Begins At Home – Page 16

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.

Stealing their thunder

Posted on February 18, 2023February 18, 2023 by Mike

As Steyn always says, the future belongs to those who show up for it.

Keeping kids safe: Idaho MassResistance activists take up all the seats at Drag Queen show in local library.

As in many other “red” states these days, the Marshall Public Library in Pocatello, a town in Bannock County in southeastern Idaho, is now staffed by leftists and LGBT activists. We’ve been told that one of the staffers is a Drag Queen at night.

Citizens in Bannock County had become outraged at the large number of obscene books and the Drag Queen Story Hours for children at the library. In mid-December 2022, one of them contacted MassResistance. We got right to work helping them. Within weeks, our new chapter there had nearly 50 people, which included members of local churches.

On January 17, a group of parents attended a Library Board meeting and read from some of the obscene books. But they were ignored. One Board member continued to deny that there was any obscene material in the library. But the parents had only gotten started!

The next Drag Queen Story Hour took place February 11, 2023.

Our activists initially planned to gather in the lobby of the library, just outside the meeting room of the DQSH. They were going to sing hymns so that the Drag Queens and the attendees in the main meeting room could hear them. If the police were called to force them to leave, then our team would go outside, stand around the library near the windows and sing. Everyone can hear people outside of the library, so it would have been a peaceful disruption.

But as the event came closer, they had the idea to go into the meeting room early and take up all the seats! That way, they would prevent adults from taking children into the story hour.

It worked. All of our activists showed up half an hour early with Bibles in their hands. They were going to read the Bible through the whole event. The library director saw what was going on, and he said to our activists: “If you are not here to participate then you need to leave.” None of our activists left. They reminded him that it was a publicly advertised event in a public place and he couldn’t simply order them out. So he backed down.

Well done and good show to the fine folks at MassResistance—who, if my bold above is any indication, appear to have a pretty good grasp of a vital concept: if you don’t resist them, then they win. Read it all, it gets even better from there.

The secession solution

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Mike

Most welcome news out of what may soon be Greater Idaho.

Breaking: Idaho Legislature Passes Bill to Move Idaho-Oregon Border to Include Large Swath Eastern Oregon

In November 2022 two more counties in Oregon voted to join the state of Idaho. Several other counties have already done this in recent years.

The reasons are pretty simple. These Oregonians are tired of being associated with the radical left that rules the city of Portland and drives policy for the rest of the state.

They feel that Idaho, a far more conservative state, much better represents their beliefs.

Conservatives in Oregon fed up with the far-left policies coming from the state legislature in Salem may have hope on the horizon. The Greater Idaho Movement, a secession movement with allies in both the Oregon and Idaho state legislatures, is making progress in its efforts to convince 15 conservative counties in rural Oregon to secede and join Idaho.

11 eastern Oregon counties have already voted in favor of joining Idaho. Due to this success, Idaho state lawmakers have introduced legislation to begin discussions with the Oregon State Legislature on relocating the Idaho/Oregon state boundary.

A Republican State Senator in Oregon introduced a bill to start talks with Idaho last month.

Mike McCarter, the leader of The Greater Idaho Movement, argues his endeavor will give eastern Oregon voters an actual voice in state affairs should the counties officially join. Unlike the urban liberal areas which dominate Oregon politics, Idaho is a rural, conservative state with traditional values.

This week The Greater Idaho bill passed the Idaho House of Representatives.

Good on ‘em. Unfortunately, I can easily imagine Oregon’s legislature stymieing them, if only just out of pure spite. We shall see.

Stand down, serfs!

Posted on February 13, 2023February 13, 2023 by Mike

Nobody is coming for your guns gas stoves. Except when they are, that is.

Oregon’s Eugene Council Bans Natural Gas Hookups in New Residences

City says it aims to be free of fossil fuels despite strong public opposition

Wasn’t someone saying something about “for the Greater Good” just a moment ago? Why yes, I believe someone was at that.

After more than two years of debate, the Eugene City Council voted on Feb. 6 to ban natural gas hookups in new residential construction, becoming the first city in Oregon to prohibit new homes from using gas furnaces, water heaters, or appliances.

During a closed meeting, the council first decided to deny a request by opponents to put the issue on the May ballot. According to DHM Research, 70 percent of those surveyed oppose the ban.

The council then voted 5-3 in favor, citing concerns about climate change, and public health, and saying the ban would reduce carbon emissions, and eliminate the air quality hazards of gas stoves.

And thus is it established, beyond all further argument or discussion, that government of the people, by the people, and for the people has indeed perished from the Earth.

It did not die of natural causes, mind; it was murdered, by people who have names and addresses. That ought to be borne in mind, not just by the people of Eugene, but by every last man Jack of us who still like to think of themselves as Americans.

