Disasters Near and Far

The results are in: masks and lockdowns are the BUNK

Posted on February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 by Mike

Don Surber’s title really says it all.

Masks worked. They just didn’t stop covid
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens pointed out what was obvious three years ago: masks don’t stop viruses. Nothing short of a hazmat suit does. Viruses make their rounds every few years, eventually deteriorating into a strand of the common cold. They are deadly at first. Indeed, this manmade concoction has killed 1.12 million Americans.

But that is less than 1% of the population; in fact it is 1/3rd of 1% of the population.

And even that “1.12 million Americans” number is the bunk as well, grossly inflated to include as it does deaths by gunshot wound, traffic accident, cancer, flu, random misadventure, and anything else the lying liars of FederalGovCo could misattribute to FauxVid and hope gullible panic-ninnies would gulp down whole.

I was sanguine about the virus. The masks and social distancing were medical theater just as TSA is security theater. Both make the public feel safer, and as an added bonus they give the Karens on the left a reason to feel morally superior to those of us who realize it is all for show.

At the height of the mask hysteria, Kyle D. Killian wrote in Psychology Today, “This week, on social media, I reposted a photo of a white woman carrying a sign that reads ‘I’d Rather Bury My Family From COVID Than See Them Enslaved to the Fear of It.’ Why? I was curious about others’ thoughts on it.”

He wrote, “Highly educated intellectuals—people literally paid to type and talk—must resist the urge to make fun of this person or to lecture down to them about virology, science, etc. What is key, crucial in fact, is not dismissing or mocking this person, but interpreting the signage as an indicator of a fear-based response.

“In this case, masking requirements have been equated in this person’s mind to a fundamental loss of freedom or liberty.”

ANALYSIS: True. Because that is EXACTLY what they were, and ALL that they were. The real problem for Killian and his ilk is that a small handful of us still give a damn about that, rather than being not just willing but eager to surrender essential liberty in exchange for a false sense of security and safety, like the vast majority of gutless pussies here in the Land of the Skeer’d and the Home of the Slave.

…”Fear has clouded this person’s thinking; instead of seeing social distancing and masks as a way of caring for others, putting the Golden Rule into action, or acknowledging that some folks feel just fine but are actually asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus, she sees them as a threat.”

Fuck you and your ersatz Golden Rule all to death, pusnuts. Quite the contrary, in truth: fear has clouded panic-ninny thinking, to the extent that it has made THEM a threat—a credible and serious one, which is going to have be dealt with mercilessly because better men and women than your kind will ever be have permitted you to get away with this creeping paternalistic incrementalism for far too long.

Which brings me to Mister Stephens, who occasionally is an isle of sanity in that Sea of Craziness that calls itself the New York Times. He has taken shots at the Pandemic Panic amid the screeching of the baboons who run that zoo.

On April 24, 2020, barely a month into the two weeks to flatten the curve, he wrote, “America Shouldn’t Have to Play by New York Rules. A national lockdown is bad medicine and worse politics.”

He was half-right on the second line. It was bad medicine, but it was excellent politics for the opponents of Making America Great Again who wanted to get rid of President Trump. Stephens’s heart was in the right place in 2020.

He wrote, “I write this from New York, so it’s an argument against my personal interest. But I don’t see why people living in a Nashville suburb should not be allowed to return to their jobs because people like me choose to live, travel and work in urban sardine cans.”

Okay, then. I’m in no wise a huge fan of Bret Stephens myself, but I do have to admit that last bit was damned well-reasoned and -expressed.

The lesson learned is never trust Washington. The American people can be fooled — but only once. It is time to live the words of General Stark, who fought for the freedoms we have. There are worse things than covid. One is masks. Another is suffering the self-righteousness of the ignoramuses who pushed masks.

Annnnd whoot, there it is. As some of us said from the very beginning of this shameful, endless fiasco, the primary issue was never about masks, (anti-)social distancing, or even public health in general. It was about liberty, no more nor less. And once you’ve traded that priceless jewel away for a mess of “safety” pottage, there’s one and only one way you’ll ever get it back again. However many of their despicable progeny have long since either forgotten, willfully abandoned, or outright rejected that fundamental truth, our Founding Fathers knew it well enough, and some few of us still do today.

So be it, then.

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THIS is Africa

Posted on February 24, 2023 by Mike

And, as African expat Kim DuToit always says: Africa wins again.

Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, I had the opportunity to work in Senegal for several months. My very first experience in-country was that the rental vehicle wouldn’t start. While the friendly and talkative mechanic repaired the jeep, he inquired if this was my first trip to Africa. “No,” I replied. “Ahhh!” he said, “then I don’t have to explain the meaning of ‘TIA’ to you.”

But I’d never heard that term or what it meant. When I asked, he explained, saying, “This is Africa; nothing works!” Indeed, in my travels, it was much the same in Latin America and other places I have lived, worked, or visited back in the day. When I returned to the U.S. it was a joy to drop a quarter into a payphone and hear a dial tone, or find that the nearest toilet always had toilet paper at hand.

But, in 2023, in Biden’s America, the acronym takes on a whole new meaning. Last week my wife’s car wouldn’t start, and after several return visits to the dealership, the problem remained undiagnosed. The service tech apologized and said, “it’s TIA.” I asked him what that meant, and he said, “This is America; no one knows how to fix things anymore.” Talk about a reflective moment.

Yep. And as I always say: that’s neither accident, nor coincidence, nor happenstance. It’s part of a plan.

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Wargaming Civil War v2.0

Posted on February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by Mike

A little theorizing on how it all might go down, and what it might look like if/when it does.

The 1860s US Civil War was primarily an economic paradigm war. The Southern agrarian plutocrats backed the Black manned slave labor system. The Northern industrialist plutocrats favored debt-wage slavery powered by European mass immigration.

Given that the first US civil war was an oligarchic conflict, what would today’s US-based oligarchs fight over in a 2.0 civil war? Slices of cherry pie. Control of population centers. What would the hoi polloi fight over? Trans bathrooms. Abortion. Race issues. School prayer. Whatever else oligarchs don’t care about.

Any civil war discussion needs to factor in the Pentagon. They control the soldiers and weapon systems. If the MIC split into two factions, I imagine we’d see something like “woke” Pentagon vs “family values” Pentagon, with Raytheon owning both sides.

I don’t see any intentional Battle of Antietam mega-army fighting mega-army scenes. Unlike Springfield rifles and Gatling guns—F35 fighter jets, stealth bombers, and ICBMs cause serious damage to infrastructure and oligarch holdings. Mushroom clouds spouting up across America is bad for business. The rules of engagement would need to be carefully controlled. An internecine US nuclear war is scarier than Black Jesus.

Like ancient Rome, the US is a multicultural empire. To keep Rome’s diverse groups from splintering, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion. In America, Whites, Latinos, and Blacks make up the bulk of the population. All are predominantly Christian- at least by birth. America’s remaining unifiers are football, smartphones, Google, and the threat of state violence. Mushroom Cloud Jesus might be the empire’s last bottle of Elmer’s Glue. I prefer Hippie Jesus over Mushroom Cloud Jesus.

Restoring school prayer, filling up prosperity gospel mega-churches, and outlawing “gayness” won’t restore America’s manufacturing base, rebuild its decayed infrastructure, or clean up the poisoned rivers. Nor will it prevent the upward transfer of wealth that comes from corporate governance, endless MIC war, and a Fed owned by 8 banking families.

Christian (Zionist) Nationalism might keep the dying empire on life support for a little while longer, but collapse is inevitable. All empires crash—pathologically corrupt ones sooner than later. If Christian Nationalism failed to keep the food rations above starvation level, WW3 seems like the next logical play. If the international bankers remained on top and human civilization stayed intact after WW3, I suppose the next phase would be One World Government dystopian dictatorship.

If oligarch-managed civil war could prolong the empire’s lifespan, it also holds the potential to shorten it. As demonstrated by Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, neocon/neoliberal ventures turn into massive clusterf*cks. What if a civil war went sideways and started whipping around like a live electric cable in a windstorm? A case of controlled chaos turning into uncontrolled chaos.

Where a civil war gone sideways winds up is hard to say. I suppose it could turn out really good or really bad. Anything from a new and improved American republic to Mad Max.

The above-excerpted analysis is certainly, well, different, to say the least. That said, it seems to me that the latter option might be a safer bet. But I’ve never been the betting type, so what the hell do I know. The history of human warfare shows that the one safe assumption we can make, in all times and all places, is that we can’t possibly know beforehand what will happen, nor how the thing will all shake out, until it actually, y’know, does shake out.

