Pentagon.

Yeah, tell me the one again about how ANY of these boobs—Bribem, Austin, Kirby, the whole clown-car load of ‘em—is actually in charge of anything whatsoever, Daddy. That one’s my favorite.

I need to establish a new category for this sort of thing, I’m thinking. “Deep State maskirovka” is pretty good, but doesn’t hit the mark quite as squarely as I’d like. Not sure what the name for it oughta be, but I’ll come up with something.

Update! So far I’ve got it narrowed down to six possibilities:

  • Frontmen, figureheads, and marionettes
  • The Great And Powerful OZ!
  • The Not-Ruling Class
  • Shadow-State kabuki
  • Signifying nothing
  • All the Washington world’s a stage

Preferences or suggestions of your own, anyone?

Updated update! Ace sees through it…almost.

White House Orders Cabinet Heads to Inform the “President” If They Cannot Perform Their Duties
—Disinformation Expert Ace

Let me save everyone the time: None of them is capable of performing their duties. Pete Buttigieg fucked off to play mommy for months and months and then have a secret vacay in Portugal and no one even noticed he was gone.

A “president” who even has to give this “order” (or strong recommendation) is obviously not really the president.

Annnnd bingo. In the next line, Ace says it’s “Obama’s staffers” who are in charge, but as much as it may seem so at times, I remain extremely skeptical. As far back as 2008, I maintained that the Boy Who Would Be King was nothing but a ventriloquist’s dummy himself; the man with his hand up Charlie McCarthy’s butt making his lips move was who really brought the act to life.

In fact, though, it isn’t even the Edgar Bergens who are of supreme interest here. The Grey Men skulking in the wings who don’t have faces; don’t have names; never do interviews or appear on the Sunday shows; and who don’t ever stand for “election” are the ones who must be sought out and uncovered. Otherwise, we’re still just playing the same old game, tilting at the same old (replaceable) windmills, dancing to their tune as always.

It’s a daunting task to be sure, but until the backstage string-pullers are at last brought out into the bright lights at center stage, willing or not, there can be no real hope of bringing the final curtain down to close the long-running Amerika v2.0 Show once and for all.

And even that arduous quest, should it be successfully accomplished, will be just the first step. Makes you respect the Founders more than ever, don’t it?

Update to the updated update! Gee, ya THINK?

Via WRSA.

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A sordid history

Steyn reviews his op-editorializing on the J6 put-up job—of which there’s a gracious plenty, all up to the usual Steyn standard of excellence.

Re Rubio: well, the scene was still unfolding, and you’d have to be made of sterner stuff than a Republican senator not to get swept up in all the shameful-desecration-of-the-world’s-greatest-deliberative-body wankery. But what was Ted Cruz’s excuse when he denounced it, one year later, as a “violent terrorist attack”? Has he ever given a plausible explanation for that? “Oh, sorry, I forgot I was making a public statement. I thought I was just shooting the breeze in the Capitol hot tub with Chuck and Nancy”?

“Violent terrorist attack”? I thought that was Speaker Pelosi’s talking point. Say what you will, but the Dems play the long game very effectively. As opposed to the GOP, who don’t play it at all. Whoever’s waggling the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock-puppet that is Joe Biden planted the word “insurrection” within twenty minutes of the smoke clearing knowing full well its constitutional significance—and here we are three years later with judges and state officials using the term to ban the leading candidate from the ballot in the interests of “saving democracy”. The Maine Secretary of State’s statement is particularly instructive in this regard.

Meanwhile, in Nevada this career thug trying to kill his judge gets more lenient treatment than gran’mas with no criminal records who wandered around “the people’s house” for half-an-hour:

That last bit refers to the Jungle Bunny HoF’er mentioned here yesterday. Next up, another appalling horror-news item I’d nearly forgotten about.

Re that bit about the Capitol Police, the name of that woeful constabulary rang a vague bell with me, and I eventually recalled the last time I’d written about their shooting of a young woman, seven years earlier. Please read on to what I regard as the most repulsive aspect of this story: Congress’s standing ovation for the Capitol Police’s dispatch of that poor defenseless mom. You can read the full column here, but this is the pertinent part:

An unarmed woman was gunned down on the streets of Washington for no apparent crime other than driving too near Barackingham Palace and thereby posing a threat to national security. As disturbing as Miriam Carey’s bullet-riddled body and vehicle were, the public indifference to it is even worse. Ms Carey does not appear to be guilty of any act other than a panic attack when the heavy-handed and heavier-armed palace guard began yelling at her. Much of what was reported in the hours after her death seems dubious: We are told Ms Carey was ‘mentally ill’, although she had no medications in her vehicle and those at her home back in Connecticut are sufficiently routine as to put millions of other Americans in the category of legitimate target. We are assured that she suffered from post-partum depression, as if the inability to distinguish between a depressed mom and a suicide bomber testifies to the officers’ professionalism. Under DC police rules, cops are not permitted to fire on a moving vehicle, because of the risk to pedestrians and other drivers. But the Secret Service and the Capitol Police enjoy no such restraints, so the car doors are full of bullet holes. The final moments of the encounter remain a mystery, but police were supposedly able to extract Ms Carey’s baby from the back of a two-door vehicle before dispatching the defenseless mother to meet her maker.

