Category: Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Catchall for whatever doesn’t fit elsewhere

Carnivale of depravity

Posted on      by     

Hey, remember back when folks on Our Side warned that acceptance of “gay marriage” would slippery-slope us right straight to the normalization of pedophilia with a quickness?

Nah, me neither.

BREAKING: Investigation underway after Kentucky high school hosts drag pageant featuring male teens in lingerie giving lap dances to staff

No, seriously. There are pictures and everything. Pictures which, in law-enforcement circles, used to be commonly referred to as “evidence.” Y’know, for the kiddie-Pr0n trial soon to follow. Obviously, our more-enlightened Progressivist culture has “evolved” WAY past those dark Neanderthal days.

An investigation is underway after photos surfaced on social media depicting a homecoming event at a Kentucky high school where male students partook in a “man pageant.”

The male students seen in photos taken at Hazard High School’s homecoming week festivities on Tuesday wore scant clothing, including women’s lingerie, and gave staff members lap dances in the gymnasium, according to The Courier Journal.

I have questions. Many, many, many questions. Let’s begin with two of ’em:

  • Does anybody besides me find it bitterly amusing that the featured attraction of this misnomered “Man” Pageant was male students masquerading as female strippers, all done up in wigs, makeup, ladies’ frilly undies, the better to dry-hump their male teachers more convincingly?
  • Does anybody but me very much doubt that any one of the male students audacious enough to flaunt even the merest hint of actual masculinity would be in for some serious “counseling” to correct his unacceptable behavior?

Hazard Independent Schools released a statement which easily establishes a brand-new Gold Standard for what is meant by the phrase “frenetic ass-covering” in a blind panic after the story blew up in their faces, which Ace effortlessly dispenses with thusly:

The CYA letter from the school repeatedly insists that the rally for “Spirit Week” is “student-led” — meaning, don’t yell at us, it’s your filthy kids who did this.

As if teachers and school officials weren’t supervising this activity. As if they weren’t enjoying getting lap-dances from male students.

Bad enough, sure, but there’s worse. Consider, if you will, a notable aspect I’ve yet to see mentioned anywhere: Exactly who the fucking godawful fuck do you think it might have been that put the notion into the heads of male teenagers that dressing as women and giving lap-dances to their male teachers and principle might be a GOOD thing? Who is it that’s responsible for the insidious promotion of all this gender-confusion horseshit in the government schools to begin with?!?

Remember also that this isn’t some Sodom and Gomorrha Blue-State megalopolis like NYC or El Lay or ‘Frisco we’re talking about here. This is Hazard County Kentucky, for fuck’s sake. Which brings us ’round to my closing question: Where in the seven bleeding Hells is God Almighty in all this, anyway? Because surely this sick nation is due and past due for another of His patented all-cleansing Great Floods at this point, wouldn’t you say? What, is He taking a nap or playing checkers with Saint Michael or something?

Memes of outrage and delight to follow, oh yes there are. Just as quick as I can get ’em done.

Update! Meme the First. Got at least one more in me, I think.

It still just blows my mind that, out of all the dozens of supposedly mature, responsible adults in attendance at this shitfling who were school employees of one sort or another, there wasn’t a one of them shocked and appalled enough to shut it down, raise any kind of a ruckus, or even speak up in polite objection.

Not “hesitant,” homicidal

Posted on      by     

What he said.

Saw a headline on a local rag while at a store yesterday. Read “local health attempting reconciliation with Vaxx hesitant ” (or sumsuch, didnt dive in just quick peep at headline)

Vaxx hesitant? Um, no. Not at all ‘hesitant’, so much as borderline homicidal against it. Try to force the issue, and blood will be drawn, but not by a little needle in my upper arm. And I will make damned sure I have an honor gaurd preceeding my arrival in hell. Nothing ‘hesitant’ here. I think the proper term is FUCKING DECIDED.

Anywhoos, I am watching the weather reports across the board and what I am seeing is the brewings of a perfect storm. Between corporate suicide into totalitarian states, the Greendeals of Kalifruitopia shutting down the National JIT delivery system, the FRAUD wiping out our energy independence in less than one year, and, and,

WINTER IS COMING.

Gonna be a lot of people dying soon, either through infrastructure failures (Houston last year, remember that’un?) The ClotShot showing its true colors as time and spike proteins build up, a Fraudulant dictatorship continually pushing the limits of a people that imploringly just wanna be left the fuck alone,,, the list just keeps growing,,,,

It does at that, don’t it? The Enemy is stacking up one hell of a tab for themselves, in the vain hope that the bartender will never call for it to be settled up. It takes an amateur drunk who hasn’t been around the watering holes long enough to have had his inebriated ass hauled off his comfy stool, bum-rushed roughly out the street door, and physically flung onto the cold, hard sidewalk to be un-savvy and inexperienced enough to think such a thing.

Neville Chamberlain Rules

Posted on      by     

So many things back-asswards and wrong in this one it would take me months to cover them all.

Compromise to Make America Great Again

WELL. There’s an inauspicious start if ever I saw one.

A devout Catholic and a pro-abortion socialist walk into a conference room. No, this isn’t a setup for a joke. It’s an example of how America can win. If that seems odd, consider this one: a slave owner and an abolitionist walk into a hall in Philadelphia. That’s no joke, either: it’s how America began.

In 1787, men who wanted slavery to end convened in Philadelphia with men who wanted slavery to grow. Their purpose was to write America’s Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris, delegates to the convention, were ardent abolitionists. George Washington, chairman of the convention, opposed slavery, too, writing a year before “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.” Pierce Butler, delegate for South Carolina, thought otherwise. “The security the southern states want is that their negroes may not be taken from them,” he declared.

The Framers bridged a nation over these deep divides. Congress today can’t even pass an infrastructure bill needed to fix bridges. A bridge too far for this Congress is—well, any bridge. 

Let’s all just please ignore the fact that, if past form is any indication, the “infrastructure” bill will result in precious few bridges being fixed, if any. But there’ll be whacking great soupçons of taxpayer gelt freely ladled out to federal employees, labor unions, illegal aliens, failing green energy companies, and any other Demonrat grifter-constituency groups astute enough to put their hands out for a nice taste.

America is the one nation that has best realized freedom and equality for all. Americans are freer and more equal and yet of more colors and creeds than citizens of any other nation. America rid herself of slavery, which had been international practice. She liberated Japan from despotism and Europe from Fascists, Nazis, and communists. She enriched her people, among whom even the poorest are rich compared to billions abroad. She proved that a nation of men free to think as they will, speak as they wish, and do as they please can together achieve more than any nation forcing its citizens to think, say, and do as the government commands. What would be obvious to the Framers seems utterly lost on too many today: compromise made all this brilliant success possible.

Fair enough, but I have a question.

Q: Why was compromise possible in 1787, but in 2021 is neither possible nor at all desirable? A:

  • In 1787, one side could be confident that the opposition was bargaining in good faith; in 2021, this is NOT the case
  • In 1787, both sides pursued the same primary objectives despite differences on how it might best be accomplished—individual liberty, safeguards against tyranny, government of, by, and for the people; in 2021, there is a fundamental conflict between not just the details, but the objectives themselves
  • In 1787, negotiations were conducted by men for whom personal integrity and good character were of paramount importance; in 2021, the opposition considers integrity to be an exploitable weakness, and the definition of “good character” has, as with so many other words and phrases, been upended to mean the exact opposite of what had traditionally been understood
  • In 1787, negotiations were conducted by men who, while by no means agreeing on everything, for the most part had many of their values, ambitions, and personal backgrounds in common with the rest; most importantly, they respected dissenting opinion instead of despising it; in 2021, no trace of comity, respect, and tolerance for dissent is to be found on the Left, with whom Real Americans share almost nothing apart from rough geographic proximity
  • In 1787, all negotiating parties could be secure in the knowledge that, all of them being honest, respectable men for whom their word was their bond, the terms of any compromise would be fully honored and upheld; in 2021, the record shows that any compromise serves the opposition purely as a jumping-off point for demanding further concessions, on the rare occasions when the agreement isn’t just ignored and/or flung down and danced upon before the ink has had time to dry
  • In 1787, American citizens had elected representatives who correctly understood their role as public servants and therefore could be trusted to advocate their constituents’ interests vigorously and honorably; in 2021, Amerikan subjects have no representation in the federal government whatsoever, their interests are of no importance to anyone in the federal government, and the political parties operate in barely-veiled collusion rather than honest opposition

The pitiful denouement:

Uncompromising moralism rejects more than America’s founding. It rejects any secular government over a free people. Either the governed are free to disagree over what is right or the government decides what is right over the objections of the governed. The only way for the governed to remain free while the government inches its way toward the true good is compromise. Some compromises already occurred in the Constitution: they are set. Others remain.

