Begins At Home – Page 15

A PROPER cuppa Joe

Posted on April 11, 2023April 11, 2023 by Mike

I believe this might just be the first product recommendation I’ve ever done here, but trust me: if you’re a coffee junkie, it’s gonna be worth your while.

So after twenty-some-odd years of stellar service, my tired old Presto electric coffee percolator finally gave up the ghost, whereupon I retired it to a place of honor on a kitchen shelf (hey, I loved that little thing; what was I gonna do, just heartlessly throw it in the trash bin? OH, YOU CRUEL BASTID). After a cpl-three hours poring over the offerings at Amazon for a replacement, I settled on this fine Moss & Stone unit:

Moss Stone perc

As I said in the 5-star review I left over at (r)Amazon, not only does this handsome red beastie brew up a flawless cup of coffee every time, it also pretties up the kitchen countertop it sits on rather nicely.

For my money, nothing tops a percolator for making good coffee. Once you’ve had it, there’s simply no going back to the swill produced by those cold-drip machines. With a perc, you want to use a coarser-ground coffee than you would in other types, which is not a problem since the Luzianne-with-chicory brand I love IS a slightly coarser grind than most other store-bought coffees. It’s relatively inexpensive, too; can’t remember now who it was, but after mentioning in passing my financially-ruinous addiction to Cafe Du Mond on this h’yar websty, someone commended Luzianne’s offering to my attention, saying it was about half the price of CDM, and smoother-tasting to boot.

Lo and behold, my mystery correspondent was perfectly correct too, on all counts. Before that, I had had to rely on buying CDM at this Asian grocery in CLT’s Little Saigon neighborhood (S& L Market #2, that would be)—much cheaper there than at the nearby Taj-ma-Teeter outlet, the only other place I’d found CDM—but they were unreliable at best when it came to keeping it in stock. The only place I know of in this area that carries Luzianne w/chicory is the Food Lion chain, which is fine by me. Never have seen it at any Wally World, anywhere, for whatever reason. But as long as FL carries it, that’s where I’ll be heading for all my coffee needs.

Understand, now, that the coffee with chicory is some damned strong stuff. Thick, dark, and rich, it makes your Folgers and Maxwell House look like the scared dishwater they are by comparison. So if really strong coffee ain’t your bag, you want to stay well away from the C w/C. Sailors, truck drivers, night watchmen in need of a good, stiff jolt of near-espresso levels of caffeine to get you through the shift? This is what you’ve been looking for all these long, somnambulent years. Which has always struck me as sorta odd, seeing as how there IS no caffeine in chicory at all.

Be all that as it may, if you’re looking to upgrade your coffee maker, or just need to replace a broke-down one, you could do one hell of a lot worse than the Moss-Stone percolator. And probably have, I’d bet.

STABILITY NOW, STABILITY NOW!

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

Left and Right no longer respect the same core values.

One side no longer concedes the moral legitimacy of the other.

The only bipartisanship in federal politics is about excluding “outsiders.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoochie mamaaaa!

Bizarro world prognosis

Posted on March 29, 2023March 29, 2023 by Mike

Peters asks the pertinent question.

Does Anyone See It?

Mentally ill people are inclined to do mentally ill things. Like shoot up a school. But we are not allowed to point out the former thing, because it is a politically incorrect thing to identify a boy who thinks he is a girl (and vice-versa) as…mentally ill.

And yet, that is precisely what such a person is. Unless one takes the position that fantasy is the same as reality, in which case why not endorse the fantasy of a 60-year-old man who insists he is a teenage girl and let him date teenage boys? On what basis would an objection to this be made, if one has no objection to a boy insisting he is a girl and must be allowed to enter the girls’ bathroom, as he is in fact a “girl” himself?

This is, of course, insane.

But one cannot fault the insane. Indeed, the law is indulgent toward them and with justice because an insane person is a person who does not appreciate that he is insane. From his—insane—point-of-view, it is the rest of the world that’s off-kilter. Not him.

The real crisis we have, then, is not one of insanity. It is the encouraging of it, which assures there will be more of it.

Bold mine, and that’s all anybody needs to say about that. But don’t let’s anybody be thinking that this all just came at us out of the blue nowhere, some kind of cosmic coinkydink. Ain’t no such thing.

