Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Remember when

Posted on February 3, 2021February 3, 2021 by Mike

Then: statesmen. Now: career politicians.

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests”, I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

Barry Goldwater, of course, whose 1964 defeat-by-smearjob qualifies as possibly the most damaging missed opportunity this poor country ever inflicted on itself. He was a fount of pithy, memorable quotations, some of them expressing viewpoints that might not always be quite what one would expect. For instance:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

And:

You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.

It’s not at all difficult to find more in that unexpected vein, which still doesn’t detract from the good stuff:

A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.

I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.

The material and spiritual sides of man are intertwined; that it is impossible for the State to assume responsibility for one without intruding on the essential nature of the other; that if we take from a man the personal responsibility for caring for his material needs, we take from him also the will and the opportunity to be free.

Such, then, is history’s lesson, which Messrs. Acheson and Larson evidently did not read: release the holders of state power from any restraints other than those they wish to impose upon themselves, and you are swinging down the well-traveled road to absolutism. The framers of the Constitution had learned the lesson. They were not only students of history, but victims of it: they knew from vivid, personal experience that freedom depends on effective restraints against the accumulation of power in a single authority.

Most important of all: in our anxiety to “improve” the world and insure “progress” we have permitted our schools to become laboratories for social and economic change according to the predilections of the professional educators. We have forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit the cultural heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to so train the minds of the new generation as to make them capable of absorbing ancient learning and applying it to the problem of its own day.

As the public grows more and more cynical, the politician feels less and less compelled to take his promises seriously.

The Conservative also recognizes that the political power on which order is based is a self-aggrandizing force; that its appetite grows with eating. He knows that the utmost vigilance and care are required to keep political power within its proper bounds.

One of the last of the real-deal conservative statesmen, Goldwater never did make it to the White House. And now, no true conservative ever will again. GP hints at one of the reasons why.

Remember the good old days when we could have serious discussions about the constitutional limits of government, and if the myriad government programs we have put in place actually met the constitutional requirement? And how much we would be able to reduce the size and scope of government, and how the first priority of the government was to protect the freedoms and liberty of American citizens?

Yeah, me neither. That is to say, I would dearly like to get back to the point where we could talk about things like this, but we are far beyond this. In fact, we are not even within shouting distance of it. Our disagreements with progressives are not over the size and scope of government, but down lower, way lower, down at some basic, fundamental level where questions about the very nature of men and things must be resolved.

Well, that and them wanting us dead. That has to be resolved, too.

Oh, it will be…one way or another. As it happens, another visionary leader had a few words to say himself on the topic.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

The frightening is that nowadays one can only wonder just how many of us are left who would agree with that last proposition.

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on February 3, 2021February 23, 2021 by Mike

Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Ol’ Remus: now more than ever

Posted on February 3, 2021February 3, 2021 by Mike

I sure do miss that guy.

Making predictions is like dressing in a clown costume and handing meringue pies to passers by. We all do it even though the future is not merely unknown but unknowable. Ask the dinosaurs of 66 million and 33 years ago—Alvarez’s date was published in 1980—how the beach party scheduled for the next day at Chicxulub worked out. Oh that’s right, you can’t, they were all flash-barbequed. So much for simple continuity, much less long term extrapolation. That said, we can predict with sufficient confidence that a truck falling off a cliff will hit bottom, and pretty much when and where. If it doesn’t, we have bigger problems than a predictive miss.

Predictions, if they’re to be understood at all, are to be understood backwards. They comment on the present without directly, you know, commenting on the present. The commenting part is not optional. It is in fact inescapable. Most science fiction is also commentary, the time displacement or alternate reality being bedazzlement to reorient the reader. It’s calculated to evade his prepositioned defenses long enough for The Message to get through intact. Movies are less subtle, we willingly check our disbelief at the door, and it remains suspended unless something blatant disquiets it.

Plain ol’ predictions are more simple minded, more the “trouble with a T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for POOL” school of commentary, an exercise in connecting dots most of which don’t actually exist. Finally, predictions are like subatomic particles, each one has its anti-particle, both spring from the same source, both are equally valid—and equally not valid. Pollyannas and noble thinkers hew to the one, the pragmatists and battle scarred the other. With all this in mind, or not, we begin.

