Hmmm… – Page 10

Elon’s assasination: not if, but when

Posted on March 12, 2025March 12, 2025 by Mike

If he isn’t taking this shit seriously, he’s a damned idiot. And we all already know he’s anything BUT an idiot.

Elon Musk Hit the Mother Lode of the Deep State. Now He Believes He’s an Assassination Target
Elon Musk and his DOGE team have now mined so deeply into the inner workings of government overspending and fraud that they may have hit the Mother Lode of public corruption. And he and his friends believe someone will try to kill him.

Fort Knox may be full of fool’s gold for all we know, USAID looks to be the mother’s milk of the international Marxist movement, and now Musk and his DOGE organization have hit the main vein: election manipulation.

As PJ Media colleagues Bryan Jung and Matt Margolis write nearby, the executive suite at ActBlue, the Democrat fundraising colossus, has nearly emptied. Many have done a bunk—to escape what DOGE allegedly uncovered?

What are they afraid of? Things appear to be worse than the oddly large “donations” made by pensioners in Washington state and other places, and worse than the dodgy credit-like cards issued to acolytes. Musk believes that the giant Democrat money machine paid for the “protests” —and worse?– done to his Tesla showrooms and charging stations throughout the country. And the DOGE team believes it has discovered a through line between ActBlue and illegality.

No stretch whatsoever, that.

Being the world’s richest man, Musk has had heavy security for years, and has spoken about the attempts on Trump’s life. He also believes that he’s also on somebody’s kill list, too.

And, like Trump, the left’s mainstream media went after Musk the same way they went after Trump.

“They actually want to kill me,” he told Rogan in his February 28 podcast. He says people with a screw loose may be inflamed enough because of media lies that he’s a “Nazi.” “They actually want to kill me. They say so online. There are Reddit forums where they don’t just want to kill me—they want to desecrate my corpse,” he told the podcast host. And he said, “If the legacy media is saying I’m a Nazi and that’s all you read, then you’re like, ‘He’s Hitler. We should assassinate Hitler, shouldn’t we?’”

When shitlibs are blatantly, openly threatening to kill you, the wise man takes them at their word and conducts himself accordingly. What we’re seeing here, in big-picture terms, is merely the latest iteration of Liberal Fascism. To wit:

Since Democrats are once again engaged in Kristallnacht-style violence because the electorate rejected their policies, it’s time once again for my periodic reminder that all Democrats are fascists.

I love the fact that whenever I point this out, some Democrat invariably claims “Derrrrr… you don’t even know what fascism is!” So let’s explore fascism a little, shall we?

Listed below are attributes and practices that all 20th Century fascists have in common with the Democrat Party of 2025:

1. Laws promoting the seizure of guns from law-abiding citizens and/or the denial of gun ownership rights for law-abiding citizens.

2. Censorship of free speech by pretending such censorship protects the citizenry from faulty information (i.e., so-called “disinformation”).

3. Government control of industry.

4. Government control of the mass media.

5. Control of the entertainment industry as a means of propaganda. (See: Leni Riefenstahl; Walt Disney Corporation.)

6. Children belong to the State and not their parents.

7. Political dissidents and opposing political leadership are to be persecuted for fabricated “crimes” under the color of law through the courts.

8. Political dissidents are locked up for months/years without a trial.

9. Leading political opponents who are a threat to the fascist order are to be assassinated.

10. Extreme nationalism (Democrats hate the United States of America, but are extreme nationalistic zealots for the Woke States of America).

11. Purposeful division of the population along racial and ethnic lines as a means to power.

12. Leadership of the ruling fascist party is chosen by party leaders without any input from rank-and-file party members, but an illusion of democracy is perpetuated. (See: Kamala as nominee with zero votes.)

13. Certain party criminals are turned into martyrs upon their demise. (See: Horst Wessel; Saint George Floyd.)

14. Destruction of statues, symbols and art of the pre-fascist order.

15. Accuse dissidents of the very crimes you yourself commit.

16. Justify all of it for the “common good.”

The Democrat Party of 2025 is a fascist party. Spread the word.

Indeed so. But, as Stephen helpfully reminds us, “They aren’t all fascists. Some are commies.” To adapt Keyser Soze’s famous maxim to current reality, the greatest trick the Left ever pulled was to convince the world that fascism is “right wing.”

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Call to violence

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Mike

I can only repeat what I said not long ago: For the Left, the step from calls for violence to acts of violence is never a big one, nor have they ever shown themselves to be at all reluctant to take it.

Political Violence Against Musk: The Left’s Playbook of Intimidation
The attacks on Elon Musk and Tesla are no accident. They are the logical, almost inevitable, consequence of the incitement coming from the highest levels of the Democratic Party, left-wing media outlets such as MSNBC and The New York Times, and billionaire activists like Alex Soros and Reid Hoffman, who fear that Musk is dismantling what they’ve spend years building. These attacks are not isolated. They are coordinated. They are deliberate. And they are meant to send a message—not just to Musk, but to anyone else who dares challenge the progressive orthodoxy.