This began in a mass psychosis kind-of-way with the normalizing of pathological hypochondria and its symptoms, including the wearing of odd garments and the performing of strange rituals. People were egged-on to regard these expressions of mental illness as normal—as opposed to in need of therapy. Indeed, those who counseled sanity were showered with opprobrium for hewing to facts, objective reality—to sanity.

Just as the same opprobrium is heaped upon the sane who refuse to concede the insane as regards the supposed fungibility of sex, that a boy can “transition” to a girl (and vice-versa) and that it actually is so – in the literally true sense. We are thus expected to not merely pretend but to accept as true that a boy who insists he is a girl is one and that if we say he isn’t, then we are cruel and “hateful” people in need of…therapy.

“Accept,” my rosy asscheeks. We’re not only supposed to accept it, but required to actively celebrate it, to act as if the demented are in fact somehow superior—to be neither censured nor pitied, but praised for their infirmity. The end result of this standing of all good sense and rationality on its head is entirely predictable, of course.

Is it any wonder people are going insane? That it feels society is, too?

This girl who shot up the school might not have, had she received the help she obviously, badly needed. Instead she was encouraged to think of herself as a “he”—and got worse rather than better, for the same reason that Crazy Uncle Bill up in the attic who thinks he’s Napoleon isn’t going to get better by addressing him as Your Majesty.

As a society, we once understood this. People with mental problems were treated—or at least, it was understood they needed it. This latter being the most important point, for their sake as well as ours. Having mentally ill people on the loose is bad news. It is something far worse when it is presented as good news – and something to want to see more of.

And that’s the bleakest, most horrid aspect of the thing: we assuredly will see more of it, lots more, unless and until enough of us stiffen our resolve to deal once and for all with the epidemic of Woke “liberalism” that created this whole situation—to make it clear that we will have no more of our children slaughtered, cities ruined, and public spaces made into No-Go Zones for decent people in the name of advancing a warped political agenda.

The “free trade” falsehood

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

use tariffs to discourage imports, and leverage the purchasing power of government to give preference to domestic producers;

invest in roads, ports, dams, canals, and turnpikes—then called “internal improvements,” now called infrastructure—to facilitate commerce; and

regulate credit to spur economic development and deter speculation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reality is cold, harsh, and tends to be uncooperative

Posted on March 25, 2023March 25, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Via Bitter Centurion, who adds:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s about the size of it, yeah.

Too smart for Fauci up in the ‘hood

Posted on March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 by Mike

Lying “Little Mengele” gets himself a schooling from an everyday schlub who simply ain’t having any of Fauci’s bullshit.

Dr. Fauci went to the hood to pressure black people to get vaccinated.

Little did Fauci know his career would be destroyed the 1st door he knocked on.

pic.twitter.com/JKJT5pl8nl

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson)

March 20, 2023

Don’t miss a minute of it; it’s one of those truly golden moments you only see so many of in a single lifetime.

At the very end, L’il Mengele is so damned flustered by this all-American show of open defiance he has to break out his bottle of what my mom always called “nerve pills” to calm himself down and quell the fear and anger surging through him as a result of this dude’s righteous, scrumptiously-direct upbraiding. Heartfelt kudos to him, and to all like him who have stood up to the scurvy tyrants in one way or another: refusing to wear the Mask Of Submission; defying lockdowns; refusing to heed illegal edicts; or simply getting all up in their face and telling them, NO.

Calls for a celebratory rock and roll classic, I believe.

From The Who’s first “farewell show” in Toronto back in ’82, which has to be one of the very best live recordings I ever did see. If the vid of Pete Townsend’s immortal magnum opus won’t show up for you here, which it probably won’t, be sure to click thru to YewToob and watch. You won’t be sorry you did, trust me.

Update! The whole concert can be viewed here. As I said, it’s close to two hours of time VERY well spent.

Auguring in

Posted on March 18, 2023March 18, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Nuff said.

Updated update! Dave Renegade sums it up quite well.

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

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

Amen to that, brother.

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

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

The economy is in shambles, we’re literally being invaded on the Southern border, inflation is so high people can’t afford groceries, Americans are tired of sending billions to Ukraine when they can’t afford to buy gas so definitely it’s time to arrest Trump for something. https://t.co/cEqmUS2eG0

— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell)

March 18, 2023

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

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the insane

Posted on March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 by Mike

By George, I think he’s got it.