Constitutional fundamentalism will dominate the 21st century like the New Deal and the New Left dominated the 20th. The one party two-party system is already understood to be profoundly incestuous and irredeemably corrupt. Worse, DC’s actions say it believes the populace to be its enemy. The populace finds less reason to doubt them every day, so DC’s blatant disregard for natural rights and Constitutional guarantees is being challenged as never before, and mere accommodation at the margins is laughably insufficient for the growing ranks of the newly converted.

The movement grossly underestimates itself. To their credit, DC knows better. The ruling class understands this administration may be the last of the wooly mammoths. They’re not looking to defeat constitutionalism, they’re looking to survive it and dominate it. Look for the patricians to decorate the lampposts with their own cadets in a dramatic lunge for absolution and acceptance.

The next Great Depression is happening now. As in the ‘thirties, everything is getting better with the single exception of everything. The stock market as a price discovery mechanism is defunct, Detroit and three dozen or so smaller municipal bankruptcies have shown Munis are no longer credible, and the Federal Reserve has gone about as far into the marshlands as it can and found—more marshland. Now the final notice is in the mail.

Look for rising interest rates to tank the economy, and suddenly so. It’s the same leverage used for the bogus rampup, except working in reverse with a gravity assist. Look for a 25 to 35 per cent drop in real GDP from here, an unexampled calamity. Also expect dollar emergencies to come closer together until they drag it into outright repudiation. DC’s clout and credibility rest squarely on the dollar. Where it goes, they go. All else is blather. Even telephone tappers don’t work for nothing.

It’s said every agency wants to be a police force, and every police force wants to be an army. This is a spectacularly bad idea. In the beginning the municipal police were manned with casual labor in the lower reaches, little more than bailiffs with street duty. Professional law enforcement meant the sheriff—originally: the shire reeve—one of two ancient offices inherited from England, the other being the coroner. There were no police when the Constitution was ratified. Over time they’ve come close to the internal standing army art the founders feared and warned against, and with creeping federal captivity, an army of national occupation.

The schisms within the police over this, and between the populace and the police, are deepening proportionally. In DC’s mind the necessity for an open transformation is getting urgent. Look for a Night of the Long Knives during some crisis or another in the coming years, to purge rogue elements and promote efficiency, natch. Then look for trouble when the people understand the thin blue line has melded with the thick blue line and “protect and defend” means protecting and defending DC—from the people.

There’s every reason to believe the 21st century will be as eventful as the 20th. It’s foolish to expect good outcomes, much less depend on them. Even this little distance in time shows the last century was about Great Leaders building make believe worlds and forcing everybody to live in them until they either died from the consequences or the regime did. It’s no coincidence modern states use prodigious resources to count heads and keep tabs, or that survivalists think a lot about escape and evasion.

In the west the first years of the 21st century have been about disengagement. Much of “collapse” doomers point to is disengagement without sanctioned reengagement elsewhere. The slo-mo dissolution of the EU and back-to-the-land survival communities are examples from the macro and micro ends of the scale. But a trend does not a future make. The future is made the same way a glacier is made, one snowflake at a time. From there on, where it goes is up to the glacier.

Aside from being a true visionary, Remus also had a beautiful way with the language, didn’t he? Since I couldn’t find any way to excerpt it without blunting the overall impact, I just lifted the thing wholesale from WRSA, for which I extend my humblest apologies. In a way, I’m happy that Ol’ Remus didn’t live to witness the current flea circus. On the other hand, though, we could surely use a man of his extraordinary gifts along about now, even moreso in the dark, dark days to come.

Outsider trading

Posted on February 2, 2021February 2, 2021 by Mike

Clown car, clown country, clown world.

If America is a clown country, the ruling class on Wall Street, along with their ruling class friends in Washington, are driving the clown car.

Enter Reddit.

You might have noticed that the suits are very upset this week. That’s because anonymous Redditors, while presumably brushing the Cheeto dust off their laptop keyboards, decided to do a little bit of stock speculation.

They had no fancy tools, no quantitative analysis, no Bloomberg terminals, and they’re certainly not members of the elite class who are entitled to engage in such sophisticated business.

What they did have was unbridled rage and disdain for the drivers of the clown car, and when they found a way to exploit them, they hijacked the clown car for themselves and took it for an epic joyride.

But if there’s anything the ruling class hates, it’s losing money—especially to a bunch of unwashed punks who were laughing in their faces while they sent Melvin Capital hurtling towards bankruptcy. In an instant, the rightful owners of the clown car demanded it back.