Throughout the duration of the actual conflict itself, we can reliably count on widespread horror, misery, and deprivation as the stuff of everyday life, carrying on far longer after the war’s outcome has been decided than is generally expected. As Gen Wellesley lamented after the Battle of Waterloo: Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

War can be conclusive or inconclusive; destructive or productive; justified or not; those things, and many more besides. It is a cruel, ravening beast with many faces, all of them terrible to those caught up in its toils. War is also a permanent fixture of the human landscape, as unpredictable as it is inevitable. Wracking and painful as it surely is, human nature itself mandates nonetheless that the awful scourge of war will be with us always.

Oddly enough, though, war can sometimes be a good thing, even a desirable thing when the sole alternative is submission, slavery, and degradation at the hands of a ruthless despot. It has been described as a crucible in which irrelevancy is burned away, leaving only personal honor intact. It should never be rushed recklessly into; likewise, it should not be rejected out of hand when it has become obviously necessary. Just as war can be the plaything of greedy, over-ambitious potentates, it can also be the last desperate resort of men too long preyed upon by them.

In the somber, cautionary words of a wise and noble warrior who certainly knew whereof he spoke: it is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

(Via Wes Renegade)

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One of these things is not like the other

Posted on February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by Mike

In his state-of-the-nation address, Putin was a helluva lot more honest and accurate than Pedo Joe was in his. Which, by now, can’t come as any great surprise to anyone.

Putin Says He Suspended Russia’s Participation in START Treaty, Blasts Western Decadence in Address to Nation
The first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is this Friday.

“We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said in the speech broadcast on all state TV channels. “The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”

He told his audience of lawmakers, state officials, religious leaders and soldiers that Western sanctions hadn’t “achieved anything and will not achieve anything.”

The Russian president also blasted “western elites,” who have been open about their goal “to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ to Russia,” adding, “they intend to transform the local conflict into a global confrontation.”

Putin also accused the West (of) targeting Russia’s culture, religion and values because it is aware that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.”

“See what they do with their own peoples—the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, mockery of children, and pedophilia are declared the norm,” Putin said.

The Russian leader said adults have the right to live as they want, and Russia has no interest in invading private lives, but advised people to “look at the Holy Scriptures,” and the sacred books of other major religions. “Everything is said there,” he declared, “including that the family is the union of a man and a woman.” This pronouncement drew applause from the audience.

“Millions of people in the West understand that they are leading to a real spiritual disaster,” Putin added.

True, dat. They just haven’t decided yet how far they’re willing to go, how drastic the measures they’re willing to take, in order to head it off, assuming it isn’t already way too late. However sincere Putin may or may not have been with the soaring rhetoric above, just compare & contrast with Phony Jaux’s incoherent blibbering in Poland.

Biden boasted that NATO is “more united and more unified than ever before” to fight Russia, setting the stage for a prolonged war.

“Putin is confronted with something today that he didn’t think was possible a year ago — the democracies around the world have grown stronger, not weaker; but the autocrats around the world have grown weaker, not stronger,” Biden said.

Throughout his boilerplate, cliché-ridden speech, Biden frequently slurred his words including during the “rousing” close to the speech. Biden, whose policies forced masks and experimental vaccines on Americans against their will during the pandemic, began loudly shouting about “freedom.”

“There is no sweeter word than freedom,” Biden said. “There is no nobler goal than freedom. There’s no higher aspiration than freedom. Americans know that and you know it,” he added.

“Freedom. The enemy of the tyrant and the hope of the brave and the truth of the ages is freedom!” Biden declared.

We can only hope it is at that, you stupid jackass. But if it does prove to be so, that won’t bode at all well for you and the other behind-the-scenes tyrants who run you.

How bitter the irony, that the day should come when a Russian despot sounds so much more like our Founders than our own fork-tongued notional “President” does, and that Putin’s invocation of the themes of faith, family, and rectitude should ring in the American ear more clearly than Biden’s empty, vapid gasbaggery regarding “freedom,” a concept he neither cares for nor comprehends—a sacred ideal which, in reality, he has spent the entirety of his five miserable decades occupying high government office constantly seeking to undermine, overthrow, and obliterate.

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Trump the Comforter

Posted on February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by Mike

A stark contrast with the Biden Affliction.