Why is the trans movement so focused on children? Why do they want drag queens, commonly associated with sexualized performances, to read books to toddlers? Why do they want kids to go to highly sexualized drag performances? Why are public schools allowing trans ideology to be taught in classrooms instead of academics? Why are schools secretly taking kids to such performances without parental knowledge or consent? Why is trans ideology being planted in kids entertainment? Why are parents being lied to about gender fluidity as if it is backed by science when it’s not? Why are children being groomed for gender reassignment drugs and surgeries? Why are states allowing children to get gender reassignment surgery without parental knowledge? What the hell is going on?

Many would point out the obvious conclusion that the trans movement has a child fetish. Stephen King is himself a rabid leftist who wrote a disturbing child orgy scene into his IT novel. It’s clearly one of the motivators, but I think that trans activism is a little more complex than simply an excuse for pedophilia.

A decade ago this kind of behavior would have been treated as suspect if not repugnant altogether. If adults with gender dysphoria (a rare mental illness) want to act out a personal fetish on their own time then that is their prerogative. However, this is about exposing innocent bystanders with no critical thinking skills to that same mental illness and that same fetish; a captive audience. This is about parents and teachers convincing children to act against their biology so they can use the child as a virtue signal prop. This is what narcissists and psychopaths do, except that it is being sanctioned politically in many states and from within the federal government.

Why? Because it is useful for gaining power. Imagine for a moment that you are a monster, the most disturbed creature you can think of. All you do is thirst for control and the anguish of your enemies and this thirst can never be fully satiated. How would you go about asserting your dominance over the population?

You would have to weaken the citizenry first. You would have to divide them, and what better way to divide them than to drive a wedge between them and their own children. Make the kids a target, bring them to your side or use them as leverage to make parents submit.

You would have to undermine the foundations of the society, eliminate the lessons of history and pervert the pillars that maintain stability. You would have to convince people that vanity and “PRIDE” are virtues rather than failings. You would have to convince people that all behaviors no matter how destructive must be treated as acceptable and that all discrimination no matter how sensible is wrong. And, when all heritage and all principles are erased you are then free to feast, for evil is now good and good is now evil and there is no one left to stop you.

All in perfect accordance with the strategic prescriptions explicitly laid out by Marx, Gramsci, and Alinski. Coincidence, you ask? Yeah, pull the other one. It has a bell on it.

The trans movement is a vehicle for the absorbing of the youngest generation into a political cult. It is part of a much larger agenda to undermine not just the basic tenets of western culture but to undermine the basic structures of moral compass and conscience. Some trans activists may be unaware of the part they are playing; they might even believe that the targeting of children is about exposing them to new ideas of “acceptance.”

That said, I think many of them do have a clear understanding of their actions and many of them are well aware of the consequences of their efforts, and they take great joy in the destruction they sow.

Several supporting links in the first paragraph of the excerpt, not transcribed here because of a surfeit of pure-tee slackness. It’s Brandon Smith, so naturally you’re going to want to read all of it.

It begins

Posted on March 11, 2023March 11, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big trouble update! Not good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to fix it

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Mike

Endorsed, wholeheartedly.

College Should Be More Like Prison
The inmates I teach are serious, disciplined, hard-working students, eager to engage with ideas.

Never have I been more grateful to teach where I do: at a men’s maximum-security prison. My students there, enrolled in a for-credit college program, provide a sharp contrast with contemporary undergraduates. These men are highly motivated and hard-working. They tend to read each assignment two or three times before coming to class and take notes as well. Some of them have been incarcerated for 20 or 30 years and have been reading books all that time. They would hold their own in any graduate seminar. That they have had rough experiences out in the real world means they are less liable to fall prey to facile ideologies. A large proportion of them are black and Latino, and while they may not like David Hume’s or Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on race, they want to read those authors anyway. They want, in short, to be a part of the centuries-long conversation that makes up our civilization. The classes are often the most interesting part of these men’s prison lives. In some cases, they are the only interesting part.

Best of all from my selfish point of view as an educator, these students have no access to cellphones or the internet. Cyber-cheating, even assuming they wanted to indulge in it, is impossible. But more important, they have retained their attention spans, while those of modern college students have been destroyed by their dependence on smartphones. My friends who teach at Harvard tell me administrators have advised them to change topics or activities several times in each class meeting because the students simply can’t focus for that long.

If prison inmates, many of whom have committed violent crimes, can pay close attention for a couple of hours, put aside their political and personal differences, support one another’s academic efforts, write eloquent essays without the aid of technology and get through a school year without cheating, is it too much to ask university students to do the same?