You see, only fancy hedge fund managers—members of the Wall Street ruling class—are allowed to decide the value of a stock. Those hedge fund managers decided the value of GameStop, a brick and mortar retailer, was very little. Hence the massive short position. They were allowed to short the stock as they pleased, which of course, in turn, continued to drive down the value of the stock, helping their positions. They knew what they were doing. Their friends at other hedge funds knew it, too, and took full advantage, pummeling GameStop into the ground.

But when Reddit decided the value of GameStop, a cutting-edge video game distribution company, was worth $350 per share (or at least worth enough to watch hedge fund managers cry, which is a hilarious source of entertainment) they were banned from purchasing the stock on almost every platform.

In our clown country, only the ruling class is allowed to win. If the ruling class is not winning, it will simply change the rules of the game.

Matt Taibbi takes the piss:

The only thing “dangerous” about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter. That bit about investigating this as a “pump and dump scheme” to push prices away from their “fundamental value” is particularly hilarious. What does the Washington Post think the entire stock market is, in the bailout age?

America’s banks just had maybe their best year ever, raking in $125 billion in underwriting fees at a time when the rest of the country is dealing with record unemployment, thanks entirely to massive Federal Reserve intervention that turned a crash into a boom. Who thinks the “fundamental value” of most stocks would be this high, absent the Fed’s Atlas-like support in the last year?

In other words, it was all well and good for investment banks and executives of phoney-baloney companies to gorge themselves on funhouse profits on a funhouse economy, but when amateurs decided to funnel just a bit of this clown show into their own pockets, finance pros wailed like the grave of Adam Smith had been danced upon.

GameStop has prompted more pearl-clutching than any news story in recent memory. Expert after grave-faced expert has marched on TV to tell Reddit traders that markets are complicated, this isn’t a game, and they wouldn’t be doing this, if they really understood how things work.

“I’m not sure everybody fully understands what’s happening here,” was the melancholy comment on CNBC of Wall Street’s famed fluffer-in-chief, Andrew Ross Sorkin. The author of Too Big to Fail added in pedagogic tones that while this “stick it to the man moment” might feel good, betting up the value of GameStop above Delta Airlines just isn’t right, because “there are no fundamentals here.”

Fundamentals? How much does Sorkin think his exalted Delta Airlines would be worth now, if the Fed hadn’t stopped its death plunge last March? How much would any of the airlines be worth in the Covid age, with their fleets of mothballed jets? What a joke!

Furthermore, everybody “understands” what happened with GameStop. Unlike some other Wall Street stories, this one isn’t complicated. The entire tale, in a nutshell, goes like this. One group of gamblers announced, “Fuck you!” Another group announced back: “No, fuck YOU!”

That’s it. Or, as one market analyst put it to me this morning, “A bunch of guys made a bet, got killed, then doubled and tripled down and got killed even more.”

He digs into the real nitty-gritty of the thing, and it’s worth a read if you’re interested. But for me, “No, fuck YOU!” is all I need to know, and t’will suffice. Anything that reduces The Power to bitching and boo-hoo’ing this way, hey, I’m good with it.

Things are tough all over, kid

Posted on February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 by Mike

Hoft got a letter from a reader in Ireland. I’ll interject myself here and there in this post, not out of orneriness cruelty or anything, but to try to explain a aspects that seem to have eluded him.

Hate to say it, Mr. Hoft – You fought the good fight, and alas it did not go your way. I like you was hoping for a Trump administration no matter how imperfect at the very least it would have preserved many core values dear to us all. Sad to say it appears the spawn of hell has now taken over not only congress but the White House too. My heart is saddened for the decent American people that desire to make your country great again, God knows the entire world needs a strong and honorable America but sad to relate what has happened in your country has made you and the democratic idea the laughing stock of the world; what a loss to mankind. Satan is now loose on the world like never before aided and abetted by Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Cuomo, Schiff, and many RINOs, assisted by their supportive cohorts within the mass media and big tech.

Minor quibble: the “spawn of hell” didn’t take over Congress and the WH. The WH they took back; Congress, they never really lost at all.

These people have no shame, no sense of decency, no honor, and no loyalty to your Constitution and Bill Of Rights.

You expect too much of the hellspawn, I’m afraid, although your other assessment of their “character” is certainly on point. After all, how can one feel loyalty to a Constitution one actively loathes, and wishes to see destroyed?

