Hmmm… – Page 11

Democracy delayed is democracy denied

Posted on February 10, 2025February 10, 2025 by Mike

For all the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth they constantly do about “saving Muh Precious Demuhcrasee,” D卐M☭CRATs sure seem awfully blase about the actual, literal practice of it.

New York State Democrats Want to Delay Special Election to Replace Stefanik Until November
The party that claims to want to “defend democracy” has decided to abandon the struggle in New York.

“Abandon” it? Close, but no donut. They’re assaulting it, waging war against it, for reasons which are about to become apparent.

New York state Democrats are going to pass a bill that allows Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul to delay scheduling special elections until November. Current law requires Hochul to schedule a special election 90 days after a vacancy is declared.

The nomination of former Rep. Elise Stefanik to be UN ambassador will create a vacancy in her deep red district once the Senate confirms her nomination. Once the bill passes (Democrats have large majorities in both Houses), Hochul could deny citizens of New York’s 21st Congressional District any representation for an extra six months.

Bold mine and, as always, dispositive. So it would appear that the D卐M☭CRATs’ deep, abiding reverence for “democracy” is conditional, depending entirely on who the participants happen to be. And if you think that Hochul’s shifty move is just to give her and her minions extra time to ensure that the “elections” will be free, fair, and above-board, I have some ocean-front property in central Arizona for sale you really ought to consider buying.

Dems double down on depravity

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Mike

“Standing up for the rights of families,” for the first time in recorded history.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took his book tour to HBO and Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, where he urged Democrats to double down on telling Republicans to “just stay the fuck out of their business” when it comes to parents wanting to give their children gender-altering “health care.”

Maher had just finished lamenting that the recent forum for the DNC chair election, complete with a land acknowledgment and other progressive cringe-inducing antics, showed the party hasn’t learned anything when Hayes replied, “I think that, I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t had a moment across the political spectrum of some form of progressive communication that’s either left them bewildered or a little like ‘Eh, I don’t know about that,’ but at the same time, there is a message of what I would call common sense patriotic pluralism. That is a majority message.”

No, what you ACTUALLY have there, Chris, is an incomprehensible word salad, exactly the sort of bafflegab you dirty swine throw in Normal faces when you don’t want them to catch on to what you really mean underneath the gobbledegook.

The first example he reached for was, “If some father and mother have health care for their kid lined up, who is trans, just stay the fuck out of their business. Like, and let them make that decision. That’s their decision to make. You don’t have to make that for your family. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your family.”

Maher pushed back, “I mean, but the argument is whether the child should make the decision.”

Hayes strained credibility to add, “But the child is never making the decision. The parents are always making the decision. Parents consent to medical care.”

Eventually, Maher would add, “They would say it’s disfiguring a child.”

Hayes was unmoved, “I think they should mind their business; I really do. I think they should mind their business, and I think that’s true about a lot of things.”

Ironically enough, that’s precisely what the rest of us have been trying to tell your criminal organization masquerading as a political party for decades now, only to have you ignore us and go right on as before. As Ed helpfully points out, this would seem to be a policy volte face for PMSDNC, although I do NOT recommend anybody rush out to bet money on it.

In 2013 the network ran ads that their parent company Comcast-signed off in which the message was explicitly stated that “your kids are not your own.” Last year, Kamala chose a veep, who, as the Daily Caller noted, “Greenlit Law Allowing State To Take Child Custody From Parents Who Oppose Sex-Change Surgeries.” Now that there’s a Republican in the White House who doesn’t want to see them mutilated before they can consent as an adult to procedures that could permanently alter them, Hayes responds, “just stay the f**k out of [the parents’] business!” Past performance, etc.

Why, one might almost think that the shitlib stance on the rights of families, if any, hinges on whether or not the “transgender” religion is involved.

Yeah, let’s don’t and say we did

Posted on February 6, 2025February 6, 2025 by Mike

I have to say, on this one I hope he IS just bluffing.

Trump is ‘not bluffing’ on Gaza takeover, will do ‘what it takes,’ sources close to prez say
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s threat to take over the Gaza Strip is not a “bluff,” sources close to the White House told The Post Thursday.

“The president is absolutely serious,” one White House official stressed.

The conversations have been in the works for months, meaning Trump was negotiating a solution for the Hamas-controlled land strip at war with Israel before his term began.