Update! When it comes to the larger issue here, the song remains the same: it’s the Leftism, stupid.

The Power-Mad Utopians

America needs a broad popular front to stop the revolution from above that is transforming the country

What happens in politics when one major party, or a major faction in both parties, commits itself to doomed utopian projects of social and economic engineering and seeks to capture and use government to impose its vision from above? In such cases ordinary political consensus and compromise become irrelevant. What is needed, in such cases, is the broadest possible coalition to defeat the mad and impossible schemes of these utopians.

Which coalition must stand resolved to do violence on behalf of themselves and their stolen liberty—not to merely die for freedom, but to kill for it. Y’know, exactly as our Founding Fathers were, hallowed be their names.

As Buck Throckmorton notes, the above-linked article is a long ‘un. And, as I will note, it suffers from the by-now-obligatory insistence on a purely political solution to problems caused by politics—a misguided, impossible dream truly Quixotic in its gross proportions. Those things stipulated, it’s still worth a look anyhoo.

A shocking revelation

Posted on February 12, 2023February 12, 2023 by Mike

Although the part I find most shocking might not be the one that comes immediately to mind.

In appearances on two Sunday talk shows, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) said that China sending a high-altitude spy balloon across the continental United States “was an act of espionage in plain sight” and revealed that the balloon had a greater capability than satellites to gather and collect imagery, and left open the possibility that these signals and images were still transmitted to Beijing even though US intelligence officials claim that they “mitigated” the damage.

On “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo,” McCaul said:

“These spy balloons have great capability to gather and collect intelligence, I would argue moreso than even satellites in the sense that they’re flying at, say, 40 to 60 thousand feet above the earth. The imagery that they can capture and other intelligence data that I can’t be specific about can be captured and then transmitted back to the mothership in Beijing.

“This was an act of espionage in plain sight, plain view of the American people.”

So far, so “well, DUH.”

McCaul’s first statement in the interview was that one of his priorities as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is to stop the export of American technology to China “that then goes into their most advanced weapons systems” (such as stealth technology, which CFIUS allowed to be sold to a company majority-owned by the Chinese government). Brennan asked if it made McCaul uncomfortable as a conservative “to have government try to control private business investment. How do you do that?” In his answer, we learn exactly why he’s comfortable doing that, and what a massive national security issue it is (emphasis mine):

Well, we have what’s called an entities list. The Department of Commerce had jurisdiction over the office within their — the Department of Defense has one.

We need to harmonize those, make it more security-focused. You know, capital flows is one issue, but technology exports into China that they use to turn — that maybe eventually turn against us, we have to stop doing that.

And I think we can do it by sectors. They do it by companies now. Obviously, they identified the six. I think, shockingly, when the balloon was recovered, it had American-made component parts in there with English on that. It was made — you know, parts made in America that were put on a spy balloon from China. I don’t think the American people accept that.

Bold in the original, not mine. And that’s where the part I found shocking comes in: “American-made component parts”? Really? Man, I had no idea we still made anything at all in this country anymore.

Schisming

Posted on February 7, 2023February 8, 2023 by Mike

Remember the other night when I mentioned my upbringing in the First United Methodist Church in Mt Holly? Well, my cousin (BPs drummer Mark) called me up Sunday with some welcome news: FUMC-Mt Holly had voted overwhelmingly that day to disaffiliate with the FUMC convocation, either to join the Global Methodist Church or go fully independent. This coming Sunday, Mt Holly Methodists will be holding a vote to decide on which way to jump.

Given events over the last several years, I had been waiting to see whether they’d make the leap or not, and hoping that they would. The FUMC has always been a fairly liberal-oriented denomination—even as far back as about 1978 or so, my dad went to our pastor to demand that his tithing money stay strictly with our local church, that he didn’t want one thin dime of it going to the national organization because of its ever-farther and faster Leftward drift—but things have gotten bad enough over the last ten years or so that a breakaway movement has begun to find its feet.

United Methodists Lose 1,800 Churches in Split Over LGBT Stance

The initial departures, mostly concentrated in the South, represent around 6 percent of the denomination—not as dramatic as the “schism” some feared.

Nearly four years ago, the United Methodist Church approved an exit plan for churches wishing to break away from the global denomination over differing beliefs about sexuality, setting in motion what many believed would be a modern-day schism.

Since then, a new analysis has found, it’s fallen well short of that.

That analysis of data collected by the church’s General Council on Finance and Administration shows 6.1 percent of United Methodist churches in the US—1,831 congregations out of 30,000 nationwide—have been granted permission to disaffiliate since 2019. There are no good figures for international departures among the estimated 12,000 United Methodist churches abroad.

The denomination’s disaffiliation plan gives churches until December 31 to cut ties, and many have already made known their desire to leave. Those churches can take their properties with them after paying apportionments and pension liabilities. Others are forcing the issue through civil courts.

