Gangster Government

“Suicide by obedience”

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Mike

Adjust to the New Paradigm on the fly, or perish.

The important message I want to relate right now, is this is all a diversion. All of these domestic issues, the insanity of drag queen strip-tease in schools is designed to enrage and distract us from the fact that literally every nation in the world owes more money than can possibly be repaid; it’s a shell game that’s running out of time. It’s the economic monstrosity of the world that’s driving nuclear war, because, like 9/11, there has to be a dramatic and terrifying moment in order to institute an earthquake of new, more-restrictive laws; in this case the great reset by which all government and banking debt will be erased, but not yours, not your car, your home, just theirs and they’ll use your assets to free themselves.

The governing powers are so jealous of our every penny, that soon they’ll just take it. Forget taxes, forget legality, they want it and we have it and they have the forces to take it. There are no principles involved here. To do that, they need a war, they need a crisis and they’ve long ago stopped caring what is right, proper or legal. Everything they’ve done in the past two years proves that point. If they’re willing to kill you, they’ll surely rob you.

Nothing will stop it. Nothing can be done about the entirety of Western civilization committing suicide by obedience, except disobedience. It’s probably too late for that to have much effect, but its a question of dying on your feet or on your knees. No matter what happens, there will be enough leftists/communists left to blame it all on our founders and capitalism. The importance of Nine Principles of Freedom, I think, is a starting point for whoever is left in deciding what sort of society to rebuild after the cataclysmic events to come.

In the chaos of post-nuclear war, there’s a chance to resettle and reorganize, but the globalists will have to be confronted directly. They’re instigating this nuclear exchange to arrive at that chaos to institute their vision. Nothing says that those who understand the principles of the republic can’t exploit that breach just as well as they can.

If we don’t step into that breach and refuse, be willing to lay down our lives to resist that sweeping change, you might as well put a Trump 2024 sign in your yard and wait for the Stasi.

If, by some miracle, all of it can be headed off, there’s the longer, tougher road of disobedience that will take an extraordinary shift in personal dynamics to save anything of the world we knew prior to 2019. Even then, it was a disaster. You have to go further back, much further.

Yep, back to around 1950, at the very least. As TL implies, the fact that you might not win doesn’t by any means excuse one from fighting on anyway. In any such conflict, the outcome is never guaranteed; the one and only absolute certainty is that if you don’t fight, you will definitely lose.

The eternal tease

Posted on October 27, 2022October 27, 2022 by Mike

Never mind the self-driving ones, where the hell is my flying car?

Why Self-Driving Cars Are NOT The Future
Technological hurdles aside, if we could develop the AI that makes self-driving cars as safe as human-driven cars, they’d still have quite a few other hurdles to overcome before going mainstream.

The biggest hurdle, perhaps, is the problem of liability.

Last week, a man in North Carolina was driving at night, following his GPS. The GPS led him to a bridge that the man couldn’t see was unfinished. He then drove off the bridge, crashed upside down in the river below and died. His GPS didn’t show that a portion of the bridge had been washed away – instead it went on mindlessly recommending it as the fastest route. After the man’s death, questions came up about who should be held responsible. Was it all the man’s fault? What about the fault of the city for not repairing the bridge? The state? The bridge manufacturer? What about the GPS technology that got it wrong? Should they pay out? It wasn’t clear where the fault lay and for that reason, all parties involved were vulnerable to lawsuits.

The list of liabilities continues to expand as well. The National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) has only demanded more and more accountability from car manufacturers regarding auto safety regulations over the years. According to NHTSA (an arm of the Department of Transportation), all vehicles MUST include specific types of seatbelts, they MUST disclose the locations of where all their parts are assembled (via the Labeling Act), they MUST follow all cybersecurity restrictions, and if a new safety recall should arise, the manufacturer MUST fix them at their own expense. Today, about one in four vehicles on the road have an unresolved safety recall on them which has increased every year since the recall program’s inception.While some may say this is a good thing to have that much oversight around safety, it also does a lot to discourage manufacturers from sticking their necks out for potentially unsafe innovations.

The EPA is also squeezing vehicle manufacturers with new regulations – tightening its emission standards and adding restrictions that car manufacturers find increasingly difficult to abide by. As David Shepardson from Reuters said,

New rules [that] take effect in the 2023 model year… require a 28.3% reduction in vehicle emissions through 2026. The rules will be challenging for automakers to meet, especially for Detroit’s Big Three automakers. General Motors (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Chrysler-parent Stellantis NV (STLA.MI).

With all this red tape, automotive manufacturers are already feeling the weight of big brother pressing on their shoulders and would be reluctant to go all in on self-driving vehicles without all the safety concerns rigorously tested and approved to the point they can be sufficiently indemnified from lawsuits.

Perhaps in another country with a more authoritative government, the liability issues can be overcome.

Perhaps. But you can bet that, in a country with a LESS authoritative government whose citizenry was jealous enough of their liberty to see to it that their central government remained firmly within its Constitutional corral, we’d probably have workable autonomous and flying cars both by now. The lesson: bloated, meddlesome, too-powerful governments stifle creativity and innovation; capitalism and liberty encourages them, and rewards them richly. In Amerika v2.0, unless and until We The People have internalized that lesson fully and put its teachings into full effect, the day of the flying car can never dawn.

Look back in anger

Posted on October 27, 2022October 27, 2022 by Mike

A capsule review of where we are and how we got here.

As some may remember, Biden practiced plagiarism in law school, where he was a bottom feeder. In 1988, when Biden first ran for president, he ripped off a speech by British leftist Neil Kinnock. Biden’s 2008 presidential bid went nowhere but the Delaware Democrat still thought he was the best man for the job. But even Mark Bowden’s hagiographical “Joe Biden, Salesman” exposed the Oval Office occupant as a know-nothing incompetent.

By 2020, Biden was telling African Americans “you ain’t black” if they didn’t vote for him. According to the former vice president, auto workers who disagreed with him were “full of shit.” As he spouted gibberish, Biden was sometimes uncertain of dates, times, and locations. Even so, Democrats made him their party’s nominee.

Cellar-dweller Biden failed to conduct a national campaign in 2020. Key states rushed to change election laws, and party “mules” stuffed ballot boxes in the middle of the night. Democrats had often challenged election results but now any challenge was a threat to national security and Our Democracy™. Without comparisons of previous contests, the press proclaimed 2020 the fairest election of all time. As the establishment media had it, the nation had been panting for an addled plagiarist.

More than 25,000 troops guarded the inauguration, and 7,000 remained in the nation’s capital until late May. If anybody thought that Joe Biden was selected, not elected, or “installed” in the manner of Third World dictatorships, it would be hard to blame them.