Steve Witkoff — Trump’s Middle East envoy — has played an influential part in the planning, a second source familiar with the internal discussions on the matter said, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed.

Witkoff developed his longtime friendship with Trump making billions in real estate investing and development in New York City. He traveled to Israel to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the final days of the Biden administration, which the Trump administration says played a key part in securing a hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

“Absolutely” Trump would be willing to take US control of Gaza, the source said.

“If that’s what it takes. He’s also creating a sense of urgency to end the status quo. And if Gulf States don’t like his plan then they should come up with their own and take more ownership of the situation. But the fact is that the status quo is a disaster,” the source added.

It IS a disaster, has always BEEN a disaster, and, unless and until some Western leader somehow scrapes up the stones to say “enough already” and start in killing Paleosimian Mooselimbs in job lots, will always BE a disaster. In the wise words of Gen Curtis LeMay, albeit in a different context: “if you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.” Truer words were never spoken.

That said, no way can I see OMB’s proposal turning out to be anything but a YUUUUGE mistake and an enormous catastrophe for the US all around. All Trump really needs to do at this point is to just step back, keep his mouth shut, and let Netanyahu get on with the business at hand. The only thing Trump can conceivably accomplish by interjecting himself and his nation into “Palestine” will be to set the stage for an encoure of 1983’s Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, if not something even worse. I’m sure he means well, but this next bit underlines how hopelessly misguided Trump’s thinking is on this whole rotten deal.

Some Republicans have raised eyebrows at the possibility of getting entangled in a foreign conflict and putting American troops in harm’s way in the Middle East. Trump first said he would not rule out putting US boots on the ground, but then said, “no soldiers by the US would be needed.”

“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“No soldiers by the US would be needed?” It is to laugh, sorry. By “in the region,” natch, Trump means Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—all of whom have for decades now been steadfastly, flatly rejecting any notion of permitting those poor, put-upon Paleosimians to be “resettled” anywhere within their borders, in no uncertain terms. Which, y’know, they still are. Clearly, they and their fellow Arab Moslem nations want no part of them, haven’t the least intention of taking them in, and have never pussyfooted around about saying so, either.

Unless his plan involves a wing of A10 Thunderbolt IIs saturation-bombing the hellhole until not one brick is left standing on another, the best thing Trump can possibly offer is a shrug, a rueful smile, a palms-up hand gesture wordlessly expressing to one and all, “Hey, I tried, whatcha gonna do,” then a blanket endorsement for Netanyahu to finish the bloody job at long last. A final pertinent quote which spells out exactly what it is we’re dealing with here:

Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me — come and kill him.

That, of course, is one of the more unpleasantly blood-curdling Hadiths culled from the Muzzrats’ hateful little murder-book, the subject of innumerable sermons in mosques scattered across the West, an uncompromisingly vicious mindset ubiquitous throughout not only “Palestine” but the Middle East entire. Which ought to tell any sentient being all he needs to know about this eternal conflict, and whence it really springs.

Just a bluff? A mere opening gambit to clear the decks for purposes of implementing a broader agenda, mayhap, to be cast aside with alacrity the instant its usefulness as a bargaining chip has expired? I pray that it is, but fear that it is not. If it isn’t, hopefully some trusted personage in Trump’s inner circle who has the Boss’s ear will step up and persuade the President that he needs to just quietly let this profoundly bad idea go by the wayside without further ado.

Update! A “pact with the devil,” John Hale calls the misbegotten ceasefire agreement with Hamas, and I couldn’t agree more.

THE world waited to see who would be the first three hostages Hamas released to Israel. Would they be alive, or already dead? Would they include the baby Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday was on Saturday, the day before the start of phase one of the ceasefire agreement and hostage/prisoner exchange?

Hamas are playing despicable and cruel mind games with the population of Israel in general, and the families of the hostages in particular – in how they release those poor abused souls who are still living, and the cold bodies of those they have murdered. And as the next six weeks of prolonged, drawn-out releases continue, the greater that psychological torture will be for the families still awaiting the release of their loved ones. It is expected that the living will be released first. My guess is that the Bibas family will be among the last, if not the last, hostages to be handed over.