In a word, NO. Our Founders—those wisest, most far-sighted of men—knew well that carrying on in search of a way to forge a reasonable compromise with the tyrant King George, particularly after years spent bootlessly imploring him for redress of grievances, would be the very height of folly. They knew what the matter was all going come down to eventually, what they were going to have to do to free themselves. And instead of bleating and whimpering endlessly about lawsuits, non-violent protest, and “compromise,” they didn’t flinch from their duty to themselves and their posterity as they perceived it. They just by-God did it.

Compromise would have doomed them; uncompromising adherence to the “moralism” of human political liberty set a sterling example for an entire civilization to emulate. As I’ve said before: any fool advocating “compromise” with the Demonrats must grapple with one simple question: Which of the Bill of Rights are you willing to trade away, then? Until they’ve provided a straightforward answer to that question, they needn’t waste their breath hectoring me about any “compromise.” They have not one thing to say that I’m at all interested in paying attention to.

“Uncompromising moralism” when it comes to tyranny is EXACTLY WHAT AMERICA’S FOUNDING WAS BASED UPON. It is in no way a “rejection” of anything whatsoever else…other than tyranny. So it was then, so it remains now.

The author of the above is under the sway of several paralyzing delusions, first among them that the central government as currently constituted is not only Constitutionally legitimate, but is in fact nobly trying to “inch its way towards the true good” of its benighted subjects as well. As if nothing we’ve seen over the last not quite two years—the Fauxvid power-grab; PantiFa/BLM riots; the wink-nudge sanction of same by governors, mayors, and other authorities; ongoing FBI corruption and thuggery; the fraudulent 2020 election, to name but a few—had ever happened at all. As if Amerika v2.0 bears even a trifling resemblance to America That Was. As if the country wasn’t already teetering on the brink of catastrophe and collapse brought on and exacerbated by its own goddamned government.

From this original self-deception the other noxious fallacies sprout, as branches from a tree-trunk. Debate and haggling over which branch might best be swapped for another is a mug’s game. When the tree itself has become toxic, none but a fool bothers with pruning. You chop the fucker down and burn the remnants to ashes, lest the whole orchard become sickened unto death from close proximity to its poison.

Phony “compromise” with villainous, amoral totalitarians barren of integrity, suffused with ill intent, and unswervingly committed to the “fundamental transformation” of America as founded into a monstrous, despotic shitrapy, is precisely what got us into the dire straits we find ourselves in today. Heaven preserve us from the dolts who still try to persuade us that only more of the same can possibly save us. There IS a way aspiring tyrants can be effectively dealt with, but reruns of the self-same DC dumbshow we’ve already been forced to watch again and again and again wouldn’t be it.

Even so, Callaghan is by no means alone in his self-deception. Steyn adroitly eviscerates Charlie Kirk, feebly laboring under similar crippling, self-negating delusions, as evidenced by the tail-chasing nonsense he mistakes for argumentation in dispute with an interlocutor way more intelligent and perceptive than Kirk appears to be:

Covidstan has sufficiently restricted my movements these last two years that I see fewer things firsthand than I might wish and am dependent, therefore, on media coverage, which is never a good thing. The parents pushing back against the social engineers (at best) and (at worst) rape-enablers of the Virginia school boards seem, given the provocations, calm and of moderate mien by comparison with the sick ideological commissars attempting to silence them.

But elsewhere there is the increasing sense that the combination of Covid, the election and the accelerating politicization of agencies such as the Department of Justice and the FBI have pushed us closer to the Yeatsian point: “the centre cannot hold”. This exchange is making the rounds:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: When do we get to use the guns? No, and I’m not — that’s not a joke. I’m not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was not anxious to go down this road:

KIRK: I’m going to denounce that and I’m going to tell you why. Because you’re playing into all their plans and they’re trying to make you do this…They are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen. We are close to have –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: They’re already doing it.

KIRK: Hold on. We are close to have momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us…They fear us holding the line with self-control and discipline, taking over school board meetings. They are the ones that are willing to use federal force against us.

And I know that people get fired up. We are living under fascism. We are living under this tyranny. But if you think for a second that they’re not wanting you to all of a sudden get that next level where they’re going to say, OK, we need Patriot Act 2.0. If you think that, you know, Waco is bad, wait until you see what they want to do next.

Mr Kirk is trying to thread a difficult needle here: “We are living under fascism” and “tyranny”, but it is not yet time for getting out the guns.

Not a difficult needle—an IMPOSSIBLE one to thread, thanks to certain self-evident contradictions which no true American ought ever to contemplate disgracing himself seeking to reconcile. I know nothing whatever about the man, but the above quotes reveal that Charlie Kirk is either a fraud, a buffoon, or an out-and-out moron desperately cherishing a long-gone memory, dizzied into stupefaction by his own circular illogic.

Between liberty and tyranny, there can be no compromise worth the making. The two are polar opposites; by definition there is no common ground to be found between them. The idea that such might nonetheless exist is chimerical, an ever-elusive phantom any wise, self-respecting, freedom-oriented American knows better than to fritter away a moment of his time and an ounce of his strength in search of. In these times, he well knows that there are far more important things he must do.

Again: Either there is liberty, or there is tyranny.

Choose.

Culture War casualties

Posted on      by     

Our tight bro BCE gets a harsh lesson on what life in Amerika v2.0 is REALLY all about.

So, I resigned this A.M.  Got word through Ye Olde Grapevine that they were going to come after me hammer and tongs. Seems I really pissed off a senior manager by calling out his subordinate’s malfeasance. Last time I looked I was -supposed- to be making sure that the people who are supposed to be at work actually are and that if they’re NOT, writing up said individuals. Until they get termed for not showing up. And timesheet fraud, last time I looked? Yeah…..

Well I guess calling out lying and timecard fraud gets you accused of being a ‘raysacyst’ when the person yer calling out happens to be the ‘approved amount of melanin’ as opposed to my Whypeepo self. That whole ‘white culture’ of honesty and integrity seems to be inappropriate now.

They aren’t just inappropriate, they’re actively proscribed whenever they work to the disadvantage or discomfort of an officially-approved Entitled Victim class.

THIS is why we’re circling the drain.

Indeed it is. One of the reasons, at any rate. There are others. And I don’t mean just a handful of ’em, either.

The willful and intentional slaughter of the norms and mores of the most basic rules of life have resulted in the death of America. I mean how foolish of me to think that De’yonte or Shaniqua should be ‘on time’ at the appointed place of duty, ready to work? How thoughtless of me to say that Nevasaydee should NOT take a hour and a half long lunch? Nevermind the two other times she took 45 minute lunches? That she missed a metric ton of training?

Any wonder why we’re on a precipice of collapse?

None whatsoever. In fact, collapse is the only possible outcome once a culture is as far gone in folly and degeneracy as this one. Any society that abandons proven-effective standards and mores which maintain stability, order, and a generalized trust that the system is at least somewhat fair and competent (or is trying to be, most of the time) is a society with no future.

Strange as it may seem, there’s a broader point to be made here, one with global and historical implications well beyond America’s plunge into the deep end of the affirmative-action cesspool and the dismal consequences for BCE. The success of a decades-long campaign to replace common sense, self-discipline, and the Christianity-based moral code underpinning Western Civ entire since its inception with nonsensical, contradictory Leftist shibboleths and psychobabble is the harbinger of ultimate doom. Eric Raymond’s brilliant 2005 post on Soviet memetic warfare and what he dubbed “Suicidalism” in the West confirms that the above-mentioned 3R (ruin-rubble-and-replace) crusade against bedrock American ideals and norms was neither happenstance nor coincidence.

The most important weapons of al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist terror network are the suicide bomber and the suicide thinker. The suicide bomber is typically a Muslim fanatic whose mission it is to spread terror; the suicide thinker is typically a Western academic or journalist or politician whose mission it is to destroy the West’s will to resist not just terrorism but any ideological challenge at all.

But al-Qaeda didn’t create the ugly streak of nihilism and self-loathing that afflicts too many Western intellectuals. Nor, I believe, is it a natural development. It was brought to us by Department V of the KGB, which was charged during the Cold War with conducting memetic warfare that would destroy the will of the West’s intelligentsia to resist a Communist takeover. This they did with such magnificent effect that the infection outlasted the Soviet Union
itself and remains a pervasive disease of contemporary Western intellectual life.