I live in Ireland, I’m a patriotic Irishman, I believe in God and try to live my life according to God’s Will but it’s getting harder with the passing of each day.

Not an accident, not a coincidence, not happenstance. Part of a plan.

All my life I never felt hate or malice towards any man but now as I look around me and observe what is going on in our world particularly in America I am hard-pushed to contain those malignant emotions.

Be not ashamed, laddie-buck. When men have repeatedly shown themselves to be profoundly, pridefully evil, it is no less than the solemn duty of any decent, honorable human being to feel hatred and malice towards them. Any leavening of the appropriate utter revulsion for such besmirches one’s own soul.

It seems also that our religious leaders and churches have deserted us all, when we need them most they are silent in the face of this pervasive evil.

Again, it’s far worse than you think. Too many of them are actively in league with it.

We need a wake-up call in Ireland also, American big tech rules the roost over here and our weak-kneed politicians are forever kowtowing to their whims and demands.

They aren’t weak-kneed, and I do badly wish otherwise right-thinking people on both your side of the pond and our own would stop saying it. Thinking of them as “cowards” or “gutless” boobs trapped in a repetitious pattern of “failure” ascribable to a personal flaw—rather than the fully-conscious acts of treachery and collusion they really are—provides an excuse for the deceitful scoundrels that is far more charitable than they deserve. They are co-conspirators, colleagues, and clients. Or maybe “employees” might be more apt. But “weak-kneed”? “Cowards”? The brazen audacity of their corrupt skullduggery puts paid to that silly notion all by its lonesome.

The liberties and freedoms that our forefathers died for are now erased and sadly forgotten, we as a people need to raise our voices once again. For example, Google interfered openly and without any objections been raised by our politicians with our referenda on Gay Marriage and Abortion. What we treasured most as a nation – family and the sanctity of human life have now been consigned to the dustbin of time.

Not accident, not coincidence, not happenstance. Part. Of. A. PLAN.

The European Courts decreed that Apple Computers owed the Irish Exchequer over 14 Billion euros in unpaid taxes and what did our government do it contested the court’s ruling for and on behalf of Apple, what power do they have over us ????, I could cite crazy examples like this all day long but I’ll refrain from doing so lest my head explodes. FaceBook another criminal organization along with Twitter, and a host of the other world’s biggest big tech companies alongside banking and investment groups are all headquartered in Dublin, not for the benefit of the Irish Economy but for their own benefit as each and every one of them has sweetheart deals regarding tax with the Irish Exchequer. Sometimes I wonder is Dublin one of the biggest criminal enterprises in the world, controlled and run by the American Chamber of Commerce situated in Dublin.

One of the biggest? Oh, absolutely not. Whether we’re talking land mass or population, the Emerald Isle has a lot of very stiff competition in the criminal-government department, several of which kleptocracies are much, MUCH bigger.

I digress, my apologies, it was not my intention to burden you with the problems in my country but you must realize that what happens in America always directly impacts my country.

That’s the bright side, see: as FUSA’s collapse hastens and deepens at the greedy hands of its own feckless, clueless rulers, its influence and importance will similarly diminish. Eventually, Amerika V2.0 will be about as relevant globally as any other Third World banana republic. Its desperate floundering and flapping about will be of no use; eventually, the raging seas of Matters Too Big For It will drag the once-mighty nation under, and it will die the death.

That is why I’m saddened by the outcome of what clearly is a stolen election, a country with a fraudulent President whose name I will not mention because it sickens me to do so has lost a magnificent opportunity to set a lot of things right not just for you but for us also.

We can’t really be said to have “lost” the opportunity; actually, we spurned it, we discarded it. To our eternal discredit, alas, and to our great cost as well. Now the country that passively sat back and allowed the thieves to get away with their crime scot-free will get exactly what it deserves—no more, no less.

What they voted for

Posted on January 31, 2021January 31, 2021 by Mike

Good. And. Hard.

Don’t know if it’s for real or not. But I desperately hope that it is.

Next, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh:

Heh. That delicate, far-off sound you’re straining to hear is the world’s smallest violin as it plays Hearts And Flowers, expressing my sympathy level for all China Joe-voting idiots suddenly waxing all stunned and dismayed at getting PRECISELY what they voted for. Enjoy your palatial new Tent Homes in a Fauciville near you, assholes.