The first hostages released were Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher and Romi Gonen, three young women who have spent a year and three months suffering in the dank, dark, suffocating terror tunnels beneath Gaza. Abused and assaulted, not knowing what their fate would be, clinging to life. Emily is British, yet the British government were barely interested in her plight as they were too concerned about appeasing the Muslim vote in the UK rather than being seen to support a Jew above the cause of the ‘Palestinian resistance’.

Hamas made a spectacle of the release. Heavily armed terrorists in full Hamas uniform kept the handover under control for the cameras while Palestinian civilians crowded in, shouting abuse and spitting at the young hostages.

After the six long weeks of phase one have elapsed, will there still be a ceasefire and further hostage releases possible, or will Hamas have violated the agreement forced on both Israel and Hamas by Donald Trump, eager to make a big impact on day one of his second presidency? Can a second phase be negotiated at all? There is much more work to be done before all hostages are released, and a permanent ceasefire attained.

The next phase of negotiations will take place during this phase one hostage release, where in exchange for 33 hostages of unknown status (dead or alive), Israel is to release nearly 2,000 terrorists and detainees, including more than 700 prisoners who between them are responsible for the murders of around 2,500 Israeli men, women and children.

In the meantime, rest assured that Hamas will keep pushing the boundaries of the current phase one agreement, flexing their propaganda muscles to keep their worldwide fan base enthused by their ‘resistance’. Just 12 hours before the ceasefire was supposed to begin, Hamas broke the terms of the agreement by not naming the first three hostages to be released. They did eventually give the names, well after the cut-off time, and after Benjamin Netanyahu halted the start of the agreement in response.

There are celebrations in Gaza and elsewhere, proclaiming this agreement as a victory for Hamas, and as a signal that murder and hostage-taking works and will be repeated. This deal is a pact with the Devil; any deal with Islamic terrorists is such. It encourages further terror, putting innocent people at risk worldwide – because this Islamic ‘struggle’ is for world domination, for a global Caliphate and the imposition of Islam and Sharia on every living soul.

Indeed so, right down the line. Again: I couldn’t agree more with Hale’s astute, clear-eyed evaluation of this patently raw deal.

Die, DEI

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Mike

Righting yet another decades-old shitlib wrong.

As Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said nearly two decades ago, “The way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.” President Donald Trump’s sweeping order shuttering every federal office related to DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — and signaling a decision to lay off staffers who worked there is an overdue step toward that goal.

Oh, it could have been done with more finesse. The effort needed to include language telling minority workers in and out of the federal government that they remain valued. But Donald doesn’t do nuance.

Nor should he. When a given situation has deteriorated so badly that properly addressing it requires wielding a BFH (ie, Big Fucking Hammer), as is the case here and now, nuance is much more harmful than helpful. That being so, it not only should but indeed MUST be discarded. When circumstances call for a bull-in-the-china-shop approach, soft voices, politesse, restraint, and yes, nuance are of no use whatsoever. Goldwater expressed it best with his straight-to-the-point “moderation is no virtue, extremism is no vice” formulation.

Trump’s decision has been met with the usual howls from the civil rights community. NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote in a statement:

“It is outrageous that the President is rolling back critical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. DEI programs help ensure that everyone can prosper. It’s clear that President Trump does not value equal opportunity.

“His appalling executive order will only worsen America’s racial hierarchy and benefit the oligarch class. This executive order threatens public services that benefit all Americans; it’s an attempt to consolidate power and money to a few wealthy individuals. And poor and working-class people will pay the price.”

Johnson has the insidious and divisive nature of DEI exactly backward. DEI has no impact on the oligarch class. Elon Musk doesn’t have to worry about whether he is being fairly considered for a job or a contract because of his race. Poor and working-class white people bear the costs of DEI — and it is that cost of quotas, set-asides and minority-only programs and spaces that divide the working class into racial blocs.

And Johnson’s complaints would have been just as apoplectic if Trump’s order were more measured and included all the nuance reasonable people would want. Because the civil rights-industrial complex doesn’t do nuance either, no amount of moderation and good intentions protects a Republican from accusations of the -isms and -obias.

The LGBTQ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign released a statement saying: “Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect in all areas of their lives. No one should be subjected to ongoing discrimination, harassment and humiliation where they work, go to school, or access healthcare.”

Tell that to the men and women at the worker bee level who have had their fill of the DEI industry’s product in mandatory trainings on microaggressions, the idea that the most minor of insensitivity is part of a larger systemic oppression that must equally systemically be curtailed. The hyper-sensitivity that DEI engenders fuels division on racial and other lines while making common American ideals such as the immigration “melting pot” into sources of animus.