In perhaps the most repugnant reaction to Ms Carey’s death, the United States Congress expressed their ‘gratitude’ to the officers who killed her and gave them a standing ovation. Back in the Eighties, the Queen woke up to find a confused young man at the end of her bed. She talked to him calmly until help arrived and he was led away. A few years later, Her Majesty’s Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, was confronted by an aggrieved protester. As is his wont, he dealt with it somewhat more forcefully than his sovereign, throttling the guy, forcing him to the ground, and breaking his tooth, until the Mounties arrived to rescue the assailant from the PM. But, had the London and Ottawa intruders been gunned down by SWAT teams, I cannot imagine for a moment either the British or Canadian Parliament rising to applaud such an outcome. This was a repulsive act by Congress.

Miriam Carey is already forgotten, and the lawyer her family hired has now, conveniently, been jailed for a bad debt. I am not one for cheap historical analogies: My mother spent four of her childhood years under Nazi occupation, and it is insulting to her and millions of others who know the real thing to bandy overheated comparisons. But there is a despotic trend in American government. Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry primarily as a threat. Which is why in Congress the so-called people’s representatives’ first instinct is to stand and cheer the death of a defenseless woman.

Ted Cruz’s anniversary remarks were very much in the spirit of that 2013 Congress. On the broader point, that “despotic trend” I noted a decade ago is well advanced now. I don’t do the constitutional-fetishisation shtick because, aside from anything else, from Miriam Carey to Ashli Babbitt, from Covid to ballot access, it’s increasingly clear that in the pseudo-republic citizens don’t count. Hence the daily scenes at the Rio Grande. Ultimately, open borders render citizenship a nullity. That’s one reason they do it to you.

Hm, lemmesee now:

  • State-sanctioned murder of its subjects
  • Applause for said murder from its well-insulated, invulnerable political class
  • Fraudulent national “elections”
  • Manifestly authoritarian lockdowns, Vaxx and mask mandates, and other unlawful edicts wholly incompatable with the concept of self-government, ordered liberty, and the rule of law
  • Leading opposition candidates barred from running for office via “legal” harrassment, smear and innuendo, and direct declarations of ineligibility issued by state-level officials with no authority to do such
  • A federal intelligence agency in flagrant violation of its own founding charter, which expressly restricts it to foreign surveillance and intel-gathering operations only
  • A heavily-politicized federal police force deployed against the ruling party’s civilian opponents absent indictment, due process of law, or credible evidence of criminal offense
  • An elephantine, lawless, prodigiously-rapacious central government gone rogue: untouchable, unstoppable, and entirely out of control, checked by neither meaningful oversight, periodic impartial review, nor accountability to its tax-slave populace

A credulity-straining litany of shocking malfeasance, shamelessness, and illegitimacy, and we’ve still barely skimmed the surface. SO: anybody out there want to try explaining to me in what sense Amerika v2.0 is NOT a dismal, banana-republic-style shitrapy? Because from where I sit, this one sets a new all-time record for shitrapy-ness.

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Back atcha Part the Third

Keep the skeer on ‘em, as the greatest cavalry officer in history liked to say.

Maine secretary of state’s house ‘swatted’ day after Trump ballot disqualification decision: ‘Unacceptable’
The home of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was “swatted” Friday evening, police confirmed Saturday.

Maine State Police responded after an unidentified man lied about having broken into the house.

Bellows and her family were away at the time of the hoax call.

The incident comes after Bellows disqualified former President Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot late Thursday, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection” over his alleged incitement of the Jan. 6 riot.

Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump’s position on the ballot.

“Swatting” is when someone calls the police under dangerous false pretenses to trigger a law enforcement response, especially a SWAT team to a location.

On Saturday, Bellows called the swatting call “unacceptable” in a lengthy statement on Facebook. 

“Thank you for the messages of love and support,” she wrote. “I’ve been moved by every one and especially by those from friends and loved ones who disagree with my decision but have reached out to express love and respect.”

Bellows added that her staff had faced “unacceptable” and “non-stop threatening communications” on Friday after her decision.

Poor old Goodtime Charlie Jazz Shaw has his panties all in a wad over the SWATting. He is wrong.

This isn’t any sort of case of “all’s well that ends well.” As horrendous as Bellows’ decision to remove Trump from the ballot was, she described the swatting attempt as “unacceptable” and she is correct. This has become an increasingly common trend and it needs to stop. The majority of recent swatting incidents have been against Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Congressmen Brandon Wiliams and Kevin Miller. But that doesn’t legitimize a similar attack on a Democrat official.

