Disasters Near and Far

Happy Memorial Day!

Posted on November 12, 2023 by Mike

As ever, Pedo Pete is a bit confused.

Biden suffers ANOTHER embarrassing gaffe as he stumbles through Veterans Day service and appears to get lost while laying a wreath

Biden appeared confused at Arlington National Ceremony to mark Veterans Day

The president, 80, needed stage directions after laying a ceremonial wreath

In his remarks, Biden said ‘war and conflict’ are ‘part of the American story’

Biden was joined at Arlington National Cemetary by Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to celebrate the armed services.

Speaking before members of the Armed Forces and Gold Star families, Biden began: ‘Here in Arlington lie heroes who gave what President Lincoln called ‘the last full measure of devotion.’

‘They did not only die at Gettysburg or in Flanders Field on the beaches of Normandy, but in the mountains of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq in the last 20 years.

‘Hundreds of graves are here from recent conflicts. Hundreds of patriots gave their all, each of them leaving behind a family who live with their pain and their absence every single day.’

He added that veterans are the ‘steel spine of this nation’, and recounted famous battles that saw soldiers ‘linked in a chain of honor that stretches back to our founding days.’

‘This Memorial Day, we honor their legacy and their sacrifice, duty, honor to their country.’

Saturday’s service was the 70th annual National Veterans Day Observance at Arlington, and followed a private reception in the White House East Room for veterans and military officials.

What a sad, sorry joke this senile old kleptocrat is, was, and shall remain.

Jewish “journalist” SHOCKED to learn murdering Hamas terrorists are, in fact, murdering Hamas terrorists

Posted on November 9, 2023November 9, 2023 by Mike

…and, being a pluperfect, Mark-1 Mod-0 example of what our blog-bud JJ Sefton aptly dubbed “self-gassing Jews,” is scrupulously careful to make sure that he learns absolutely nothing whatsoever else.

I’m a Jew at ‘The Guardian.’ I Don’t Feel Safe at Work.
An anonymous employee describes the hostile environment at Britain’s foremost left-leaning newspaper.

I wake up on October 7 to a text from my brother-in-law: “Thoughts are with your family in Israel. I hope everyone is safe.”

I check the news. Hamas has entered southern Israel. They’re in a kibbutz. My partner’s family is in that kibbutz. His cousin is nine months pregnant. He’s in contact with them; they’re in the safe room. Terrorists are outside.

I check social media. Reports of hostages, maybe three. I check again; perhaps ten.

There has been a massacre at a music festival. I look at the video. Who do I know there? I check social media again; there are videos of hostages. I look at their faces. Do I know them?

We lose contact with family in the kibbutz. I tell myself that the phone lines are down because the IDF are there. I watch Hamas footage as it is coming out. I go on Telegram for the first time in my life and I see a room full of bodies covered in blood. I see children gunned down. I see the bodies of raped women. I see families holding each other as Hamas livestreams atrocities. I look for people I might know.

I look at the papers the next day. The newspaper I work for has a tank on the front page: ‘Hundreds die and hostages held as Hamas assault shocks Israel’—victorious terrorists hold a Palestinian flag. The subheading reads ‘Netanyahu declares war as 150 Israelis die. 230 Palestinians killed in air strikes.’

I don’t understand. I know people, Israelis, who were murdered. They did not “die,” as if in some kind of accident. I saw footage of terrorism. It was not an “assault.”

On Sunday, we get more information about what happened to my partner’s family, about how Hamas set the family’s house on fire when they thought it was empty, how my partner’s cousin screamed for her life when the room filled with smoke, how her husband had to pin her down to stop her cries, how Hamas laughed when they realized the family would need to crawl out of the room, how they refused to leave the burning building. We hear that they somehow survived and walked out through pools of their neighbors’ blood, pieces of dead children littering the street; kids who’d been playing on a Saturday morning.

My group chats are exploding as family and friends work out what has been happening, who is alive. I go back to the news. I type the name of the kibbutz into the wires. Nothing. I read how Hamas invaded “settlements.” They’re not settlements! They’re small, pre-state kibbutzim.

I find out that a friend of a friend was at the music festival and is missing. I’m shaking at work.

I see a colleague who had posted about “decolonization” all over social media over the weekend. They’re laughing with the rest of their team. They’re having a great day. I used to love their podcast, full of hot takes and celeb gossip. Now they’ve evolved into an expert on the Middle East. It doesn’t look like their family is in the middle of it, though.

No one else at work speaks to me about it. I nod my way through conversations about fonts and I stumble home.

I go back the next day. I look at the front page. A photo of Gaza and “violence escalates.” Israelis “dead” but Palestinians “killed.” If they can’t empathize with the Jews now, they never will.

Hate to be the one to break it to you, schmendrick, but guess what: they never will. Nor will any but the tiniest handful of left-wing ((((JoojoojooJOOOOOOOZ!!!)))) learn, either. Too uncomfortable a truth for any diehard shitlib to ever even consider taking on board, see. Better get used to it, at least until you and yours somehow scrape up the stones to finally remove those tired, worn-out old ideological/intellectual knickers and try a new pair on for size. We won’t be holding our breaths for that, I’m afraid. Until then, it will remain as Ace says:

“If I just repeat the leftwing mantra that will protect me from their hatred.”

Can I see your ticket, sir? Yes, I see; your ticket is in order.

The trouble is, sir, that this ticket proves that you bought the ticket, and now you’ll have to take the ride.

I know: How could you have foreseen this? Socialists and communists are never antisemitic, never ever!

Pretty much, yeah.

How ANY self-respecting person of Jewish descent could even dream of aligning himself with the Left-wing religious creed—much less a solid majority of them—is way beyond me. Yet somehow…well, here we all are, as we have been for years.

Shaking in their boots, they are NOT

Posted on October 25, 2023October 25, 2023 by Mike

Yeah, they’re afraid of us and all our big, scary guns. Just keep telling yourself that while clicking your heels together three times and maybe it’ll come true.

It’s been a while since the term studied insult was common in American discourse. Yet the thing itself has been much with us these past few years, so it’s well to understand what the term signifies:

studied insult: An insult carefully designed to pertain to a particular person or group, such that the insulted one(s) cannot fail to take note of the offense.

The intention is to give offense to a specific person, and in a specific way. The British have long been celebrated for excellence in this field.

The question good-hearted people of every kind have been asking since January 20, 2021 is simple and plaintive: “How could they not have known this would happen?” The stolen elections of November 2020 were followed by one incredibly “stupid” policy after another. Surely the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch remember the high points:

Strangling the supply of oil and gas.

