Commies – Page 20

The Forever Plan(demic)

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Mike

More “experts,” God help us.

Are there places you should still mask in, forever? Three experts weigh in

There are still hundreds of thousands of COVID cases reported in the U.S. each week, along with a few thousand deaths related to COVID.

“Cases,” yet. Another word redefined for the convenience of shitlib tyrants and wannabe despots. “Related” to Fauxvid—do I detect the faintest pitter-pat of the wretched orphan Honesty, coming in on its little cat-feet? I mean, they for once didn’t claim these deaths were from Fauxvid, y’know?

But with mask mandates a thing of the past and the national emergency health declaration that will expire in May, we are in a new phase of the pandemic.

No, we are not. There is no longer a “pandemic,” the “pandemic” is over. Even Pedo Jao Bai-Deng said so, back last September. Not exactly a source one would want to count on in the normal run of things, of course. But hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Life looks a little more normal here in the U.S. than it did a few years ago, but decisions on how to deal with the virus aren’t over yet.

And they never will be, not as long as Americans remain tolerant of your precious “experts” making all their decisions for them.

China had a huge increase in cases last month after abandoning its zero COVID policy, and another variant prompted renewed recommendations in some airports. Researchers estimate that more than 65 million people are struggling with the effects of COVID — a disease we still have to learn about.

Speak for yourself, and the rest of the pussified and pusillanimous. The intelligent, observant, and independent of mind know everything about The Virus The Virus The Virus!™ they’ll ever need to, thenksveddymuch.

Wondering if and when you should still be masking up? NPR asked some experts.

“Experts,” forsooth.

Said “experts” tell us everything you would expect from them, and nothing you wouldn’t: Be afraid, be very afraid, every minute of every day, for the rest of your micromanaged existence, until you are given permission to do otherwise by Proper Authority. For the Greater Good, as always.

The rest of the NPR piece amounts to a rhetorical firehose-nozzle spraying metric tons more of this patent horseshit over all and sundry, which shouldn’t come as any great surprise to anybody; it is, after all, NPR—Official State Media, the Mouth Of Sauron—we’re talking about here.

I have to confess, I’m beginning to be as pessimistic about the likelihood of Heritage Americans ever rising up to throw off the yoke of this oppression as our good friend Wes usually is.

(Via Ace)

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The Great Debunkening

Posted on February 11, 2023February 11, 2023 by Mike

Looks like the science is finally settled.

I’m pro-science. That’s why I’m anti-mask

The landmark Cochrane study shows that the mask skeptics were right

I believe in the scientific method: make an observation. Ask a question. Form a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. Listen to the answer. Insisting on the answer before pursuing this methodological approach is not science, it is propaganda.

And “masks work” was never more than propaganda — rooted in mechanical plausibility, not actual science — furthered by public health officials, left-leaning government leaders, the press and the party faithful starting in 2020 and continuing to the present day.

The left is holding fast to the idea that masks do work, despite all the evidence to the contrary. In fact, as of February 6, mask mandates have been reinstated at four elementary schools in Marin County, California.

Will there be redemption for those who had the audacity to challenge authoritarian public health bureaucrats? No, it seems. Will there be a change in policy now that the science is clear? Again, no, it seems.

Will there be a doubling down, with the self-proclaimed pro-“science” crowd continuing to insist masking works despite the scientific evidence showing us that they don’t? Yes. It appears so.

What seems clear is that the enthusiastic, religious devotion to the dogma — “masks work” — signified adherence to a set of beliefs: I mask therefore I am good. I mask my children therefore I am loyal to the Democratic Party and public health diktats. I mask therefore I care. I am a loyal follower of “the Science.” My faith is unwavering.

Those who claim to be on the side of “the Science” will continue to push unscientific policies in order to prove that they were right all along. This is the sunk cost fallacy writ large. Don’t admit mistakes. Ignore the actual science in favor of “the Science.” And continue to punish those who challenge. As well as those most vulnerable who simply aren’t in a position to challenge at all.

“Science” has apparently been rebranded by the left. It is now a slogan — a tagline — shouted at heretics to signify one’s moral superiority and loyalty to the party. What we have now is “science” that ignores the scientific method, which means “the science” is a cult. And a dangerous one at that.

Yes, it most certainly is. That is neither coincidence nor happenstance.