The 1,831 church departures come as United Methodist bishops say they’re battling misinformation from conservative groups that encourage churches to leave the denomination for the newly formed Global Methodist Church, which has declared it will never ordain or marry LGBTQ people—the crux of the conflict.

In turn, the Global Methodist Church and groups like the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a network of theologically conservative churches, argue that the denomination’s regional conferences are making it prohibitively hard for churches to leave.

The FUMC’ers in Mt Holly, being of a more conservative bent, had long been dismayed over the parent organization’s dismal shift towards godless-Left libertinism, which has resulted in this sort of abomination:

Drag queen pastor delivers a sermon at a Methodist church. What in the world? pic.twitter.com/NXJJl9cq3T

— Catch Up (@CatchUpNetwork)

February 6, 2023

Yeah, small-town Christian folk in the South are really gonna go for that. Heartfelt kudos for the Methodists who have shown the gumption to finally tell TPTB, “Enough, no more, we’re out.” It’s about damned time, and I hope to see a lot more of it.

So how is Biden’s War On Russia working out so far?

Posted on February 3, 2023 by Mike

Not too good.

The point of the war, you recall, is “to weaken Russia” (so said DoD Sec’y Lloyd Austin), even to bust it up into little geographic tatters to our country’s advantage — that is, to retain America’s dominance in global affairs, and especially the supremacy of the US dollar in global trade settlements.

The result of the war so far has been the opposite of that objective. US sanctions made Russia stronger by shifting its oil exports to more reliable Asian customers. Kicking Russia out of the SWIFT global payments system prompted the BRIC countries to build their own alternative trade settlement system. Cutting off Russia from trade with Western Civ has stimulated the process of import replacement (i.e., Russia making more of the stuff it used to buy from Europe). Confiscating Russia’s off-shore dollar assets has alerted the rest of the world to dump their dollar assets (especially US Treasury bonds) before they, too, get mugged. Nice going, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken, and the rest of the gang at the Foggy Bottom genius factory.

All of which raises the question: who is liable to bust up into tatters first, the USA or Russia? I commend to you Dmitry Orlov’s seminal work, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, Revised & Updated. For anyone out there not paying attention the past thirty-odd years, Russia, incorporated as the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991. The USSR was a bold experiment based on the peculiar and novel ill-effects of industrialism, especially gross economic inequality. Alas, the putative remedy for that, advanced by Karl Marx, was a despotic system of pretending that individual humans had no personal aspirations of their own.

The Soviet / Marxist business model was eventually reduced to the comic aphorism: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. It failed and the USSR gurgled down history’s drain. Russia reemerged from the dust, minus many of its Eurasian outlands. Remarkably little blood was shed in the process. Mr. Orlov’s book points to some very interesting set-ups that softened the landing. There was no private property in the USSR, so when it collapsed, nobody was evicted or foreclosed from where they lived. Very few people had cars in the USSR, so the city centers were still intact and people could get around on buses, trams, and trains. The food system had been botched for decades by low-incentive collectivism, but the Russian people were used to planting family gardens — even city dwellers, who had plots out-of-town — and it tided them over during the years of hardship before the country managed to reorganize.

Compare that to America’s prospects. In an economic crisis, Americans will have their homes foreclosed out from under them, or will be subject to eviction from rentals. The USA has been tragically built-out on a suburban sprawl template that will be useless without cars and with little public transport. Cars, of course, are subject to repossession for non-payment of contracted loans. The American food system is based on manufactured microwavable cheese snacks, chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas produced by giant companies. These items can’t be grown in home gardens. Many Americans don’t know the first thing about growing their own food, or what to do with it after it’s harvested.

There’s another difference between the fall of the USSR and the collapse underway in the USA. Underneath all the economic perversities of Soviet life, Russia still had a national identity and a coherent culture. The USA has tossed its national identity on the garbage barge of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which is actually just a hustle aimed at extracting what remains from the diminishing stock of productive activity showering the plunder on a mob of “intersectional” complainers — e.g., the City of San Francisco’s preposterous new plan to award $5-million “reparation” payments to African-American denizens of the city, where slavery never existed.

As for culture, consider that the two biggest cultural producers in this land are the pornography and video game industries. The drug business might be a close third, but most of that action is off-the-books, so it’s hard to tell. So much for the so-called “arts.” Our political culture verges on totally degenerate, but that is too self-evident to belabor, and the generalized management failures of our polity are a big part of what’s bringing us down — most particularly the failure to hold anyone in power accountable for their blunders and turpitudes.

As for the “which will fall first” question, with America now entirely in the inept hands of its own homegrown Marxists and their pretend “opposition,” well, the answer ought to be obvious. Russia already went through that cataclysmic teachable moment once; soon, it will be our turn.