Opening wide the southern border.

Massive inflation of the currency.

Pansification of the military.

Involvement in Russia-Ukraine War.

Massive financial gifts to Iran.

Abandonment of $80 billion in weaponry to the Taliban.

Use of the DOJ and FBI as political tools.

De facto legalization of rioting, vandalism, vagrancy, and theft.

Sam Brinton, Karine Jean-Pierre, and “Rachel” Levine.

I could go on, of course. Every single thing in the list above was done deliberately, with full foreknowledge of its consequences. They were strokes intentionally delivered to achieve two effects:

To weaken the United States, whether politically, militarily, or economically;

To insult decent Americans so blatantly that there could be no doubt about it.

Many good-hearted people simply can’t believe that the Usurpers really meant to offend us so blatantly…that those were studied insults. But in fact they’d been planned since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in November 2016. Those barbs were intended to be blunt and brutal: We can do what we like to you, and there’s not one damn thing you can do about it.

I’m a fair hand with such things, and I tell you plainly: I could not have contrived more blatant, humiliating insults if I were given a decade to do it.

Francis has nailed it but good with this one, and Bayou Peter knows it.

I have to agree with Mr. Porretto. This is deliberate, in-your-face intimidation and triumphalism. “We got rid of Trump and his ilk, and now we’re in charge, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” That’s the message. That’s also why I, and many others, believe the 2024 elections will be a sham, and a fake, and a public lie. Having gone this far, the powers that be dare not see their handiwork overturned by another Trumpian revolution. They have to protect it, and themselves for having fostered and accomplished it: and that means we’ve probably seen the last free and fair elections in America for some time to come, until people get fed up enough to do something about the corruption and dishonesty that have come to rule the “old ways” of government.

Mr. Porretto asks, “What will we do on that day?” My question is, “When will that day come?” Either way, it’s not a comfortable thought. I’ve lived in disintegrating societies and nations in the Third World, and seen at first hand how many become casualties of the process – militarily, economically, socially, politically, culturally and in every other way imaginable. I think most of us will learn more about that in the not too distant future, because when the rot has set into a society as deeply as it has into ours, there’s a certain inevitability about the process. What’s more, unless the decent majority “screws their courage to the sticking place”, the end result is unlikely to be happy. The intimidation currently on display is designed to stop them doing that. Will it succeed? Or will it provoke them to say, “So far and no further!”?

Remains to be seen, I suppose, which we will soon enough. The one thing for sure is that, far from fearing us, all the evidence shows that in fact they despise us—that they hold us in complete contempt, and will go right on doing so until they’re given reason NOT to.

One of Jefferson’s most well-known apocryphal aphorisms sums up our condition more than adequately, as pithily and neatly as it’s ever been done: When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Whether Jefferson ever actually said it—it’s almost certain that he didn’t—is pretty much moot, because of the overwhelming truth of it. That being so, which of those two sentences best describes Amerika v2.0 today?

Some societies could USE reshaping

Posted on October 15, 2023October 15, 2023 by Mike

Sensing on where it all might wind up.

War and the reshaping of societies
Let me emphasize at the outset that my assessment of the looming Israeli invasion of Gaza is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I am not proposing what Israel should do, but what it may do as the coming days and weeks unfold, even if Israel does not actually intend it now.

Having formed a “unity government” for the war, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stated clearly that the permanent end of Hamas as the principal war aim. That this objective requires a land invasion of Gaza is also clear. But what can it take to destroy Hamas? Netanyahu has said that killing its terrorists fighters is a specific goal, but Hamas is not merely an organization. It is also an ideology. How does Israel end with not only the present Hamas organization destroyed, but also the ideology?

America’s Civil War and World War 2 may provide a clue.

But first, what is Hamas’ ideology?

It is very simple: Kill Jews, kill Jews, kill more Jews. Specifically, Hamas (and Lebanon’s Hezbollah) has said publicly and often that it has at least the following goals:

1. The elimination of the state of Israel and establishment of a Muslim nation “from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.” Jews must vacate this land entirely or they will be killed.

2. In the meantime, and as a tactic to attain that goal, Hamas has said before and again very recently that Jews must be killed. Last Saturday, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif announced, “Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge.” Al-Aqsa is the name of the mosque atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Deif said that the mass killings of Israelis were a mere “first strike,” with much more yet to come.

Donald goes on to discuss the CW1 parallels as reflected in the total-war philosophy of Sherman, then hits lightly on Eisenhower before landing squarely on Roosevelt’s somewhat-belated WW2 realization:

Hence, wrote Roosevelt in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation…The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

Precisely so—then, now, and always. As I’ve said so very many times here, about both Muslim Supremacists and the American Left, so it was with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. As Sensing quips: “One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945.” One does at that. Thus do we arrive in the unlovely place we were always doomed to:

The End Game
At this point, both Israel and Hamas must realize that, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, “In war there is no substitute for victory.” Victory for Hamas can be defined very simply: it survives as an ongoing, at least minimally effective, violent anti-Israel entity as before. Hamas’ leaders know that to abandon murderous violence to establish a purely Palestinian state by political measures, rather than violence, means two things: (a) Hamas would not even be Hamas any more, so what is the point, and (b) mere politics will never accomplish that goal anyway. Hamas’ true believers would literally rather die than take that course.

As for Israel, its leadership at least knows that Hamas must be ended and no Hamas-by-another-name can be allowed. There is no answer to how long it will take to destroy Hamas or how many casualties it will cost. But neither Grant nor Sherman knew those things ahead of time, either. So Israel must proceed, though it is doing so as Otto von Bismarck reportedly said about going to war, “entering a dark room blindfolded to search for a black cat that is not even there.”

Gaza’s residents, whether they know it now or not, must decide in whose hands they literally trust their lives and the lives of their children. Hamas is quite willing to sacrifice them. But they may come to realize that while Israel will not target them, neither will Israel refrain from attacking if Hamas militarizes their refuges. An international standard called Common Article 3 governs combat between state and non-state combatants. It states that civilians’ presence at a location does not automatically make that location off limits from attack.

S’truth. In modern, post-Napoleonic warfare, “civilian” doesn’t mean quite what it once may have. In fact, during WW2’s Ruhr Valley strategic bombing campaign civilians were redefined as “military assets” themselves due to their work in Germany’s military-matériel industry—steel- and ironworks, armaments factories, synthetic-oil refining facilities, among other things—centered there.