The larger issue here is that Leftists, having by now promoted their misbegotten ideology on up to de facto religious-cult status, while also being constitutionally incapable of leaving anything under the sun imaginable alone and untampered with, must therefore pretzel actual science into “The Science” in order to bring it into compliance with their contradictory catechism.

They’d adamantly deny there’s any religious-cult aspect to their beliefs, natch, particularly as it applies to the Church of the Eternal Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ denomination. But the truth couldn’t be more obvious to any reasonable, thoughtful person.

Which is not to suggest that science and religion are incompatible, mind. It’s just that they’re two very different things, that’s all—distinct modes of thought whose focus is on two separate realms, which we might think of as the practical and the ethereal. Religion is definitionally a matter of faith, and matters of faith are NOT amenable to empirical proof. That built-in contradiction in terms is just another of the myriad reasons why, intellectually speaking, shitlibs can’t help but trip over their own dicks fifty times before lunch every day.

Intellectually speaking.

The aforementioned Cochrane study is here, and says this:

One of the largest and most comprehensive studies on the effectiveness of masks found they do almost nothing to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.

The study reviewed 78 randomized control trials—experiments that have long been considered “the gold standard” for medicine—which assessed the effectiveness of face masks against flu, COVID-19, and similar illnesses. It found that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” for the general public, no matter what kind of mask is used. Even N95 masks, considered the most effective at filtering airborne particles, showed no clear benefit for health care workers.

The study was published on January 30 by the Cochrane Library, a world-renowned medical database that is famous for its high-quality evidence reviews. It comes as a battering ram to the recommendations of the U.S. public health establishment, which urged children as young as two to wear masks throughout the pandemic.

“This amounts to the scientific nail in the coffin for mask mandates,” said Kristen Walsh, a clinical professor of pediatrics in Morristown, New Jersey. “I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that some schools are still actively forcing children to wear masks, much less children who need to see faces to learn.”

You shouldn’t try; it makes sense only when you recognize that the Scamdemic entire wasn’t really about health or safety, but about the twin pillars of authoritarian tyranny: power and control.

(Via Ed)

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Free speech: dead as the dodo

Posted on February 11, 2023 by Mike

The incomparable John Hayward’s latest.

A generation after the supposed triumph of classical liberalism at the “end of history,” free speech exists nowhere on Earth as a matter of principle. Every single tech mogul’s commitment to free speech evaporates when powerful authoritarians demand censorship.

Authoritarian foreign regimes know they only need to threaten blockage of Western social media services to make their management comply with censorship demands. Some push back harder than others, but in the end, they all cave. They can’t afford to lose access to growing markets.

Tech moguls rationalize to themselves that they can still do some good in oppressive countries by complying with some censorship demands – it’s better than being silenced completely. Any way you rationalize it, it’s a power calculation that limits the speech of the powerless.

Domestically, we’ve seen government officials using economic leverage and ideological affinity to limit speech in collusion with their Little Partners in the private sector. The ruling left-wing Party has operatives in tech companies that did much of the dirty work.

The power calculations have shifted a little lately, especially after Musk bought Twitter, but they’re still power calculations, not adamant defenses of free speech as a matter of principle. The variables changed, but the equations remain.

A troubling percentage of the free world’s population evidently believes censorship IS free speech – as though speech were a limited resource that must be allocated by the State with an eye toward “justice” and “equity.” Only by silencing some can others be truly free to speak.

“Hate speech is not free speech!” is a pure power calculation: those with power will decide what constitutes “hate speech.” They invariably rule that disagreement with their ideology and political demands is “hateful” and must be silenced.

How utterly convenient for them.

In America That Was, the very place where such forgetfulness was never supposed to happen, we somehow lost sight of the fact that “offensive” speech is the very embodiment of free speech—that once we’ve allowed TPTB to stifle speech they deem “offensive,” the hourglass has been turned over, the countdown to the inevitable loss of yet another Constitutionally-enumerated right has begun. Thus:

Speech is vital to political organization – in the Internet era, they are nearly synonymous. Twitter mobs have a direct pipeline to real political power via lazy, biased legacy media – provided they agree with the ruling Party. That pipeline is tightly shut against dissidents.

“Disinformation” is also a crude political calculation, not a high-minded and principled commitment to protect the population against fraud. We see examples every single day of disinformation that is tolerated, and boosted, when it comes from members of the ruling Party.