Most of them, yes. They won’t, because they can’t. Never having been subject to much in the way of self-discipline or respect for any sort of authority, up to and including parental; possessed of little to no interest in actual education or self-betterment; born, weaned, and raised sucking down the bitter milk of self-indulgence, unearned praise, overentitlement, and low expectations—it is indeed too much to ask. They have been spared the rod, yielding the results predicted by the old biblical homily. That shouldn’t come as any big surprise, to any parent worthy of the name.

(Via VP)

All against all

Posted on March 6, 2023March 6, 2023 by Mike

JJ Sefton’s reliably dead-on Morning Report is rife today with examples confirming the grim success of the Left’s divide & conquer strategery.

Report: Austin Police Officers Quit in Droves, Texas City ‘Hostile Place’ for Conservatives

The leftist-run city of Austin, Texas, is facing a police officer shortage with current and former officers citing hostility toward law enforcement and conservatives as the driving force, the New York Post reported on Friday.

Multiple sources told the Post the city allegedly has more than 300 vacancies and officers are quitting “because they feel disrespected,” according to the report. The Austin Police Association said 77 more officers are expected to retire before the end of March. Lt. Brian Moon, who retired last month after 23 years of service, said Austin has become like Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco “where if you’re at all conservative or in law enforcement, it’s become a hostile place.”

The staffing shortage is leading to later response times and 911 calls are being redirected to the non-emergency number “because there aren’t enough cops to solve the crimes,” according to the report. Senior Police Officer Justin Berry told the publication that the department has taken detectives off of cases to act as patrol officers.

“If you come home and find your home burglarized, calls like that are now going to 311,” said police union president Thomas Villarreal. “You’re not getting a police response to many property crimes if it’s not a violent crime that is currently ongoing.”

The report notes that “entire areas of the city are left unpatrolled” at times if a large incident occurs.

“We’ve pretty much conceded that we’re not going to show up anymore on certain calls,” Moody said. “Eventually it’s going to get to the point where it’s so bad, everyone’s going to realize that something has to be done.”

Rest assured it will be, but you ain’t gonna like it much. It’s commonly known as vigilantism. Even though they’d greatly prefer not to have to resort to it, when things get bad enough and enough people realize they’re entirely on their own and have been forced to live in a lawless society, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it than civilized, First World nations are accustomed to. At some point, it becomes too much to expect that Normals will just passively sit back and allow themselves and their families to be preyed upon indefinitely, just because that’s what shitlibs want them to do.

Moar D&C:

Critical Race Theory Teaches Kids To Hate Each Other, And The Proof Is On The Playground
Critical race theory lessons are fostering anger and aggression instead of empathy among children. This is most obvious on the playground.

In mid-February 2023, administrators at an elementary school in Springfield, Ohio, called the police to intervene in a racially charged incident on the playground. According to the police report, a group of black students forced several white students to say “black lives matter” against their will.

Around the same time in Orlando, Florida, a teacher at Howard Middle School created and posted to his personal social media account a demeaning skit using students from his classroom. In it, white students bowed to their black classmates, feeding them snacks and fanning them. The teacher, now on administrative leave, captioned the video: “Black History Month. The shortest month of the Year.” Critical race theory is permeating public education across the country and aggravating racial hostilities, even among elementary school children.

When people with authority, such as schoolteachers and administrators, tell children that one group is the oppressor and the other is oppressed, children tend to listen. These critical race theory lessons are fostering anger and aggression instead of empathy among children.

Teachers and administrators need to stick to the “three Rs” of education. Social and racial politics must be under the jurisdiction of families, not public education.

And when they refuse to, as most of them will, what then? My personal preference is for pitchforks, torches, tar, and feathers, but then I freely admit I’m an “extremist” like that.

Chin up

Posted on March 3, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

I been rasslin’ ‘round in my head all day with how I might present this next without confusing the hell out of everybody, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything. So steel yourselves; gonna be a lot of jumping back and forth betwixt posts on this one. Instead of just providing one link for each excerpt as and when it’s first referenced, as is my usual wont, each time I shift to a different post I’ll re-link where it comes from. That’s the best expedient I can think of.

The Democrats Have Already Won the 2024 Election, Regardless of Who Either Party Runs

We don’t need to recap what happened in 2020, when Sundown Joe* campaigned from his basement and drove enough enthusiasm to have 81 million votes counted for him. The Democrats did a spectacular job of making their stolen votes completely unverifiable. “OK”, I thought. “The GOP has learned their lesson and won’t let this happen again, right?” Wrong.