Official handwringing over “civilian casualties” might be all fine and well during times of (relative) peace, but once the two-way firing range has gone full-on hot, all bets—and gloves—are off. In guerilla warfare (ie, asymmetrical, 4G-5G, however you prefer to conceptualize it), restraint and “proportionate” responses will ultimately serve only to get even more of your civilians killed than might otherwise have been the case.

For the moment, Israel seems firmly committed to trading the kid-gloves in for a stout set of knuckledusters: razing Gaza to the ground, making the rubble bounce, and effectively depopulating the place. So be it, then; having been forced into the position of waging total war against a clearly-implacable enemy who has repeatedly, explicitly, and openly declared its intention to kill every Jew they possibly can, the Israelis must now see this thing through to the very end. Gaza may not survive; Hamas MUST not, period fucking dot. Sic semper jihadists, sayeth I.

Admittedly, this isn’t America’s fight. In truth, I seriously doubt whether—given our current sorry state of self-enfeeblement, in ways by no means restricted to military matters alone—the US could provide a whole lot of assistance anyway, to Israel or anybody else.

Send a couple carrier groups with newfangled electromagnetic catapults that won’t catapult, conned by Manwoman helmspyrsynnz who were never taught to navigate without crashing into other ships, seawalls, docks, and/or sundry land masses, their flight decks jam-packed with squadrons of combat-ineffective F35 Turduckens that are far too expensive to chance having to replace when they fall out of the sky inexplicably, or recover when the malfunctioning EM catapult lobs them gently into the sea? With a complement of overweight, out of shape lesbian Wokester-Marines in “support”?

Sure, why the hell not? Tell me the one about Goldilocks and the Three Bears next, Daddy, that one’s my favorite.

Expect any practical effect on the situation beyond humiliating self-beclownment, though? Surely you jest.

At this point, the best course of action for us is to firmly reject all pompous FederalGovCo demands that Israel be put back on its leash before any more Mooselimb terrorists get hurt; re-establish and secure the southern border; and muster the will to cleanse our own badly-broken nation of the domestic jihadist threat. A Sisyphean task to be sure, but that’s still just for openers. Sorry to bust any bubbles here, but there’s an extremely lengthy to-do list of domestic affairs needing to be settled before we can even dream of mucking about in anybody else’s.

After two decades plus of bootless circle-jerkery under the War on (Some) Terror rubric, we ought never to have wound up in such an awful fix. And yet, somehow, here we all are anyway.

MOAR coinkydinks!

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Mike

Divemedic reports on yet another J6 outrage.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested and charged for supposedly trying to overthrow the government on January 6. The FBI has left no stone unturned in identifying every single person who participated that day.

What is curious about this wide ranging investigation is that five men gathered on the National Mall directly in front of the Capitol, erected a gallows, with one of them making a coffee run during its construction. To a coffee house blocks away, located directly across the street from the headquarters of the FBI. I am sure that the HQ of the FBI has security cameras on it, yet not one photo of any of these men has been circulated, and not one attempt has been made to identify any of them.

Why not? If the FBI is so fired up about identifying a grandmother whose only crime was walking into the Capitol, looking around, then leaving, why aren’t they making an effort to locate the five men who threatened to kill members of Congress with their material act?

Of course, DM knows the answer as well as you do: because, since the five men were FBI agents provocateur, either CHS’s or agents, they neither need nor WANT to—they know full well who they are, and where. The vid DM mentions can be viewed here, including footage of the mystery man the open.ink website refers to as “Mr Coffee,” along with a request:

Who is “Mr. Coffee”?
If you know, or if you have any relevant information to share, please call 314-256-1776 or email at us at proamericareport@open.ink.

As always, this Special Collection includes links to our growing database of video, audio, articles, and other relevant information.

For those wishing to support the J6 Patriots and their loved ones, visit patriotfreedomproject.com.

Link transcribed for once, because it’s important.

It’s morning Red Dawn in America

Posted on October 7, 2023October 7, 2023 by Mike

Probably the most important Twitter X thread you’re ever gonna see.

I know it’s long but read this entire thread, I think it’s the most important warning I’ve ever written. Where we’re at isn’t a game. We’re at the edge of the cliff and it’s our last chance to save America. Share this thread if you agree, tag lawmakers and discuss in replies!

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck)

October 6, 2023

Understand what time it is in America:

• Trump is being prosecuted by Biden’s regime + multiple state level Democrats

• Every agency in government has been weaponized to investigate @elonmusk because he’s trying to level the playing field online to empower citizens

•…

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck)

October 6, 2023

At the direct request of no less august a personage than the highly esteemed and estimable Elon Musk his own self, Starbuck also posted a recorded version which, being more the written-wordly type myself, I didn’t listen to. But as always, YMMV; whether by ear or by Mark 1-Mod 0 eyeball, be sure to hit “Show more” and take in the whole thing. It really does say it all—and I DO mean all.

Via WRSA and Bracken, with sincere thanks to both for calling my attention to it.

Moar inside-baseball music-biz schtuff!

Posted on October 5, 2023October 6, 2023 by Mike

Yet another repurposed comment I thought enough of you CF Lifers would find interesting, informative, and/or arcane enough to be promoted up to main-page status. First, the conversation-starter, courtesy of hhluce.

I think most “classic rock” stations are simply the digital version of a 24 hour tape loop without any human intervention, utterly soulless and boring, you can tell what time it is by what song is playing, day after day.

That triggered my response, which quickly outgrew its comment-section knickers and right on into a pair of Big Boy pants, before I ever even thought of hitting the “Post comment” button.

Oh, that is definitely the case, HH, has been for years and years. Mr Bill—a dear friend of mine who plied his On-Air Personality trade in unforgettable fashion for many years at WRFX in Charlotte (99.7 FM), after which extended star-turn he made his escape to the Florida beaches—used to gripe to me about the new radio-station production process all the time; he positively HATES it, as do all the other DJs I know. There’s a very good reason for their disgruntlement, one I can readily understand and sympathize with completely.

These guys (and several gals, too), without exception, grew up listening obsessively to radio, moved so much by the spell cast over them by the sound of those disembodied voices—cracking wise, spinning records, unleashing ad lib and in-the-moment a rock-steady flow of frenzied, improvisational platter chatter without a single stutter, stumble, or moment’s uncertain pause to give the more reflective and organized side of his DJ brain a chance to catch up—that a sweet, sweet dream took form deep in their hearts.

For all those kids who, like Mr Bill, got swept away in radio’s powerful thrall, the more they heard of this fresh new necromancy, the more adamant and implacable their resolution to somehow, someday, some way become a part of it themselves, no matter how lowly, thankless, and unheralded their first paid position in the business might be.