As with hate speech, the powerful decide what constitutes actionable “disinformation,” and they cannot resist the temptation of heavily tilting those scales against dissenters and speakers of forbidden truth. Party apparatchiks are never banned or reprimanded for disinformation.

The “end of history” was actually the triumph of authoritarianism, not classical liberalism – political scientists and commentators were just too giddy over the fall of the Soviet Union to see it. Individual rights, beginning with free speech, have steadily eroded since then.

It’s Doc Zero; reading it all isn’t mandatory, but you’re going to want to nonetheless.

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It’s settled

Posted on February 9, 2023 by Mike

The Science™ has spoken.

Fauci: now he tells us

Fauci lied, and now he is admitting it. In writing. In a peer-reviewed journal.

To be clear, Fauci is not claiming that the vaccines were utterly worthless. He still maintains that in certain specific cases–atypical, but the ones that generally kill you–the vaccines serve as a sort of pre-treatment. Not a great one, but a somewhat effective one. But he flat out admits that the claims about the vaccine possibly preventing infection and transmission are simply bogus and always were.

No, I am not exaggerating. He even admits that flu vaccines would never meet the standard to pass muster for use if they were for any other virus. Fascinating. And hardly how they are advertised.

Ace follows up.

Here’s one quote from the paper:

As of 2022, after more than 60 years of experience with influenza vaccines, very little improvement in vaccine prevention of infection has been noted. As pointed out decades ago, and still true today, the rates of effectiveness of our best approved influenza vaccines would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases. Even decades-long efforts to develop better, so-called “universal” influenza vaccines–vaccines that would create more broadly protective immunity, preferably lasting over longer time periods–have not yet resulted in next-generation, broadly protective vaccines, although a large number of experimental vaccines are in preclinical or early clinical development.

He writes that the successful true vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella gave rise to hope that similar vaccines could be developed for respiratory viruses.

But he then points out that “Science,” represented in his physical body, has long known that respiratory viruses work differently and could never be truly vaccinated against.

But he then points out that “Science,” represented in his physical body, has long known that respiratory viruses work differently and could never be truly vaccinated against.

In stark contrast, the non-systemic respiratory viruses such as influenza viruses, SARS-CoV-2, and RSV tend to have significantly shorter incubation periods (Table 1) and rapid courses of viral replication. They replicate predominantly in local mucosal tissue, without causing viremia, and do not significantly encounter the systemic immune system or the full force of adaptive immune responses, which take at least 5–7 days to mature, usually well after the peak of viral replication and onward transmission to others.

In other words: Because these viruses incubate in the mucosal tissues (nose, lung tissues) and not the bloodstream or the body as a whole, they do not encounter the body’s immuno defense system until after they’ve already begun sporing off out of the mucosal tissues to infect other people.

So: No vaccine injected into the body will ever be of much use in keeping mucosal viruses from spreading person-to-person.

And he always knew this, he says now.

Just another thing he lied and lied and lied about, in his role as Science Personified, to achieve the political objective of Making People Do What a Power-Mad Bureaucrat wants them to do.

Yep, that’s just about the size of it. The Scamdemic was a political maneuver, a bare-nake power grab, right from the very beginning. The only real surprise here, for those of us who realized that sorry fact early on, is that Fauci is actually ‘fessing up now.

2

1

Another FederalGovCo cash grab

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

The goobermint is your enemy.

Those 87,000 new IRS agents that you were promised would only target the rich…

They’re coming after waitresses’ tips now: “monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer’s point-of-sale system.”https://t.co/WAvh0t2cNN

— Mike Palicz (@Mike_Palicz)

February 7, 2023

Hey, no need to fret, it’s a purely “voluntary” program. For now.

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“Ace” Biden saves America!

Posted on February 6, 2023February 6, 2023 by Mike

I haven’t been able to verify it as of presstime, but rumor has it that this is the very aircraft flown by China Joe Bribem himself to shoot down that Gook spy balloon.

FlyingTigerP40

For his part, Bitter Centurion reminds us that, ultimately, this was about a heckuva lot more than some overinflated old gasbag.

ALL A BUNCH OF HOT AIR?

I didn’t go too far in depth in one of my last posts on the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon debacle, mainly because I didn’t have enough information available to me to make a definitive call on whether or not it actually was what the media is telling us it was. I more or less wanted to address the fact that, regardless of whether the story was legit or not, China DOES have the west by the balls in many different ways and we have largely been paying lip service to the whole entire issue.