Jump to 2022. We were ready for the Red Tsunami, which turned out to be a red trickle. Yes, there were factors. I pointed out that the Roe V. Wade victory was worth any temporary losses. Could we have had stronger candidates? Sure, Hershel Walker & Dr. Oz were far from perfect, but spare me that talk as an excuse. The Dems “won” with Raphael “Slum Lord Preacher Millionaire” Warnock in GA, Katie “Abortion Mouse” Hobbs didn’t even make any freakin’ effort to hide the election fraud that she committed! And don’t get me started on Uncle Festerman in PA. The dude got elected despite that fact that he is so clearly brain damaged that he couldn’t utter a single coherent thought! Even more so than the dementia patient who was installed as President after the 2020 election! No, a bigger problem is that the GOP Establishment didn’t want solid majorities in the House & Senate. Cocaine Mitch witheld funding for any candidates who would not kneel and kiss his ring, while barely veiled double agent Lindsey Graham decided to offer the Dems some great Get Out the Vote fodder by introducing a bill (that had ZERO chance of passing) to completely ban abortions immediately after the Roe ruling.

Then in the aftermath, the GOPe decided to spit in the faces of the Normals who they pretend to represent, with Cocaine Mitch proclaiming that sending billions of dollars with no accountability to Ukraine was the top priority of the GOP base. And in a head scratcher, the party decided to reward Mitt Romney’s niece, Ronna McDaniel as GOP Chair. I can see her appeal to the GOPe, as she is great at raising a lot of money from big donors while carefully avoiding producing results with that money (And no, I have no idea why Trump’s people whipped votes for McDaniel on election day).

So what can we expect in 2024? At the top of my post Iinked to my anti-Trump take. There was a lot of disagreement, both in the comments and on various boards where I posted, and most of the disagreement was well articulated. But on top of everything I had to say, it looks like Biden* is trying to use Merrick Garland’s corrupt Department of Justice to go after Trump to keep him from being able to run. This wouldn’t be unprecedented – Tuca recently made a strong case that the Justice Dept. railroaded Nixon out of office. So let’s say that we end up having a bruising GOP primary that toughens the eventual winner, and whoever loses decides to put the country ahead of any personal disputes and endorses the winner. And in this scenario DeSantis is the winner, and we have a simple case of what too many pundits have called, “Trump without the baggage” and the GOP cruises to victory, right?

Well, no, not necessarily.

The first and most important angle to consider when analyzing this stance is the present reality of American elections. President Trump’s seemingly insurmountable election night leads in 2020, which were significantly larger than his leads throughout the night in 2016, somehow vanished into slim Biden victories. In other words: Without our corrupt election systems being corrected, it doesn’t matter who runs since the winner is predetermined. Trump didn’t cost us; the election was stolen. But for the sake of this discussion, we’ll say that our elections are free and fair.

Despite his alleged loss, Trump gained more than 12 million votes from 2016 (and likely more,) the largest increase in vote total for any sitting president in American history and the highest vote total by any presidential candidate ever, aside from Biden’s highly suspicious 81 million votes that same year. So, the media-manufactured Trump baggage has not had any negative impact on voter enthusiasm for Trump. Based on his vote increasing by millions, you could make the argument the baggage led to more people rallying to support him.

Prior to 2016, Conservative voter enthusiasm in the previous two presidential elections was abysmal. John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost convincingly to Barack Obama due in large part to their politically correct, low energy approach to politics when conservatives were looking for the exact opposite.

The “Trump baggage” can be summarized as a combination of his brash style of politics and the never-ending war waged on him by the media. Ironically, Trump’s style was the change America sought, and his exposure of the corrupt media is what has kept him so popular. In essence, Trump is a product of the corrupt environment the media has created, and their hatred towards him makes him more popular. The “Trump baggage” is what was needed to move the needle enough for Trump to win states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that Republicans had not won since the 1980s.

Most of the baggage from the Trump presidency was completely manufactured by media with the purpose of doing exactly what it is accomplishing to an extent now: Diminish enthusiasm for Trump at any cost, no facts needed. The goal was never to prove any of the false accusations against Trump. They knew this was impossible; they created them.