The recent wave of violence against Tesla facilities, dealerships, and charging stations is staggering in its scope. In New York City, over 350 protesters stormed a Tesla showroom, smashing windows, attacking customers, and even assaulting police officers. In Colorado, an activist-turned-arsonist lobbed Molotov cocktails at Tesla vehicles, spray-painting “Nazi cars” on the walls. In Oregon, a self-described “transgender terrorist” opened fire on a Tesla showroom, shattering windows and riddling vehicles with bullets. And the vandalism isn’t limited to the United States—graffiti in Tasmania denounces Tesla owners as driving “swasticars.”

What fuels this madness? The answer lies in the rhetoric of those in power. Prominent Democrats have relentlessly demonized Musk, not merely as a political opponent, but as a threat to democracy itself. Representative Robert Garcia, in a heated CNN interview, declared that the fight against Musk requires “real weapons,” a statement that he later claimed was metaphorical but was nonetheless embraced by activists as a call to action. Reid Hoffman, billionaire donor and longtime Democratic operative, ominously mused that “actions have consequences” when discussing the attacks on Tesla—an implicit endorsement of political violence. Others, including Representatives Al Green, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, have accused Musk of fascism, of being the next Hitler, of plotting to round up Democrats into concentration camps. This is not political discourse; this is incitement.

Lots more to this one yet at the link, of which you definitely want to read the all. I can’t refrain from including this bit from the closing sum-up:

This is not about Tesla. This is about the future of political discourse in America. If we allow these tactics to succeed, if we permit violence and intimidation to dictate who may speak and who must be silent, then we will have ceded our democracy to the mob.

Which, of course, is precisely why the Founders, to a man, warned their posterity so strenuously and continually against democracy—after all, at the end of the day “mob rule” is what democracy actually is.

(Via BRM)

Crooks, robbers, and thieves

Posted on March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 by Mike

Yet another question that answers itself.

12 billion dollars was allocated to the Navy for submarines and not one submarine was built.

42.5 billion dollars was allocated to hook people up to high-speed Internet, and not one single person was hooked up to high-speed Internet.

7.5 billion dollars was allocated to build…

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree)

March 8, 2025

Annnnd your obligatory “Show more…” end run.

12 billion dollars was allocated to the Navy for submarines and not one submarine was built.

42.5 billion dollars was allocated to hook people up to high-speed Internet, and not one single person was hooked up to high-speed Internet.

7.5 billion dollars was allocated to build EV charging stations. Only 37 stations were built. Thats 200 million per charging station.

Where is the rest of the money?

Three guesses, first two don’t count. More and more I’m coming to think that all US ProPols, at every level, should be required by law to wear black bandanas over their faces, like the highwaymen of old. That way we’d all know right away what we were looking at, and no mistakes need ever be made about it. The truly pressing question, being brought home to us more forcefully with every passing day, is whether ANY of these villeins ever intended to spend the taxpayers’ money on what they claimed they were going to.

Aww, don’t bother, that one kinda answers itself too, really.

Peach state goin’ down

Posted on March 9, 2025 by Mike

We hardly knew ye, Jawja.

A Biological Male for ‘Miss Georgia’?
It’s bad enough that biological men want to compete in women’s sports, but now it looks like they’re aiming for women’s pageants, too. In 2023, men from Portugal and the Netherlands were contestants in the Miss Universe pageant, and in June of last year, a biological male became Miss Maryland and later competed in the Miss USA pageant. And now, it’s happening in my home state of Georgia.

Bella Bautista from Cartersville, Ga., is a biological man who is now, apparently, “Miss Buckhead” (Buckhead is a popular residential and commercial district in Atlanta) and plans to compete in the Miss Georgia pageant. When I saw this headline, my obvious issue was, of course, that here we go again with men attempting to take something away from women.

But then I visited Bautista’s Instagram page and noted that this person has a big agenda. The bio reads, “Civil Rights Activist. Collegiate Athlete. Econ. Major Using Archives To Restore Trans History.” Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that this person’s life is largely dedicated to disrupting the lives of others in favor of “trans rights.”

Gee, how very unusual of him/her/it, wouldn’t have expected it.

A bit of backstory: when I lived in ATL, Buckhead was universally known as “Fuckhead” amongst us lesser beings—a snooty rich-people nabe you could barely even drive through without getting jeered at and heckled by the locals as you passed. After dark, fuhgeddaboudit: the streets and sidewalks were asshole to elbow with inebriated, besuited yuppie-puppies staggering about, twelve-dollar beers in hand, making the nightly pub-crawl through the many exorbitantly priced watering holes dotting the area.