BREAKING: Donald Trump greeted by crowds of supporters in East Palestine, slams Biden for prioritizing Ukraine over America
“If you were in office right now, what would you have done to help the people of East Palestine?” Hernandez asked, to which Trump said, “FEMA would have been here a long time ago.”

Donald Trump landed in East Palestine, Ohio on Wednesday, where he met with local officials and citizens of the small town still trying to bounce back from the ecological disaster caused by a train derailment and subsequent controlled burn.

The Biden regime recently denied FEMA aid to East Palestine, saying that it did not meet the criteria. “What East Palestine needs is much more expansive than what FEMA can provide,” the official continued. “FEMA is on the frontlines when there is a hurricane or tornado. This situation is different.”

Which you would know HOW, exactly? Certainly not firsthand.

Trump would go on to deliver some remarks thanking police, firefighters, and first responders while assuring that those who have been impacted would not be left behind. “It’s an honor to be here. It’s an incredible place,” Trump said, “we’re here today in East Palestine to show our love and support for our fellow Americans in this hour of need…They’ve done some incredible work in a short period of time.”

“To the people of East Palestine and nearby communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania, we have told you loud and clear, ‘you are not forgotten.’ We stand with you, pray for you, and we will stand with you in your fight to help answer and the accountability you deserve… will all be out there, very clearly,” said Trump.

Trump said that the community needs “answers and results,” and that Norfolk Southern needs to “fulfill its obligations.”

“The people of East Palestine are going to be taken care of… When your representatives and all of your politicians get here, including Biden, get back from touring Ukraine, that he’s got some money left over as we’re now at $117 billion, and as you probably know, Europe when you add it all up has added $10 billion. That’s a big difference… They’re at it again, they’re very good negotiators those people in Europe. When you add it all up, it’s about the same size as the United States’ [contributions] the economy of the different European countries, and they’re at a very small number compared to us… That’s a massive difference, it’s a very small fraction of what we’ve put up and it affects them more than us. They have to do what they have to do.”

Trump would then go to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant, where he would continue to answer questions.

Mo’ bettah Trump:

Trump Overrules Pete Buttigieg, Delivers Truckloads of Water to East Palestine, Ohio
President Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio where he delivered truckloads of bottled water following a toxic train derailment earlier this month.

The disaster has left the small town reeling, with Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration showing little interest in the crisis.

Government officials at both the state and federal levels have not risen up to the challenge, leaving the people of East Palestine furious.

After being snubbed by the Biden admin, Trump scheduled a visit to the town to show them support.

After Trump’s Wednesday visits, Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg scheduled a trip to see the disaster firsthand, almost three weeks after the train derailed on February 4.

This is vintage Trump at his very best, making a unique contribution which in the long view will amount to much more than he’ll ever be able to accomplish anywhere else. I do wish he’d focus his considerable attention more on things like this, along with mass rallies and speeches to inspire and reinforce Real Americans in their long fight against The Enemy, rather than vainly chasing after an office he’ll never be allowed to accede to anyway.

He was already re-elected once, and when the “election”-fraud dust settled what we wound up with instead was a senescent, corrupt kiddie-diddler so old and feeble he can’t even walk up a flight of stairs without busting his damned-fool ass right out in front of God and everybody roosting in the Oval Office as pRetend “pResident.” So how’s all that working out for ya’s, anyway? There’s a lesson in there somewheres, and one would think Trump of all people might have learned it by now.

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Road trippin’

Posted on February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 by Mike

“Ace” Biden pays a visit to genuflect before one of the many malefactors who own him body and soul, thanks to their having the goods on his visceral penchant for corruption, graft, and greed.

Secret Agent Man “Joe Biden” turned up in Kiev Monday morning after landing in Poland and riding an overnight choo-choo train across the Ukraine frontier to avoid the hazardous pomp of landing Air Force One in a war zone. One might try to guess the message Victoria Nuland sent her errand boy to deliver. My guess is that “JB” was there to tell Wolodymyr Zelensky the USA stands behind him one hundred percent — an obvious whopper — being exactly the opposite of the developing reality that, short of setting off nuclear Armageddon, there is really nothing the USA can do to prevent Russia from concluding our ill-conceived project on its own terms. Who better to deliver an arrant falsehood than the master, “Scranton Joe,” he who once battled and vanquished the tyrant Corn-Pop!