If those examples are considered “too much baggage,” could you imagine the media frenzy with issues of actual substance? Enter Ron DeSantis. To this point, it is obvious why the Florida Governor does not seem to have much baggage, and it isn’t because he has a squeaky-clean past. He currently has not declared a run for the presidency which is when most baggage is exposed (or manufactured.) There already are accusations ready to be weaponized when the time comes. Important to note, as seen with Trump: truth and facts are not needed to create baggage.

It’s a crucial distinction, since the list of DeSantis “baggage” is much ado about the exact same style of deceitful, ginned-up nothing the AmThink author dismisses with Trump. But, as Brother Bob notes, that ain’t the point.

Personally, I thought that the anti-Desantis shots in the post I just linked didn’t have much substance to them, but that’s not the point. To The Radical Left, charges don’t have to have any substance or facts behind them. Lefties will happily believe any lie if it supports their beliefs, and just look at the stupidity they believed about Trump. I could write a few thousand words, but can sum it up with the most egregiously unbelievable example that they all swallowed: Pee Tape, anyone? Of course, in this scenario The Radical Left will also forget their seething hatred for Trump, as one trait they’ve always shared is that they obediently march in lockstep to whoever their leadership labels their latest Emmanuel Goldstein. Ace lays down a few of the ways thet they will delude themselves that they actually like Trump compared to DeSantis. And of course, unless voter fraud gets addressed, pretending any nominee can overcome it is a trap.

Since you brought it up, let’s talk about traps for a sec.

DeSantis 2024 Is a Trap

If voter fraud is not addressed, it doesn’t matter who the candidate is, because democracy in America won’t exist.

Stop trying to take Ron DeSantis away from Florida. Just stop it. I understand the rationale, but it’s wrong. It may be quite reasonable to be jealous of Florida for its governor—the only governor in the nation to win my coveted “competent” rating on every major issue. But before we encourage DeSantis and Donald Trump to have a falling out that splits the party (or, rather, before we let the RINO simps do it at the behest of Democrats and lots of Chinese money), let’s review a few salient points.

First, governors really matter now. The worse Washington gets—and it gets bigger and worse no matter who’s president because the bureaucrats never change—the more important states become. We need to stop thinking of the presidential election as the be-all and end-all of politics. It was never supposed to be that way. States were once so powerful that the federal government had to fight a Civil War to smack them down. States formerly regarded themselves as coequal partners in the nation, not as subservient entities bowing to federal dictates. Whatever else the Civil War achieved, it did immeasurable damage to states’ freedom of action and, by extension, our own.

States have it in their power to undo this damage by protecting their citizens from federal agents who operate outside the law. (Case in point: ATF agents showing up without warrants at peoples’ homes, attempting to entrap gun owners.) But that would require boldness and courage on a level I don’t expect from any governor. Maybe Kari Lake would have done it. But she had her election stolen. DeSantis is the only sitting governor who could conceivably have the strength of purpose to lead a great reawakening of states’ rights. As I say, I don’t expect it. But he’s the only one who could do it—and he won’t do it if he’s busy trying to get himself elected president.

And here’s the other thing about DeSantis. We can call it “the main thing”: DeSantis isn’t going to win in 2024. No Republican is, unless voter fraud is addressed first. That means voting in person, on Election Day, and with a valid picture ID, not voting by mail over the course of a month. If we don’t fix that—and we’re not fixing it—it does not matter who the candidate is: Trump, DeSantis, or any other Republican. None of them have a chance in hell. It has nothing to do with who they are.

I’m going to say this again, simply because far too many “conservative” writers are ignoring it: Trump did not lose in 2020. Republicans did not lose in 2022. If we think we can win with a broader “big-tent” message or with someone who does less mean tweeting, we, in our innocence, are actively helping to destroy this country.

Pretty much, yeah. Back over to Brother Bob for the Big Question.

So what do we do now? We’ve already heard talk about the GOP adopting ballot harvesting techniques, as has already been successfully done in California. While I get the idea of using their tactics against the Lefties, that only goes so far, as the moment it becomes truly effective for us Normals is the day we get FBI raids on the homes of every Republican participating. If you don’t see that happening, look no further than all of the BLAMtifa domestic terrorist walking free while the victims of the January 6th Reichstag Fire rot away in the Garland Archipelago. Even if that threat didn’t hang overhead, I still don’t like it. For one, it gives a huge advantage to the GOPe versus any grassroots Republicans given the monetary and organizational advantages. Second, and more importantly, why should we Normals have to surrender a huge tactical advantage to The Radical Left? And if we become over reliant on harvesting, how soon until Democrats figure out that it’s a great way for them to measure how many fraudulent votes they need to find on election night? On this tactic, I share the brief, profane opinion toward Heinecken that Dennis Hopper offered in the movie Blue Velvet. Side note, but why aren’t any of us Normals pushing how ballot harvesting takes away the right of the secret ballot?