My own thoughts are that it’s certainly possible that the media is telling the truth this time *COUGH, COUGH* BULLSHIT *COUGH, COUGH*….whew, excuse me. Yeah, anyway, the balloon may well be a device that is Chinese in origin used to conduct aerial espionage or perhaps reconnaissance. I mean, it isn’t like they don’t already have several spy satellites in orbit that can obtain this same information far less conspicuously, right?

Actually, there are plenty of perfectly good reasons for using balloons rather than satellites, for one that it’s orders of magnitude less expensive to just float a balloon overhead than to lob a satellite into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). For another, you get a much more clear and detailed view of whatever you want to look at from angels 60 than you can from orbit. Loiter time also factors in to the equation, with balloons winning out there too.

The US uses balloons for these very reasons, as do many of not most other players on the multinational stage.

Aesop points out another aspect of this kerfuffle that most probably haven’t taken into consideration.

As I noted elsewhere, and as anyone from SAC Norad or the Silent Service from 1946-1990 can tell you, don’t tell your enemy how early you can detect him, and you frequently just sit back and watch what they’re doing, because it gives you more intel on what they can do and what they’re interested in, than any intel they think they’re getting from you.

We did that with Russian subs and aircraft for decades at the height of the Cold War, with far more at stake.

Similarly, the whole point of China’s gambit may well have been not to glean intel on the missile silos in Montana, but to test US capabilities and reaction time to such an incursion, which would be highly valuable intel in its own right. Back to BC for what I still believe to be the bottom-line issue.

So, no. I absolutely don’t think that communist China is going to launch an attack on mainland North America, or anything to do with North America. No ‘Chinese blue helmets’. No bio weapons (I mean, no worse than the ‘Coronapocalypse’, but I’m starting to wonder if that was a massive screwup judging by how things played out). They’re not gonna launch chemical weapons, or ‘nuke’ us, or fry our grid with an EMP or cyberattack. And IF they do this, it probably won’t be anything large scale and it wouldn’t be for any other purpose than to harass us and keep us occupied, while they do other things. If the Chicoms are gonna attack anyone anytime soon, it’ll be Taiwan. That could go either way, really.

China is more than content to watch us tear each other apart over manufactured ‘social’ bullshit like gender and racial equity or reparitions, or whatever ’cause du jour’ we conjure up (with some prods and nudges from certain influential folks getting bennies from the CCP) due to our society’s massive inferiority complex, developed because we haven’t actually accomplished anything worthwhile in a few generations because we’re lazy and spoiled. China is quite content to watch us squander our wealth and our children’s futures away in never ending, massive conflicts that further tear our social fabric and destroy our faith in the institutions that our forefathers initially granted permission and responsibility to in order to take care of everything. China is quite pleased to see scores of migrants and ‘refugees’ pouring over the southern border, and in some cases be flown or bused, right into the United States, causing massive issues domestically from rising crime rates and homelessness to stretching taxpayer funded government and social services – everything from nurses, to cops, to teachers – to the point where they’re almost ineffective. On that last point, I still strongly believe China has funded and driven much of that, as I believed they did during the massive migrant surge in Europe back in 2015.

The thing to keep in mind here is that China doesn’t need to hit us with anything in terms of conventional warfare. We’re far too busy kicking our own asses and we’re actually doing a pretty fucking bang up job on that. All the Chicoms have to do is fry up the jiffy pop, enjoy the show, and wait.

Pretty much, yep.

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Peace through strength

Posted on February 6, 2023February 6, 2023 by Mike

Or chaos through senility.

It is worth remembering that during Donald Trump’s first term as president (note that I say “first term”), America and indeed the world was a more pacific place. Russia did not invade Ukraine. Iran was bottled up. The Abraham Accords brought peace to the Middle East. Amazing.

How did he do it? By taking a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook. Next to “Make America Great Again” (and perhaps laments about “fake news”) the phrase that one heard most often from the Trump campaign and, then, the Trump Administration was “peace through strength.” It was born of Trump’s understanding that weakness is provocative and destabilizing while recognized strength encourages peace and social order.