The heroic Biden actually flew his alternate fighter aircraft (ie, not the one he famously splashed that Zipperhead “weather” balloon with) straight into Kiev Aerodrome, executing his usual flawless three-point landing there:

SpadXVIII

Good show, Jaux! Back over to Kuenstler for the rest of the story.

Remember, last week Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, speaking out of the aperture between his butt cheeks, announced that Russia had lost “strategically, operationally and tactically” in Ukraine. This was after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced rather clumsily that Ukraine’s army was out of ammo, especially artillery shells, and the only remedy for that was for Europe to rebuild an armaments industry — which was a sideways-and-backwards way of saying… fuggeddabowdit.

Yeah, umm, about those artillery shells…

CranmerUkeArty

Whew! Thank goodness the US isn’t tens of trillions in debt and can thus afford to indefinitely support the grifter currently in charge of the D卐M☭CRAT Party ATM™ in the style to which he has become accustomed, thereby guaranteeing Zelensky’s continued silence regarding all past and future endeavors with the Biden Crime Family. Onwards.

One might also suppose that, behind all this cognitive dissonance, the US would be engaged in secret talks with Russia to arrive at some face-saving device for getting out of this mess. But really, what is our leverage for that? Can we threaten to put US boots-on-the-Ground in Ukraine? That would be a little like channeling Gen. George Armstrong Custer, don’t you think? Apparently, all we’re left with is a game of pretend, using the Pretender-in-Chief as the front.

I’d also venture to say that American voters are not so enthused about this Ukraine pageant as they seemed to be last summer when the yellow and blue flags popped up on front porches at every Woked-up clam-bake from Edgartown to Bar Harbor. Our Ukrainian proxies sure seemed to be giving those Ruskies what-for along the front lines in Donbas, payback, you understand, for helping Donald Trump steal the 2016 election from She Whose Turn It Was Supposed to Be…America’s Amazonian Caesar-in-a-pants-suit, HRC.

The fall offensive by Ukraine was an illusion, alas, setting up its army for methodical decimation, now nearly complete. So, too, is all the talk of sending tanks in to save the day. And so, too, is the very existence of NATO as anything other than window-dressing on an empty storefront. If blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, as recently alleged by independent reporter Seymour Hersh, smells like an attack on our supposed ally, Germany, then how was it not an attack on NATO, in which Germany is the centerpiece? And, finally, why would Germany not be engaging in secret talks of its own with Russia, behind America’s back?

Why indeed, and who the fuck cares anyhow. Say, anybody remember back when Trump, as actual as opposed to ostensible US President, suggested extricating ourselves from the steely clutches of the long-obsolete and entirely-dysfunctional NATO—whereupon the Usual Suspects threw the Usual Hissy Fit about the outrageousness of any such “radical” notion? Good times, good times. Or, if not altogether good, at least a damned sight better than the sweat-soaked fever dream we’re unable to wake up from now.

Intrigue must be rife now throughout Europe, and Americans will not hear anything about it from its Deep State-owned news media. Is there any reason why Europe could not live with a neutralized Ukraine? Of course not. Ukraine is in uproar now simply because geniuses in the US State Department thought it would be a good way to annoy and antagonize Russia. The project was insane from inception. The main result is that Europe will no longer have the natural gas it needs at a rational price to continue being an industrial society.

One must conclude that NATO is looking for a way out of this. But there is no way out except to declare by word or deed, directly or otherwise, that NATO has outlived the reason for its existence. Any sane analysis by Europeans would arrive at the unnerving realization that the USA has become the enemy of NATO, not Russia. If all that is so, then a seismic shift is underway that will leave America hung out to dry on the Ukraine project. Germany will have to make a deal with Russia to rebuild the Nord Streams. What could the US do about that? Impose sanctions on Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the bunch? Where does that leave Western Civ?

I’ll tell you: it leaves Western Civ diminished. It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world. (Fare-thee-well hegemonic dream; hello multi-polarity!) It leaves Ukraine neutralized and no longer a problem…It leaves Russia able to feel secure in its borders and free to get on with being a normal nation…and it leaves Europe the hope that it can resume modern life a while longer with the familiar comforts and conveniences.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes, if you ask me.

Errata update! I have been reliably informed, by a source who wishes to remain anonymous, that the photo of “Ace” Biden ostensibly setting down in Kiev is factually incorrect—disinformation, as the cognoscenti like to say. As it happens, Jaux doesn’t even own a Spad XIII at all, although I’m certain that, being a man of taste and discernment, he’d surely love to. This is the true and accurate pic of America’s Heroic Savior taxiing his DR1 to a secure undisclosed revetment at Kiev Aerodrome, after dogfighting his way across all of Europe to get there.