Nothing under Heaven would prevent or dissuade them from working their way up the radio ladder to the one place they so desperately wanted to be: all alone at the console in a dimly lit late-night broadcast booth, headphones on, waiting for the red “ON AIR” sign to light up, cueing him to start his spiel. In those anticipatory moments, the fearful pressure of being The Man On The Spot suddenly felt less intimidating and more exciting to The Man In The Booth.

These DJs were passionate about broadcast radio, deeply proud of the essential role they played in its continuation and development. This bewitchment was a heady, intoxicating blend which, over time, gave birth to something we might think of as a beast with three heads: the Music Historian, the Raconteur, and the Keeper of the Rock and Roll Flame. In the form’s glorious heyday, the DJ was the life of the radio party.

In certain well-known cases—Alan Freed, Bill Randle, Murray the K, Mad Daddy Giggle, Jack Spector, to name but a few—the DJ’s impact on rock and roll history was as profound and meaningful as that of the artists themselves. The contributions of these gifted radio icons can’t be overstated, and ought never to be forgotten.

So naturally, when their once-exalted, multifaceted role was reduced by the empty suits at Corporate to the ignominious one of mere talking robots blessed with an unusually mellifluous speaking voice, it hurt. It hurt a LOT. After being admired for their unique and irreplaceable talent, the poor saps were suddenly no more than hired hands. The Suits hadn’t just taken a job, a piffling (if well-compensated) livelihood, from them; they had taken the love of their lives. No wonder they’re pissed off about it; far as I’m concerned, they damned well oughta be. Hell, who wouldn’t?

And from what Bill tells me, a talking robot is exactly what a DJ is nowadays. He goes into the studio— no longer a broadcast studio, but a recording studio—no more than one day each week to spend a few hours laying down his between-songs chatter, which the tech-heads will then splice into place alongside the ads, announcements, and other such. When that labor of (something well-removed from) love is done, the station will have an entire week’s worth of dreary, inanimate pap securely in the can, as the tech-heads like to say—”the product” (as the tech-heads also like to say) carefully primped, manicured, and emasculated, to then be pumped out to touch-screen automobile receivers. This manufacturing process concludes with “the product” droning at modest volume from factory-installed Blaupunkt speakers, to the benumbed disregard of zombified commuters stuck in freeway traffic everywhere.

Annnnd SUCCESS! WE DID IT! High fives all around! Don’t leave me hangin’, bra!!

Sadly, even tragically, rock and roll radio is no longer a creative enterprise or artistic endeavor. It’s a fucking soul-blighting assembly line. This is decidedly NOT an improvement. Y’know, in case you were wondering about that.

No spontaneity; no creativity; no nothin’, really. Provocatively clever witticisms, raucous innuendo, or off-the-cuff flights of rhetorical fancy will NOT be permitted. No wandering off-script; all lines are to be rigorously toed, all rules strictly obeyed. Anyone caught thinking for themselves or attempting honest, uncensored communication with the listening audience will be caned.

Having glommed total control over broad regional swaths of broadcast facilities, the besuited Grey Entities of Big Radio Consolidated Inc™ have surgically excised any sign of life, warmth, or humanity from the jivin’ and thrivin’ medium they so brutally murdered. Those passionate DJs who once soared untrammeled to gleeful heights of rock and roll glory are now permanently ground-bound—their once-mighty wings clipped, their voices effectively neutered, their freewheeling creativity leashed and chained.

They loved radio, but radio didn’t love them back. Which isn’t just their personal loss, it’s everybody’s.

And there you have it, folks. I just called my homeboy Bill, a solid CF fan of long standing, to let him know about this post, and will text him a link to it when he gets back to me (Bill keeps busy enough that the first call is usually just the opening gambit of the process; after a day or so’s wait, he’ll call back). Let’s see if he shows up here to enlighten us further on this whole mess, and perhaps correct any errors or clear up any misconceptions on my part, both of which are always a possibility. I do hope he will. Bill, your thoughts will be most welcome, buddy.

Update! Remarkably enough, there are exceptions to the above depressing rule still extant here and there. One such is Greenville’s The Planet, WTPT 93.3 on your FM dial. Their morning drive-time program, The Rise Guys show (“The Saviors Of Morning Radio” or, as the hosts sometimes refer to it in jocular self-deprecation, The Rise Guys Tragedy), is a stellar example of the sort of thing rock radio was once known for, and in a better, more just world would be still.

The Rise Guys show prominently features not one, not two, but four (4) hosts: three funny, smart-alecky redneck dudes, along with newsreader chick Page And Her Great Big Hoo-Ha’s, who occupies her own solo time-slot right after the other Rise Guys cease hostilities and go home for a nice, refreshing nap. The team members—yes, even Page and her justly-celebrated fun bags—all proudly flaunt deep Southern accents, in unapologetic traducement of the industry’s ubiquitous insistence on a flat, nondescript, lukewarm universality of on-air speech patterns—a carefully-considered calculation intended to soothe, never to agitate; to lull, never to arouse; to Seem, never to Be.

The Rise Guys team incautiously skates right up to the very edge of the censorship line, reveling in a riotous rejection of every dogmatic requirement of the PC/Wokester catechism. Their schtick—which is likely not schtick at all, but their own natural personalities, not something anybody could just put on and take off like a cloak, not easily anyway—revolves around defiant, brash individualism, free will, and an innate unwillingness to bend the knee to anybody, any time, for any reason. Southerners were once renowned for their doggedly inflexible pride in possessing these very qualities, habits of mind which have gradually been subsumed in most of us. But not all of us, by God.