Biden has depleted our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, shuttered the Keystone Pipeline, and put the kibosh on fracking. He has gone a long way towards transforming the United States military into a gender fluid sensitivity camp while also undermining the U.S. economy by incontinent spending and by pursuing other inflationary policies. Biden and his puppet masters tried to stymie Trump by turning his catchphrase “MAGA” into a negative epithet (and if “MAGA” is bad, how much worse is “Ultra MAGA”?). As Julie Kelly remarked, “if the balloon was an unarmed female veteran, the government would have shot it by now.”

But it didn’t work. So-called MAGA policies really did “make America great again”—richer, more secure, more confident and patriotic.

Which is precisely why they so desperately, fanatically hated it. And him, and us.

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All you’ll ever need to know about those spy balloons

Posted on February 4, 2023February 4, 2023 by Mike

As an aside, it appears that Jao Bai-Ding, in accordance with the wishes of his ChiCom owners, has fulfilled the Bee’s prophecy: Biden Says He’ll Shoot Down Chinese Spy Balloon As Soon As He’s Done Letting It Spy. Brandon Smith has a look into it.

There are numerous theories as to why such a surveillance platform would be used by the CCP and what it is designed to look for, and I thought I would offer a couple theories based on my years of study into similar projects pursued by the US Department of Defense and DARPA.

Lidar Observation From A Balloon Platform

The Chinese have been messing with lidar technology a lot lately. Lidar uses pulsed lasers to measure small variations in terrain to uncover hidden shapes and structures. It also has a knack for cutting through forest canopy and other obstructions. The problem with lidar is that the platforms commonly used to carry the apparatus are faster moving and only capture a snapshot in time. Also, it cannot see through thick clouds, dust, rain, snow or fog.

NASA and DARPA have both been testing lidar from balloons as a means to keep the lasers in the sky longer above a specific area. The Chinese balloon also looks somewhat similar to the equipment used on European lidar balloon experiments.

A lidar based spy balloon would explain Chinese interest in Eastern Montana, where there are numerous known nuclear missile silos as well as suspected hidden silos. The Chinese balloon did in fact come near at least one known nuclear missile base near Billings. Lidar could be exploited to find hidden bases in the region.

Weapons Delivery Platform

High altitude balloons are cheap and relatively effective surveillance platforms that can be used much like satellites but, with the right equipment, could become far more maneuverable. With the CCP’s limited resources it makes sense that they would be utilizing low-cost and low visibility measures instead of expensive and easier to target long range drones or spy planes.

However, these systems are not just useful for observation – They can also be used to deliver weapons packages, including EMP weapons, nuclear weapons and biological agents. The US has been testing balloons for nuclear delivery ever since Operation Yucca in 1956.

In the event of war between China and the US, the CCP may be looking for a way to strike with weapons of mass destruction with a passive delivery system that’s hard to defend against.

The EMP business is worrisome, sure. But war—actual, literal, armies-marching-as-to-no-shit war? Sorry, but despite the recent alarums raised in various quarters about a Chinese attack and/or invasion of the FUSA, I still can’t find it in myself to fret overmuch about the possibility. I mean, why on earth would they bother? They already OWN us lock, stock, and barrel, in both political and economic terms. Given their real-estate acquisitions here over the last several years, a hot war with us would only mean willfully and needlessly ruining the return on their investment.

Then again, though, they’re fucking Commies, so what would they know about maximizing return on investment anyway?

In the end, it all comes down to this: Who really needs military conquest and the attendant hassle, aggravation, and expense, when they de facto defeated us years ago—with the full and witting cooperation of America’s greedy, traitorous Ruling Class—without ever actually having to fire a shot?

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Old Media launches pre-emptive strike

Posted on February 4, 2023February 4, 2023 by Mike

In typical dishonest fashion, against their latest hate-object.

DeSantis Derangement Syndrome: The media get even more unhinged

For those of us with already-low expectations for the leftist media, they’ve been working to lower that bar even further in their coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

You’d think these press organizations would have learned from their Trump Derangement Syndrome, when they burned trust in so many institutions, including and specifically their own, trying to fight President Donald Trump. Instead, they’ve simply substituted DeSantis in their activist, bile-filled, often-totally-wrong rants.

CNN reporter John Blake sent this note to DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin, asking for comment after the gov blocked a woke high-school class: “I’ve talked to one of the nation’s leading scholars on fascism who, along with another scholar who is an authority on fascism, say that DeSantis’ decision echoes similar decisions made by fascist dictators to force what one historian calls ‘collective amnesia’ about the past.”