These ideas travel under many labels: postmodernism, nihilism, multiculturalism, Third-World-ism, pacifism, “political correctness” to name just a few. It is time to recognize them for what they are, and call them by their right name: suicidalism.

Trace any of these back far enough (e.g. to the period between 1930 and 1950 when Department V was at its most effective) and you’ll find a Stalinist at the bottom.

Stalinist agitprop created Western suicidalism by successfully building on the Christian idea that self-sacrifice (and even self-loathing) are the primary indicators of virtue. In this way of thinking, when we surrender our well-being to others we store up grace in Heaven that is far more important than the momentary discomfort of submitting to criminals, predatory governments, and terrorists.

I think it’s important to understand that, although suicidalism builds on some pre-existing pathologies of Western culture, it is not a native or natural development. It is an infection that evildoers and their dupes created and then spread as part of a war against the West; their goal was totalitarian control, and part of their method was to talk the West into slitting its own throat.

Eric’s follow-up was equally brilliant, and prescribes a possible remedy.

The first step to recovery is understanding the problem. Knowing that suicidalist memes were launched at us as war weapons by the espionage apparatus of the most evil despotism in human history is in itself liberating. Liberating, too, it is to realize that the Noam Chomskys and Michael Moores and Robert Fisks of the world (and their thousands of lesser imitators in faculty lounges everywhere) are not brave transgressive forward-thinkers but pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant.

Brittingham and other have worried that postmodern leftism may yet win. If so, the victory would be short-lived. One of the clearest lessons of recent times (exemplified not just by kaffiyeh-wearing western leftists but by Hamas’s recent clobbering of al-Fatah in the first Palestinian elections) is that po-mo leftism is weaker than liberal individualism in one important respect; it has only the weakest defenses against absolutist fervor. Brittingham tellingly notes po-mo philosopher Richard Rorty’s realization that when the babble of conflicting tribal narratives collapses in exhaustion, the only thing left is the will to power.

Again, this is by design. Lenin and Stalin wanted classical-liberal individualism replaced with something less able to resist totalitarianism, not more. Volk-Marxist fantasy and postmodern nihilism served their purposes; the emergence of an adhesive counter-ideology would not have. Thus, the Chomskys and Moores and Fisks are running a program carefully designed to dead-end at nothing.

Religions are good at filling that kind of nothing. Accordingly, if transnational progressivism actually succeeds in smothering liberal individualism, its reward will be to be put to the sword by some flavor of jihadi. Whether the eventual winners are Muslims or Mormons, the future is not going to look like the fuzzy multicultural ecotopia of modern left fantasy. The death of that dream is being written in European banlieus by angry Muslim youths under the light of burning cars.

I remain more optimistic than this. I think there is still an excellent chance that the West can recover from suicidalism without going through a fevered fascist episode and waging a genocidal war. But to do so, we have to do more than recognize Stalin’s memes; we have to reject them. We have to eject postmodern leftism from our universities, transnational progressivism from our politics, and volk-Marxism from our media.

The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing. I don’t want to live in that future, and I don’t think any of my readers do, either. If we want to save a liberal, tolerant civilization for our children, we’d better get to work.

You CF Lifers might recognize that passage; I’ve linked and excerpted this essay several times over the years, starting way back when it was originally published. It’s dismaying that it remains every bit as timely and relevant now as it was when it was written. I corresponded with Eric regularly in those bygone days, and can tell you that Eric’s abhorrence of violence and killing above was heartfelt and sincere. Sadly, the failure to take appropriate action then means that the only hope of saving ourselves now is via the dreadful measures Eric anticipated with such horror. Myself, I’ve come to suspect that it was ever thus, and ever will be—that, as Jefferson said, the Tree of Liberty cannot long be sustained without the regular application of its natural manure.

The cudgel BCE just got whapped upside the haid with was actually the end-product of something bigger than mere government-mandated racial discrimination in the workplace—bigger, and much, much worse.

Spade=spade

Posted on      by     

A small but significant, and unexpected, break for Kyle Rittenhouse.

Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal team can brand the men shot by the teen in Kenosha, Wis., as “rioters” and “looters” when his murder trial starts next week — but prosecutors can’t call them “victims,” the judge has ruled.

In a pre-trial hearing Monday, Wisconsin Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder overturned a motion to bar the teen’s attorneys from using such terms while trying to prove his triple shooting in August last year was justified self-defense.

If prosecutors can try to portray Rittenhouse as “a cold-blooded killer,” then his defense should be free to “call someone a rioter,” the judge said, according to a Kenosha News court report.

Still, he cautioned the defense team against using pejorative terms during opening statements, saying they should be reserved for closing arguments — and only if they can produce evidence justifying the terms.

Oh, I dunno about all that, now. Seems to me there’s an abundance of evidence justifying ’em—seeing as how the filthy scumballs made a serious, credible attempt to murder the kid in cold blood and all. Then again though, I’m a reasonable, sane White Debbil™ who has refused all along to buy into this upside-down, Through The Looking Glass anti-reality the gibbering-mad Left has foisted on us. So YMMV, I guess.

(Via Ace)

Sick, monstrous, evil

Posted on      by     

Your tax dollars at work.

“Our investigators show that Fauci’s NIH division shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hungry sand flies so that the insects could eat them alive,” the non-profit White Coat Waste project told reporters. “They also locked beagles alone in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights to use them as bait to attract infectious sand flies,” all to test an “experimental drug.”

White Coat Waste also claimed that some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed so their barking would not disturb the attending scientists. Rep. Nancy Mace fired off a letter to the National Institutes of Health, calling the cordectomies “cruel” and a “reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.” Mace is a South Carolina Republican but signatories to her letter included Democrats Cindy Axne, Steve Cohen, Jimmy Gomez, Josh Gottheimer, Ted Lieu, Mike Quigley, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Terri Sewell and Eleanor Holmes Norton, plus more than a dozen Republicans, including Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Maria Salazar.

Fauci earned a medical degree in 1966 but to avoid treating American soldiers in Vietnam, he hired on with the NIH in 1968 as one of their “yellow berets.” Fauci’s bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry, but in 1984 he became director of NIAID. Kary Mullis, who earned a PhD in biochemistry from UC Berkeley and won a Nobel prize for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), called Fauci unqualified for the job.

“He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine,” Mullis said. “He should not be in a position like he’s in.”

Of course, Thoroughly Modern Mengele hasn’t limited his twisted “scientific” experiments to animals alone. Ohhh no, not a-tall.

As UC Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg noted in Inventing the AIDS Virus,  Fauci networked with pharmaceutic giant Burroughs Wellcome and recommended azidothymidine, also known as AZT. The drug is marketed under the names Zidovudine or Retrovir, even though it “amounts to poison” according to Duesberg.

In 1989, Fauci’s NIAID conducted trials of AZT on pregnant mothers injected with HIV. As Duesberg noted, “A drug that interferes with growth can lead only to physical deformities in babies developing in the womb.” See also Poison by Prescription: the AZT Story by John Lauritsen, with a foreword by Duesberg, and this interview with former Harvard and Johns Hopkins molecular biologist Charles Thomas.  

When Duesberg challenged the government orthodoxy on AIDS, Fauci contrived to cancel his media appearances and the Berkeley virologist found his grants under attack. Fauci was hopelessly wrong about the spread of AIDS in the general population, yet he remained at the helm of NIAID.

The litany of horror, wanton cruelty, and pure evil continues on from there, only to wind up nowhere and then just stalling out completely.

The late Angelo Codevilla, a former staffer with the Senate intelligence committee, quickly pegged Fauci as a “deep state fraud.” In more than 50 years in government, Dr. Fauci never once had to face the voters. This is the person most responsible for wrecking the booming Trump economy and locking down the workers. The NIAID boss, now 80, showed little if any concern for the suffering Americans were forced to endure. Here is a medical doctor who first causes harm, so it makes sense that such a person would spend taxpayer dollars to torture beagles in Tunisia.

Republicans are calling for Fauci to resign and face prosecution for perjury. As with the dog-torture issue, Democrats should support a full criminal investigation of the NIAID boss.

Uh huh. Hold your breath waiting on it, whydon’tcha. Hey, maybe one of Lindsey Graham’s patented Blue-Ribbon Investigative Committees will “get to the bottom of this,” eh?

If a free America is to endure, white coat waste and white coat supremacy will both have to go.

Perfectly true, never gonna happen. You know it, I know it, we all know it. So NOW what?