In March 2021, Biden fell three times getting into an airplane, so the Delaware Democrat has a problem with basic motor functions. For all but the willfully blind, Biden is physically and mentally incapable of exercising national office. Conrad Black calls him a waxworks effigy of a president, but that might be too kind.

He handed the Taliban $7 billion of some of our best military equipment, and abandoned many Americans and Afghan allies. Biden hired the Taliban to provide security, and a terrorist bomb claimed 13 American lives and at least 95 Afghans. The Delaware Democrat then claimed the withdrawal was an “extraordinary success.”

On Biden’s watch, goods are more scarce, everything costs more, and your money is worth less. When a reporter asked about inflation, Biden called him a “stupid son of a bitch.” Biden canceled pipelines and drilling leases and sent the price of gasoline skyrocketing. The Delaware Democrat now claims gas was “always” $7 a gallon in California. And he sends oil from America’s strategic reserve to China.

Under Biden, the U.S. border is in perpetual crisis and the Delaware Democrat disregards U.S. immigration law. The administration gave “migrants” more than 300,000 smartphones, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $361,218.08 per day. The Biden junta allows illegals to use arrest warrants as identification to board domestic flights. Just so you know, legal immigrants and legitimate citizens can’t do that.

Biden proclaimed COVID-19 a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” which placed many workers at risk of losing their jobs, or their positions in the military. Then Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci both tested positive for COVID, repeatedly, so Biden’s earlier statement was kind of like a lie.

So the chants of “fuck Biden” were perfectly understandable.

If this is what Delaware “Democracy” looks like, maybe Civil War v2.0 ought to kick off with the rest of the states teaming up to kick Delaware’s ass up between its shoulder blades, so to speak. There’s more yet, incredibly enough, and dismal and depressing though it surely is you’ll still want to read it all.

Power, destruction, death

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Mike

Quoth Captain Malcolm Reynolds: If somebody tries to kill you, you kill ’em right back.

Middle Earth had its Mount Doom, into which the One Ring of Power could be tossed, ridding that evil from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional setting. Real Earth is not so fortunate, but in all other aspects the lessons drawn from his classic apply. It only comes up short in one respect. Tolkien never delved into the psychology of Sauron, Saruman, and the lessor denizens of Middle Earth who lusted after the One Ring’s power, other than to depict the inevitable corruption of the soul their lust produced.

There are two conclusions uncorrupted souls have difficulty accepting, although both experience and logic point uncompromisingly towards them. The first is that those in power and those who lust for it want power for power’s sake, ultimately to destroy and kill. The second is that they want to destroy and kill because they want to destroy existence and kill themselves. We owe the first conclusion to Orwell, the second to Rand. (For a fuller explanation see “The Last Gasp,” Robert Gore, SLL, March 24, 2020.)

This article assumes both conclusions are well-founded and that the second in particular is the key to understanding where the world is now and where it’s going. They offer a realistic assessment of the chances for nuclear Armageddon.

It is no coincidence that the twentieth century witnessed history’s most totalitarian regimes and its bloodiest wars and genocides. By all indications the twenty-first century will extend the connected trends. Power goes hand-in-hand with destruction and death. Governments are based on their capacity to inflict violence; what else can they produce? Rejecting lofty rhetoric and revolutionary rationales, Orwell wrote that: Power is not a means; it is an end. The twentieth century demonstrated that power is a means to inflict incalculable destruction and death. Know them by their fruits—those are the true ends of those who seek and hold power.

Report after report details the injury and death inflicted by the Covid mRNA vaccines, puncturing hollow platitudes and invocations of “Science.” The travesty offers a refresher course we don’t really need: from world leaders down to petty politicians and functionaries, they want to kill us. Those who aren’t killed are to be frightened into compliance with their ghastly and tyrannical edicts, herded like cattle into some other slaughterhouse.

The gelatinous souls who move whatever direction the bowl tilts usually don’t recognize what’s happening until the moment of their execution. Beforehand, a few of the more intellectually adept will argue that the powerful will be limited by their instinct for self-preservation—if they kill too many they’ll end up killing themselves. Perhaps that thought offers comfort, however scant.

But what if the powerful are like those mass shooters whose terror ends only when they turn their guns on themselves? What if mass murder is the means to their desired end: suicide? Someone who kills himself but no one else is to be pitied. Someone who kills innocents before taking his own life perpetrates paramount evil.

Which would give our putative “leaders” not one moment’s pause, being willing representatives of Paramount Evil their own selves.

(Via Dave Renegade)

Is Pedo Joe lying?

Posted on October 26, 2022October 26, 2022 by Mike

There are just three questions: 1) Is he a politician? 2) Is he a “liberal”? 3) Are his lips moving? Answer those three, and you’ll never be in doubt again.

Speaking at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Biden announced “new actions to lower the cost of everyday living for American families, to put more money in the pockets of middle-income and working-class Americans, to hold big corporations accountable.” Yes, that’s right: more soft Marxism is coming, complete with the politics of envy and bitter invective against the wealthy and successful without which the Democrats would have nothing whatsoever to offer.

Toward the end of his divisive and rambling incitement to class warfare, Biden served up one of the brazen, outright lies that have marred his entire career. The man deserves credit for audacity, for even in his dementia-ridden dotage he is unsurpassed in Washington (a city of politicians, which means a city of liars) in his ability to deliver an absolute falsehood not only with absolute conviction but also with passionate, self-righteous fervor.

“Some airlines,” Joe declared, “if you want six more inches between you and the seat in front, you pay more money. But you don’t know it until you purchase your ticket. Look, folks, these are junk fees. They’re unfair, and they hit marginalized Americans the hardest, especially low-income folks and people of color. They benefit big corporations, not consumers, not working families. And that changes now.”

If “fact-checkers” really actually checked facts instead of just running interference for the far Left, they would give that statement all the Pinocchios they have, for there is simply no truth in it whatsoever.

Biden, contrary to his carefully nurtured Lunchbucket Joe image, has been a member of the Beltway elite for over five decades, and so he likely hasn’t flown commercial in ages. And characteristically, his statement is not entirely clear. He is clearly saying that the airlines are racist and take money illegitimately from their non-white customers, which is viciously false and irresponsible enough in itself, but it’s not clear how exactly he is saying they do it. Is he saying that it’s wrong and racist for airlines to charge more for seats that offer more legroom? Or does he mean that the airlines are tacking charges for more legroom onto the price for a ticket that the customer has already agreed to pay, without the customer’s knowledge?

None of the above. No, what’s really going on here is that Gropey is laying the groundwork for eventual FederalGovCo control of the airline industry entire, that’s all. Spencer reels off a good ‘un to kick off the next ‘graph:

Either way, Biden’s claim here is rancid hogwash of the most fetid variety.

Heh. Well said, Robert. I love it.