The one and only reason I know even that much about the place is that the photography school/college/whatevs my then-gf Kat attended was on Peachtree just beyond Fuckhead, so we had to run the gauntlet through the miserable dump twice daily on the way to school and back. At that time, we only had the one car between us: Kat’s beat-up but nonetheless valiant old Ford Fiesta, a less than ideal situation which persisted until I arranged to buy my uncle Larry’s battered old Burick for a piffling sum.

Head games

Posted on March 9, 2025March 9, 2025 by Mike

CBD undertakes a little thought experiment.

Let’s play a little game… pretend that a group of “White Supremacists” (yeah, I know, they mostly don’t exist) decided to parade across the Columbia University quad in KKK garb, then set up a “camp” where they built little gallows for mock lynchings. Oh, add in some signs about how the Emancipation Proclamation was an existential evil, and integration is genocide. And if we really want to add some spice to this, let’s have the participants harass and sometimes attack every black person they see, and trash some buildings for good measure.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it! How long do you think these protesters would last before a few hundred NYPD riot police busted their heads, fighting for the privilege with thousands of counter-protesters from all over the country? How many robe-clad-racists would survive unscathed to make it to jail? And imagine the very public trials for dozens of insane and imagined charges cooked up by foaming-at-the-mouth prosecutors salivating at the thought of throwing some 20-year-old dipshit into jail for 10 years!

We can have a robust discussion about whether this is constitutionally protected free speech (obviously not including physical violence), and that is an important discussion to be had in America. But the obvious difference between our imaginary protest and the very real and violent protests on the campus of Columbia University is that the administration of the university did nothing to protect the Jewish students from real danger, and did almost nothing to the protesters in spite of their clear and obvious violations of dozens of university rules, and state and federal law.

Where were the U.S. Marshalls escorting Jewish students to class? Where was the 101st Airborne protecting the campus?

They were nowhere to be found, because the administration of one of the oldest and most prestigious (hah!) universities in the world decided that violent Jew-hate is an acceptable expression of free speech. It is as simple as that.

And in a simpler world that would be incredibly distasteful but legal (again, not including violence). After all, free speech that is anodyne is trivial. True free speech is offensive and challenging. But the second Columbia University accepted one penny of public money, they were bound by the strictures of the various federal and state laws governing discrimination, namely Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Columbia failed to protect its Jewish students from discrimination based on their religion.

If Columbia University is institutionally anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel, and I believe they are, then they have a straightforward way of being allowed to express those opinions. Stop taking government money. Easy-Peasy! But they won’t because they can’t! They suckle at the government teat to the tune of $5 billion! So they are stuck! And it is glorious!

Hm…well, could be, could be. CBD is a lot more gleeful than I am about what looks to me like a mere token response from God-Emperor Trump.

Trump cuts more than $400 million in grants to Columbia over antisemitism concerns, potentially more to come

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will rescind more than $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, citing concerns over rising antisemitism on campus and the school’s failure to address it.

Earlier this week, the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (DoED) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the initiation of a “comprehensive review” of more than $5 billion in federal grant money that goes to Columbia, “in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act” related to antisemitism on campus.

I hope this hurts them. And I hope that every wealthy Jewish alum will stop giving. And I hope that no Jewish students apply to Columbia. And I hope that the massive corporate money flow to Columbia will slow to a trickle, because all of a sudden, it is appropriate for corporations to examine their funding of overtly racist programs (DEI anyone?). And yes, I am aware that some of this is a pipe-dream, but there will be incremental decreases, and that is entirely a good thing.

I repeat: could be, could be. But from where I sit, 400 mill out of over 5 BILLION ain’t gonna hurt ‘em as much as I’d like to see ‘em hurt. Baby steps, I know, baby steps; gotta walk before you can run, all that. But still.

The absolute last word on “birthright citizenship”

Posted on March 5, 2025March 5, 2025 by Mike

It is NOT a thing, has never BEEN a thing, and ought never to BE a thing. Period fucking dot.

The 14th Amendment does not confer automatic citizenship
Claremont Institute scholars, including me, Ed Erler, Tom West, John Marini, and Michael Anton, President Trump’s incoming Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, have been contending for years—decades, really—that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause does not provide automatic citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances. Other prominent scholars, such as the late University of Texas law Professor Lino Graglia, University of Pennsylvania Professor Rogers Smith, and Yale Law Professor Emeritus Peter Schuck, have come to the same conclusion based on their own extensive scholarly research.

Claremont scholars have made the argument in books, law review articles, congressional testimony, and legal briefs. President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese, even joined one of those briefs, in which we argued against treating enemy combatant Yaser Esam Hamdi as a citizen merely because he had been born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while his father was working in the U.S. on a temporary work visa. Perhaps as a result of our brief in that case, the late Justice Antonin Scalia referred to Hamdi as a “presumed citizen” in his dissenting opinion.