Speaking of Faucivilles: some of y’all may already know that I’ve spent almost my entire adult life supplementing my perennially pitiful income as a professional writer. The overwhelming majority of my work over lo, these many years has been political essays, with the occasional history- or music-related article, celebrity interview, or random humor piece sprinkled in here and there just to stave off the monotony. I even tried my hand at an autobiographical novel a few years back, at the insistence of several good friends and relatives. I managed to get a bit under three chapters into the thing before having to admit I was in way over my head and giving it up as a bad job.

Oh, and then there was my stint writing porn “letters to the editor” for various Bob Guccione periodicals, about which the less said etc. Who knows, though; I might just decide to do a tell-all about that someday too. Turns out there’s a lot to tell, surprisingly enough. I got that gig via the influence and connections of my dear departed brother Chris Pfouts, another pro scribe who also happened to be one of the best damned writers I’ve even been fortunate enough to know personally.

On my arduous journey through the killing thickets of writerdom I’ve commited one (count ’em, 1) act of true, honest tp goodness journalism—available for perusal using the Leatherballs menu link above;the Myrtle Beach Goodbye piece, should you be at all interested—back when I was working for Outlaw Biker. Now I’ve decided to embark on a second foray into the treacherous toils of Real Journalism, chronicling the incredible blossoming of one of those Fauciville tent-cities becoming increasingly familiar in decrepit urban shitholes all across the “nation.”

It started at the triangle-shaped island where Church Street splits off from southbound North Tryon, which suddenly became host to a small encampment of around fifteen or twenty tents just a few months back. From there the disgusting, garbage-strewn atrocities have multiplied, now engulfing very nearly every last square inch of available ground on the northern quadrant of downtown Charlotte.

Having worked for many years in the downtown CLT area, the sight of homeless sidewalk-dwellers is nothing new to me. But I have never, ever seen anything remotely like this. And it’s by no means the filthy stewbums, crackheads, and mentally-disturbed wretches, mostly Negroes, that we’ve all become familiar with. I know of at least one young-ish white woman with two small children in tow out there too, her overall appearance disheveled but not downright grungy…yet. I’m seeing a rapidly increasing number of others who are similarly outside the bounds of familiar stereotype, looking more like shell-shocked recent arrivals rather than the irretrievably dysfunctional habitues of the shelters and street grates.

What I’m NOT seeing is any local media coverage of this mind-boggling surge of homelessness, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. “Growing armies of the homeless” media pity-parties, after all, only come along to monopolize tee-wee “news” broadcasts and newspapers when there’s a Republican in the White House. They’re like those old “Grim milestone” body count tallies that were ubiquitous back when “journalists” had Dubya the Genocidal Chimperor’s neck to hang ’em around; maybe you noticed how, despite launching deadly military adventures of every stripe so long as there was no perceivable US interest at stake, the Ogabe junta nonetheless found itself unburdened by the kind of saturation coverage used to hound and hinder his hapless predecessor. Probably just coincidence, I’m sure.

If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself, I suppose. So first chance I get over the next cpl-three days, I’ma go take a few photos of the wreckage. From a distance, that is; I don’t plan on interviewing any of the residents, since what folks used to quaintly call “hobo jungles” are known for being veritable petri dishes for the cultivation of exotic, fatal diseases, as well as the random knifings, rapes, beatings, and sundry mayhem common therein—none of which I have any desire to be subjected to. I’ll get the pics and write a little something up for posting in another day or two.

The Beast at Tanagra

Posted on January 26, 2021January 26, 2021 by Mike

Sokath, his eyes open.

I sure wish I had not learned so much over the last five years. In retrospect, five short years ago seems almost like Mayberry. Here are some important things that I didn’t know five years ago or now.

There actually is a Deep State, and those who constitute it really do not honor the election results or the will of the people.

There really appear to be lawless elements within the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who are not accountable for their crimes and are thus above the law.

The fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, really is unaccountable to the “unwashed masses.”

Many of our top military command, along with many in the military-industrial complex, don’t always hate wars. There’s a lot of money and many promotions to be made during a time of war. The last four years saw no new wars and even troops coming home. For some, that is bad for business.

Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are no longer works of fiction, but prophecies.

It’s a fairly long list, each item true and accurate, undeniably important too, but…DUDE. You honestly didn’t know all this until five years ago? That must have been one hellaciously tremendous rock you were hiding under all those years, eh?

The good old days of just five short years ago sure do make us nostalgic for Mayberry. Trouble is, we now must decide, how are we to respond with what we now know?