Update! This story reminded me of something from the Aulden Thymes I’d all but forgotten: any of y’all rogues, rapscallions, and reprobates out there old enough to remember a budget airline called People Express, perchance?

People Express Airlines, stylized as PEOPLExpress, was an American low-cost airline that operated from 1981 to 1987, when it was merged into Continental Airlines. The airline’s headquarters was in the North Terminal (later Terminal C) of Newark International Airport (EWR) in Newark, New Jersey.

People Express was about as no-frills as no-frills can get, and I availed myself of their services quite a few times back in my callow youth. A nonstop, direct-flight ticket from CLT to Newark could be had for a footling 29 smackeroos, which was a real bargain even back then—inexpensive enough to make jet-setting it up to NYC for a day just to see a rock ‘n’ roll show perfectly feasible, if that was your thing. Which, it absotively, posilutely was mine.

“The Flight 93 Election” revisited

Posted on October 26, 2022October 26, 2022 by Mike

The Biden junta has vindicated Michael Anton’s brilliant, prescient, and justly renowned “Flight 93” essay. Not that it needed any; the piece acted as its own vindication, more than adequately so. But still.

Anti-Constitution insurrectionists have seized the American cockpit, and they must be stopped even if that requires electing a polarized Donald Trump, wrote social critic Michael Anton in 2016 under a pseudonym.

“The Flight 93 Election” set off an internet storm. The late, great Rush Limbaugh read almost all of it to his audience of Republican base voters soon after it came out, giving them assurance that not everyone on the right hated their candidate after an ugly primary battle in which no less than National Review published a cover essay collection titled “Against Trump.”

Anton was as reviled as he predicted in the essay. But now, six years later, Trump’s four years of governance and the Biden administration’s willfully malicious reign has vindicated the overall accuracy of Anton’s analysis.

Anton said the U.S. administrative state’s gradual replacement of constitutional self-government has metastasized into a national emergency, an argument American conservatives have been developing for more than 100 years. The essay justified a vote for Trump based on his platform against open borders, endless foreign war, and trading our economic advantages to China.

Trump was a wild card, Anton noted, but every other Republican candidate had no idea what time it is, so we’ll have to play the wild and see what happens. The alternative was certain political suicide.

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You — or the leader of your party — may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

He was right. Nothing backs that truth so much as the Biden presidency. It is, as Clinton’s would have been, a third term for Barack Obama, which is to say another four years of planned national demolition and the astonishing expansion of unlimited government, which is to say tyranny. The evidence is more visible now than it was in 2016, and those who tried to un-person Anton over his arguments owe him, and the country, an apology.

Yet another thing nobody should be holding their breath awaiting. The piece goes on from there to a lengthy list of then-impending man-caused national disasters foreseen by Anton with perfect clarity and accuracy. The whole article is fantastic, out of which this next ‘graph is my own personal fave:

If we can’t make Americans out of Afghans in their native country, how can we pretend we can make Americans out of Afghans, Somalis, and Guatemalans flooding the failing institutions of a wildly polarized United States? We can’t even make Americans out of most of the people who are born here. Trump was the only person willing to even talk about this supremely important public concern.

Bold mine, because…well, I mean, YEAH. You know what you must do, Glasshoppah. Myself, I think it’s high time I went back and read Anton’s outstanding piece again, for the first time in many a moon.

Update! Yep, “Flight 93” remains at least as gripping—as trenchant, as apposite—now as I remember it being back when it first appeared, probably even more so. Herewith, an appetizer—which, as Cartman informed us, is what you eat before you eat to make you more hungry.

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.

But it’s quite obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff. A recent article by Matthew Continetti may be taken as representative—indeed, almost written for the purpose of illustrating the point. Continetti inquires into the “condition of America” and finds it wanting. What does Continetti propose to do about it? The usual litany of “conservative” “solutions,” with the obligatory references to decentralization, federalization, “civic renewal,” and—of course!—Burke. Which is to say, conservatism’s typical combination of the useless and inapt with the utopian and unrealizable. Decentralization and federalism are all well and good, and as a conservative, I endorse them both without reservation. But how are they going to save, or even meaningfully improve, the America that Continetti describes? What can they do against a tidal wave of dysfunction, immorality, and corruption? “Civic renewal” would do a lot of course, but that’s like saying health will save a cancer patient. A step has been skipped in there somewhere. How are we going to achieve “civic renewal”? Wishing for a tautology to enact itself is not a strategy.

Continetti trips over a more promising approach when he writes of “stress[ing] the ‘national interest abroad and national solidarity at home’ through foreign-policy retrenchment, ‘support to workers buffeted by globalization,’ and setting ‘tax rates and immigration levels’ to foster social cohesion.” That sounds a lot like Trumpism. But the phrases that Continetti quotes are taken from Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, both of whom, like Continetti, are vociferously—one might even say fanatically—anti-Trump. At least they, unlike Kesler, give Trump credit for having identified the right stance on today’s most salient issues. Yet, paradoxically, they won’t vote for Trump whereas Kesler hints that he will. It’s reasonable, then, to read into Kesler’s esoteric endorsement of Trump an implicit acknowledgment that the crisis is, indeed, pretty dire. I expect a Claremont scholar to be wiser than most other conservative intellectuals, and I am relieved not to be disappointed in this instance.

Yet we may also reasonably ask: What explains the Pollyanna-ish declinism of so many others? That is, the stance that Things-Are-Really-Bad—But-Not-So-Bad-that-We-Have-to-Consider-Anything-Really-Different! The obvious answer is that they don’t really believe the first half of that formulation. If so, like Chicken Little, they should stick a sock in it. Pecuniary reasons also suggest themselves, but let us foreswear recourse to this explanation until we have disproved all the others.

Whatever the reason for the contradiction, there can be no doubt that there is a contradiction. To simultaneously hold conservative cultural, economic, and political beliefs—to insist that our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature and must undermine society—and yet also believe that things can go on more or less the way they are going, ideally but not necessarily with some conservative tinkering here and there, is logically impossible.

Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.

If your answer—Continetti’s, Douthat’s, Salam’s, and so many others’—is for conservatism to keep doing what it’s been doing—another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal—even though we’ve been losing ground for at least a century, then you’ve implicitly accepted that your supposed political philosophy doesn’t matter and that civilization will carry on just fine under leftist tenets. Indeed, that leftism is truer than conservatism and superior to it.

If you somehow missed The Flight 93 Election back when it originally appeared, then I urge you—nay, I implore you, I beseech you—to hie thee thither to rectify that deficiency without delay. I assure you, you’ll be glad you did.

“What are the consequences of not fighting back?”

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Mike

Ask a silly etc. We already know what the consequences are; we’re seeing them every single day, LIVING them, all up front and in our faces.