Our argument is straightforward. The text of the 14th Amendment contains two requirements for acquiring automatic citizenship by birth: one must be born in the United States and be subject to its jurisdiction. The proper understanding of the Citizenship Clause therefore turns on what the drafters of the amendment, and those who ratified it, meant by “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Was it merely a partial, temporary jurisdiction, such as applies to anyone (except for diplomats) who are subject to our laws while they are within our borders? Or does it instead apply only to those who are subject to a more complete jurisdiction, one which manifests itself as owing allegiance to the United States and not to any foreign power?

Think of it this way. Someone from Great Britain visiting the United States is subject to our laws while here, which is to say subject to our partial or territorial jurisdiction. He must drive on the right-hand side of the road rather than the left, for example. But he does not thereby owe allegiance to the United States; he is not subject to being drafted into our army; and he cannot be prosecuted for treason (as opposed to ordinary violations of law) if he takes up arms against the United States, for he has breached no oath of allegiance.

So which understanding of “subject to the jurisdiction” did the drafters of the 14th Amendment have in mind?

Happily, we don’t need to speculate, as they were asked that very question. They unambiguously stated that it meant “complete” jurisdiction, such as existed under the law at the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which excluded from citizenship those born on U.S. soil who were “subject to a foreign power.”

Covers the bases pretty well, I should think, although there are still plenty more indisputable proofs perusable at the link. Which, of course, doesn’t by any means suggest that shitlibs are going to cease and desist soiling their Underoos, wailing and weeping, and waving their chubby fists around demanding that saner sorts recognize this nonexistent “right” immediately. Not anytime soon, they ain’t. It’s an approach Real Americans would do well to adopt for themselves: no discussion, no debate, no controversy is truly concluded until the Left has gotten its way.

Apropos of nothing: if you check the date on the article (1/28/25), you’ll see that this one has just about got to be the all-time record holder in the Most Consecutive Days Spent Languishing In An Open Tab Waiting For Ye Aulde Blogghoste To Finally Get Around To Posting On It™ category.

Deep dive into some dirty water

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Mike

EXCELLENT run-down of the DOGE dustup, what it all means, the history behind it, how Real Americans should perceive and interpret it, and more, from Jeffrey A Tucker. It’s a Tweet/X/whatever, and a pretty long ‘un too, so rather than do an embed of the original post I’ll just fast forward to the inevitable “Show more…” workaround.

I’m concerned that many people do not understand the historical and institutional context in which the DOGE labor reforms are unfolding. They look at this as if these are some random, chaotic, arbitrary, strange, and even cruel measures to impose on a devoted civil service.

The reality is very different, and I’m not even sure that Elon entirely understands this. For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too.

Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut. The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller.

Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured.

No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control.

This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue.

All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all.

The Biden years underscored the point. We didn’t even need a conscious and present executive. We only needed a figurehead to pretend to be president, just like the Soviet premiers in the old days. The institutions ran everything and the people controlled nothing.

How to deal with this? Trump alone figured it out in his last term: he simply took charge of the agencies in a limited way. There were screams of horror and plots galore. They performed a long stream of clever schemes to destroy him and show him who is boss, which is not the democratically elected president but the forces behind the scenes.

The job of the president, goes the message from all the insiders, is to PRETEND to be in charge but not actually do anything meaningful. Shut up, mug up, obey, and disturb nothing, let the administrative state do its thing without oversight or disruption, and then you will get your honorary library and bestselling autobiography and go down in history as great.

Trump refused the deal and look what happened.

Four years have gone by and Trump is back again, this time with a determination to slay this beast, one that he knows all-to-well. The efforts of DOGE and MAHA and MAGA are epic in scope, breaking a century of pathetic acquiescence toward the deep, middle, and shallow states, at last using moral courage to confront the problem head on, come what may.

They are profoundly aware that they MUST act fast and with some degree of ferocity, even recklessness, else we will default back to the status quo of leaders who pretend to be in charge while the embedded system runs things behind the scenes.

It has been this way for TOO LONG. The voters this time have demanded change, and mustered the faith to believe that change is possible. This is precisely what DOGE is attempting, to make good on a promise, a promise that for once the voters actually believed was credible.

They simply must succeed. There might never be another chance. The way of failure is the path everyone knows the US was on, toward economic stagnation, political scolerosis, and eventual irrelevance in the unfolding of the next stage of social evolution.

As comprehensive, clear-cut, and just dead-on-point good as we’re ever gonna see, I believe. I started to do a little boldfacing here and there (I especially dug that “voters…have demanded change, and mustered the faith to believe that change is possible” bit), but then it hit me that there’s just way too much rich, buttery goodness here to easily be able to find a stopping point once I got started. Some things are just better left alone; they stand well enough on their own, thanks.

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Coolest. Gift. EVAR!

Posted on February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by Mike

I sure do hope Trump properly values having this guy so firmly in his corner.