True also. The serious suckage comes in with the grim realization that, after the dismal failure of the soap, ballot, and jury boxes, there’s really only one response with even a ghost of a chance of succeeding. Tragically, that response does NOT involve “voting harder” at them—which actually amounts to re-resorting to Box #2 knowing full well that it already failed us once. For more on that, please refer to Einstein’s (perhaps erroneously attributed) definition of insanity.

For any non-ST/TNG people out there who found them puzzling, the explanation for my title and opening line is here.

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on January 26, 2021February 3, 2021 by Mike

Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Control over power

Posted on January 20, 2021January 20, 2021 by Mike

Muscle car power, that is.

The first (method for getting rid of muscle cars—M) was to strangle them via emissions controls they couldn’t comply with – and didn’t, at first. Those first generation muscle cars of the ‘60s and early-mid-‘70s all had engines designed back in the ‘50s – i.e,. designed without emissions control in mind at all. The only way to make them “compliant” with the emissions regs passed decades after the fact was to cripple them by grafting clumsy emissions controls onto them.

These made them run poorly – and gradually killed off the muscle, too.

It only took four years – from the passage in 1970 of the Clean Air Act – to eliminate literally every muscle car except the last one, which happened to be a Pontiac, too. It was the 1974 Trans-Am equipped with the 290 horsepower SD-455 V8. Just a few hundred made it through the noose and by the following year – 1975 – the Trans-Am’s strongest engine was a 185 horsepower 400 V8 geezing through a catalytic converter and single exhaust made to look like two.

But just like the Terminator rebooting himself after receiving a shotgun blast to the guts, the muscle car only seemed dead. Gradually, performance began to return. Clean performance, too – via engines designed to be “compliant” and powerful.

By the ’90s, performance had returned to what it had been in the late ’60s and soon exceeded it.

So that had to be stopped, too.

This time, the method applied was unanswerable. Federal fuel economy fatwas descended. It no longer mattered that muscle wasn’t dirty. It now had to be fuel-sippy and that is like making a ribeye without the fat.

The fuel economy fatwas also served to attack mass-market large cars, which went the way of the muscle car.

By shifting the meaning of fuel efficiency to mean “emissions” once again – though this time, not pollution. The new meaning is “greenhouse gasses,” which don’t smog the air or foul the lungs but are asserted to change the climate.

Whether it does or does not is a matter for another column.

What it unquestionably will do is achieve the goal which has been their goal since at least the 1960s. That goal, of course, is to get rid of not just the muscle car, not only the large car and not merely the SUV but every car.

By making it impossible to make them compliant. So as to get people into other forms of transportation, under their control.

Regardless of what they may say, control is ultimately what it’s really all about—each and every time, without exception, whatever the issue or context. The Progtard lust for absolute, untrammeled power is in full effect 24/7/365, a sort of Universal Constant that goads them in a mindlessly eternal quest for MORE.

They never sleep; they never relent; and they never, ever, ever stop. It’s a resounding testament to the adaptability of the internal combustion engine, as well as to the creative genius of American auto engineers, that workarounds have somehow been found to blunt the bitter Leftist assault on the venerable American muscle car and the rebellious freedom they so perfectly represent. So far, anyway. It’s no mystery why Proggy hates them so fanatically, and wants them gone for good.

Eyes on

Posted on January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 by Mike

So this happened.

That’s our esteemed colleaugue Wes over at NC Renegade, enjoying an unscheduled and unsolicited visit from The Man. If you scroll down through the comments, you’ll see that he is hardly alone in that distinction. To his great credit, Wes seems to have conducted himself quite admirably, handling a seriously dangerous situation with backbone and finesse. Good on ‘im for that.

But with that in mind, and having for years seen all kinds of dot-gov IP’s in the CF server logs back when I used to check ’em, I feel it’s high time for me to rethink a few things, maybe do a little attitude-adjusting. Yep, starting now it’s a brand new day and a brand new way, so y’all are gonna be seeing some changes around this hogwallow, people, starting in 3…2…1…

Probably the last time I’ll be trotting out this deathless tune, more relevant now than it ever was before.

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on January 17, 2021January 26, 2021 by Mike

Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

A fitting tribute

Posted on January 16, 2021January 16, 2021 by Mike

Last night I made mention of Bon Scott, wondering whether or not he actually did play bagpipes. Turns out he did. That’s pretty cool all right. But wait, it gets even cooler.