The Rise Guys show-topic list (partial):

Broad sexual suggestiveness, all strictly hetero-oriented? Yep
Devil-may-care celebrations of drunkenness and nonspecific, good-natured, non-destructive civic misbehavior? Gotcha covered
Fast cars, fast women, fast times? You bet your sweet bippy
Outrageous flirting with random female callers whose physical attractiveness is unknown, but who come off as pretty cool people on the phone? Hey, why not?
Stinging jokes insulting “transgenders,” Pride Week/Month/Summer/Year/Decade/Epoch, BLM, Green Weenie-ism, Crypt Keeper Pelosi, Stumblin’ Jaux “Pedo Pete” Biden? Check, check, check, check, check, and emphatically check
Sincere-sounding compliments, snickers, and shameless pleas imploring Page to just pleasepleasepleasePLEASE bare them Great Big Hoo-Ha’s of hers and let ‘em breathe, an act of selfless generosity sure to gratify and delight her fellow Morning Tragedy reprobates? Damn’ skippy
Recounting of the previous weekend’s leisure-time activities, with especial emphasis on a slightly (if at all) exaggerated estimation of alcohol consumption, the resultant crippling hangover and morning-after remorse, and sundry other acts of stupefying debauchery, depravity, and self-defilement? Well, I mean, y’know, DUH
Explicit, defamatory exhortations for invading Yankee carpetbaggers to turn their sorry asses right around and skedaddle on the fuck back to wherever they came from, rather than ruining things here? But of course

From the above sampling, one can readily discern that nothing whatsoever does this rowdy, blunt bunch consider off-limits or out of bounds: no controversy too red-hot; no subject too delicate or nuanced; no bridge too far; no cow too sacred; no personage too august to elude a well-deserved whacking with the bloody snow-seal club the Rise Guys wield with merry aplomb. Bless their blasphemous hearts, they’re willing, able, and eager to turn the Morning Tragedy blowtorch on all of ‘em.

The Rise Guys bunch don’t play a whole lot of music betwixt the raging torrent of ribaldry, lowbrow wit, and Dixie-fried brigandry, a nonstop cannonade that doesn’t leave time for much more than a bare minimum of tune-damage. Contra my usual aggravation with the cavalier approach of most modern DJs—particularly their egomaniacal penchant for mindlessly yapping over the instrumental intro of even the most hallowed classic-rock megahit, only shutting down the drivel-factory as the singer draws breath to sing the first syllable of the first verse—GOD, how that shit makes my fucking blood boil!—can this self-absorbed subgenius be so delusional that he seriously imagines that his disrespectful jackassery, his inane prattle, is what anybody not locked away in a lunatic asylum tuned in hoping to hear?—with the Rise Guys, you really don’t miss the music.

Even if you did, the rest of the day’s programming more than makes up for it, packing a knockout musical punch which intermingles several disparate R&R sub-genres: classic rock, early-2000 vintage grunge and hard rock, even a 1st-generation punk song from the Ramones now and then. At first glance, one might well be forgiven for thinking that those styles would go together about like oil and water do. For my money, though, the stylistic mix is downright ambrosial, balm to soothe the savage breast. I love it all to pieces, and am glad indeed that my ex-gf Wendy inadvertently* turned me on to The Planet a few years ago.

The Planet is Preset Numero Uno on my car-radio tuning buttons, my go-to radio choice whenever I’m forced to leave my shabby abode and get out and about, and with very good reason. Should you ever find yourself within range of WTPT 93.3’s broadcast signal and have a hankering for a solid dose of some harder-edged, guitar-driven rock—never have I heard any Beta-male, unreconstructed-hippie folksters; weepy, Men Without Chests© balladeers; headache-inducing dance-trance abominations; or testosterone-deficient MOR sneaked onto the playlist there, not one time—I simply can’t recommend The Planet highly enough.

*I was dropping her ride off at a shop I know for a few minor repairs and tweaks which required a computer-diagnostic machine I ain’t got, see, and her radio was tuned to WTPT; I listened enraptured all the way to the garage, checked the station ID numbers, and straightaway plugged ‘em into my own car radio once I got back to my pad. Been listening to ‘em ever since. And yes, I did thank Wendy, profusely, for that serendipitous main-vein strike later

High crimes and misdemeanors

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Mike

Seems there’s never a Fletcher Christian around when you really need one.

Elections used to be the means of turning the ship of state around, to go into a different and more beneficial direction. The people used to have some say, if not a great deal, often enough to let the natural inclination of the masses guide it away from the more disastrous of futures. It was this means that taught politicians how far they could go in any given direction, but the unwillingness to let the people speak through these elections means that there is no civilized way to change course.

That leaves only the uncivilized.

When the captain of a ship is clearly insane, or reckless, endangering the lives of the crew and indeed the ship they all need for survival, there are means of removing him from his position. There’s logic and reason, but when all else fails and the lives of the crew are at stake, only mutiny will suffice. It’s ugly and is fraught with danger, because, if unwarranted, it can lead to a death sentence, but someone has to utter the word, someone has to suggest the unthinkable to resolve a condition that is likewise unthinkable.

The trouble with America, right now, is that there is no more sane person to put in the captain’s chair. There is no way to effect a mutiny when the officers are as insane and reckless as the captain. It’s as if everyone in charge of anything significant is infected with the same suicidal, destructive disease.

And, it’s the people who will pay, not only in the immediate, but in the future as well.

We are facing the end of the United States of America no matter what we do, or don’t do. The financial situation just got worse with the passage of the Continuing Resolution (CR) and only more inflation can come of it. There is no political will to stop the disastrous spending put into every congressional bill. The BRICs nations will benefit from this act, more aid and comfort to those trying to destroy the US, but the competing nations are doing so because they recognize the insanity that has gripped the officers of our ship of state. Those nations see as well as most citizens that the United States is acting in increasingly irrational and self-harmful ways, taking their investments down with it, so they’ve stopped buying our debt and started liquidating our bonds as a defensive measure against our recklessness.

Americans can not just continue to use the means and methods that have always worked before, they no longer work. Elections, legal action, petitions, protests and revolts have been hijacked, turned into criminal activities instead of political expressions of disapproval. That ensures the United States can do nothing other than collapse, taking all of us down into the dark, cold sea.

Unless the common sailors stand up and challenge not only the officers, but any in authority, they will go down with the ship. In this scenario, they will try to kill us all before we can do that, but they’re doing that just to get to some enormously stupid Net-Zero. They are that evil.

They are undeniably that; the way our Masters and their pet-poodle media manufactory work in concert to conceal their motives and intent, deflect or misdirect any attempt to closely examine their actions, then flat-out lie about their results—all point unerringly towards that inescapable conclusion. I left TL’s final ‘graph out of the excerpt so as not to spoil anybody’s Christmas, but it states the underlying cause of this whole sordid, stinking mess flatly, concisely and with nary a flinch. The rest of the essay is every bit as well-written and direct, and you’ll probably never forgive yourself if you don’t go read the whole thing.

Wide-screen TVs, 500 dollar sneakers, and KFC hardest hit

Posted on September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 by Mike

Another Nee-grow scumbag* offed by a cop in self-defense, another American city burned and looted by frothing, yowling baboons.

Widespread Mass Looting Overnight in Philly
Mass looting is being reported all over Philadelphia tonight. There are accounts of Center City stores being cleaned out by looters, including Lululemon, the Apple Store, a Foot Locker near the Liberty Bell, and many others.