Elon Musk Given “Chainsaw For Bureaucracy” By Javier Milei At CPAC
Elon Musk is no stranger to using physical props to make a point – After his purchase of social media giant Twitter, which shocked the political left to their core, he famously entered corporate headquarters on day one with a bathroom sink in his hands. “Let that sink in” became a mantra and a meme as Musk proceeded to fire around 80% of the bloated leftist company’s staff without any visible decline in operational ability.

The day Javier Milei was sworn in as president he shuttered 13 ministries and fired over 30,000 government bureaucrats. Argentina’s economy has been a train wreck for almost three decades due to socialist mismanagement and out of control debt spending. The country has been indebted to the IMF for many years and was suffering from multiple bouts of hyperinflation since 2001. Milei ran on a Libertarian platform and his campaign promise was to eliminate government waste. He went on to reduce spending by 30% and cut monthly inflation from 25% down to 2.7%.

By all accounts, Milei’s administration has been a resounding success in terms of economic reform and he has proven that Austrian economics work in practice and not just in theory. His open disdain for the political left was refreshing to see in a political candidate – Much like Trump, he has not been afraid to say what he really thinks of progressives.

After a decade of woke authoritarianism (much of it funded with American tax dollars) it’s hard to argue with anything he says here. Milei’s disdain for the political left is only matched by his disdain for big government. His favorite campaign prop was a chainsaw, representing his intent to chop the fat off the bureaucracy.

The saw blade is engraved with Milei’s catchphrase, “Viva la libertad carajo!,” which roughly translates to “Long live freedom, Goddammit!” Musk wielded the chainsaw on stage at CPAC, swinging it wildly. Thankfully the machine appeared to be inert, otherwise Musk probably would have cranked it into action and run around the stage with it.

The saw is a real beaut; best picture I’ve seen of it so far would have to be this one:

See what I mean? Thanks for all you do, Javier.

Churmany defeats itself…again

Posted on February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by Mike

In case any of you were laboring under the delusion that Germany will somehow be able to politically right itself and save themselves from—well, themselves, actually, Ace provides this helpful, handy-dandy explainer as to why that simply isn’t so.

The fake “center right” party won the election. They made noises about cracking down on illegal immigration, but, as you can see in the video below the fold, their leader and the next German PM vows that “no one is talking about closing the borders.”

The “far right” party, AfD or Alternative for Germany, came in a strong second at 20%, receiving its highest vote share ever, will have… zero participation in the new government.

That’s because the CDU vowed to not form a government with the “far right” (they’re far right because they oppose unlimited eternal mass migration from the third world) AfD.

The “Center right” party, the Christian Democrat Union or CDU, is the party of Andrea Merkel, whose “Wilkomen” policy of allowing mass migration without even the most basic vetting has plunged Germany into crisis.

Note that they do not have a majority of the seats in Parliament, or the Bund I guess the huns call it, so that means they will have to form an alliance with another party to secure a majority and form a government.

Because the CDU abides by the “cordon sanitaire” or “firewall” policy that all the Euro Regime countries do, refusing to form governments with any party that’s “far right” (again, meaning “against unlimited mass migration from Islamic countries”), that means that this “center right” party will form a coalition government with… either the German Socialist Party and/or the German Green Party, who are themselves big champions of unlimited third-world mass migration.

You might wonder: Why not just start a new party that isn’t “far right” but still opposes open borders?

Well, silly, because any party that opposes open borders is “far right” and subject to the “firewall” policy of excluding closed-border parties.

So the “center right” party will be pursuing a socialist, mass-migration open borders agenda.

But they’ve kept those dirty “far right” voters out of power.

And what happens when the German government collapses again because the “center right” party cannot agree with its socialist and green partners?

Well, we go through the same process again: a government is allowed to govern without a majority, citing an emergency, and they stage another election in which the will of the people will again be thwarted, and the “center-right” party again forms a coalition with the leftwing open borders parties.

How long can this inherently unstable situation persist for?

Right offhand, I’d say it will until all of a sudden…it won’t.

Oversight on purpose

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Mike

Somehow, for some unfathomable reason, the people responsible for the “Official portraits of Presidents and First Ladies since 1965” (no link, because fuck them) made one glaring omission, which (presumably deliberate) omission AoSHQ’s Scampydog helpfully addressed. Ladies and germs, I give you the indisputably loveliest, most stunningly beautiful First Lady not just since 65, but in US history entire.

Melania 2025.

MAN, what a dish! Class, style, looks, brains, breezy self-confidence—whatever Melania doesn’t have we don’t need, and will assuredly never miss. She’s a First Lady all Americans can be proud of, and damned well ought to be. A real headscratcher, innit, how the White House Historical Ass’n couldn’t lay their hands on the above Official Portrait no matter how hard they “tried,” but a lowly blogger-dude somehow managed it.

MAN BITES DOG!