Stupid Party: Kevin McCarthy Says GOP Won’t Move to Impeach Biden or Administration Officials

Sorry to have to clue you in so rudely and all, but…suuuuckerrrrrrrs!

In America today, we have a two-party system: the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. The Evil Party sets the agenda and pursues its aims relentlessly and ruthlessly; the Stupid Party registers a polite token opposition and then fully agrees to whatever the Evil Party wants, occasionally only arguing that it can implement the Evil Party’s program more effectively than the Evil Party itself. We saw this play out yet again Wednesday, when Stupid Party House Leader Kevin McCarthy (S-California) downplayed any talk of impeaching Old Joe Biden or any of his cronies if the Stupids retake the House in the midterm elections. McCarthy is still playing by rules that the Evil Party discarded long ago, and that’s why he and his fellow Stupid Party members keep losing.

Close, Robert, but no cigar. What we actually have is the Evil Party and the Evil Party’s Junior-Partner Party, scuttling around doing as they’re told, as any rumpswab worth his salt should. Awkward nomenclature, I admit; might be a more apt choice to swipe a page from the Mad Mullahs Playbook and go with Greater Evil Party and Lesser Evil Party, maybe.

McCarthy declared that Americans don’t “like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” and added that “the country wants to heal” and see a “system that actually works.”

Hopefully, for their own sake, Americans aren’t holding their breath waiting around on any of that to transpire, lest they all keel over from oxygen starvation forthwith.

That means there will be no impeachment proceedings against Biden, or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary and former Disinformation Governance Board supreme overlord Alejandro Mayorkas, or Gestapo chief Merrick Garland. Leave billions of dollars worth of materiel in Afghanistan for our enemies to use against us? No problem! Open the Southern border so that untold numbers of criminals and terrorists can waltz right into the country? Hey, we all make mistakes. Sic the woke FBI against parents protesting at school board meetings against the far-Left agenda in public schools? We all can get carried away! Impeachment? Forget it. It wouldn’t be the decent thing to do.

When McCarthy was asked if he saw any grounds for impeaching any officials of this lawless and authoritarian administration, he answered: “I don’t see it before me right now. You watch what the Democrats did – they all came out and said they would impeach before Trump was ever sworn in. There wasn’t a purpose for it. If you spent all that time arguing against using impeachment for political purposes, you gotta be able to sustain exactly what you said.”

This chaps my skinny white ass to no end: impeachment is BY DEFINITION POLITICAL. It is an explicitly political sanction, intended to be levied by politicians to redress illegitimate and/or unlawful political actions which were implemented to attain purely political ends. Literally EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of impeachment is political. Maybe on some phantasmagorical dream-planet where all motives are honorable, all politicians noble and above the sordid fray, and all hearts pure as the driven snow you might possibly see a non-partisan impeachment now and then. Regrettably, not a one of us currently resides on that lovely planet. Or anywhere remotely near it, for that matter. Hell, where WE live even the unicorns are cut-rate, kinda grubby and gay-ass.

Well, sure. There shouldn’t be any impeachment for political purposes. The two impeachments the Democrats perpetrated against Trump were travesties of justice; the framers of the Constitution never intended impeachment to be used as a weapon against a political opponent.

I’m kinda dubious of that contention too, Mr Spencer sir. I’m sure they hoped it never would, but I’m pretty confident that they, in their profound wisdom and foresight, suspected that it would anyway sooner or later. Never before or since has anyone understood the nature of government, those fallen sorts who pursue elected office in it, and even the mass of the national polity more comprehensively, more deeply, than they did. Which is why, as with amending the Constitution they bequeathed to us, they made impeachment so difficult to attempt, and even moreso to actually accomplish.

But McCarthy’s assumption that any impeachment proceedings that the Republicans bring if they win back the House in November would be politically motivated in the same way is unfounded.

And what if it wasn’t? Why, exactly, are we to consider that a good thing, prithee tell? Impeachment is a tool, a weapon, even. If the choice is either to take it up and use it effectively against our enemies or to perish as men without blemish or fault, our honor unbesmirched by petty partisan squabbling, I know which one gets my vote.

What if Biden, or Mayorkas, or Garland actually violated the law? What if they abused their power in persecuting “MAGA Republicans,” purveyors of alleged “disinformation,” and Jan. 6 “insurrectionists”? Could we get any impeachments then?

Of course not; by now, you shouldn’t even have to ask. As a fully-paid-up member in good standing of the Junior Partners In Evil Party, McCarthy is simply fulfilling his assigned role by foreswearing ever confronting his colleagues in any manner that risks upending the Holy Status Quo. He’s doing his job, no more nor less, and doesn’t care a fig whether a few dewy-eyed, scandalized Pollyannas who persist in deluding themselves as to what his and his Party’s real job is feel themselves hard done by because of it.

For McCarthy to wave away even the prospect of impeachment as stooping to the Democrats’ level and engaging in politically motivated prosecution is disquieting on several levels. The most immediate one is the fact that there may indeed be impeachable offenses that warrant serious investigation. Secondary but likewise important is the fact that the Republican establishment these days always seems to be adhering to the “decency” and “civility” that was said to be the hallmark of American politics in bygone days while they’re getting their pockets picked. The Democrats have left “decency” and “civility” in the dustbin of history with the old Democrats of whom they used to be proud, such as Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson (who wasn’t actually a Democrat at all, but they used to claim him). The Republicans should indeed not stoop to their level, but having a Republican president smeared, defamed, framed for crimes he didn’t commit, and vilified in the most extravagant terms for four years and then responding by saying they’re going to do the decent thing and not fight back is just asking for it all to happen again.

Ahhh, NOW you’re getting it. See there, that really wasn’t all that difficult to suss out, now was it?

(Un)Righteous retribution

Posted on October 23, 2022October 23, 2022 by Mike

Is it civilizational self-defense, or state-sanctioned murder?

Here’s the thing – a civilization that cannot come up with the moral testicularity to execute a creature who murders over a dozen of its children is a civilization in serious trouble. The minimum standard for any culture that intends on surviving – and surviving means dealing with the barbarians within and without – is to take its own side in the fight for survival. Eventually, there will be a backlash. The only question is how ugly it will be.

This injustice in the Sunshine State – appropriately deplored by Governor DeSantis – is a symptom of the larger problem. You see it manifested across our culture – suicidal tolerance and performative forgiveness. In places like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and other blue cities – it is always blue cities – the inhabitants murder each other with glee. But more than that, they generally act like savages. We have all seen the videos. Random creeps menacing citizens on the subways, packs of thugs raiding convenience stores or shopping malls, pitched battles between groups of aspiring Einsteins in Walmarts, animals cold-cocking citizens who are simply minding their own business. But no one stops them. No one holds them to account. The cops’ shrug, because the blue politicians have told them to stand down. The answer to those of us who protest is always the same – shut up, racist, and also give us your guns so that you cannot defend yourself from what the government refuses to suppress.