One woman screamed, “Everyone must eat!” at the looting of a wine store.

Thugs even tried to loot a Popeyes restaurant:

Because OF COURSE they did. “Hey yo, we be loo-inn ‘n’ sheeit, yo!”

they really just tried to loot popeyes😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/Hlyxj9jhWC

— da flyest. (@Z4Bitch)

September 27, 2023

If you are surprised by anything at all in that video, you are beyond help and should probably check yourself into some kind of home. Onwards.

There are unconfirmed reports of looters livestreaming their crimes, monitoring police scanners, and coordinating their efforts on social media.

The looting is reportedly in response to murder charges being dropped against a cop who allegedly acted in self-defense during a traffic stop. Eddie Irizarry, who is Hispanic*, pulled a knife on cops while in his vehicle.

Hispanic, eh? Well, what the hell, any excuse will do.

According to Fox29:

A judge has dismissed all charges, including a murder count, against Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial who shot and killed a driver as he sat inside his vehicle last month.

Philadelphia Municipal Judge Wendy Pew made her ruling Tuesday after watching video of the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry. The defense had asserted that Officer Mark Dial was acting in self-defense when he fired his weapon at close range through the rolled-up driver’s side window of Irizarry’s sedan during a vehicle stop on August 14….

…Irizarry’s family has said that Dial deserves a long prison sentence. The defense, meanwhile, has blasted Krasner’s decision to charge Dial with murder.

“When police officers ordered him to show his hands, he instead produced a weapon and pointed it at an armed police officer,” lawyer Brian McMonagle told reporters this month. “In no world (are) those facts murder.”

Not surprisingly, the District Attorney’s Office, headed by Soros DA Larry Krasner, announced that it would appeal the decision. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney inflamed the situation by tweeting his support for the man who pulled a knife on police officers.

Which, along with the rest of the PJM report, only means that the people of Philadelphia richly deserve whatever they get. As is usually the case, I’m with Sefton on this.

Honestly, my give-a-shit-ometer is barely registering. And I have many friends and acquaintances who live in or near Center City and in the outlying burbs, along with an abiding affection for that town. At least the town as it was years ago. Sorry to friends and family and others who voted for this as well as that overgrown, slovenly brain-addled sloth loping around the Senate and toking on spliffs in the cloak room, election after election. You got exactly what you voted for so enjoy it, my erstwhile friends. I pray you all wake the hell up and fast. I fear you never will even if you should come face to face with these poor innocent victims of institutional white supremacy. I’ve got news for you; flashing your BLM t-shirt won’t shield you.

Nor should it, either. As far as I’m concerned, the voters of Philly brought all this on themselves; now, they get to enjoy the ride they volunteered themselves for. So sit back and suck on it, assholes.

As of 11:45 p.m., looting is ongoing in the City of Brotherly Love, and police are struggling to keep up with all the reports. Pray for their safety tonight.

Shyeeeaaah, NO. Myself, I’ll be praying for casualties, as yet another shitlib city gets exactly what it voted for, good and hard. Maybe Abbott could send three or eight busloads of “migrants” to the City of Brotherly Love to help out in their time of trouble.

Local developments update! Breaking news from CLT: Gibmedats are gathering in the downtown area, threatening to “burn this mothafackah up ’n’ sheet” in a major chimp-out if De White Mayng doesn’t immediately agree to bring back Price’s Chicken Coop, in its old location.

MACV-SOG is BACK, baybee!

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Mike

Shades of another foredoomed cause from long ago.

U.S. Army Hospital in Germany Is Treating Americans Hurt Fighting in Ukraine
The Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center has quietly started admitting Ukrainian Army soldiers who were wounded in combat, most of them American volunteers.

“Volunteers.” Oh, I like that. “Quietly,” too. Not that either sounds at all familiar to someone of my advanced age, of course. NOT. AT. ALL.

A group of Ukrainian Army soldiers pierced by Russian grenades and mortar shells arrived at a hospital recently in need of surgery. It would have been a familiar scene from the bloody war grinding on in Ukraine, except for two crucial differences: Most of the wounded soldiers were American, and so was the hospital — the U.S. Army’s flagship medical center in Germany.

The Army has quietly started to treat wounded Americans and other fighters evacuated from Ukraine at its Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Though the number so far is small — currently 14 — it marks a notable new step in the United States’ deepening involvement in the conflict.

When the war erupted in 2022, hundreds of Americans — many of them military veterans — rushed to help defend Ukraine. Nineteen months later, perhaps a few hundred are still there, volunteering for local militias or serving under contract with the Ukrainian national army.

An unknown number of them have been shot, hit by artillery, blown up by mines or otherwise injured in combat. About 20 have been killed. Most of the wounded have had to rely on a patchwork of Ukrainian hospitals and Western charities for help. Now, though, the Pentagon has stepped in to offer some of them the same care it gives to American active-duty troops.

The hospital at Landstuhl is authorized to do so under a Defense Department policy, which began last summer, that allows the hospital to treat up to 18 wounded members of the Ukrainian forces at a time, the Pentagon confirmed in a statement. The fact that most of the Ukrainian troops at Landstuhl are Americans illustrates how the war has progressed in unexpected ways.

The Biden administration vowed at the start of the war that it would not put American troops on the ground in Ukraine, and it warned Americans not to get involved. Now it finds itself treating those it told to stay away.

Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, knowhatImeanrightright?

Asked about the development by The New York Times, a Defense Department official who is regularly briefed on Ukraine-Russia matters expressed surprise, and said that leaders at the Pentagon were unaware that Landstuhl was regularly treating wounded American volunteers, but added that the leaders were not concerned about it.

I’m sure they aren’t. Because you know damned well they DID know about it. Because they’re, y’know, running it.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, noted that while the administration strongly discourages American citizens from going to Ukraine to fight, it is obvious that some go anyway, and if they become wounded and end up at Landstuhl, the military is not going to turn them away.

One would certainly hope not. Then again, seeing as how this country’s “leadership” is pure, unadulterated Evil Incarnate, one wouldn’t be much surprised to learn that they were.

Incroyable, innit, how everything old is new again.

(Via WRSA)

To laugh, and to cry

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Mike

Pretty funny one, if bitterly so, from Kurt Schlichter.

America Is Becoming a Joke

Becoming, Kurt?

The United States just lost an F-35 as part of its campaign to reduce itself from the greatest superpower in human history to a pitiful punchline. Ah, the magic of leftism – only it can make a great country like America ridiculous. From an inability to find its fighters to an unwillingness to defend its borders or prosecute criminals – with the exception of conservatives framed for the crime of conservativing – our country has become the Three Stooges without the dignity.