I’m writing a piece calling the governor a fascist, care to comment? And how long have you been beating your wife?

Griffin posted Blake’s request to Twitter, pulling back the curtain on how hit pieces calling America’s most popular governor a “fascist” get made.

The Daily Beast ran an entirely fictitious account, likely written in crayon, of the DeSantis team paying influencers and “bot farms” on Twitter.

DeSantis for his part talks directly to Floridians and calmly explains his policies, which Floridians continue to support despite the media hoopla. He comes to his press conferences armed with facts and never lets the media get the better of him. He and his team have been teaching a master class in how to handle the dishonest press.

But they shouldn’t have to. Even those who don’t share his politics should speak up and say the coverage is absurd and lack of trust in news organizations has hurt us all. But they won’t because there are elections to win.

Well, that, plus they just enjoy the near-sexual frisson deceitfully slandering their adversaries and bringing them down provides them so much they really can’t help themselves. It’s too great a temptation for the snarling, yappy little ankle-biters to resist.

As for Ron The Great, he’s been an excellent governor, accomplishing several real and worthwhile things aimed at undoing many of the Great Leaps Forward made by Florida Leftards. Which is exactly why they hate him so desperately: love him or hate him, see him as a genuine reformer or just another grubby politician on the make, there’s no denying that DeSantis has been damned effective as governor of Florida.

And that’s what counts most at this point. The Sovereign States are where all the action is; for the most part, all the national political maneuvering and Titanic-deck-chair reshuffling hardly even registers with me anymore, it’s close to irrelevant. We know for sure and certain that the President is nothing more than a figurehead—a malleable, pliant ventriloquist’s dummy trotted out to make speeches at fundraisers. Trump’s Oval Orifice ordeal raised the curtain on that harsh reality, and the Biden meat-puppet’s disastrous tenure has confirmed it beyond all doubt.

I mean, seriously now: even diehard Dim-O-Creeps are coming around, in steadily increasing numbers, to the manifestly-obvious fact that the Biden meat-puppet isn’t in charge of his own daily bowel movement, much less of Amerika v2.0’s bloated central government, whether they’re willing to openly admit to it yet or not. Not that they’ll balk at campaigning, fundraising, and voting for the addle-pated old crook in 2024, mind. After all, they ARE still D卐M☭CRATs, you know.

Despite all the will he-won’t he 2024 Presidential speculation, despite oleaginous operators from both sides of the political fence presuming to put words in DeSantis’ mouth for their own purposes, I have yet to see the man himself utter Syllable One about the chances of him deciding to take a run at the tarnished brass ring. That makes me very happy indeed; as I’ve said over and over, Real Americans need Ron DeSantis right where he currently is. He’ll do way more good for us as Florida’s governor than he’ll ever be permitted to as POTUS, if only as a morale- and resolve-booster showing that the Left juggernaut isn’t invincible—that with a little effort and determination, they can in fact be defeated.

Should he decide to run anyhow, it will reveal much about who and what Ron DeSantis really is down deep—his character, his intelligence, his ego, his ambitions, his grasp of current reality, even—none of it the slightest bit encouraging. That will be a truly sad day, both for us and for the nation its own self.

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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.

1

Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children disgrace themselves

Posted on February 3, 2023February 3, 2023 by Mike

As goes the rest of the FUSA military, so go the Marines.

Hi @USMC. My dad will be 100 yrs old on 2/24. A Marine during WWII. 5 assault landings. We’d love it if a uniformed Marine came for a visit – say “HI” to him. Few WWII Marines are left alive. Sent a message thru the Marine Corp portal.
They blew me off.
Thanks pic.twitter.com/V273AE648O

— Jim Thompson (@JimmySportToons)

February 2, 2023

Disgusting. But it’s probably just as well, I suppose; if today’s Marine Corps had deigned this vet worthy of a visit from one of their own, they’d have undoubtedly sent along a Jarhead in his prettiest black cocktail dress and spiked heels, in full make-up. If Mr Thompson’s poor dad didn’t stroke out right away from the sheer horror of it, being confronted by what Wokester pissants have done to his beloved Corps would have put him on a rage-high that would last for the rest of his days. I’m with Billy:

In TOTAL there were only 589,852 MARINES to serve in WW2.

16 Million Americans served in uniform

Only a little over 500k were Marines

That means this gentleman is one of a very few surviving Devil Dogs Left

Shame on the Marines for blowing this guy off.