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Mike

Well, this is a refreshing change of pace. Kinda-sorta, in a manner of speaking.

DC judge blocks bid to stop DOGE mass firings, federal data access
A federal judge rejected an emergency request from Democrat-led states Tuesday to hamper cost-cutting efforts by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Washington, DC, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied the petition by 14 Democratic states to issue a temporary restraining order against Musk and DOGE.

“Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight,” Chutkan wrote.

“In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this court acts within the bounds of its authority. Accordingly, it cannot issue a TRO, especially one as wide-ranging as Plaintiffs request, without clear evidence of imminent, irreparable harm to these Plaintiffs.”

Chutkan said that the plaintiffs, led by New Mexico, had not met the “high standard for irreparable injury.”

Oh, I dunno about all that, now. Seems to me that “imminent, irreparable harm” to these scum-slurping shitlib swine is basically the entire point of the exercise. Unless and until the baglappers have been harmed irreparably, their exsanguinated carcasses cast into Outer Darkness for all time, to the last man Jack of ’em, the job won’t be well and truly done. Otherwise, it just amounts to the same tired three-card-monte scam the DC Swamp critters have been running against America That Was all along, so why even bother? Then again, could be I’m all wet about the whole sordid mess.

However it all shakes out when all’s said and done, seeing a judge—ANY judge, a DC judge, no less—step up to prevent the shitlibs from getting their way rather than providing overt assistance as usual really IS a refreshing change of pace, no two ways about it.

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About face

Posted on February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 by Mike

Strom sees the Trumpian light. Kinda, sorta, a little bit. What the hey: baby steps, man, baby steps.

I Was Wrong About Trump
No, I am not in love with Trump. He still makes me cringe sometimes, and I still don’t understand the Canada/51st state thing at all, and want nothing to do with Gaza if he is serious about that.

He should make ALL of us cringe sometimes, and anybody who agrees with Trump’s every policy, position, and statement every single time needs to see a shrink and have his head checked. Can’t remember who first coined the phrase (Milton Friedman, maybe? Eh, dunno), but it’s right as rain: if you find yourself agreeing with anyone in the political arena 99 percent of the time, then one at least of you is almost certainly insane…and it’s probably you. True then, true now, true forever.

But there are two vital things about him which I got completely, totally, and without question wrong.

Walter Kirn slapped me in the face (not literally) with a single tweet…

Boom. At least it was a “boom” for me, because I was one of those people who was absolutely certain that Trump was too immature, too narcissistic, and too lacking in self-awareness to put his ego in check and hire the best people and support them. More than that, Trump has withstood weeks of attacks on his “ceding power” to “President Musk.”

And he has shrugged it all off and pushed his collaborators to the front, empowered them, and backed them every step along the way despite the Democrats and the Pravda Media baiting him hourly on how weak he appears.

As the Democrats and the Pravda Media scream about “President Musk,” Donald Trump invites him to give a press conference in the Oval Office with Little X running around. Trump seems so comfortable in his own skin that the richest man in the world waxing about his role in the government isn’t threatening at all; he invited it, and handed the mic over to him.

Same with Kennedy. Same with Gabbard.

I was also wrong about another issue that is perhaps even more important: his competence to take on the Deep State and win.

During his first term, I came to the conclusion that Trump didn’t understand government well enough and that by the end of his term, he hadn’t destroyed the Deep State, but rather they destroyed him. I stand by my assessment of the success of the Deep State. It hobbled him in his first term, which ended with the annus horribilis of 2020. The Deep State ran the United States in 2020, leading to Trump’s narrow defeat in the 2020 election.

As Trump himself has said several times of late, he squandered most of his first term listening to bad advice from people he believed to be his friends but were in actuality no such thing. He has learned from those mistakes, and it shows.

Believe it or not, even some normal people are scared enough about change and still trust the Democrats enough to buy the “woe is me” propaganda, but enough people are waking up that the Democrats are in a losing battle. Trump won’t win every fight, but he is wracking up a lot of wins.

I supported Ron DeSantis in the primaries because I thought Trump would have the will to fight, but not a winning strategy.

I was wrong. Trump might still be stopped, but it won’t be due to his inherent weaknesses. He is performing masterfully.

He is at that, and deserves full credit for it.

Update! Even shitlib ABC journalismist Jon Karl is forced to own up to the painful truth:

ABC’s Jon Karl: Trump’s favorability is now HIGHER than it ever was in his first term.

– 63% want the government to recognize only two sexes
– 60% support deporting illegal aliens
– 60% favor expanding oil & gas productionpic.twitter.com/9fUNRCY0Yp

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok)

February 16, 2025

YEEEEOWTCH! You know saying that had to hurt him like a hydrochloric acid-dipped shiv to the heart.

The “Health” Racket

Posted on February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 by Mike

I must say I was kinda surprised to read Steyn’s take on all this. It wasn’t quite what I would’ve expected from him, although perhaps I should’ve.