And yes, Kunstler’s reversion to his by now Standard-Form surfeit of unfounded optimism concerning “investigations” and such tripe in the final ‘graph remains in full rose-tinted effect. Y’know, just in case any of you were wondering about that.

The burning question

Posted on February 2, 2023February 2, 2023 by Mike

TL asks it.

If Not War, Then What?

One cannot be loyal to the United States of America, that government is gone, overthrown, dismissed. The only thing left of it are the documents that rightfully informed the people of their God-given rights and some formative departments and offices that maintain the structure of the government, but without the effectiveness or responsibilities thereof. Our government is performance art, nothing else.

What can be done? What can we do about it? That’s a question that, in truth, has a violent answer. When a people have been stripped of every aspect of privacy; had their wages and incomes (completely different things) subjected to digital confiscation at any moment; are being forcefully injected with poison; watched the past generations being snuffed out in nursing homes and their children and grandchildren either killed outright or chemically altered to prevent reproduction; have come to know that the future is even more oppressive, violent and hostile and that the process of altering that formulation of caustic actions against them is now politically impossible, the only thing left is to recognize the enemy and engage them.

Since I cannot imagine a commission of demonic acts greater than that to which we have already been subjected, I doubt anyone will do anything no matter how vile and vengeful our illegitimate government is. We are stuck in a 1950s frame of mind about America and being subjected to a 1984 dystopian reality without the will or ability to engage in a 1946 Athens, TN response.

So, what’s left?

Fret not, TL. People just have to get good and hungry, that’s all, and there aren’t enough of those people quite yet.

Until then, all we can do is wait…and watch. The concept of Constitutional liberty, as an issue, has faded almost completely from the picture for the majority of Americans (In Name Only); some don’t really care much either way about it, some are actively, openly hostile to it. Many of those who might once have been motivated to action by it have been lulled to sleep by indolence, sloth, and relative comfort and ease. Even those who recognize how truly awful the situation has become nonetheless feel no urgency, no impetus to risk their homes and lives to finally do something about it.

Yet.

Yes, the notion of the Former USA as the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is now nothing but an obscene joke. But as with all aspects of life on this poor Earth, these things too are by no means permanent. Once their children are going hungry—wailing out loud from the physical anguish that comes along with too-long-empty bellies—and they can no longer find either the means or the ability to put food on the table for them…well, we might all be surprised at just how powerful a wake-up call that is, for all parents with the least shred of dignity and self-respect left to them.

Ain’t chicken feed

Posted on January 31, 2023January 31, 2023 by Mike

Cherchez le shitlibs.

Tractor Supply Chicken Feed Scandal Rocks Poultry Industry!

A recent alteration to the popular “Producer’s Pride” chicken feed sold by Tractor Supply has caused chickens to stop laying eggs, according to multiple farmer sources. The reduction in egg production has been reported to be much greater than the normal decrease seen during the winter months, with some farmers reporting that their hens are laying zero eggs.

My brother has five of the blighted birds, gets his feed at a Tractor Supply close by, and says he hasn’t seen so much as Egg One in weeks now. As much as he do love him some fresh aiggs, it’s just about killing the poor guy.

The cause of the reduction in egg production is still unknown, but some suggest that the feed’s new formulation may have a lower protein content. This news comes at a time when chicken and egg prices have reached historic highs, driven in part by Avian Flu and inflation under the Brandon Administration.

“We pride ourselves here at Kreamer Feed on premium nutrition for animals nationwide, and all of the products in our organic, non-GMO brand Nature’s Best Organic Feeds line is no exception,” said Courtney Price, spokeswoman for Nature’s Best Organic Feeds. This statement is in contrast to reports from farmers who use Tractor Supply’s “Producer’s Pride” feed, as well as the “Dumor” brand owned by Purina.

The U.S. poultry feed market is valued at $5 billion per year, with Tractor Supply and Purina being two of the most popular brands among backyard chicken homesteaders. However, the recent reports of chickens not laying eggs have led to public concern that the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum) may be artificially causing food scarcity. The World Economic Forum has been widely criticized for encouraging citizens to eat bugs instead of animal protein.

Tractor Supply’s board of directors is made up of 10 individuals, including Joy Brown, a former executive for Vanguard, an index fund with $5 trillion under management. Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are among the major index funds that financially support the World Economic Forum. These funds are also behind the “social credit” and “ESG” left-wing movements among corporate America to force businesses into left-wing economic and cultural compliance.

Another Tractor Supply board member, Thomas Kingsbury, previously bragged about implementing ESG initiatives while working as an executive at Kohl’s. And board member Andre Hawaux is a former executive with ConAgra, which has been criticized for using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to change the genetic composition of its foods, which some say causes sterility.

Sinisterer and sinisterer, wouldn’t you say?

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