Fucking the local Jarheads -should- have a fucking parade for him…

WTF ever happened to “Semper Fidelis?”

Always Faithful my ass.

Indeed. I repeat: Disgusting. Disgraceful. Reprehensible. And truly, truly sad.

My sincere apologies as a Heritage America to you, Mr Thompson, sir. May you have a happy 100th birthday anyway, despite this unconscionable PC insult to your bravery, your legacy, and your personal honor. Always remember, though: Illegitimi non carborundum. Otherwise, they win. And that, they must never, EVER be permitted to do.

1

A future so bright

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

We have to be dragged into it against our will, kicking and screaming.

Road Trips in Our Long-Term EVs Have Been…Interesting

Broken chargers, full charging stations, single-digit temperatures, and optimistic range estimates have tested our patience.

While winter has seen many travelers stranded at airport check-in counters this year, MotorTrend editors have been braving the open road in our expanding fleet of long-term electric cars, trucks, and SUVs. During road-trips, MT’s Slack channels often become a de facto logbook of our exploits, capturing the headaches and small victories of long-distance EV driving in real time. Here’s a lightly edited look at how our drivers have fared in the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning, the 2022 Rivian R1T, the 2022 Volkswagen ID4, the 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance, and the 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 when holiday travel peaked, the weather and temperatures turned nasty, or they simply headed to far-flung destinations.

If you thought that was tons o’ fun, just wait till our antiquated and way-overtaxed power grid crumbles into pieces-parts under the weight of all these state-mandated struggle buggies. The only practical answer? This.

Chris Reed: I’m going to still drive the same vehicle I am now in 2040. I won’t be alone.

Assuming you’ll be allowed to, that is.

People routinely go down memory lane when they see decades-old vehicles — lovingly and ingeniously kept up for years despite replacement parts no longer being readily available — still on the streets long after they typically would have been consigned to scrap heaps. While wealthy collectors of older vehicles focus on classic sports or muscle cars, those with economic motives often prefer those they grew up with, such as the Volkswagen Beetles first sold in 1949. It was the best-selling car in the world in 1968 — popular in the U.S. in large part because of its countercultural associations, popular elsewhere more for its durability, affordability and excellent (for its time) gas mileage. In 1972, the Beetle passed the original Ford Model T to become the most manufactured vehicle in history.

Now there is an increasingly strong chance that this phenomenon — of aging vehicles still being a common sight long after they were first sold — will just keep growing in the United States, and that it could be strongest of all in California.

So I guess they’ve finally gotten it done, then: we are all Cubans now.

1

More on those electric Harleys

Posted on January 27, 2023January 27, 2023 by Mike

Thanks to Himself for hipping me to this vintage Eric Peters post, from 2018.

The Electric Suicide of Harley-Davidson

Imagine a Harley that doesn’t vibrate. No bark through the straight pipes when you push the starter button. No nothing through the pipes – which aren’t there anymore.

There is no starter button.

Just an On/Off switch.

No shifter, either. Because no gears.

All that remains is the “Harley” name on the tank – which isn’t one because it will never be used to store any gas. Might as well paint it on the side of your toaster.

Welcome to the 2019 LiveWire – Harley’s first electric motorcycle. The first of a whole line of them – intended to be ready by 2025.

They’re betting the future of the company on it.

If you have any Harley stock, better unload it.

Quickly.

Because an electric Harley is as silly as juice-bar speakeasy. It runs counter to the point.

People buy motorcycles – and especially Harley motorcycles – because they make that sound.

And also because of the smells – of gas and oil – which attend those sounds. Without which you’ve got what amounts to alcohol-free beer.

Or a girlfriend who won’t sleep with you.

Heh. Indeed. Oh, you’ll for sure be getting yourself a good fucking alright, but you won’t enjoy a single minute of it.

This is not going to end well. For the intangible reasons already articulated – a BLT without the bacon – and for other more tangible reasons.

Harleys – more than any other make of bike – appeal to the cruiser. The long-haul rider. The open road.

But electric bikes – like electric cars – are stunted by abbreviated operational range. A 2019 V-twin Sport Glide carries 5 gallons of easily and quickly replaced gas and gets 47 MPG. It thus can travel almost 240 miles – and when the tank runs low, this Harley can be back on the road in minutes.

That is freedom.

With the LiveWire, you are tied to an electric umbilical cord.