What a man, eh? Americans are fortunate indeed to have such a one to lead their nation through these parlous times.

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Buttplug in absentia

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

Gee, who woulda ever thunk that two disastrous terms as the fumbling, bumbling mayor of a small-ish Indiana town might not turn out to be preparation aplenty for the job of US Secretary of Transportation?

Pete Buttigieg fails the Woody Allen test

He’s been called the future of the Democratic Party, and the smartest man in the swamp. Pete Buttigieg serves as transportation secretary in the Biden Administration. And one could argue that, outside of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, there isn’t anyone in the administration who has performed as poorly as the former mayor of South Bend, Ind.

This perspective comes after Buttigieg was once again several days late and many dollars short in his response to a 50-car train derailment on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, that resulted in four kinds of cancer-causing chemicals being released into the area’s air and water. Fish and poultry have died as a result, while frightened residents are complaining of nausea, headaches and respiratory issues.

During any catastrophe, leaders must get out of their offices and travel to the disaster site to assess the damage, weigh what resources can be utilized and show solidarity with the affected people.

Buttigieg has done no such thing, perhaps taking his cues from President Biden, who also has avoided any public acknowledgment of the situation. It’s a head-in-the-sand approach that has many Ohio residents angry.

“Where’s Pete Buttigieg? Where’s he at?” one resident asked East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway.

Now on the defensive, Buttigieg has resorted to blaming (you guessed it) former President Trump for what is happening in Ohio.

“We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe,” Buttigieg tweeted. “And of course, I’m always ready to work with Congress on furthering (or in some cases, restoring) our capacity to address rail safety issues.”

So, despite Democrats having controlled the House, Senate and White House for two years, Buttigieg claims his hands are tied because of the administration that has been gone for 25 months.

A supply chain crisis; baby formula shortages; a U.S. commercial airline industry in chaos. And now evacuations, a federal investigation and a cancer-causing chemical scare that continues to stress residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Woody Allen said that 90 percent of success in life is just showing up. On that front, Pete Buttigieg continues to fail.

If he wants to be president one day, Buttigieg must show more effort, urgency and competency than what the country has witnessed so far.

He won’t, and nobody with a lick of sense ought to be expecting he ever will. Truth is, being an incompetent boob cut from the same raggedy, moldy cloth as his (titular) boss, he CAN’T. He was manifestly a Bribem junta diversity-hire, brought in exclusively due to being a loud-and-proud homosexual and no other reason whatsoever. As they say in Texas, Pete Buttplug is all hat, no cattle. If Affirmative Action were ever to be put on trial, he’d be Exhibit A for the prosecution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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More Hersh debunkery

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

As promised earlier in the comments, I present Lee Smith’s analysis. I must say, he makes a good case.

Sy Hersh Swings and Misses Big

Careless claims that the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream pipelines cover for the real scandals of the Biden administration

The most astounding claim in the blockbuster new article from Seymour Hersh alleging that the U.S. is responsible for sabotaging two of Russia’s natural gas pipelines is that the Biden administration is led by a no-nonsense crew of highly capable tacticians. Forget what you’ve heard about secret classified documents turning up in various Biden residences; in Hersh’s telling the Biden White House practices exceptional operational security.

And it would need to, because according to the single anonymous source on whom Hersh bases his piece, the Russians have “superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.” Pulling off a plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines between Germany and Russia would require not only vision and leadership, but sophisticated cover. So what kind of highly advanced stealth technology did the Biden team employ to cloak the underwater operation? In fact, they did just the opposite. They hid the plot to start World War III in plain sight.

Despite the strong temptation to swipe more of it, I’ll limit that excerpt to those two introductory ‘graphs; naturally, you’ll want to click over and RTWT. I’ll tell y’all this much: I don’t really know anything at all about this Oliver Alexander fellow whom I quoted last night, but Lee Smith is definitely a wholly trustworthy source as far as I’m concerned, as well as an excellent analyst. I’d be more inclined to take his word on just about anything before I would a whole boatload of others, frankly. His conclusion on this whole Nord Stream shit-circus might be somewhat different than one might expect, seeing as how it’s focused on a larger issue.