I rejoice in the confirmation of RFK Jr as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (no thanks to longtime Chinese asset Mitch McConnell). “Make America Healthy Again” is the indispensable component of “Make America Great Again” – because the most obvious sign of what’s gone wrong in the country is to take a walk down any main street. No one would bet the future on a country that has debauched its human capital the way the United States has.

As Bobby Kennedy pointed out on The Mark Steyn Show, Americans are the most medicated people on the planet and are the unhealthiest in the developed world; in particular, as RFK also noted on our show, our children are the world’s most medicated children, and have accelerating rates of childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, childhood heart disease. A grade-school diagnosis of diabetes can take up to two decades off your lifespan.

So what’s the answer? Further enriching Blue Cross-Blue Shield? Americans pay more for health care than anybody else, and have lousier outcomes, starting with the most basic indicator of all – life expectancy: According to the UN, from the Swiss to the Australians, the list of peoples that enjoy an extra half-decade of life over Americans lengthens year on year. In the 2023 UN rankings, the United States comes in at Number Fifty-Five on the life-expectancy Hit Parade; for purposes of comparison, Albania – where the men smoke seventy a day and accessing the health-care system requires swimming to Italy – is at Fifty-Three. By 2022 America’s annual spending on health care was twelve-and-a-half grand per capita; Albania’s was under five hundred bucks – which is less than your co-pay on a Covid anal swab; the word “co-pay” does not exist in Albanian.

Four years ago, we first had RFK Jr on the show mainly because no one else wants to talk about this. If you’re wondering why, it’s because his late friend Roger Ailes, of Fox News, told him that in non-election years three-quarters of Fox’s ad revenue comes from Big Pharma.

Five years ago, the state and the pharmaceutical companies joined forces for an unprecedented experiment on you – to damage almost every aspect of daily life, including even more damage to a generation of children. There has yet to be an accounting for that.

And THAT’s what really stings about this, at least for me. Although admittedly, the only way We The Peepul will ever get an accounting is to r’are up on our hind legs at long, long last and demand one. Not “request” one; not ask politely for one; not hold a referendum and vote on whether or not we’d like to have one at some later, unspecified date; but straight-up remind our “public servants” of their proper place in the grand scheme of things, get ‘em skeered and keep the skeer on ‘em, and inform them in no uncertain terms that there is by God going to be one, or we’re gonna damned well know the reason why not. T’was ever thus, ain’t nothing whatsoever new.

More, and even worserer:

I was also glad to see, in the above clip, RFK trash USAid, which was after all founded by his uncle. As noted earlier this week, it’s now a near parodic example of the racket that the federal government has made of everything it touches. According to the above-mentioned Daily Telegraph, Trump has only been in office for three weeks but he’s already killing grannies:

US aid freeze claims first victims as oxygen supplies cut off

Seventy-one-year-old woman dies after being sent home from USAID funded hospital.

This story is by Sarah Newey, the Telegraph’s “Global Health Security Correspondent” in Bangkok. In my day, the Telegraph didn’t have a “Global Health Security Correspondent” in Bangkok or anywhere else. It’s not funded by USAid, is it?

Oxygen isn’t really that expensive. A member of the Steyn team required it at an event in Colorado a couple of years back. It certainly isn’t that expensive if you’re the “International Rescue Committee” and have revenues of over a billion dollars per annum. Of course, like everyone else on the take from USAid, the International Rescue Committee pisses away a lot of its dough. It pays its president, David Milliband, over a million bucks a year. No, not Ed Milliband, the talentless prat who serves as His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Net Zero. This is his brother, David, the talentless prat who was British Foreign Secretary back in the Gordon Brown era and parlayed that into a seven-figure salary with this IRC racket. As I always say, the “non-profits” are where the big bucks are.

The racket goes on. Uniparty warmonger Victoria Nuland was last heard of on The Mark Steyn Show warning that the zillions of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine could easily fall into Russian hands. Why are American taxpayers outsourcing gain-of-function to Kharkiv and Odessa? Well, they’re world-renowned experts in developing a new strain of monkeypox with fewer homophobic overtones…

The good news is that the all-war-all-the-time queen, who’s even more bloodsoaked than David Milliband, has just been appointed to the board of the “National Endowment for Democracy”. Ms Nuland is an expert in democracy, having ended it in Ukraine. “NED” was founded back in the Eighties, at taxpayer expense, to “export the American way of governance” – so that every nation may enjoy the blessings of paying former foreign parliamentarians a seven-figure salary to kill l’il ol’ ladies.

That’s the point. Whether you’re a Thai gran’ma, a Ukrainian infantryman or a New Hampshire grade-schooler, Nuland-Milliband-Big Pharma government is killing you. I wish RFK and the other Trump 47-iconoclasts all the best.