AC/DC’s Bon Scott may hold bagpipes in new statue
A STATUE honouring former AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, to be erected in his home town, will feature the Highway to Hell star clutching a set of bagpipes – even though the instrument only figured on one AC/DC track – it has been proposed.

Plans to erect the monument to the singer in Kirriemuir, Angus, have been held back after campaigners disagreed over whether the likeness should be holding the traditional instrument instead of a microphone.

While local charity DD8 Music has already commissioned an architect to design the £40,000 figure, organiser Graham Galloway has launched a public consultation to decide what the people of Kirriemuir want to see in the rockstar’s hands.

Mr Galloway said today: “We’ve had a few people saying they are unhappy that Bon’s statue design features him holding bagpipes.

“We chose this design as we felt it emphasised Bon’s Scottish roots – something he was very proud of.

“It was also a link back to Kirriemuir, where Bon’s father Chick played in the local pipe band and, of course, Bon’s first experiences in music were drumming in the Fremantle band as a boy.

In order to gauge public opinion, Mr Galloway set up an online poll and at present, 85 per cent of the town is demanding bagpipes be included on the statue.

If they do this, I may have to relocate to dear old Scotland. Being of Scots-Irish descent on my mom’s side—as are multitudes of other heritage Southrons—I got roots there my own self. The Kirriemuir statue won’t be the first memorial honoring Bon’s iconic stature, however.

Scott is already honoured in a Kirriemuir street name and with an engraved stone slab in the town’s Cumberland Close alongside those of other famous people from the village.

In February 2008, a bronze statue of Scott was unveiled at Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour in Western Australia, where the singer spent much of his life.

I love it.

Way too little, way too late

Posted on January 15, 2021January 16, 2021 by Mike

What the hell took you so long?

On Thursday night, Lou Dobbs reported that President Trump ordered the release of the Obamagate intelligence documents.

Lou Dobbs: President Trump is declassifying top-secret documents all related to Obamagate. That is the coordinated and years-long spying against a presidential candidate and ultimately the President of the United States and his administration, that of Donald J. Trump.

Yeh, yeh, whatevs.

On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit got word that President Trump was going to declassify all of the Russian hoax investigation documents.

They previously reported that Deep State operatives, including people inside the White House and ostensibly on “his” side, were urging the president to keep the information from the public.

In fact, President Trump promised several times that he would release everything on the Russian hoax before he left office.

The Trump administration must now make sure these documents are released to the public.

For what? The time when such a move might actually have done some good is long behind us now. Or is there anybody out there stupid enough to imagine that Usurper Joe’s crack Injustice Dept team is going to SPRING INTO ACTION and get to the bottom of that steaming, flyblown pile of corruption?

It’s like this: Yes, they did it. Yes, we all know that they did it. And yes, they got away with it. Declassification, threatened by Trump many months ago but never followed through on for whatever incomprehensible reason, is as futilely masturbatory at this point as screaming about the ziggurat of solid evidence of election fraud in 2020 is, nothing but a chattering-class circle jerk.

The Obamagate/Russiagate/Ukrainegate/FBIgate/Laptopgate scams are way past their sell-by date—as stale and moldy as Earth Shoes, Mood Rings, and your deceased Aunt Maude’s orange shag carpet. Who cares about the Barrackorrhoids’ 2016 election jiggery-pokery anymore anyhow? After all, the self-same mountebanks just successfully stole another one outright in front of our faces. They got away with that, too.

Hold on, though, it gets even worse.

CNBC Washington Correspondent Wamon Javors reported on Thursday that President Trump has a slew of pardons ready to go as well as plans to appoint special counsels to investigate meth addict Hunter Biden and possibly the Dominion voting machines!

Great. That’ll go on for, what, four days tops before Usurper Joe is inaugurated and cancels the whole thing? But hey, maybe somebody could talk Honest Jim Comey into spearheading a new “investigation” based on Trump’s tardy document-dump. Anything’s possible, right? What the heck, if you’re gonna dream, dream big.

And maybe, just maybe, the horse really will learn to sing.

Autonomous County Project

Posted on January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 by Mike

TL proposes a way forward.

This is a post that has been put off and put off due to other more pressing issues literally as the nation hangs in the balance. A presidential election affects the entire nation and therefore the unresolved nature of it is vexing. Regardless whether the election is settled or not, the change from a corrupted and dysfunctional republic to an all out communist state run by the puppet master that is China is another thing.