An outsider looks in

Posted on      by     

Rose-colored glasses: OFF.

I am not an American. I am a native born Canadian who practiced law in Toronto and London before becoming a law professor. I have worked in law schools in pre-handover Hong Kong, in New Zealand, and for the last 16 years in Australia. I have had sabbaticals in the United States, Canada, and Britain. And yet despite not being an American I am going to be presumptuous enough to offer some comments about the United States. +

These won’t be disinterested comments because I like the United States a lot. I think America has been, and is, a force for good in the world. Who better today to be the world’s most powerful nation? Of course, I would have said the same about the British Empire up to its post-World War II petering out, so some readers may wish to stop reading right now. Yet my point is that I defer to no one in claiming the crown of being the most pro-American, non-American law professor there is working outside the United States today.

Start with how you run elections.

I won’t excerpt the next part—the point I want to cover comes later in the piece—but you definitely want to read it for yourself. Some may find it shocking. ALL of us should find it horribly embarrassing, infuriating, and…motivational, shall we say.

Then there is Joe Biden. I’d say he won firstly because of COVID (no COVID, no Biden presidency) and secondly because he sold himself as a moderate, safe pair of hands that suburban voters and so-called “NeverTrumpers” could convince themselves wouldn’t go too far to the political Left. Instead, and I quote a savvy political scientist friend here in Australia, “these suburban voters got precisely what they saw and knew, but pretended not to notice.”

This is a president who is barely articulate; who is unable to field two or three consecutive tough questions; and who looks to any disinterested observer to be significantly impaired in terms of his mental facilities. Think back to the sort of press conferences former President Trump fielded and the level of press hostility to him that oozed through the room, day in and day out, with all the back and forth. Were it not for a sort of journalistic praetorian guard around the current president, one that shields him from all but the softest of softball queries—and even these are frequently fumbled and make for excruciatingly embarrassing TV clips down here in Australia—we would all be openly wondering how much longer he could stay in office. This decline was obvious to any observer before last year’s election, of course. Trump Derangement Syndrome may have given lots of voters grounds “not to notice.”

But there is a price to pay for willful blindness. That price is especially high for voters on the Right of the political spectrum, those who very much disliked former President Trump’s coarseness, vulgarity and brawler’s instincts and hoped for a relatively painless return to civility in the political sphere without too much long-term damage. From this observer’s perspective that chimera was never on offer. It was a mirage, a fantasy. And any honest assessment should have concluded that was the case before last year’s election. Indeed, if today’s polls mean anything (an open question), then with Biden now down to below 40 percent approval and completely underwater not just with Republicans but with Independents, buyers’ remorse has set in. Big time. Alas, that is not how elections work. As President Obama made clear (when he won, not when Mr. Trump won), elections have consequences.

I’m with H.L. Mencken on this. Voters deserve to get what they wanted. And they deserve to get it good and hard. For more than a few suburban and NeverTrumper Republicans, I suspect that is precisely how they are getting it at the moment. Whether they can admit as much, to others or to themselves, is a separate question.

A fair enough point, with one crucial issue carefully elided, namely the patently fraudulent 2020 “election,” stolen in front of our very eyes with total impunity in what has to be the all-time record setter for Most Audacious In A Scummy Role. That successful hijacking suggests the need for a revision of Mencken’s classic aphorism, which in full says: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Updated to more precisely reflect contemporary American reality, it should run more along the lines of: American “democracy” is the theory that the common people deserve to get what they’re willing to put up with, good and hard.

That one should hold until such time as the limit on what we’re willing to put up with has been reached and overtopped, at which point everything goes pear-shaped, the more astute bettors cash out and quickly leave the casino.

Doomed

Posted on      by     

Taiwan on its own.

According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently announced, “Just like the overwhelming majority of other countries, Russia views Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. This is the premise we proceed from and will continue to proceed from in our policy.” At the time of this statement, Russian forces were conducting joint naval exercises with Chinese forces in the Pacific—culminating in a 10-ship joint formation sailing through Japan’s Tsugaru Strait on October 18.

This, following a series of unprecedented Chinese military aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s airspace, has rattled Taiwan and America’s other allies in the region, namely Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. During the first week of October, over 150 aircraft, including advanced SU-30 fighters and H-6 heavy bombers, flew into Taiwanese airspace. An unprecedented 56 tactical aircraft penetrated Taiwan’s airspace in a single 24-hour period on October 4, the highest single day total to date.

China has already taken control of multiple islands claimed by these allies in an effort to access vast oil and natural gas resources, as well as project its military power in the contested territorial waters of the South China Sea. China’s ongoing trade dispute with Australia has also ratcheted up tensions in the region.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment has rushed to assure Taiwan and its other allies that the United States intends to honor its regional security agreements. Of late, Joe Biden has publicly pledged to defend the Japanese Senkaku islands, which China claims as its territory.

BWAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The notion of the ever-more-enfeebled FUSA actually leaping into the fray to make war against the ChiComs in defense of our RoC allies is ludicrous, and has been for a while now. Realistically, it’s inconceivable that any president since Reagan at least would have dared to honor the explicit US treaty commitment to act militarily in defense of Taiwan against ChiCom aggression—today, the idea is even more bizarre. For numerous reasons, it’s gone from inconceivable to…well, ludicrous.

Thanks to past U.S. economic and domestic policies, we allowed our manufacturing base to be exported to China. While offshoring American jobs to cheaper labor in China was good for U.S. multinational corporations, it resulted in China effectively capturing the bulk of American industrial capacity for consumer goods. This gives China immense leverage within the U.S. economy.

Look now at the supply disruptions spreading across the United States, which result in no small part from our inability to offload Chinese consumer goods at West Coast ports. Consider how U.S. sanctions against China might create an even greater disruption in the supply of goods that the U.S. no longer has the ability to produce. This dynamic gives China considerable sway with a U.S. political donor class that derives its wealth from Chinese industrial capacity. It makes the idea that the Biden Administration would have the will to impose crippling U.S. sanctions as a check against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan unrealistic.

In contrast to China’s relative position of strength, the world has watched as America lost two wars in our failed Global War on Terror. Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was exceptionally humiliating, not just to America, but also to our allies. It was so bad, the UK parliament held Biden in contempt for his mishandling of the withdrawal. Americans swallowed hard when it was revealed that the U.S. general in charge of the evacuation asked the British SAS commander to stop conducting rescue missions to retrieve UK citizens because it was embarrassing the airport-bound U.S. military. We went on to leave thousands of U.S. citizens behind in Afghanistan with only a shrug of Joe Biden’s shoulders.

Today, the United States is a deeply divided nation on the brink of open internal conflict. The Biden Administration is gleefully running down a list of ill-conceived policies that historically have resulted in civil unrest and rebellion. Oblivious to its own incompetence or the concerns of working-class America, it has labeled half the population domestic extremists, including parents angry that their children are being indoctrinated into woke-Marxist ideology. Just this past week, Biden’s national approval rating hit 38 percent and is dropping rapidly. It’s no secret that he appears to be suffering from cognitive decline and who, exactly, is running the country has yet to be revealed. America is at its weakest point in at least a century, and China, as well as the rest of the world, notices. 

Numerous reasons, as I said, but the boldface bit is the one that dwarves all the others. As the American populace has grown ever more complacent, indecisive, and vacuous, their will to victory—their willingness to even countenance making war at all, for any reason—has proportionately withered as well, in mirror-like reflection. It’s unlikely in the extreme that present-day American lotus eaters in any great numbers would support military action to defend this country.

Taiwan? Shhyeeeaaah, pull the other one, whydon’tcha. It has a bell on it.

Which may actually turn out to be a good thing in the long run. Fact is, Real Americans have much bigger and more pressing issues confronting us right here at home—issues that will have to be dealt with, issues that simply cannot be back-burnered, ignored, or blithely waved away. Hate it for Taiwan and all, but the rip in our national fabric is so profound that it’s no easy thing to define the FUSA as a nation at all anymore, except in the loosest terms. In a great many minds, the Great Schism has already taken place. And in a non-trivial percentage of those, there is little or no desire to knit the country back together again.

With regard to a China-Taiwan conflict, the danger to America does not necessarily come from what happens to Taiwan. The danger comes from how radically the geopolitical status quo in the Pacific might change should China retake Taiwan by force in the face of U.S. opposition—or lack of opposition.

If the United States opposes China and fails to stop its move against Taiwan, then we will have shown ourselves incapable of fulfilling our security agreements in the Pacific.

Which is, y’know, true.