And then there is the spectacle of family members of murder victims “forgiving” the criminals as if forgiveness was a simple act and not a process that demands action by the person being forgiven. This bizarre misunderstanding of Christianity is mixed with what seems to be a desire to front to the world as somehow enlightened – “I want to announce that I forgive the barbarians who raped and murdered my daughter. They did not repent, they did not seek forgiveness, and they have not yet been punished, but I’ll do it now anyway. Look at me.” Not that you want to take theological hints from a guy who grew up a Californian Methodist, but the forgiveness of God does not just manifest out of the blue; the one receiving grace needs to take steps to obtain it. These moral posers – and it is posing, sad and horrifying, but posing nonetheless – demand nothing to obtain forgiveness, so the forgiveness they offer is meaningless narcissism.

Yes, in case you are wondering, I am criticizing the family members of rape and murder victims who refuse to demand justice. Their moral voguing is perpetuating a paradigm where more people’s kids die. Forgive those who seek forgiveness; don’t hand it out as moral welfare and be shocked to find a society full of moral welfare bums.

Oh, and forgiveness does not mean letting them out of jail.

I must confess to being of two minds regarding the death penalty issue, and have always been. On the one hand, yes, there are certainly people who need killing among us, and I do get Schlichter’s strong conviction that civilization cannot long survive without defending itself against the wanton brutality of such ogres. Then again, though, I also have serious reservations about the State’s ability to handle this most grave of matters responsibly, competently, and correctly. As Divemedic concisely says:

This story is why I remain opposed to the death penalty in practice. You can’t trust anyone in our “justice system.” Even with a confession.

The guy spent 35 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit before his conviction was overturned. The cop who got his conviction was using questionable tactics to secure confessions for years.

And this is but a single case, out of literally hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of them. It’s been estimated that anywhere between 46,000 and 230,000 innocent people have been incarcerated due to a wrongful-conviction rate which hovers between 2 to 10 percent. Given what we all already know about how incompetent, ruthless, and untrustworthy government, at any level, all too often is—much less how thoroughly tainted and dysfunctional the American “justice” system has proven itself to be just in recent years—can any of us be too terribly comfortable with granting it the power of life and death over us? Can we AFFORD to be?

Forbid it, Almighty God!

Posted on October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 by Mike

Ask a silly question.

But Will Elections Change Anything?

If they could, they’d be illegal.

It’s coming up in a fortnight. For many people, all their hopes rest on the outcome. I get it because these seem like very dark times. We cannot live without hope. But we also need realism. The problems are deep, pervasive, scandalously entrenched.

Many people won financially and in terms of power from lockdowns and have no intention either to apologize or give up their gains. What’s more, for that to have happened to this great country – and many great counties – indicates something far more pernicious than a policy error or an ideological mistake.

The fix is going to require vast change. Tragically, the elected politicians may be the least likely to push for such a change. This is due to what we call the “Deep State” but there ought to be another name. It is rather obvious now that we are dealing with a beast that includes media, technology, nonprofits, and multinational and international government agencies and all the groups they represent.

That said, let’s deal here with the most obvious problem: the administrative state.

The plot of every episode of Yes, Minister – a British sitcom that aired in the early 1980s – is pretty much the same. The appointed Minister of the Department of Administrative Affairs waltzes in with a grand and idealistic statement left over from his political campaigns. The permanent secretary who serves him responds affirmatively and then cautions that there might be other considerations to take into account.

The rest follows like clockwork. The other considerations unfold as inevitable or manufactured behind the scenes. For reasons mostly having to do with career concerns – staying out of trouble, advancing through the ranks or avoiding fall down them, pleasing some special interest, obeying the Prime Minister whom we never see, or coming across well in the media – he backs down and reverses his view. It ends as it begins: the permanent secretary gets his way.

The lesson one gains from this hilarious series is that the elected politicians are outnumbered and outwitted on all sides, only pretending to be in charge when in fact the actual affairs of state are managed by experienced professionals with permanent positions. They all know each other. They have mastered the game. They have all the institutional knowledge.

The politicians, on the other hand, are skilled at what they actually do, which is win elections and advance their careers. Their supposed principles are just the veneer put on to please the public.

What makes the series especially painful is that viewers can’t help but put themselves in the position of the Minister of the Department of Administrative Affairs. How would we have done things differently? And if we had, would we have survived? Those are hard questions because the answer is not obvious at all. It seems like the fix is in.

Now, to be sure, in this series all of the players have elements of charm. We laugh at the bureaucracy and their ways. We are delighted by the oddly emerging lack of scruples by the politician. In the end, however, the system seems to work more or less. Maybe this is just how things are supposed to be. It was ever thus and must always be.

Anyone can be forgiven for believing that just a few years ago. But then the last three years happened. The rule by the administrative bureaucracy in every country became highly personal when our churches were closed, the businesses were shut down, we could not travel, we could not go to gyms or theaters, and then they came after every arm insisting that we accept a shot we did not want and most people did not need.

The laughter of the sort Yes, Minister inspired is over. There is far more at stake. But just as the stakes are high, so too the problem of implementing a solution – representative democracy as a means to reobtain liberty itself – is also exceedingly difficult.

Not difficult, utterly impossible. Can there ever be a wrong or inappropriate time to remind ourselves once more of the deathless words of Patrick Henry? I think not.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free– if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained–we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable–and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Indeed. American liberty was won at the muzzle of the gun and the point of the sword. T’was ever thus; I can recall offhand not a single instance when corrupt and fraudulent “elections” such as ours have ever been sufficient to the task. The miserable curs of Our Side’s chattering class who preemptively abjure any resort to the very dear coin with which our Founding Fathers bought freedom for their posterity disgrace themselves by their pusillanimous break with true American history. They insult the bloody sacrifice made by our Founders even as they cheapen the very idea of liberty itself with their puling, girlish squee, squee, squee-ing. When Henry asks of them “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” they can but answer in the affirmative, if they have a shred of integrity left about them.

Not that I’m recommending anybody should rush to this last, most desperate resort, mind. But those who would rule it out forever—as if reclaiming our unique American heritage of freedom and individual self-determination could ever be accomplished as cheaply, easily, and painlessly as merely casting a ballot in yet another sham “election”—have effectively demonstrated for all to see just how little they really value those priceless things, whether they know it or not.

(Via WRSA)

Yes, they’re coming for your children; now, what are you gonna do about it?

Posted on October 20, 2022October 20, 2022 by Mike

Could this turn out to be the final straw—the one that breaks the camel’s back, driving the great mass of heretofore-complacent Americans to get off their duffs at long last and embrace an open, vigorous revolt against their avowed enemies in the federal government of the (former) United States?