The opposite of freedom.

Yes, t’is, with cars and bikes both. Which is precisely why TPTB insists so vehemently on cramming their blasted EVs down our collective throat.

Over at Eric’s place, there are a cpl-three Harley-hating sourpuss types in the comments who scornfully profess their complete lack of concern for whether H-D carries on as an independent motorcycle manufacturer or not, and who the hell would want one of the outdated POS dinosaurs anydamned way? They’re missing the point at issue, which is, was, and shall eternally remain freedom. This ain’t about motorcycles and/or who makes ‘em. Ultimately, it’s about taking your freedom away from you, nothing more nor less. Y’know, just like with everything else.

2

Checking into Hotel USSR

Posted on January 26, 2023January 27, 2023 by Mike

Just emailed Oleg Atbashian to tell him I finished reading his autobiographical tome, Hotel USSR, and am now going through it a second time to make notes for use in my review of it here, which I should have up probably in another week, maybe two. And MAN ALIVE, but this book is powerful indeed! It’s written in a straightforward, matter-of-fact style, which only serves to intensify the impact of the relentless brutality and inhumanity chronicled therein.

I’ve been reading and excerpting Oleg’s People’s Cube humor blog for years now, and never realized that he grew up in the Ukraine, and was born the same year I was. Our upbringing and youthful experience as Children of the 60s and 70s couldn’t have been more different, alas for him.

No matter how well-informed you might be, how carefully and thoroughly you’ve educated yourself about what life might be like under full-bore totalitarian tyranny, Oleg’s story comes at you like a sharp punch in the gut. As far along the same dismal road as the US has come, let me assure you that we have no idea what it was like for the victims of the heartless thuggery and oppression that was simply the stuff of everyday existence in the Soviet Union. It’s monstrous, no more nor less. How people like Oleg managed to get through it all with their souls and spirits still relatively intact and functioning is far beyond my ken.

Yet more baffling, and infuriating, is our domestic Useful Idiots who continue to this day to lobby hard for a Made In America emulation of this abominable regime. The clueless dolts know not what they wish for, a truth that Hotel Russia makes perfectly clear. God forbid that they should ever get their way. Every last one of them should be forced to read it, with a gun at their heads if need be.

More to come as and when, folks.

2

A coup, if you like

Posted on January 26, 2023 by Mike

Just now noticing it, are ya?

Jeremy Clarkson: We’re in the midst of a coup. Who the hell’s behind it?

Not in the middle of one; it’s long since been over and done with, I’m afraid. As to wondering who’s behind it, you can’t really be serious about that one.

My son came over for a father-and-son pre-football supper the other day, and as he fussed over the Aga, making a particularly fine stir fry, we laughed about what innocuous word had been banned that day and who’d been cancelled. And then, after a pause, he said with a solemn face, “You do know there’s a war going on, don’t you?”

He wasn’t talking about Ukraine. He was talking about a full-on left-wing campaign to unstitch and burn the fabric of Britain. And the genius is that no one really knows that what they’re doing is serious. We laugh as they change the name of the Sir Francis Drake Primary School to something less slavey. We think it’s all a big joke. But it isn’t.

Think about what typically happens in a military operation and then look what the woke left has done here. It’s seized control of our television and radio stations to such an extent that last week Sophie Raworth said, on the BBC News at Six, with a straight face, “And over now to our LGBT and diversity correspondent …”

And TV drama? Unaffected? Right, and when was the last time you saw a fictional police force hunting a gang of Muslim extremists? It’s always the far right. And it’s the same story in comedy. Say anything you like about Boris or Rishi and the laughter track is turned up to 11. Make a joke about she/him pronouns or Greta Thunberg and they’ll blow a piece of tumbleweed across the stage.

You probably think, because you don’t know this war is going on, that when you drop little Johnny off at the school gates he’s going to learn the nine times table that day. No, he isn’t. He’s learning that he might actually be a girl, which is why there are probably tampon dispensers in the boys’ lavatories.

When some young people with green hair glue themselves to the road, large numbers of officers are dispatched to stand around looking at them. And they are only ever removed from the tarmac if they promise to go immediately to the nearest art gallery and throw some soup at a painting.

You’ll definitely want to read all of this one, folks. Even though he’s writing about Jollye Olde, across the pond we’re tailgaiting them down the same sorry road ourselves.

2

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