If the United States demurs and abandons Taiwan to the Chinese, then we will have shown that our security agreements are not worth the paper on which they are printed.

Which is also, y’know, true.

Either way, this likely results in the restructuring of alliances in the Pacific away from an impotent or feckless United States to accommodate the new global hegemon—China. The second and third order effects of our losses in the Pacific would reverberate across Europe, particularly in areas threatened by an expansionist Russia…which has opportunistically positioned itself for just such a situation. 

This, too, could be looked at as a good thing from some perspectives, or maybe a not-entirely-disastrous one. The cold reality is that Amerika v2.0 is a paper tiger, a hollowed-out shell whose only resemblance now to the once-mighty military, economic, and geopolitical juggernaut I call America That Was (swiped from the finest TV show ever conceived, natch) is entirely superficial. As Morton points out, every imaginable Taiwan scenario ends badly for this third-rate power, worse for Free Taiwan.

The post-WW2 treaties promising pipsqueak nations a US defensive shield against Commie aggression now only serve to highlight the unpleasant fact that our antecedents wrote a lot of checks that the current generation hasn’t the means to make good on. The sooner our feckless, braggadocious ProPols admit this forthrightly, sit down, and stop running their fat yaps as if it was still 1947 the better I’ll like it. Because the sad delusion of an American colossus permanently astride the globe, omnipotent and unchallengeable, is getting to be pretty embarrassing at this point.

Supply chain SNAFU

Posted on      by     

An industry insider outlines the multifarious problem.

Yesterday I rented a boat and took the leader of one of Flexport’s partners in Long Beach on a 3 hour of the port complex. Here’s a thread about what I learned.

First off, the boat captain said we were the first company to ever rent his boat to tour the port to see how everything was working up close. His usual business is doing memorial services at sea. He said we were a lot more fun than his regular customers.

The ports of LA/Long Beach are at a standstill. In a full 3 hour loop through the port complex, passing every single terminal, we saw less than a dozen containers get unloaded.

There are hundreds of cranes. I counted only ~7 that were even operating and those that were seemed to be going pretty slow.

It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam.

Right now if you have a chassis with no empty container on it, you can go pick up containers at any port terminal. However, if you have an empty container on that chassis, they’re not allowing you to return it except on highly restricted basis.

If you can’t get the empty off the chassis, you don’t have a chassis to go pick up the next container. And if nobody goes to pick up the next container, the port remains jammed.

WIth the yards so full, carriers / terminals are being highly restrictive in where and when they will accept empties.

Also containers are not fungible between carriers, so the truckers have to drop their empty off at the right terminal. This is causing empty containers to pile up. This one trucking partner alone has 450 containers sitting on chassis right now (as of 10/21) at his yards.

This is a trucking company with 6 yards that represents 153 owner operator drivers, so he has almost 3 containers sitting on chassis at his yard for every driver on the team.

He can’t take the containers off the chassis because he’s not allowed by the city of Long Beach zoning code to store empty containers more than 2 high in his truck yard. If he violates this code they’ll shut down his yard altogether.

With the chassis all tied up storing empties that can’t be returned to the port, there are no chassis available to pick up containers at the port.

And with all the containers piling up in the terminal yard, the longshoremen can’t unload the ships. And so the queue grows longer, with now over 70 ships containing 500,000 containers are waiting off shore. This line is going to get longer not shorter.

This is a negative feedback loop that is rapidly cycling out of control that if it continues unabated will destroy the global economy.

Alright how do we fix this, you ask? Simple. And we can do it fast now,

When you’re designing an operation you must choose your bottleneck. If the bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn’t choose it, you aren’t running an operation. It’s running you.

You should always choose the most capital intensive part of the line to be your bottleneck. In a port that’s the ship to shore cranes. The cranes should never be unable to run because they’re waiting for another part of the operation to catch up.

The bottleneck right now is not the cranes. It’s yard space at the container terminals. And it’s empty chassis to come clear those containers out.

In operations when a bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn’t design for it to appear, you must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK!

Miscellaneous side angles I haven’t seen or heard mention of anywhere other than in casual conversations with my brother and several of his coworkers at Horizon Freight:

  • Chassis are extremely scarce currently; my brother has been working only two-three days/week over the last two weeks because there are just too few chassis in Charleston available for use—no chassis, no haulee containers
  • Amazon has taken to reserving way more container space than they need, then offering to resell it to shippers at eight to ten times the usual rate, which adds up to a lot of empty space in a lot of containers
  • Horizon has two dispatchers responsible for assigning chassis and containers to specific drivers who are charged with hauling them out of the Charelston and Savannah ports. These dispatchers are absolutely worn to a frazzle, working frantically to get these containers out of the ports and on the road to their destinations, for a damned good reason: there’s a firm deadline by which each container MUST be removed from the port, usually only two-three days after arrival. After the deadline, the dispatcher her own self gets whacked with a several-thousand dollar fine…compounded EACH AND EVERY DAY said container doesn’t move, applicable to EACH INDIVIDUAL CONTAINER

I repeat: in shutting down entire national economies on a pretext that grows more threadbare each and every day, politicians and bureauweasels have meddled in affairs much too big for them. Contrary to their personal God Complex delusions, the extremely complicated, intricately interdependent, and fragile systems they wilfully fucked up are FAR beyond their meager ability to restart or repair. The unbridled arrogance and conceit of ProPols have created a catastrophe that the entire world can only watch unfold with horror and dread. There is no power on Earth capable of stopping what’s coming now.

Here’s a simple plan that @POTUS and @GavinNewsom partnered with the private sector, labor, truckers, and everyone else in the chain must implement TODAY to overwhelm the bottleneck and create yard space at the ports so we can operate again.

Not one proposal of which plan is ever going to happen.

This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don’t need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.

We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working again. I can’t stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don’t work. Every company selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will fail.

The circulatory system our globalized economy depends has collapsed. And thanks to the negative feedback loops involved, it’s getting worse not better every day that goes by.

I’d be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient at this point.

Nope, nope, nope. One of BRM Peter’s commenters says it concisely and correctly.

government diddling caused this crap storm.

More government diddling will not fix it.

Nailed it. The one positive contribution federal and/or state governments might make here is also the one they’re wholly incapable of making: get the hell out of the way and allow the innumerable moving parts of the system of supply and logistics freely begin the slow and painful process of healing itself. Sadly, tragically for all of us, the self-styled Superior Beings who made this mess will never go along with it; such a thing is constitutionally beyond them, and goes against their nature. Their vanity, their bloated sense of their own importance, their every belief stands in direct opposition to the very concept. Indeed, they would resist any attempt at relaxing their grip on our throats to their dying breath. Which, y’know, can be easily arranged for them, and in fact ought to be.

Elsewhere, Karl digs down to unearth one of the deepest roots of our sorry situation.

I get it that everyone would like to just wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. There are people out there who claim they can — and have. They’re wrong. I may not be the CEO of Flexport but you shall see that going from a 2-stack to either 4 or 6 (depending on approvals) in the trucking company yards will solve nothing; the problem simply does not lie there.

The problem is that all the constraints have produced a labor shortage end to end in various places, including in warehouses, transportation hubs, drivers and similar. As a result the freight is not being unloaded and the empties not being returned on schedule.

When the ship gets here and unloads its several thousand containers those containers must ultimately return to the source to be loaded again. If the cycle is interrupted and there are none to load for the return trip then the source will run out. Unloading more containers into a chain of events that is constrained all the way through does not accelerate the rate of return for the journey back to the source!

You have to return the cycle from unload time to the return of the empty to the port to its expected rate and time in-transit or you do nothing. That means getting rid of the reasons that problem exists – which all revolve around labor and working conditions.

Some of those have been building for quite some time but a hell of a lot of them are external and imposed by governments related to lockdowns, mandates of various sorts and similar. The former ones building for quite some time will take some time to resolve but the others can be removed on an instant basis by the very government entities who placed them.

Phew—transcribing all of Karl’s characteristic bolds, underlines, and italics is hard work. But the man ain’t wrong about the scarcity of willing grunt-workers. Why, one might almost start to wonder whether—after going on two years of lockdowns, business closures, and being paid handsomely to lounge about at home in one’s jammies—this all might possibly be more than happenstance, coincidence, or sheer bad luck. Yeah, I know, I know, excessive paranoia, a ridiculous conspiracy theory, sorry I brought it up.