For nearly two years, we’ve been told the Covid-19 “vaccines” offer varying degrees of protection while offering varying varying degrees of risks. The trajectory of these two attributes of the jabs have been heading in opposite directions every since their launch. At first, we were told the injections received emergency use authorization because they were 100% effective and offered zero risk. Over time, that effectiveness number has steadily dropped while the risk factor has risen, though the degree to which these numbers have fallen and risen has been shrouded by lies, gaslighting, and a persistent narrative.

The powers-that-be have continuously changed their own narrative, but one thing has remained consistent throughout. They continue to push for every man, woman, and child to be injected as many times as possible.

On today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show, I discussed several stories and played a few videos that highlight while today is a “tipping point” for vaccine tyranny. The perceived mandate by the CDC to force vaccinations on school-age children contradicts every piece of data we have available. Children face infinitesimal risks to Covid and far greater risks from the jabs themselves. On top of that, the jabs appear to have negative efficacy that gets worse with each subsequent shot, draining away immune systems and replacing what God gave us with the abominations of manufactured spike proteins and other chemical toxins.

If we can’t stop this, we can’t stop them at all. By no means does that mean we stop fighting. It simply means our fight is to save a remnant and to prevent tyranny from spreading more quickly.

Dude, we reached that stage long, long ago. Happily, though, there’s at least one state whose governor refuses to bend the knee to Leviathan’s evil, grasping minions.

Guess which one. Go on, guess. I dares ya.

Ron DeSantis: “There Will Be No Covid-19 ‘Vaccine’ Mandate for Children in Our Schools”

The CDC is adding the Covid-19 shots to the Childhood Immunization Schedule. This will compel some states to mandate the jabs for school-aged children. It will also prompt other states who are not locked into CDC guidelines to opt into them anyway.

But not Florida. Not on Ron DeSantis’s watch.

“There’s been a lot of questions to our office about the CDC potentially adding Covid vaccine to the Childhood Immunization Schedule, and I know a lot of parents are concerned about that because if that’s on the immunization schedule the fear is that schools could potentially mandate your child to get a Covid shot even if that’s not something you want to do,” he said.

“As long as I’m around and as long as I’m kicking and screaming, there will be no Covid shot mandates for your kids,” DeSantis continued. “That is your decision to make as a parent. These are new shots.”

Then, he explained why this is the logical stance.

“By and large, most parents in Florida have opted against doing these booster shots, particularly for the young kids. The Surgeon General of Florida does not recommend this for young kids, for kids under 18, and basically his reason for that is there’s not really been a proven benefit for that.”

He added that he could get into the potential side effects but you don’t really need to do that because there hasn’t been a proven benefit.

DeSantis’s plainspoken declaration that this “is your decision to make as a parent” comes across as a real breath of fresh air in today’s “America.” Which, frankly, is more depressing than any other single aspect of this whole shit-circus. Hell, I’m so old I can recall a time when such an expression of as obvious and incontrovertible truth as that would have merited no more than a “Well, I mean, DUH” in response. The idea that it might actually NOT be is a recent development, and a most unwholesome and damaging one at that.

Time was, to argue against such a bedrock proposition would have been to court a swift, hard belt in the puss from a doughty Dad disinclined to brook any nonsense. And his fellow parents would have stood up and cheered when he did it, too. Alas, those were better times, when we were better people.

Get with The Program

Posted on October 20, 2022October 20, 2022 by Mike

From energy independence to beggar-nation in a single day.

Destroying America’s Energy Advantage To ‘Save Democracy’
Emptying the strategic reserve is at best stupid and at worst corrupt.

It’s worse than that, even. It’s malicious, part of the long-term DemonRat strategy to force America to its knees, and ensure that it stays weak, supine, and dependent forever.

“I have been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine caused these price hikes — these prices to spike and rattled international oil markets,” Biden said Wednesday. When Biden told a town hall audience in September 2019 that he would end all new drilling on federal lands, the national average for a gallon of gas was $2.56. That was more than two years before Putin invaded Ukraine. When Biden was inaugurated, long before the Russian invasion, the price of a gallon was $2.38. It was one cent higher when he signed an executive order pausing all new government leases on public lands — where nearly a quarter of American oil extraction takes place. Since then, Biden has handed out the fewest new leases for a president early in his administration since World War II.

Putin hadn’t invaded Ukraine the day Biden killed the Keystone pipeline, and with it 830,000 barrels per day – around 25 million a month —which was scheduled to open in only a few months. Nor had he invaded Ukraine when the Interior Department stopped pursuing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. All these actions put us in a precarious position when the inevitable international event shook the market.

Biden can’t control prices, of course, but there are plenty of things he could do to mitigate the pain outside of incentivizing production. Instead of easing sanctions on the socialist kleptocracy in Venezuela, or begging authoritarian cartels to drill more until the midterms, Biden could repeal the Jones Act and lower costs. He won’t because Democrats need union cash. Biden could help increase domestic production by pressuring governors to overturn fracking bans, but he won’t, because he needs to pacify the climate warriors.

BZZZT! Wrong answer, David! DemonRats are far more calculating and cunning than that; Biden, for his part, doesn’t truly care about “pacifying” anybody, not deep down. Though he, and they, enjoy listening to their gums flap in recitation of those shopworn shitlib pieties as justification, he, and they, prefer to keep the actual agenda carefully tucked away and out of public view. Union gelt, climate warriors, and sundry other useful idiots are precisely that—useful—in the exact same way PantiFa, the BLM rioters, LGBTQIZVERUKNXXXers, vapid and vacant celebs, and the FauxVid hoax have been: as tools to assist them in glomming onto, consolidating, and expanding the unchecked power and control they so desperately crave, nothing more.

Return of the desaparecido

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Mike

Put nothing whatever past these vile, perfidious enemies of all humanity.

An award-winning ABC News investigative reporter who was working on a book about President Joe Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan has not been seen in months after his apartment was raided by the FBI reportedly in connection with having classified material on his computer.

Rolling Stone broke the story about 52-year-old James Gordon Meek, an Emmy-winning journalist, on Tuesday. Meek was also former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee.

The FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid on his upscale apartment in Arlington, Virginia, back in April and he has not been seen since.

The publication claims that sources familiar with matter said that he was the target of a federal investigation and that the FBI allegedly found classified information on his laptop during the raid.

None of Meek’s neighbors have seen him since the raid, the report said. “He fell off the face of the Earth,” one neighbor said, noting that they’ve asked around, “but no one knew the answer.”

The report said that it was unclear what story Meeks could have been working on that would’ve led to the raid, but it noted that the entire situation was “even stranger” because Meeks was finishing a book titled, “Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan.”