At this point you might be wondering if I’m going to offer anything remotely constructive, assuming you haven’t already put your fist through your screen hoping it will reach my nose. Adam Mill lays out the interesting scenario of boycotting the 2024 election.

I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, either. Completely sitting out the election means an electoral bloodbath downticket and wipes out representation for us Normals at the state and local levels, as well as in the School Board fights, where our base has shown new life. What if we still voted, but all voted a write in for President, such as John Galt? I’m sure that many of you disagree with me, but if I’m right (and I sincerely hope I’m not), how many rigged elections and tyranny at the hands of the Democrats do we put up with before we realize that we’re fighting the last war, and that we lost it years ago? Are we at that stage? I don’t know. Can we avoid reaching the stage where our election process has gone full banana republic, or was 2020 our Pearl Harbor, and 2022 was our Phillippines? I’d like to say that our Midway will be 2024, but based on what I wrote here I don’t see it. Calling out the regime’s illegitamacy is only a starting point, and things will get worse before they get better. But America remains the greatest country to ever exist, warts and all. My uncle didn’t get shot up by Rommel’s Africa Corps to return and live a productive life, while my great uncle didn’t get gunned down on the beaches of Normandy for me to squander what they sacrificed.

We will win this fight, as tyrannies always fall eventually. Some take longer than others. But if Germany could overcome being ruled by literally Hitler, and most of Eastern Europe could throw off Russian tyranny, there’s no reason we can’t do the same. And while we’re not as far along the road as those nations wound up, it’s impossible to ignore the path we’re on. But I’m not giving up.

Nor should you, nor should anybody else. Whatever the answer might turn out to be—and like Bob, I don’t claim to have any good ones myself—there is in fact one out there, just waiting for us to find it. Hope is only ever lost when it’s been abandoned. And that we must not, we cannot, do.

The Big Con

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Mike

Little did MAD magazine know how truly big a thing they were onto with this classic cover:

Ahhh, innocence! — *The con has only gotten bigger since then*

Fran calls it the Longest Long Con, which works for me equally well.

If the media megaphone can get you charged up about a notionally two-sided contest — with the help of the contestants, of course — it can keep your attention on what’s being said and away from what’s being done. That is the pattern of the last forty years at least. It keeps the political parties fat and happy, the media moguls dancing in dollars…and you and I bereft of the thing this nation was founded to protect and preserve: FREEDOM.

It’s a con game, Gentle Reader. It’s been nothing else since Ronald Reagan left office — and do you want to know what the Big Giveaway is, the one that everyone in this country should reflect on? It’s right out there in front of God and everybody, but only a handful of commentators have even brushed their microphones against it:

It’s the swindling of Donald Trump.

Trump was a genuine Outsider, a maverick determined to do right as he saw it. That made him an unacceptable, permanently “outside the tent” figure to the master croupiers of the Con Game, they who pour the Very Best Butter over the cams of the Big Rake-Off Machine we call party politics. They labor ceaselessly to keep We the People in Us vs. Them mode, that the oceans of campaign dollars might continue to flow uninterrupted into their coffers. Despite their best efforts, Trump gained the White House and set about doing as he said he would do. Unthinkable! the masters of the Establishment said to one another. No one keeps campaign promises! That’s why we let our puppets make them!!

So Trump had to go. The theft of the 2020 presidential election was the plainest imaginable revelation about the essential phoniness of contemporary political “conflict.” But despite Election 2020 and subsequent developments – Ukraine, anyone? — only a few have caught on.

Disaffiliate yourselves from the farce. Stop paying it any attention. Stop expecting political mechanisms to solve any of your problems. Concentrate on doing the best you can for your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your community, however defined. The game is rigged — so completely that even though “it’s the only game in town,” there’s absolutely no point in playing it any longer.

Be free. Freedom is not granted; it is taken: by you or from you. And the longer you focus on the con game called politics, the longer it will be withheld from you — by your own stubborn inanition.

Wait, if by that you mean I can no longer poke fun at the buffoonish, shambolic FiNC (Feeb in Chief, that would be), then I’m totally NOT down with that, now.