Trump is right when he says that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine were he still in the White House, so long as he kept NS2 sanctions in place. Naturally, it would have enraged the Germans, and the U.S. media would’ve blamed Trump for alienating our great ally in Berlin, even if the Germans were plotting with Putin to impoverish the rest of Europe. But all that’s hypothetical. What we know for sure is that Trump was on the mark when he warned the Germans that Nord Stream2 would come back to haunt them. And, thanks to Biden, it has hurt America, too.

There is indeed a scandal that involves Biden and Russian pipelines, but it’s not the one Seymour Hersh wrote about. It’s simply this: a venal and careless old man was so obsessed with undoing his predecessor’s work that he greenlighted a war in Europe with consequences that are likely to impact how Americans live for years to come.

Can’t argue with any of that, and I ain’t gonna try to.

Questions, questions Vol XXVLLIII

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Mike

Kunstler has a few.

How and why else has the evidence of those crimes been so sedulously suppressed when it should have been served up to a grand jury post-haste in 2019, as soon as Hunter Biden’s laptop surfaced? The darn thing was absolutely stuffed with a rich documentary record of crime from the lowest (drugs and whores), to the highest (payoffs from foreign actors). The extraordinary lengths that the DOJ and FBI traced to hide it, or pretend to not look inside it, is one of the most transparently degenerate acts ever seen in US history — and continues to this day.

And now, all of it unwinds rapidly, all the organized deception and lying. You could argue, perhaps, that US government agencies, this aggregation of interests we call the Deep State, just went plumb insane from guilt, fear, and shame over its own long-running, rampant criminality, but even that fails to answer how come, for instance, the CDC is still pushing booster shots of a toxic bio-engineered cocktail that maims and kills people. Are they aiming to reduce the US population on-purpose — at the same time that the DHS is ushering millions from other countries across the border illegally? Is the Deep State working China’s will against us and the rest of the West? Did we collaborate with our adversaries in our own collapse?

A: Yes.

2

Of COURSE they did it re-redux

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Mike

As I keep saying: Cherchez le cui bono.

Biden’s Bombing

The deeper meaning of the American attack on the Nord Stream pipeline.

On September 26, 2022 Joe Biden unilaterally declared war on both Russia and Germany. This, at least, is the only logical conclusion if the allegations by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh last week are true. Hersh maintains, based on claims from an anonymous source within the White House, that Joe Biden skirted congressional notification while ordering the U.S. Navy to plant remote-controlled explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic last year.

The anonymous source business I covered here already, at least to my own satisfaction if no one else’s. So ‘nuff said about that for the nonce.

Now, I’m as distrustful of both Sy Hersh and his erstwhile employer, the execrable NYT, as anybody else. That said, the one thing we can bank on from Hersh is a reflexive, relentless anti-Americanism. Amongst his breed, the America-hate trait is so deeply bred-in-the-bone that it can even override the standard-issue, Mark-1 Mod-0 partisan desire to protect someone like the Biden marionette, so long as genuine damage to America will be the result. I think that’s almost certainly what we’re seeing in this case. Anyways. Onwards.

The Nord Stream undersea pipelines, when fully operational, could supply over a third of Europe’s energy needs by shipping cheap Russian natural gas from the Arctic into the heart of Europe. The mysterious explosions that ripped through both pipelines last fall, forcibly cut off Germany from cheap Russian natural gas—an outcome openly favored by the United States for years. As long as Europe remained dependent on Russian natural gas, the major continental powers had a powerful reason to maintain relatively cordial relations with the Russian government. Nord Stream had been one of Putin’s most potent diplomatic bargaining chips with Europe during his war in Ukraine.

The American foreign policy complex well understood this dynamic. In February 2022, just weeks before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Joe Biden told a journalist at the White House that if Russia were to invade, it would mean the “end” of the Nord Stream pipeline. When pressed on how he would accomplish this, Biden simply stated that he “promised” the pipeline would no longer be operable.

Hersh argues that Biden kept his word. The U.S. Navy, working with its Norwegian allies, was able to identify the ideal spots for detonation and then planted explosives under the cover of a large-scale NATO sea exercise in the summer of 2022.

Western journalists in the immediate aftermath of the explosion speculated that it had been the product of a Russian attack. According to this theory, the Russians had, for unknown reasons, blown up their own pipeline. This claim always rang hollow. Why would Moscow destroy its own infrastructure when it could just as easily turn off the flow of natural gas at will while pursuing a strategy of geopolitical flexibility?