The first question that arises from the mystery jet is not what happened – we can safely assume it was some manner of gross incompetence – but what the plane’s pronouns were. We had the spectacle of the Marine Corps high command dragging itself away from one of its drag shows to ask regular folks if they could pretty please give the jarheads a hand finding their wayward fighter. They couldn’t even spin this fiasco effectively and brag about how their not being able to detect the $100 million aircraft just goes to show how darn good our stealth tech is. No, instead it was just exactly what it sounded like. We can’t keep track of our jets. The only ones happy about it had to be the Navy, since this was a welcome respite from the mockery it earned smashing its destroyers into other boats. Our Army – with its colonels running sex kennels – used to recruit with slogans like “Be All You Can Be,” and now it would probably be better off with “We Suck Less Than That Other Service That Lost The Jet.”

Over on Capitol Hill, where the People’s House that you get sent to jail for peopling inside is located, we have the Republican Charlie Browns once again teeing up to kick the football held by the Democrat Lucys. Yeah, this time will be different! The GOP has only had the better part of a year to get ready for this debt ceiling thing and to plot out a course of action to get some concessions. But have they? Ha! Why win when you can lose?

And on the Senate side, our minority leader keeps freezing up like a Windows blue screen as everyone explains how it is perfectly normal for McConnell to stand there rebooting every time someone puts a mic in his mug. And, of course, there’s Chumley the Congressman insisting that the august institution conform to his desire to dress like a guy playing $2 blackjack hands at Circus Circus on a Monday morning.

We have a president who sounds both like English is his second language and that he’s gotten into the cooking sherry. We have a vice president who, if not for fractured cliches and bizarre cackling, would not be speaking at all. Biden takes the short stairs to get up to the short bus, which is what Air Force One now is. Hey, at least they haven’t lost it. Yet.

Heh. I especially like that “what the plane’s pronouns were” bit. He carries on in like vein from there, all of it good, juicy stuff. Best of all, he resists the urge to start up with the usual blibbering in the last two ‘graphs about how we’re gonna vote so hard we kick their sorry asses black, blue, and purple in the 2024 presidential “elections,” yo! Maybe Col Schlichter has at last outgrown all that airy-fairy horseshit.

Hey, did somebody misplace a Turducken?

Posted on September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 by Mike

It would seem so, yeah.

Search for missing F-35 Lightning II fighter jet continues after pilot ejects during ‘mishap’
U.S. military officials are searching for a missing F-35 jet after a “mishap” caused its pilot to eject on Sunday afternoon.

Joint Base Charleston said on Facebook that the aircraft was a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II belonging to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. The pilot ejected safely and was transported to a local medical center.

The base is working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to help locate the missing aircraft. Emergency response teams have been deployed to find the jet.

“Based on the jet’s last-known position and in coordination with the FAA, we are focusing our attention north of JB Charleston, around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion,” Joint Base Charleston said in a statement on Facebook.

Anyone with information about the jet’s whereabouts is urged to contact JB Charleston Base Defense Operations Center at 843-963-3600.

That strange sound you hear is hilarity, ensuing. For his part, BCE has a question.

Let me get this straight…
An 80 million dollar aircraft
Known as the “Flying Turducken” or “The Turd”
80 fucking million dollars, and they don’t even have the fucking thing LoJacked!?!
My car is fucking LoJacked FFS.

Not only that, but as I recollect, commercial airliners; boats/ships of a certain size both civilian and military; tractor-trailer rigs; and even most cars nowadays are all equipped with some sort of locator-beacon/tracking device or another. Have been for years, in fact. Yet somehow, a fully-tricked-out, state of the art, next-generation air-superiority fighter—supposedly the very best Amerika v2.0 can design, build, and deploy, the very tippy-top of the top of the line—ISN’T?

Naah, not sketchy AT. ALL. Now look, everybody, over there: SQUIRREL!!!

Elder(ly) abuse

Posted on September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 by Mike

Jaux must gaux.

BIDEN: “The Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, ‘He’s a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!’ Well, there’s a lot of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers out there about global warming!” pic.twitter.com/d98IdhKLRA

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch)

September 10, 2023

As Nick Arama notes, nobody has ever managed to locate the movie Jaux is rambling on about in the John Wayne filmography. But never mind that right now; maybe it was Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, or Lash LaRue. Anyways, after this dismal culmination of an aeonic mess of mumblemouthed mish-mash, meandering malapropism, and addle-pated confustication, Too Old Jaux’s handlers had finally seen enough to belatedly bestir themselves and give the babbling buffoon the old heave-haux:

WATCH: Joe Biden’s staff cuts off a rambling Joe Biden mid-sentence and abruptly ends his news conference.

I have never seen this occur with any other president. pic.twitter.com/LqvW2VsESH

— Andrew @ Don’t Walk, RUN! (@DontWalkRUN)

September 10, 2023

Utterly hilarious, if you ask me. Couldn’t happen to a nicer asshole.

Lies, damned lies, and government statistics

Posted on September 1, 2023September 1, 2023 by Mike

The Biden Economic MIRACLE!™ continues apace, God help us all.

Warning, this link is to CNN, and it is pure regime-promoting propaganda, discussing how a major downward revision in new job creations is actually good news, because it beat expectations on how badly the Bureau of Labor was going to have to adjust its previously published fabrications. Or something to that effect.

”America Added 306,000 Fewer Jobs Last Year Than We Thought” [CNN Business – 8/23/2023]

Link not transcribed, of course, because fuck CNN, that’s why. Onwards.

Despite the spin, there are a few hard numbers I’d like to extract:

US job growth during much of the past year was weaker than previously projected by a little more than 300,000 jobs, according to new federal data released Wednesday.

As part of the agency’s annual benchmark review of payroll data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down March 2023’s employment gains by 306,000 positions.

This means that 306,000 fewer jobs were created over the 12 months ending March 2023. How significantly was the data overstated?

When spread through the prior year, that amounts to about 25,000 fewer net jobs added per month, meaning that the average monthly job gain for the 12 months ended in March 2023 was nearly 312,000 versus 337,000, BLS data shows.

Let me do the math. The BLS overstated new job creation by 8.0%. That is not a rounding error or a minor miss, it’s a significant and deliberate government lie. And of course, since it is policy at BLS to publish false, inflated figures to help Democrat administrations, it is safe to assume that the revisions are also false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is simply trying to adjust their falsified data reports enough so that they can somehow, sort of reconcile to surveys of actual employment. They have to do this to set the benchmark before the next round of completely bogus jobs reports is released.