Swatting is extremely dangerous and people have literally been killed or injured by the police accidentally during these attacks. Filing false reports to the police is a crime and calls intended to produce stressful SWAT Team responses are among the worst. Also, we’re living through a time where crime rates are surging and the police are already overwhelmed in many cities. They don’t need to be wasting their time chasing false reports when there are very real crimes taking place that they need to be responding to.

Simply claiming “but the liberals do it” doesn’t make this any more acceptable.

Oh, doesn’t it? In a better, saner, more just world that would be so, sure. Unfortunately, this is NOT that world—and that is mainly because of the machinations of shitlib swine like the execrable Bellows and her ilk. Which fact, as far as I’m concerned, changes everyfuckingthing.

The only correct response would be to track down the people making these calls and lock them up for a long time as an example to others.

Again: in a just world, wherein the late, lamented rule of law still existed, sure. To date, however, there have been scores if not hundreds of SWATting incidents perpetrated by shitlib trash who specifically hoped to get their conservative victims unjustly arrested or mistakenly killed, and I know of exactly one (1) of the perps being arrested for it…after his victim WAS in fact killed, actually (the incident wasn’t sparked by politics, but over an even more insane reason: a stupid-ass video game).

Shaw’s daintily horrified response puts me in mind of one of my personal favorite LOTR quotes: “You won’t rescue Lotho, or the Shire, just by being shocked and sad, my dear Frodo.” It was true when Tolkien wrote it, and it’s true now, and all the more applicable for being non-fictional this time.

Live by the sword, die by the sword, bitch. As MisHum says, albeit in slightly different words, I am all out of fucks to give.

Update! This shit also puts me in mind of Jefferson Davis’s plea at the end of his first message to the Confederate Congress (Provisional), which inspired me to make a meme:

Same as it ever has, and ever will, it would seem. Here endeth the lesson.

Every nook, every cranny, every corner

For Leftwits, “racism” is everywhere. And I do mean EVERYWHERE.

Think you’ve heard it all concerning Critical Race Theory? Take a seat.

If you thought Marxist-derived CRT was only related to the behavior, attitudes, and actions of white people against people of color, you were sorely mistaken. Turns out, the interiors of the homes of white people are likely “racist” as well. The solution? “Decolonization” of interior spaces. No, really.

Here’s architecture author Aaron Betsky, who’s written more than 20 books on the subject and believes architecture should be taught through the lens of CRT:

We cannot turn away from the fact that many of the structures we hold up as examples, like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, were instruments of oppression, rape, and forced labor, and that even what we think of as neutral models, in whatever style, were…built [as] affirmation of wealth built on violence.

What we also must recognize is that the forms we think of as ‘good’ architecture, from the layout of our houses and offices to the white columns that festoon classical buildings, cement the culture of whiteness, based on European models, in stone, concrete, wood, glass, and steel.

Lunacy? Of course. But when has lunacy stopped the left — from getting even loonier?

According to interior designer Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah, people can creatively resist “structures of domination in their homes by challenging themselves to think about the various ways that politics are embedded into the built environment and encouraging more ‘racial wellness’ within the spaces they create” — particularly concerning the objects they display.

Iyamah also warns that people of color shouldn’t emulate white people in the interior design of their homes.

The Use of the Color White
You knew we’d get around to this, right?

In addition to the unforgivable sin of decorating a home with “racist objects” like “mammy jars, colonial busts, war memorabilia, and Confederate flags,” Iyamah argues that the use of white paint is just as “racist.”

The use of the color white has been weaponized to symbolize purity…There’s [sic] a lot of ways that this theory can deconstruct conservative values that really align with whiteness.

So there you have it. Before you buy that next can of white paint to, say, repaint your kitchen, remember: the color white has been “weaponized to symbolize purity.”

Tell ya what, Teqweelah: I’ll paint my place any color I like, decorate it however the fuck I want, and will thank you to keep the fuck out of it. Opinions from you and your ilk regarding my personal taste in home decor and color scheme will be neither sought nor welcome—nor, for that matter, tolerated. Far as I’m concerned, you can jam your pathological obsession with finding “racism” under every least pebble you trip over so far the fuck up your stupid ass you get a sore throat, you wretched fucking degenerate.

Cliff’s Notes version: If I want any shit from you, I’ll squeeze your fucking head. 

God, how truly awful life must be for these pathetic fools, spending every minute of every day writhing under the microscope of their “the political is personal” creed: injecting Progressivist politics into every aspect of their stunted lives; intent on seeing to it that more well-adjusted, normal people will share their self-inflicted misery. If they weren’t such total assholes, you’d have to feel sorry for them.

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