The Autonomous County Project is something designed to combat the communist wave sweeping the nation. The Constitution embodies some particular ideals that are important for a free people to cling to, even if they pack the courts and turn the Supreme Court into a liberal lovefest, finding everything under the sun “constitutional.” That is where we are. It’s important for the individual to demand their rights, especially when they are being ignored by the establishment. The Constitution embodies those rights, but it cannot create them and cannot destroy them. It can either be an aid in securing them or a nonsensical piece of paper. The difference is up to the people.

The Autonomous County Project is something that was quickly becoming necessary even without the recent election. It was already clear that the people of a given state held vastly different viewpoints from others in that state based on where they lived. Urban populations all over the nation have different values and concerns than the rural population. That in every state, the laws passed by representatives of the urban population were able to disregard the views and beliefs those in the rural part of the state. These blue islands in a sea of red had been able to control the state and therefore the run of the legislature on a state and a national level. But that, in effect, is a democracy, not a republic. The Constitution was written for an overwhelmingly rural people, not considering that at some point the number of people in the cities would outnumber those in the whole rest of the state. They understood the nation from a rural perspective, because they derived their greatest revenue from crops and that requires rural land.

But, one might say: “well, that’s how it works, the greater the population, the more weight in government.” But, it is not how it was supposed to work. There is one overlooked clause in the Constitution.

It’s a good, solid idea, and makes for interesting reading. But it puts the cart before the horse. No attempt at any kind of restoration will bear fruit unless and until our would-be masters are removed, the institutions corrupted by them unmade, the illegitimate power seized by them dissolved. Without all that, any effort to find a peaceful, non-violent way out of this awful situation can only be “interesting reading,” and nothing more.

The face of evil

Posted on January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 by Mike

Take a good, hard look at who they really are. Then act accordingly.

PBS principal counsel Michael Beller dreamed up big plans to punish his political opponents once Democrats are inaugurated in the White House.

“We go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away,” Beller said in comments caught on tape and published by Project Veritas, comparing President Donald Trump to Hitler while saying the kids of Trump supporters should be sent to “re-education” or “enlightenment camps.”

“They’re [re-education camps] nice,” the tax-payer-funded attorney promised. “They have Sesame Street characters in the classrooms, and [the children] watch PBS all day.” Without them, Beller prophesied, the nation was breeding a new generation of evil, intolerant children who Beller demanded be subject to 20th-century-style internment.

“Kids who are growing up, knowing nothing but Trump for four years, you’ve got to wonder what they’re [Trump supporters’ children] going to be like. They’ll be raising a generation of intolerant, horrible people — horrible kids,” Beller said.

In the absence of a Biden win, Beller said prior to the November contest, then true patriots ought to “go to the White House and throw Molotov cocktails.”

Beller also celebrated COVID-19 outbreaks wreaking havoc in the homes of Trump-supporting deplorables, hoping the virus would kill off those who might dare vote for the incumbent president.

“What’s great is that COVID is spiking in all the red states right now. So that’s great … because either those people won’t come out to vote for Trump, you know the red states, or a lot of them [Trump supporters] are sick and dying,” Beller said. “Americans are so f-cking dumb. You know, most people are dumb.”

When it came to the nation’s capital, home of countless political elitists, Beller echoed the sentiment of members of the corrupt ruling class who possess nothing but disdain for those outside the Beltway. “It’s good to live in a place [D.C.] where people are educated and know stuff. Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or states where everybody’s just … stupid?” Beller said.

“Unite” with fascist excrescences like these, in the interest of “healing our nation”? NEVER. I’ll see them all in Hell first. When it freezes.

Reminder: this pustule’s salary is paid with your tax dollars. Or was; after his rancid hate had been exposed to sunlight, PBS cut him loose with a quickness, in a transparent attempt to save face and keep the tax-money spigot a-flowing. Expect another insincere non-apology apology—the self-serving “I’m sorry I got caught” horseshit typical of every shitlib caught speaking his mind honestly—from the loathsome cockroach forthwith.

It would be nice to think this incident might render Beller permanently unemployable, so that he winds up homeless, disgraced, eventually starving to death on a cold, filthy sewer grate: a forgotten stewbum, wretched, friendless, and entirely miserable. But he won’t. He’s a lawyer, see. And no matter how slimy, how abhorrent, how just plain evil they may be, lawyers always seem to land on their feet somehow.

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