Lt. Col. Scott Mann, who was co-authoring the book, said that he got a call from Meeks earlier this year indicating that something was going on.

“He contacted me in the spring, and was really distraught, and told me that he had some serious personal issues going on and that he needed to withdraw from the project,” Mann said. “As a guy who’s a combat veteran who has seen that kind of strain — I don’t know what it was — I honored it. And he went on his way, and I continued on the project.”

Just par for the usual course, an unremarkable and quite ordinary part of life under an authoritarian central government gone rogue. JJ elaborates:

Maybe it’s just me but this Merrick Garland chap is coming across more and more as rather a dislikable fellow, nein?

It’s bad enough when the FBI/DOJ at the behest of the Deep State sabotage an election (Miranda Devine’s waiting for an apology is risible unless she’s being sarcastic) then stage a Reichstag Fire (Godwin, drink!) phony “insurrection” to entrap innocent law-abiding protesters and hold them as political prisoners to preserve the illusion that 2020 was legitimate and anyone who says otherwise is on the verge of being labeled “a clear and present danger” to America.

We’ve now already seen that reliably leftist organizations like the National Association of School Boards colluded with the White House to have uppity parents identified by the DOJ as potential terrorists for objecting at school board meetings to the mental and physical abuse of their children and demanding change. We know that corrupt organizations like the ACLU and SPLC gin up phony stats (as if they had to) that perpetuate the myth of a vast white supremacist organization — comprised solely of millions of conservative and Republican voters — set to overthrow the government, which in turn the DOJ uses as a casus belli and political cover to oppress dissent.

So now, an investigative reporter who dares write a book that is critical if not an actual exposé of the Biden junta’s disastrous Afghanistan bug-out debacle “vanished off the face of the earth” months ago, without a trace. Can you say “nacht und nebel?”

If I were a betting man, I’d say if this story gains traction, Meek will be found dead, buck naked (except for a MAGA hat) in a seedy French hotel, surrounded by two dead catamites along with a suitcase full of documents linking him either to the Mossad or the Saudi intelligence services. The photos will resemble that of the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago raid. The cherry on top will be abject criminal scumbags like Peter Strzok spouting the party line that Meek was trafficking in phony disinformation. A “dossier” if you will.

Myself, I’d bet they’ve offed him already, and they’ll get away scot-free with it, too. There’s also been speculation here and there that Meek has actually gone into hiding, which would be the closest facsimile of a happy ending one ever gets in a tyranny as soulless, depraved, and morally bankrupt as Amerika v2.0 damned sure us. One thing we know for absolute certain: Americans can never again lay a remotely credible claim to being “free” as long as the FBI still exists, and remains perfectly free to run amok amongst its political foes without constraint.

Don’t do it, Gov!

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Mike

The historical quote I’d most like to hear DeSantis The Barbarian cite: “If nominate, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.”

Why DeSantis Should Not Run in 2024
Last week at American Greatness, Brandon Weichert explained why, in his estimation, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis should run for president in 2024. His main argument is that DeSantis is excellent in every way—and I agree.

But I reach the opposite conclusion from Weichert. Here is why DeSantis should not run in 2024.

Among many DeSantis boosters, there is an undercurrent of nervous dissatisfaction with Donald Trump. Weichert avoids a direct comparison, but his view is nonetheless clear when he says, for example, that DeSantis is the pinnacle of professionalism and “will not rage tweet his rivals.” At the very bottom of that is an error many still cling to: If we could find someone who does what Trump does but is nicer and more professional about it, then maybe that someone would have an easier time in Washington.

Not going to happen.

I hate to break it to my friends on this side of the aisle, but the total, mind-exploding, apocalyptic hatred of Trump never had and still has nothing whatever to do with Trump’s “rage tweets.” It has everything to do with his actions in office: He fights the established, corrupt-uniparty way of doing things. He makes it clear that a peaceful and prosperous nation is good for everyone except professional politicians.

If you replace Trump with someone who takes his same anti-establishment tack, that someone will get the same Orange Man Bad treatment, just in a different flavor. Maybe they won’t go after DeSantis for tweets, but it will be something else. One way or another, they’ll make him out to be the second coming of Adolf Hitler. And then, four years from now, the media will have you saying “OK, we need a new DeSantis—someone who has the same policy views but is just a little less controversial.”

For heavens’ sake, stop! Stop playing their game. Stop trying to find a candidate America and Washington both like, because it’s not just undesirable—it’s impossible.

If you think that by switching to DeSantis you’ll get the best features of Trump without the drawbacks, you’re just playing into the Left’s hands. You may think this is clever tactical maneuvering. In reality, you’re reading the part of “Fourth Plebeian” in Shakespeare’s Roman forum scene: “Caesar’s better parts shall be crown’d in Brutus!” In case you haven’t read the play, this genius logical fallacy doesn’t work too well for the plebeians—or for Brutus.

This is not the only time for DeSantis to run. We’ll need him in 2028 and beyond. And in the meantime, Florida needs him now. In the battle for American liberty, states are the only real counterbalance against federal power. If you remove DeSantis, the only genuinely pro-freedom governor, from that office now, you’ll have killed two birds with one stone—for the Left.

A perceptive, insightful article overall, and I particularly enjoyed Gelernter’s grateful appreciation regarding what Trump really represented to his supporters, and why he mattered. Nonetheless, I do have a quibble or two, especially the penultimate ‘graph.

Only the political class is afraid of Trump and his mean tweets. Voters will back him in the next cycle as never before, even beyond 2020 election levels. We understand this is a showdown, and it has nothing to do with Republicans and Democrats: This is people versus government. This is America versus politics. Don’t lose sight of that. And don’t try to out-clever the professional political manipulators. You already know who they fear the most: Trump terrifies them. The thought of Trump being president again scares them silly. That alone should tell you who our best candidate is.

Would that it were so. Alas, I still discern no sign whatever that they’re “scared silly” of anybody. They despise Trump, as they despise MAGA Americans, certainly. But seriously, now—”terrified”? Nope, just can’t see it. They managed to hogtie Trump handily enough the first time out, and from where I sit they seem to expect no more difficulty than they had then—not with Trump, not with DeSantis, not with anybody else you could name. Could be they’re mistaken about that; their arrogance might easily be luring them into the type of Pride that usually Goeth Before a very bad Fall, which is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

As you all know by now, I very much hope that DeSantis holds fast in Florida. As I told the redoubtable Christina Pushaw in our recent email exchange, we need him much more there rather than besieged in the White House, victimized by the selfsame Power that did for Trump.

As Gelernter so astutely puts it, this is now people versus government. In such a struggle, the sovereign States will necessarily have a vital role, being the obvious governing entity around which any Resistance movement will assemble, as our Founders intended and foresaw. DeSantis can be a key player in that conflict, whatever shape it eventually assumes, and can accomplish so much more there than he could as just another figurehead POTUS fronting for the real Power behind the throne.