All the same, though, we might want to ask ourselves: cui bono? Who benefits, that is, from tighter control over individual freedom and mobility; reinforcement of fear, uncertainty, and doubt; making 24-7 surveillance and tracking of the Serf Class much easier; increasing Serf Class dependence and helplessness, among other things? We wonders, yes we wonders.

In the wrong hands Part the Third

Posted on      by     

I’m thinking this will probably be my final post on this topic, since my expectations going forward are as follows:

  1. The armorer chick, being patently unfit for her job, is gonna take the hardest fall, which I consider only meet and just since the lion’s share of the responsibility for this needless tragedy is squarely on her;
  2. Hollywood’s gun-safety record IS incontrovertibly quite good, especially seeing as how such a large proportion of its feature-film output over the last, ohh, seventy or so years has consisted of bang-bang shoot-em-ups of one genre or another; the jaw-slackening hypocrisy of so very many rabid hoplophobes getting filthy rich off of the very guns they abhor, then spending scads of their time, energy, and moolah lecturing people who’ve known more about firearms since they were 12 than any dozen Tinseltown asswarts put together ever will does rankle my baggy old ass some—but in the end, eh, whatcha gonna do; and
  3. The worst ass-rankler of all, at least for me: Baldwin will donate a big chunk of his accumulated wealth from a lengthy career being filmed waving various and sundry E-Ville Guns™ around threateningly to Handgun Control Inc or the Brady Org or some other such outfit, after which TPTB will consider his debt to society paid in full

Being as confident of these developments as I currently am, there just ain’t a whole hell of a lot more that’s worth saying. The final word I’ll leave to Divemedic, with whom I am in total agreement.

I want to make something clear with regards to my disagreement with Aesop’s opinion on the Rusty Baldwin shooting. The disagreement that I have with him is about his opinion on this topic. Yes, he and I have disagreed in the past. We have also agreed on topics in the past. That is the nature of human interaction.

I still believe that he and I agree on more topics than not. Don’t take our little discussion as anything other than a disagreement between colleagues.

I don’t have a problem with him or his blog. It’s the nature of human interaction- we don’t always agree. We also have a tendency to circle the wagons when we want to defend our own opinions, which MUST be the correct opinion, or we wouldn’t have it, would we?

Well said, sir, and seconded from here. Transmission ends.

In the wrong hands Part the Second

Posted on      by     

A plethora of information is emerging on the Baldwin tragedy—and that’s exactly what it is, although frankly I still don’t give two shits about Alec Baldwin’s suffering, and am not likely ever to—and the more that comes out, the worse the whole thing smells.

‘Rust’ crew describes on-set gun safety issues and misfires days before fatal shooting
Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.

The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints about long hours, long commutes and waiting for their paychecks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.

Safety protocols standard in the industry, including gun inspections, were not strictly followed on the “Rust” set near Santa Fe, the sources said. They said at least one of the camera operators complained last weekend to a production manager about gun safety on the set.

Three crew members who were present at the Bonanza Creek Ranch set on Saturday said they were particularly concerned about two accidental prop gun discharges.
Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired two rounds Saturday after being told that the gun was “cold” — lingo for a weapon that doesn’t have any ammunition, including blanks — two crew members who witnessed the episode told the Los Angeles Times.

“There should have been an investigation into what happened,” a crew member said. “There were no safety meetings. There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. All they wanted to do was rush, rush, rush.”

A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires that he sent a text message to the unit production manager. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,” according to a copy of the message reviewed by The Times.

The tragedy occurred Thursday afternoon during filming of a gunfight that began in a church that is part of the old Western town at the ranch. Baldwin’s character was supposed to back out of the church, according to production notes obtained by The Times. It was the 12th day of a 21-day shoot.

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was huddled around a monitor lining up her next camera shot when she was accidentally killed by the prop gun fired by Baldwin.

The actor was preparing to film a scene in which he pulls a gun out of a holster, according to a source close to the production. Crew members had already shouted “cold gun” on the set. The filmmaking team was lining up its camera angles and had yet to retreat to the video village, an on-set area where the crew gathers to watch filming from a distance via a monitor.

Instead, the B-camera operator was on a dolly with a monitor, checking out the potential shots. Hutchins was also looking at the monitor from over the operator’s shoulder, as was the movie’s director, Joel Souza, who was crouching just behind her.

Baldwin removed the gun from its holster once without incident, but the second time he did so, ammunition flew toward the trio around the monitor. The projectile whizzed by the camera operator but penetrated Hutchins near her shoulder, then continued through to Souza. Hutchins immediately fell to the ground as crew members applied pressure to her wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

According to something I read yesterday and can’t seem to find now for whatever reason, the director had called for another take after an already long day, to which Baldwin objected in a joking fashion, pointing the gun at the director and inexplicably pulling the trigger. Maybe so, maybe not so. Anybody who’s spent significant time on film sets—which I have, way more than once, in various roles and situations ranging from what’s known as “talent” to invited guest—knows well enough how grueling the work is, how long the days can be, and how seriously it all wears everybody involved down. Onwards.

Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.

Shooting began on Oct. 6 and members of the low-budget film said they had been promised the production would pay for their hotel rooms in Santa Fe.

But after filming began, the crews were told they instead would be required to make the 50-mile drive from Albuquerque each day, rather than stay overnight in nearby Santa Fe. That rankled crew members who worried that they might have an accident after spending 12 to 13 hours on the set.

Hutchins had been advocating for safer conditions for her team and was tearful when the camera crew left, said one crew member who was on the set.

As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, two of the knowledgeable people said.

One of the producers ordered the union members to leave the set and threatened to call security to remove them if they didn’t leave voluntarily.

“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.

The shooting occurred about six hours after the union camera crew left.

From the sound of things, and as is usually the case, there’s plenty of blame to go around here; Baldwin is hardly the Lone Ranger on that. So stipulated. Nonetheless, I am still not prepared to go anywhere near as far to sympathize with the prick as Andrea Widburg appears to be:

Part of me pities Baldwin a great deal. He was seen weeping outside the sheriff’s office because, while he is an arrogant, entitled, aggressive, obnoxious git, he’s not a killer. His entire self-image is of someone who defends life (never mind that he’s fanatically pro-abortion). Now, though, he’s taken a life, something that will haunt him forever. That deserves compassion because all of us go through life knowing that one stupid, thoughtless moment (perhaps a moment of inattention when driving) could see each of us take a life, too.

True enough. Also, immaterial. Metaphors and analogies, helpful as they can be at times in establishing perspective and broadening our understanding, break down pretty fast in a case like this—all the more so because “cases like this” are in fact extremely rare, if not totally unique. And when it comes to being unstinting with our compassion Baldwin, by his own words, deeds, and untrammeled arrogance has made himself a damned tough sell in ANY case, this one more than any other. For instance:



That is but one example of many Baldwin lectures reviling the 2A and its supporters personally, by no means the harshest and most obnoxious of them either. The sanctimonious putz has made a fortune shooting people in the movies, yet blankly rejects the very idea of anyone but the film industry having access to them, regardless of how learned, experienced, skilled, or responsible in their use they might be.

Well, screw that noise, and screw Alec Baldwin too. Bill joins Aesop in disagreeing with my assessment, most heartily:

On a set, the actor is no more responsible for checking a firearm – and very likely would not be permitted to do so – than you would be if somebody handed you a toaster and expected you to check it for dangerous electrical faults before making toast.

Let me unpack that a bit. Most actors know exactly zippo about firearms. If you handed them a firearm and told them to make sure there were no live rounds in it, they’d probably ask you were to find the bullets in the piece. Or they’d pull the trigger three or four times to see if anything happened. More than a few actors are dumb as goldfish, and couple that low IQ level with ignorance about firearms is a recipe for disaster.

That’s why firearms on a set are always handled and supervised by an armorer or at least a prop master who is responsible for making sure they are safe.

And those people generally do an unbelievably excellent job. I am aware of only three deaths involving the accidental firing of prop guns in the entire history of the business. Considering how many millions of hours of production time we are talking about, you are far, far, far more likely to be killed by a malfunctioning toaster.

Second, a lot of actors, and especially stars, have “people” who do stuff for them. Lots of stuff. I know one megastar whose PA orders for him in restaurants. She follows him around to do things like that for him.

On set, actors have most things done for them. Their job is to act, not fetch, carry, check stuff, certify gun safety, or whatever. To most actors a gun is just a prop, no different than a toaster or a break-bottle for smashing over heads in a fake fight.