How persistent is the jobs report fraud? Take a look at this graph from Zero Hedge, which shows that every month so far in 2023 the BLS publishes an overstated jobs report, which the regime media dutifully touts as a sign of great economic progress under President Biden, and then that same monthly report is later adjusted downward without media fanfare.

The July report was the first one this year to report under 200,000 new jobs, which means that the actual number is going to be even lower than the already disappointing 187,000 jobs reported.

Damned seditious violent treasonous MAGAT bastige, spreading all those damnable lies about our fine government and media establishments. Where’s our fine, upstanding FBI and their paramilitary SWAT teams when you need ‘em for another of their patented late-night, home invasion-style raids, anyway?

Good. And. HARD

Posted on August 23, 2023August 23, 2023 by Mike

Reading these next two maddening stories, I’m more convinced than ever that no one has ever understood democracy as thoroughly as did HL Mencken. First up, a little Maui Wowie.

After President Joe Biden traveled to Maui and all-too-typically cited his own personal history in order to comfort the grieving residents of the island, where at least 115 people have been declared dead from the fire that engulfed the town of Lahaina, he was blasted on social media for his colossal insensitivity.

“Hearing you talk about your house that had a little fire, you ‘almost lost your house and your Corvette,’ there were children that were incinerated to ash, you f***king old man, you vile human being,” one man said in a viral video.

“You’re so out of touch with the common man, you don’t even know how to speak to them,” he continued. “The only way you think you can establish commonality with them is to lie, ‘The same thing happened to you no matter what the tragedy is.’ He referenced Biden attempting to commiserate with Gold Star Moms who lost their son in action by citing his son Beau’s death from brain cancer: “Your son wasn’t killed in action, by the way,” adding furiously, “Your house didn’t burn down. Your children weren’t burned to death.”

“How dare you get up there and speak this way?” he snapped. “Your job is to go there and assuage them in a way that you talk to them about their loss, that you can’t imagine what it’s like, that you can’t imagine what it’s like never to find the bodies of the poor children who were sent home from schools. They died alone! Alone. In fear. Without their parents or guardian. The most abhorrent thing happened. You’re a disgusting, despicable bastard.”

“You ‘almost lost your cat?’ Go f*** yourself,” he concluded.

Yeah, I’d say SOMEbody ought to go fuck themselves for sure and certain. I’m just not entirely sure it shouldn’t be the whole goddamned kit and kaboodle of them. Lots of other Twitter X rips on the soulless, senile old fraud included with the article—all of them coming from the overwhelmingly liberal populace of a West Pacific island chain that “voted” for none other than Pedo Jaux Buyem in 2020 by well over 63 percent, and has reliably pulled the lever for D卐M☭CRATs in every “election” since said islands inexplicably became a state.

Not that the guy’s wrong in anything he says about Buyem, mind, be he the typical Islander shitlib or no. Hey, there’s bound to be three or four Hawaiians who ain’t, right?

In our next example of getting exactly what you voted for, and richly deserving it, the “good people” of Oakland are declaring themselves fed up too.

Sick and Tired in Oakland
The city’s NAACP chapter calls out its political leaders to do something about an “intolerable public safety crisis.”

On July 27, the Oakland NAACP published a scathing letter decrying the city’s failure to keep its vulnerable communities safe from persistent violence from high-risk offenders.

“Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities,” the letter begins. “There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime.”

The NAACP called on Oakland to declare a “state of emergency” due to the untamed spiral of crime. “Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland,” the letter warns.

Indeed, much of the crime data support the NAACP’s portrayal of disenfranchised and increasingly endangered Oakland residents. The most recent week’s Oakland Police Department statistics show that violent crimes have risen (year to date, compared with last year) by 18 percent, while overall crime is up 28 percent. The recent trend represents a major reversal from a few years earlier. Between 2012 and 2018, the city reduced gun violence by 50 percent, aided by its Oakland Ceasefire program, which implemented strategies such as “focused enforcement” involving the highest-risk individuals. In the first two years following the George Floyd uprisings, however, homicides rose 17.6 percent.

Oakland has seen radical shifts in its police department in recent years. The department is down 100 officers, according to Councilman Noel Gallo, though the NAACP states in its letter that various experts view the department as short as many as 500 officers from optimal levels. (The force’s current size is 734 officers).

Uh HUH. SO, how’s that “defund the police” bushwa you demanded not so long ago working out for ya then, idiots? From where I sit, it looks to be working out exactly as the more intelligent among us said it would from the start—and then got denounced by you as RAYCISS!!!!™ for having the outrageous temerity to say so right out loud.

I gravely doubt if a single man Jack of these maleducated ignoramii—whether they’re breathing through their mouths in Hawaii, Kalifornia, Chicago, or NYC—has even the vaguest clue who HL Mencken was, but they could all benefit from boning up on him. Because being the irascible, curmudgeonly visionary he was, he foresaw every bit of this horseshit long, long ago.

Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

An honest, reasonably intelligent soul might wish to try argue that he’s incorrect about any of that, but I can’t for the life of me see how he’d go about it without beclowning himself spectacularly in the doing of it.

Working as intended update! Joe Mannix makes an excellent point.

As the details about the disastrous Maui fire continue to unfold, many people are left wondering how the hell a foul-up this spectacular is possible. How did everything go so wrong at every level of the response? Why did Maui have to wait for water authorization? Why were the emergency sirens not activated? Why was traffic allegedly blocked from leaving on the only good road out? Assuming that all of what we’ve heard is true, how did so much go wrong?

I think that the sad conclusion is that, in reality, nothing went wrong. Not officially. Everyone likely followed every guideline, rule, regulation and requirement. Procedural compliance was probably quite good. What apparently nobody did, however, was the single most important thing: think. The environment in which they operate has been designed to eliminate the need to think and ensure compliance instead.

The purpose of the rules laid down in such great volume for so long a time is to obviate thinking. You don’t need to think if there’s a rule to cover whatever it is you need to do. Follow the rules, comply with the procedures, adhere to the regulations and you will achieve your goal or at least be shielded from any poor consequences. Nobody is to blame, because the rules were followed. The rules are there to act as a substitute for thinking. Robotic adherence to the rules – and striving to have a rule for all things – is awfully bad in situations that even slightly deviate from the context envisioned by the rulemakers.

Juat another of the many wonderful attributes of kakistocratic bureaucracy run amok. For certain values of the word “wonderful,” that is.

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.