I DO very much hope that both Trump and DeSantis are smart enough to see through the recent efforts to sow discord and division betwixt the two of them, another manipulation launched by the Men Behind The Curtain for their own quite obvious purposes.

Repeal the 17th—NOW

Posted on October 19, 2022October 19, 2022 by Mike

Ain’t gonna happen, of course, not without an epic cataclysm…most likely a bloody one. But while we’re just spitballing here, the 16th has to go too.

To Save America, Repeal the 17th Amendment

Last week we looked at the pernicious effects of the 16th amendment, and how for more than a century it has destroyed almost any chance the middle classes ever had of accumulating wealth, since their money is confiscated at the source, and has taught working Americans that the first call on the fruits of their labor belongs not to themselves and their families but to the federal government. (Real estate used to be the exception, although that too is now the province of the rich.)

Whereas the feds managed to scrape by from 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, to 1913, when the 16th was endorsed by 38 states (two more than the requisite number), on tariffs, and excise taxes, with only occasional resort to some sort of temporary income taxes, the way was now open for Washington to reach directly into the pockets of every American. This was a sea-change in the relationship of the federal government to the citizen, and the beginning of federal dominance over the very states which had given it birth and thus the entire population of the nation—not as members of sovereign states but as individuals.

The 16th, as several readers noted, was also significant in that it overturned the constitutional language regarding taxation under Article 1, Section 9: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” That went out the window with the 16th and its game-changing language that “the Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

In other words, the idea that states could be subject to an individual “head count” tax of their residents only in direct proportion to their share of the overall population was now gone. This malevolent blunder turned out to be the first of several colossal blows to the nation-as-founded during the so-called “Progressive Era” headed by presidents Theodore Roosevelt (what in the world is he doing on Mount Rushmore?), the gloriously corpulent William Howard Taft, and the cadaverous Woodrow Wilson.

According to the liberal Khan Academy, the period was:

an era of intense social and political reform aimed at making progress toward a better society. Progressive Era reformers sought to harness the power of the federal government to eliminate unethical and unfair business practices, reduce corruption, and counteract the negative social effects of industrialization. During the Progressive Era, protections for workers and consumers were strengthened, and women finally achieved the right to vote.

That’s one way to look at it. The problem is, it’s looking at the era through the wrong end of the telescope by people who love the intentions and can afford to ignore the results. Left unquestioned is whether the federal government had the right under the Constitution to what it did. And the answer is clearly no—so it simply changed the Constitution via the perfectly legitimate amendment process, and induced a gullible and resentful populace to go along; recall that nobody thought the Income Tax had a snowball’s chance in hell of ratification, and yet it was ratified. (Don’t start yapping at me that the 16th was “illegally ratified.” It wasn’t, which makes things even worse.)

Which brings us to the 17th amendment. The relevant bit reads: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. ” Prior to its ratification in 1913, the same year as the 16th and a spectacularly disastrous year for our real democracy, senators were chosen by the various state legislatures, in order to keep them tethered and answerable to their state governments: they were senators from the Great State of Whatever, not interchangeable “United States senators.”

I’ve been beating this particular dead horse for years hereabouts, and Walsh is perfectly correct: the 17th Amendment was the killshot for Constitutional governance, the Amendment that grotesquely flouted the core Founding concept of the sovereign States having their interests represented in the US government. As such, if you had to pick one specific development out of the myriad of ’em that cemented our status as a lowly, impotent Serf Class groaning under the immense weight of a bloated federal government whose power is without limit, whose expansion is perpetual, and whose intrusiveness is beyond challenge or even scrutiny, the 17th would have to be it.

There are two (2) primary obstacles standing in the way of any prospective restoration or rebirth of America That Was: the 17th Amendment, and the government “school” system. Unless and until those obstacles have been dealt with, the desperately needed American renaissance we all yearn so much to see will remain but a dream.

The Reichstag Fire that wasn’t

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Mike

Another phonus-balonus Congressional “investigation” winds down with a groan, not a roar.

The Broken Promises of the January 6 Committee
Questions about the role of the FBI and other prominent government agencies in the events of January 6, 2020 remain unanswered because they were not asked.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol conducted its final televised performance on Thursday afternoon, an event dutifully carried live by every cable and broadcast news station. Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) now plan to exit stage left as their congressional careers come to an end—the former at the hands of disgruntled Wyoming Republican voters and the latter at the hands of gerrymandering Illinois Democrats. It’s only a matter of time before both find a new home at some NeverTrump outlet funded by leftist billionaires to play the role of the “conservative” useful idiot to the Democratic Party.

Since its inception, the select committee has wielded its unchecked authority not to fulfill the stated mission of finding out exactly what happened on January 6—a four-hour disturbance the enabling legislation refers to as a “domestic terror attack”—but as a vehicle to harass, intimidate, prosecute, and destroy the careers of Donald Trump, his aides, and his supporters. Former federal prosecutors for months have interrogated Trump White House officials behind closed doors to produce cherry-picked clips to bolster the regime’s narrative that Trump incited the “insurrection” by refusing to accept the 2020 presidential election as legitimate—a view still shared by the overwhelming majority of Republican voters.

Along with everyone else possessed of even half a lick of common sense, analytical ability, and integrity.

Questions as to the involvement of the FBI or other federal agencies remain unanswered and unasked. It’s unknown whether FBI Director Christopher Wray even testified. Remember when the committee came to the defense of Ray Epps and promised to disclose his testimony? That didn’t happen, either.

What about videos that showed police officers allowing hundreds of individuals into the building? Where are the disciplinary reports on officers who permitted the breach to occur? Or internal investigations into use of excessive force that contributed to the deaths of four Trump supporters?

Why not release the 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by security cameras inside and outside the building on January 6? The footage would tell the complete story, not just snippets to support the regime’s narrative.

And on and on.

Of course, Jules knows the answer to her questions as well as anybody: because supporting the regime’s narrative was the sole purpose of the entire charade. That, and not a jot or tittle more. Thus:

In an overwrought monologue before the committee voted on her resolution to subpoena Trump, Cheney preached that she was obligated to the “country and the Constitution” to get all the “answers” about what happened that day. But her list of those culpable intentionally omits the powerful and the unknown—despite promises otherwise.

And therein lies the real truth about January 6, 2021.

The problem is one of simple mathematics, see. Inconveniently for the shitlibs and Swamp creatures (BIRM), two plus two goes right on summing to four, no matter how they flounder, flail, and connive to make it add up to five. Nobody needs to delude themselves that the long-threatened GOPe “investigation” will end better, assuming it ever even happens at all.

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