As I said before, there is plenty of blame to go around here, and arguments to be put forth over how and where it should be apportioned. That said, I am neither willing nor able to absolve the person who pointed it at someone and then pulled the fucking trigger of his share of it. Bill’s headline contends that “Alex Baldwin Bears No Responsibility For This Shooting.” Sorry, but I simply can NOT go there; in my opinion, that particular bridge is WAY too far for me. For his part, in a recent follow-up post on the matter Aesop says this:

As the Baldwin kerfluffle has illustrated, the shared malfunction by a host of persons reading and commenting hereabouts, and throughout the greater blogosphere, on this exact subject, is best described as thinking everything is YOUR job.

Well, you’re wrong, it’s not, and now we can all go back to whatever we were doing befo….Oh? What’s that? Explain it to you?…heavy sigh

Look, we’ve already covered first aid for any butthurt, so let’s talk turkey here, no offense, nothing personal, and we’re all grown ups.

You, Jasper, and Billy Bob all going shooting at the abandoned quarry is not Alec Baldwin working on a movie set, not even when it’s his production, on a low-budget p.o.s. being filmed in Bumfuck NM.

The lack of a prodigious number of otherwise intelligent people to discern this lies at the root of your problem.

If Jasper or BillyBob get a mite lax with muzzle discipline, or putting their booger hook on the bang switch, you may elect to call it an early day, or not invite them next time. But no one died and left you their Drill Sergeant smokey bear hat and gave you leave to have a boot camp flashback, and most people figure all this out without having it explained to them with a boot to the junkulus.

But somehow, you can’t make the leap from that, to understanding why in hell it’s not ever Baldwin’s (or any other Swinging Richard’s) job to do weapons checks on a movie set, with 40-140 people around.

It might come as a small surprise to some, but I can agree that it is not, never was, and never will be Baldwin’s job to observe the most basic fundamentals of firearm safety before aiming at someone and then pulling the trigger, based entirely on the assumption (!) that others have done their own job competently and completely. So stipulated; as Jesse Jackson used to bellow while speechifying: COMMON GROUND!

But as I see it, it most certainly IS the responsibility of any rational adult, working in whatever industry or profession, to take a moment and check for himself anyhow. Mind, this isn’t preparing lunch for the on-set catering tent, or rehearsing a risky stunt before shooting, or even wiring the lights, cameras &c. What we’re talking about here is a gun, people. Guns are extremely dangerous things, period. They are NOT to be played around with or flippantly mishandled, EVER, lest some innocent party be maimed or killed because of your casual negligence. I supposed it’s possible, just barely, that there might be some benighted Rip Van Winkle sort out there somewhere who, after decades of hysterical propagandizing by the gun-grabber Left—of which Alec Baldwin has been a fully-paid-up cheerleader for many years—is not aware of this. But I very much doubt it.

Aesop’s contention seems to me like a pretty good argument for seeing to it, as a matter of black-letter law, that every last projectile weapon operated by means of any explosive chemical propellant be removed from film industry hands forever. No more guns in the movies—full stop, end of story. Which, hey, I’m good with that. Then again, I’m also in favor of a blanket ban on gun ownership for ALL Leftists, so it may be that my position is a somewhat, ummm, radical one, I admit.

Interestingly enough, Baldwin can’t even fob it all off on his being an ignorant dumbass about handling guns properly, as my boldface below strongly suggests.

It’s unclear what was fired from the firearm, as The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating, telling The Daily Beast that as of Friday afternoon, a forensics report hadn’t been completed. A spokesperson for Rust Movie Productions claimed the gun only contained blank rounds, while IATSE Local 44 said a “live single round was accidentally fired.”

Still, Tobey Bays, a prop and set artist by training and the business agent for IATSE Local 44, explained to The Daily Beast that “a live round” doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a bullet in the chamber.

He said Hollywood propmasters will “only put the amount of blanks into the gun that are meant to be shot in the scene… They’re pretty strict, they’ll always yell out, ‘Gun is hot!’ before they hand it over to the actor.”

However, the source who was on set when Baldwin discharged the prop gun on Thursday said the cast and crew were told it was a “cold” firearm during the rehearsal as they were setting up the framing.

And despite Baldwin having recently gone through a firearm-safety training session, the source said safety protocols were all but ignored by both Baldwin and the responsible production members.

Oof. If true, boy might want to consider lawyering up, I’m thinking. For me, it all still comes down to the fundamentals.

“You never let the muzzle of a weapon cover something you don’t intend to destroy,” said Carpenter, whose New Orleans-based firm has worked on the sets of scores of TV and film productions. “All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.”

Former filmmaker and former US National Shooting Team member Peter Lake put the blame on Baldwin.

“The buck stops with Alec Baldwin on every level,” he told The Post. “It looks very bad for him. At least the captain of the Titanic had the good sense to go down with the ship.”

And that, my friends, is IT. No matter who you are; no matter what your job is and/or is not; no matter how many flunkies you have to take care of things for you, YOU DO NOT EVER—EVER—POINT A GUN AT SOMEONE AND PULL THE TRIGGER WITHOUT CHECKING IT OUT FIRST. Via GFZ, a more intelligent and aware actor named Baldwin says it well:


For my money, Adam is way more talented than Alec too, but feel free to disagree with me on that also, if you absolutely must.

Update! Arthur drives the lesson home. Film-industry types, pay close attention. Take notes, even.

I am kinda obsessive about checking a firearm when I pick it up to make sure it is unloaded. Generally I will check the chamber on a firearm when it is handed to me or I hand it to someone else, even when I literally just checked it a second earlier. It is just a habit I have gotten into as someone who has handled firearms all of my life and in several stages of my professional career been a seller of firearms. Some people think it is a little weird but I don’t care.

So today I was stowing some gear and one of my handguns was in a case. Before I put it into the safe, I reflexively racked the slide even though I knew the gun was empty. 

Clink, a round was in the magazine and chambered.

Now because I am not Alec Baldwin, everything was fine. I was treating the gun as loaded, as always, had it pointed in a safe direction, as always, had my finger away from the trigger, as always. But the gun I knew was unloaded had a round in the magazine.

That is why we check every single time. Better to verify a gun you know is unloaded a hundred times than think that a gun is unloaded when it is not. Don’t get sloppy or lazy, not ever.

Bingo. My own uncle, a highly-decorated former Marine MP and lifelong firearms enthusiast, once nearly shot himself in the leg whilst preparing to disassemble one of those “unloaded” guns for cleaning. I repeat: guns are dangerous. They are NOT to be played around with, regardless of how skilled, knowledgeable, or experienced you may be. You play stupid games with them, you will win stupid prizes. That’s all there is to it—for you, for me, for Alec Baldwin, for every single one of us, no exceptions. And no do-overs, either.

Right back atcha, Slick

Posted on      by     

So how ya liking that sauce there, Gander?

Black students in Georgia were suspended for planning a protest after white students waved a Confederate flag and allegedly used racial slurs
A group of Black students in Georgia was suspended after they planned a protest in response to white students who waved a Confederate flag and reportedly used racial slurs against Black students while at school earlier in the month.

Students at Coosa High School in Rome, Georgia, were captured on video waving the Confederate flag during a spirit day event, but the students did not face disciplinary action from school officials, a student at the school told WGCL-TV.

The incident led other students to plan a protest against racism. The student organizer, Jaylynn Murray, told WGCL-TV that the Confederate flag “is a racist symbol” and “it makes me feel disrespected.”

Aww, did poor widdle snowflake get hims feewings all hurted? Nut up, punk, and get the fuck over it.

A recording of an announcement made over the school intercom last week obtained by the outlet said students should not participate in a protest, warning they’d be “disciplined for encouraging unrest.”

And so they were. Looks like Zero Tolerance for CRT-pimping race-hate mongers is the order of the day at this school, and I for one am all for that.

The protest organizers, comprised of a group of Black, Latinx, and white students, were called to the front office to discuss the demonstration with administrators, the students said, according to the report. During the meeting, the organizers said they argued with school officials over the lack of actions against their classmates who they said used racial slurs against Black students, WGCL-TV reported.

As many MAGA protesters, anti-pAntiFa and -BurnLootMurder counter-protesters, and other Real Americans have learned—via having been beaten bloody while cops looked on and did nothing, or being hauled off and gulagged indefinitely without benefit of legal counsel or bail—life ain’t fair, Buttercup. Deal with it.

Then, the students said administrators suspended only the Black students involved in organizing the protest, even though other non-Black students involved told WGCL-TV they had also been disruptive and argumentative with school administrators.

Ibid, fuckface.

“They didn’t suspend me and I was yelling and loud. It’s because I’m white,” student Lilyan Huckaby told the outlet.