Being forced into training that contradicts closely held ideals and targets members of the majority based on their race and sexual orientation is “discrimination, harassment and humiliation” where we work and go to school.

Ahhh, but that’s perfectly okay, see. White people, having been summarily declared guilty of racism, bigotry, misogyny, and homo/transphobia by TPTB, deserve to be systemically discriminated against, harassed, and humiliated.

The concealed core of the Deep State itself

Posted on February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by Mike

Looks as if Trump, Musk, and Co have tripped ass-backwards over the Überstadt motherlode.

DOGE and the budget audit of doom
the commanding heights of the unravelling to come

meet the new boss, nothing whatsoever like the old boss.

not this time. maybe never again.

welcome to “dismantle leviathan” the fun new game that all the cool kids are playing.

i warned you about how these people were not going to act like the gormless opposition party of old. they will understand the system better than you do. and they’re going to tear it down.

DC is finally starting to see how much trouble it is in and people are freaking out. the moves are coming too fast for the news cycle to even keep up with. and DC has mostly already lost. all the high ground has been taken and now it’s just going to be about squeezing.

DOGE grabbed the OMB and the treasury payments system.

that’s it. lights out, game over.

from ukraine to climate science to NIH to 100 different agencies like USAID, money is being funneled everywhere and stolen in wholesale quantities.

USAID and who knows who else were all out meddling for decades in foreign elections. they have probably been meddling in ours.

suddenly, these agencies are losing their minds about “declassification efforts.”

it certainly does make on wonder: why were they classifying anything at all? wasn’t this supposed to be aid?

and DC is finally realizing how much trouble they are in and leviathan is shrilling in terror and rage, but it’s already way too late.

threads are exposed, they will be pulled, and this is going to, for the first time in generations, tear the covers off these boxes and let us see what’s inside. and it’s not gonna be pretty friends. i’m telling you point blank: however bad you fear this was – it’s worse.

the middle of the american overton is about to see that government is 80% money laundering and unaccountable tyranny and theft by weight.

More, much more at the link, every word of it seriously edifying reading. The predicament now being screeched about by scabrous vermin like Schumer, Pelosi, AOC, et al reminds me strongly of a fine old Dead Boys tune.

If, as has been said so very many times, the D卐M☭CRAT Party is in actual fact a criminal organization masquerading as a political party (PRO TIP: it is), then FederalGovCo itself is the officially-sanctioned analog of La Cosa Nostra, only one step higher up on the Big Government ladder, with more fingers in bigger pies grubbing for ever-greater power, wealth, and authority.

What fun it’s been since Jan 20, watching Trump and his wrecking crew turn over the Deep State rocks one after another and seeing the cockroaches underneath crawl for their very lives in abject terror of the simple, cleansing light of day.

Epic moments in total lack of self-awareness

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Mike

They can retire the prize with this one, I believe.

You people doxxed a minor for awkwardly smiling. You told the entire world where he went to school. A Disney producer said he wanted to shove him and his friends into a wood chipper.

Trump isn’t going to make the left “start to be cruel”

He’s going to make you stop. https://t.co/kKfC9WfQwt pic.twitter.com/ul1QgAswJv

— Seamus (FreedomToons) (@seamus_coughlin)

February 3, 2025

Via Insty.

2

Civics 101

Posted on January 29, 2025January 29, 2025 by Mike

As I always say, there’s a reason this sort of thing isn’t taught in the government schools anymore.

There cannot be a “hostile takeover of the civil service.” The civil service is not a check on the Executive Branch- it IS the Executive Branch. If a Department, Office, Bureau, program, or individual is doing something counter to the will of the Executive, it’s well within the… https://t.co/9UsT93H9Q6

— Where are we? Nowhere (@nowhere_nh)

January 29, 2025

Your obligatory “Show more” workaround:

There cannot be a “hostile takeover of the civil service.” The civil service is not a check on the Executive Branch- it IS the Executive Branch. If a Department, Office, Bureau, program, or individual is doing something counter to the will of the Executive, it’s well within the Executive’s right to nip such behavior in the bud. Because the Executive was elected by the will of the people. The bureaucracy was not.

“Prevent the civil service from becoming the President’s henchmen.” What absolute drivel.