As should we all, whether we find Trump’s personal swashbuckling, over the top style grating or not.

Q: Do these people know ANYTHING AT ALL about history?

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Mike

Or do they prefer to just make it all up as they go along, in whatever willy-nilly fashion that suits them?

Never mind, probably best not to answer that one.

Marco Rubio Leaves CBS News’ Margaret Brennan Speechless After She Claimed Nazis ‘Weaponized’ Free Speech
CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan had nothing to say after Secretary of State Marco Rubio brutally countered her weak argument that the Nazis somehow “weaponized” free speech to conduct a genocide.

The “Face the Nation” exchange came Sunday morning during a discussion about Vice President JD Vance’s incredible speech in Munich, Germany on Friday, in which he roasted European leaders to their faces for their horrible positions on unchecked immigration and free speech.

The speech predictably drew howls of protest from Europeans who for the past four years were doubtless unused to being criticized by an American administration. German president Olaf Scholz called Vance’s words “not appropriate,” and German defense minister Boris Pistorius called them “unacceptable.”

Well, bless their hearts.

Bless their hearts, hell. Y’know, for people who in fact are themselves fascists, you’d think shitlib “journalismists” like Brennan would know one when they saw one without too much trouble. And yet.

Brennan interrupted Rubio with the claim that Vance was “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” She then went on to criticize the vice president for meeting with Germany’s “far right” Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, despite the fact that he also met with leaders of other major German political parties. There is also the fact that Europeans consider any party that doesn’t want to invite the entire world “far right.” Even more disturbing, Brennan defended the censorship by claiming it was “specifically about the right.”

Rubio not only vehemently disagreed with the CBS anchor, but countered with facts:

“I have to disagree with you,” he responded. “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities … There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country, and so that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”

Rubio defended Vance’s point about the “erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view” in Europe.

When the secretary of state was finished, Brennan had nothing to say except that they were out of time. How convenient.

Funny how it always seems to work out sooooo conveniently for these morons, innit?

Fair winds, following seas

Posted on February 13, 2025February 13, 2025 by Mike

Probably the smartest, bestest, most encouraging thing Trump v2.0 has done so far is to at last make good on his flamboyantly unfulfilled first-term pledge to hire “only the best people” for his administration. This, in turn, has yielded some unanticipated but nonetheless salutary results.

Trump shares the spotlight in his second term
President Donald Trump did a remarkable thing earlier this week: He let Elon Musk take reporters’ questions about the Department of Government Efficiency live from the Oval Office.

While Musk’s son ultimately stole the show, Trump sat at the Resolute Desk while his tech billionaire ally defended DOGE, a government-cutting project currently dominating the headlines, from media criticism. Though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt subsequently said she would be happy to have Musk in the briefing room, he didn’t sound like he was ready to compete for her job anytime soon.

It’s long been conventional wisdom that there is only one star of the Donald Trump Show and the only rule in his freewheeling political world is “don’t upstage the boss.” Yet the constant complaints that Musk is the shadow president or the unelected power behind the throne have not created a rift with Trump.

In the sequel to his first term, Trump has been perfectly willing to share the spotlight. Musk is a unique case. The richest man in the world and recent convert to conservatism — Musk is fond of posting videos of Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate economist who was many a young conservative and libertarian’s entry point to the free-market gospel — was especially helpful to Trump in last year’s presidential election. Musk and conservative activist Charlie Kirk were up against an experienced Democratic field operation and, based on the results in all seven battleground states, at least held their own.

But it isn’t just Musk. Vice President JD Vance has kept up a brisk pace of interviews since taking office. At one point during the campaign, he made more than seven times as many such appearances as both members of the Democratic ticket combined. On the night they were elected, Trump singled out Vance to praise for his performance on cable networks Republicans generally deem hostile.

Trump’s Cabinet is stocked with proven television communicators, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Attorney General Pam Bondi to newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. When Gabbard was sworn in, Trump asked the group of reporters if they had any questions. As they shouted them out, Trump said, “You know what, I’d like to have Tulsi say a few words first, and then we could answer a couple of questions.”

With a capable staff and Executive Branch appointees backing him up, all of whom he not only trusts but actually seems to like and respect personally, Trump v2.0 obviously learned all the right lessons from his first term in office—and boy, does it ever show. Small wonder, then, that the man should be more unflappable, less temperamental, and more at ease with sharing the limelight, responsibility, and credit with them, in fairly sharp contrast with his first time in the Presidential pressure-cooker. I repeat: MOST encouraging.

Steady as she goes, Mr President sir, steady as she goes. In addition to the aforementioned crew members (sober men and true/and attentive to their duty, to paraphrase WS Gilbert), maintain the heading you’re currently on and you’ll soon have nearly all Real Americans—be they lowly swabbies on their Middie cruise or salty old seadogs with more Bluewater-spray coursing through their veins than blood—solidly aboard the USS MAGA to boot.

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