Hopeless

Posted on February 23, 2023February 23, 2023 by Mike

Sounds like Scott Adams must have gotten hold of the blackest of black pills.

VIDEO: Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Warns White People ‘Get the Hell Away’ from Blacks, As Poll Shows They’re Not ‘Okay’ with Being White
Dilbert creator Scott Adams turned heads with his commentary urging white people to stay away from black people after a recent Rasmussen Reports poll claimed nearly half of Black Americans don’t agree with the statement: “It’s okay to be white.”

“26 percent of blacks said no, it’s not okay to be white. 21 percent weren’t sure,” Adams said trying to wrap his head around the poll results during his podcast Wednesday. “Add them together that is 47 percent of black respondents were not willing to say it’s okay to be white.”

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people—according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll—that’s a hate group,” Adams reasoned, adding, “And I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”

The 65-year-old creator of the popular office humor comic strip went on to assert the racial rift is irreconcilable and white people should basically “get the hell away from Black people.”

“Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”

It’s sad to have say it, but it would seem so, yeah. On the other hand, there’s a vast gulf between what we see reported in media outlets, polls, and statistics—ALL media outlets, including Our Side’s—and real life as everyday folks live it. Worth keeping that in mind, I think. On the other other hand, though, if you live in an urban nightmare surrounded by hordes of hate-sodden, dead-eyed Ferals, it’s always best to err on the side of caution. And then there’s this truly horrific local story.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) – A concerned mother called WBTV for help after her five-year-old daughter reported being sexually assaulted on the school bus.

The incident happened in early February. Records show the girl’s mother reported it to school officials and police. But Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools didn’t take any immediate action in response; the district failed to even provide supportive measures it pledged to take.

Instead, the girl’s mother said her daughter was made to sit next to one of the two boys she said attacked her the next time she rode the bus.

Five years old, and now undoubtedly scarred for life. Both the victim and her assailants were Nee-grows, by the way.

Introductory Shithole Construction 101: If you build it, they will run

Posted on February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 by Mike

As with professional politicians, nobody you’d actually want in the job would be the least bit interested in taking it. In the case of law enforcement specifically, that’s purely intentional, done with malice aforethought—a nefarious plan greatly accelerated by the Ogabe junta’s militarize-the-police program, although its origins date back to well before that.

Why Would Anyone Want to Be a Cop in Los Angeles Today?

Having retired from the Los Angeles Police Department some years ago, I often look at the day’s news and ask, “How can anyone be expected to do that job today?” The latest inspiration for this question came Friday with the news that two Los Angeles city councilmen are trying to make it easier for the LAPD chief to fire officers accused of misconduct.

LAPD chiefs are now selected by the five-member civilian police commission, whose members are selected by the mayor. In recent years, the selection criteria for commissioner would not appear to include any expertise in law enforcement, but rather merely how each member can be said to represent some segment on the all-important “diversity” spectrum. A chief is appointed to a five-year term, with the police commission having the option of reappointing him to a second term if a majority so chooses.

The result is that what LAPD officers have leading their department is a politician in uniform, one who was selected by politicians initially and who is beholden to them for his recent reappointment to the position, for which his total compensation comes to $494,615.05.

So the question arises: What would Michel Moore, or any police chief, be willing to do to maintain that well-paid position? If some police encounter were to arouse the ire of the anti-cop mob, would he be willing to summarily fire a cop or two so as to appease that mob? The prudent bettor says, yes, he would.

And keep in mind that the upper ranks of the LAPD are largely populated by people who achieved their positions by demonstrating their willingness to please the chief and thereby please his political masters. If the Board of Rights system is maintained but returned to the hands of LAPD brass, how many of them would be willing to go against the chief’s expressed desires and acquit an officer, or impose some penalty less than termination on one who has been found guilty? Not many.

Which brings us to the cops on the street, not a single one of whom today goes through his 10- or 12-hour shift without fearing that he, should an arrest go wrong and rouse the mob, will become the next YouTube villain and be put through the kind of Kafka-esque ordeal already endured by others.

The streets of Los Angeles are already in chaos. It will only get worse if the cops are made even more fearful of doing their job.

Gee, second look at perpetually electing and re-electing D卐M☭CRATs and nothing but to every local, county, and/or state-wide office, perchance? Naaaw, that’s just crazy talk right there, you fascist, Ultra-Mega-MAGA™ lunatic, you.

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