The United States, on the other hand, had the motive, the opportunity, and the capability to carry out the attack. Biden and his lackeys openly displayed hostility to the pipeline’s continued existence. Hersh’s reporting simply validates what any common-sense observer could already see: the ostensibly “neutral” United States had launched an economically destructive attack against a geopolitical rival and a major European ally.

Motive, opportunity, and means constitute reason enough, in law enforcement circles, to make an arrest and proceed to the trial phase.

In U.S. criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a common summation of the three aspects of a crime that must be established before guilt can possibly be determined in a criminal proceeding. Respectively, they refer to: the ability of the defendant to commit the crime (means), the reason the defendant committed the crime (motive), and whether the defendant had the chance to commit the crime (opportunity).

A reasonable argument can be made that Amerika v2.0’s thoroughly de-boned Woke military, along with its haplessly inept political “leadership,” lacks the means to successfully pull off skullduggery as audacious as this. Nonetheless, I find the Biden junta guilty as charged. As always, though, YMMV. Either way, the author of the AmGreat piece is hunting bigger game here, and it’s pretty intriguing stuff.

There is a deeper truth at the bottom of the Batlic, amidst the Nord Stream wreckage. It isn’t just Germany that is no longer a sovereign power—in fact, the very concept of the nation-state has been destroyed. All of Europe is an American satrapy. France, England, Italy, Austria, Luxembourg—these petty powers have no real existence as independent entities. They are neither economically nor militarily self-reliant. They cannot even secure their needed energy requirements without outside intervention.

Africa and South America, as a whole, are little better. Will anyone pretend Nigeria or Peru are independent nations that could stand up to a concerted American assault? In Asia, the Gulf States are little more than American-sanctioned outposts. Would Bahrain exist without America? Would Kuwait? In the Far East, Japan is still occupied by American forces. India has no meaningful modern military tradition worth mentioning. China became the manufacturing capital of the world because of explicit policy choices made in Washington, D.C.

This is not a new development. The nation-state died in 1945. The mid-20th century Anglo-American-Soviet alliance made sure of it. American liberals and Soviet communists at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam marched in complete lockstep on the future of the world order. There were tensions, of course, but there was no doubt in the minds of either Franklin Roosevelt or Josef Stalin that the postwar order would be fundamentally leftist.

Even after my copious excerpting there’s plenty more yet, of which you should read the all.

1

Where’s Waldo Pete?

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Mike

Buttplug must be on another vacay with “his” “family,” I suppose.

Pete Buttigieg And Chernobyl in Ohio

I guess if you are going to be the worst President in American history you want a Transportation Secretary that is equally bad. Pete Buttigieg, the man who ran for President on a solid record of mediocrity and being gay, certainly fits that bill. Ask the people of East Palestine, Ohio.

Last Friday a train derailed in East Palestine, a small town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Fifty cars went off the tracks. Ten of those carried various types of hazardous chemicals. Five of those cars were carrying liquid vinyl chloride. That comes out to 1,000,000 pounds of this dangerous toxic substance.

That was bad enough. Then Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation decided to make it much worse. Authorities made the decision to burn the vinyl chloride to prevent derailed tanker cars from exploding.

When vinyl chloride burns it turns into hydrogen chloride. When hydrogen chloride enters the atmosphere it bonds with water vapor and forms hydrochloric acid. That means hundreds of thousands of pounds of acid have now been released into the environment.

There is no precedent for an event of this type on this scale. The only previous similar incident involved the derailment of a single tanker car in New Jersey, but in that case, the authorities did not burn the spilled chemical.

Where is Buttigieg, our Secretary of Transportation? Busy with other matters. In public announcements and comments recently, he has talked about the dangers posed by an excess of white people working in construction. He has also had time to talk about a book called “Song of Achilles,” a gay rewrite of the Iliad. He hasn’t said a word about East Palestine, Ohio.

Well, of course not. He’s completely tied up with what a person of much greater intelligence and competence than Mayor Pete Buttplug can claim once called vital social issues ’n’ stuff.

Lest we forget, Kelly’s show featured a truly great band, too.

Yep, Pete Buttplug has a long, long way to go before he could ever dream of filling dem shoes.

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)

1

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)

4

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.

1

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