I suggest you cavil and kvetch less and count your blessings more, young ‘un. Might also want to consider cracking a book now and then, which will accrue to your benefit much more than getting suspended, locked up, and/or doing hard time ever will.

“We’re not allowed to wear Black Lives Matter shirts or the LGBTQ flag, but kids can have Confederate flags, and they have said nothing,” a student told the outlet.

Which is precisely as it should be, far as I’m concerned. But hey, here’s a novel idea: how about you kids just drop the whole “protest” gig altogether and spend the school day attending to your fucking studies, eh? I know I run the risk of making the baby Jesus cry by making such an outlandish, impractical, and unfair suggestion, but you kids are in school for a goddamned reason. And “protest” DEFINITELY ain’t it.

A video posted by WGCL-TV’s Hayley Mason on Oct. 8 shows students protesting and shouting: “No Justice, No Peace.”

Ahh, exactly what I was waiting for from these little pukes: the direct and explicit threat of violence and disorder as redress for imaginary grievances. It’s as predictable as the sunrise any time they don’t get their way.

The indispensible Patrick Henry

Posted on      by     

Having only recently posted a copious excerpt from his momentous “Give me liberty or give me death” address, I can’t argue with the proposition.

After finishing a biography titled, Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty, by John Kukla, I am convinced that Mr. Henry, Colonel Henry, nay, Governor Henry is the real father of our country instead of the beloved General, President George Washington. As I become more familiar with the particular history of Old Dominion and her role and that of her leading citizens in the first war for independence, it seems that Patrick Henry was the actual indispensable man. It was his writings that first dared name the final object while others were still calling it treason. It was his resolutions that prepared Virginia to become economically independent and arm herself when England’s aggression first became apparent. It was his conviction and energy that moved the goal of independence forward among a people whose timidity and lack of vision made them reluctant to pursue it.

In cannot be disputed that Virginia lead the revolution, so it must follow that one of her leading residents must be credited with spearheading the charge, defining its course, and seeing it through to fruition. I submit that it was the unchallenged leader of Virginia at the time; the man whose influence trumped all others, Patrick Henry, who was the real author of an independent America. Neither Thomas Jefferson, nor George Washington held positions with influence great enough to rival Henry during the true formative years of early American government. Patrick Henry’s education, experience, talents, and temperament gave him more credibility in the colonies than any other man. Jefferson may have written the final founding documents of the country, but before Jefferson was Henry, paving the way. Washington may have taken the helm when the new constitution was in place, but it was during his years of leadership that the principles of independence saw immediate decay.

No doubt Henry’s greatest talents were in law and legislation. He had no rival when it came to articulating and persuading through the written word and oratory how the rights of men were to be upheld, and a significant amount of his contributions came during his years serving as a burgess in Virginia and on various legislative committees. His career as a lawyer gave him experience in the judiciary sphere and unique resilience when it came to discussion and debate of the issues of the day that many of his peers lacked. Neither was he was devoid of military knowledge and even reluctantly served in a military command when the thrust of the independence movement turned to combat maneuvers in Virginia. He was willing to serve wherever the cause needed him.

At the conclusion of the war and as attention turned to augmenting the government connecting the states, Patrick Henry stayed alert and informed in order to be prepared to protect the liberty of the people when changes were proposed.

And what relationship should my proposed ‘Father of our Country’ have to the adopted Constitution? Ever faithful to principles of liberty, he naturally opposed it. Regardless of the promises and assurances given by its proponents, Patrick Henry was the one who prophetically saw its flaws and the abuses that were inevitable. Perhaps it was his superior ability to observe and judge the hearts of the people around him that allowed him to see that the Constitution had too much potential to be construed by imperfect human nature. He knew that Virginia’s sovereign happiness would be destroyed by being under the same rule as regions different and hostile to her culture. He was right and his perception deserves to be acknowledged.

Why do men like Jefferson, Madison, and Washington take center stage? Similar to the fate of the South after the ‘Civil War’, those that won the war wrote the history. The Federalists won the ratification debate and became major players in the new government. Henry recedes into Virginia history working to remedy the threats to Liberty instead of taking the national limelight. When this man said, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” they were not just idle words.  He truly meant that Liberty was more important than anything else, even union, and he proved to be its greatest advocate until his death. Regardless of what America has become today, Patrick Henry represents its true spirit, the protection of individual rights, and the best of what it should be; free and independent states.

This short piece is from the Abbeville Institute, whose site I became aware of not long ago. It appears to be a top-notch resource for articles not only on America’s Founding, but also for current events; ideology and philosophy; and Southern-specific political and cultural history as well. Top-notch enough, in fact, that at present I have three more of their articles sitting in open tabs, awaiting their appearance here as soon as I can make time to git ‘er done. Until then, into Ye Olde CF Blogrolle with ye, AI.

Update! Okay, I’m gonna shirk my sworn duty to you folks a wee mite and commend your attention to these two excellent Abbeville posts without any commentary from me: this one, an in-depth account of the rise of representative government in Virginia and the men involved in its creation; and this one, a review of the first book-length treatment ever published on Spencer Roane, son in law of Patrick Henry and a staunch defender of Jeffersonian principle who has fallen into undeserved obscurity.

In the wrong hands

Posted on      by     

Waitwaitwait…WHUT?!?

Alec Baldwin “Discharged” Prop Gun That Killed ‘Rust’ Cinematographer & Injured Director On Set; Actor Questioned And Released – Update

Ho. Lee. SHIT.

UPDATED with more law enforcement information: The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department confirmed Thursday night that Alec Baldwin “discharged” the prop gun that killed one Rust crew member and injured director Joel Souza on the set of the Western feature film on location in New Mexico.

Director of photography Halyna Hutchins, 42, died not long after being transported to a hospital in Albuquerque, NM this afternoon. Souza, 48, remains in a local hospital; his condition is unknown.

“Mr. Baldwin was questioned by investigators and released,” a Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department official told Deadline this evening. “No arrests or charges have been filed.”

No, of course not. Unlikely there ever will be. Meanwhile, responsible, well-trained teenager Kyle Rittenhouse faces a very uncertain future at best, having A) shot someone in as clear-cut a case of self-defense as can be imagined, and B) no helpful connections among the wealthy, famous, and/or powerful, in sharp contrast to the unhinged asshole Baldwin. From the Santa Fe SD’s official statement:

Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Bonanza Creek Ranch movie set of the western “Rust”, October 21, 2021, when an 911 caller reported a shooting on the set.

The sheriff’s office confirms that two individuals were shot on the set of Rust. Halyna Hutchins, 42, director of photography and Joel Souza, 48, director, were shot when a prop firearm was discharged by Alec Baldwin, 68, producer and actor.

Ms. Hutchins was transported, via helicopter, to University of New Mexico Hospital where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel. Mr. Souza was transported by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical center where he is undergoing treatment for his injuries.

This investigation remains open and active. No charges have been filed in regard to this incident. Witnesses continue to be interviewed by detectives.

Baldwin, natch, is one of innumerable sanctimonious Hollywood gun-grabbers who flaunt their shameless hypocrisy by creating, acting in, promoting, and personally profiting from one guns ‘n’ gore-drenched feature film after another. Baldwin’s readily obvious ignorance and recklessness when it comes to the proper handling of firearms is even more appalling in light of his extensive record of violence, abuse, and over-entitled obstreperousness (sanitized as “a long history of fiery behavior” in the linked article).

And now, two guiltless people have been shot, one of them killed, by this “fiery” prick, waving a loaded gun around in total disregard for the safety of others nearby. How long will it be, I wonder, before we’re treated to the BLOCKBUSTER interview wherein he whines and pules at narcissistic length about how the REAL victim here is…Alec Fucking Baldwin.

(Via GP)

Putting it straight

Posted on      by     

Not sure where I ran across this one—it’s been just sitting quietly on my desktop for days now, waiting for me to make some P-shop adjustments and then put it to good use here—and I can’t say I know who this Langan fellow might be, either. But I dunno, the part I highlighted in blue just tickled me no end.

Don’t hold back, Chris, tell us how you really feel.

CF Archives

Categories

Comments policy

NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.

If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.

Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.

Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum

Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

Subscribe to CF!

Support options

Shameless begging

If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:

Correspondence

Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc

All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender

Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

Fuck you

Kill one for mommy today! Click to embiggen

Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle

Best of the best

Finest hosting service

Image swiped from The Last Refuge

2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

RSS feed

RSS - entries - Entries
RSS - entries - Comments

Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx

Copyright © 2026