Left-wing ideals have been left to fester and seep into every aspect of the so-called civil service, to the point it feels emboldened to act as an unelected, unvetted check on the President. Nonsense. There are three branches of gov’t that are intended to check and balance each other: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. There is no fourth branch called “The Bureuacracy” that has the right to check or balance the other three.

The bureaucracy in DC is as entrenched as a tumor grown in the bone, sucking the life force out of this country. It will take a lot of surgery – some of it messy – to fix all that damage.

Messy indeed—with the majority of said “mess” consisting of spilled blood, buckets and buckets of it.

(Via Stephen Green)

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike

Glenn helpfully explains where the wrecking ball comes into the picture.

Trump is following through with unprecedented and swift action to begin his presidency – which has reset the national mood
Soon after November’s election, I suggested that if Donald Trump were smart, he’d come in like a wrecking ball: Move fast, break things and precipitate change across many fronts all at once, subjecting the Democrats, the media and the left (but I repeat myself) to shock and awe.

Boy, has he ever done that, unleashing unprecedented change in just his first 100 hours.

He banned DEI throughout the federal government, closed the borders to illegal immigrants (according to Customs and Border Protection, illegal crossings dropped 97% by Trump’s second day in office), halted government censorship efforts, refocused the Defense Department from social issues to warfighting, and started a massive cleanup at the corrupt Department of Justice.

Follows, a most edifying litany of Trump moves, directives, and initiatives, culminating with:

A week or two ago, all these things seemed too hard to accomplish.

Now they’re simply being done.

Oh, there’s resistance: The Air Force announced that as part of Trump’s DEI ban it would stop teaching cadets about the Tuskeegee Airmen scandal, an act of obvious bad faith designed to grab headlines.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who knows whereof he speaks, rightly called this “political theatrics” and “passive-aggressive performative nonsense . . . It’s all an act.”

It is an act, and the actors should be sacked.

Indeed they should, in fact, MUST—every man Jack of them, lest this nascent movement in all the right directions be kilt a-borning.

But that they’re trying this sort of idiocy is proof that they’re flailing and desperate. Trump has the momentum.

One reason for this, of course, is that things like the DEI ban and immigration enforcement are wildly popular.

The American public has never supported affirmative action or open borders.

Those are policy preferences of the elites, who bullied opponents by calling them racist.

That doesn’t work anymore.

Nor should it. May it ever be thus.

The guilty flee where no man pursueth

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike

Pardons? We don’ need no steenkin’ pardons.

There are those who have argued that the offenses of January 6th are “unreasonable” to pardon and that Trump’s pardon and commutations for persons prosecuted due to January 6th 2020’s actions are outrageous.

That assertion is false.

The issuance of a pardon imputes guilt and acceptance of one, which is voluntary, confesses guilt (Burdick .v. United States, 1915.) The reason you must voluntarily accept a pardon is that once pardoned you cannot assert 5th Amendment protections as the risk of criminal sanction has been removed. Thus you must accept it voluntarily in that you are giving up Constitutional Rights, but in doing so you also confess to the truth of the offense(s) in question.

There is no means to expunge a federal offense. Once convicted the only way to remove it from your record is to prevail on appeal in which case the offense itself is voided. Many states have a process for expungement, which is a formal and legal removal of a conviction; no such thing exists for federal crimes.

A pardon does not erase an offense — that is, the offense of “parading” or whatever have you that a person was convicted of from Jan 6 is not “gone”, however, it is undisputed, because Biden pardoned all of the Jan 6 committee members, that the government and members of Congress obstructed justice which was used to deny said persons a fair trial. That issuance of the pardon by Joe Biden imputed said guilt and the acceptance thereof confessed to same by the committee members.

That doesn’t make the actions of those who paraded (or stole and destroyed, for that matter) into “not occurred.” They did take those actions, and they were charged or convicted as the case may be. But the trials were not fair as justice was obstructed so whether the original sentences were reasonable (or whether, for example, probation or a modest fine under misdemeanor penalties was a more-appropriate penalty in the case of someone who’s crime was mere presence in the Capitol building) was never lawfully and fairly adjudicated.

Trump’s pardons and commutations thus might objectively be considered “wrong” except for Biden’s action on the way out of office, in which he pardoned obstruction of justice, witness tampering and willful destruction of evidence by persons who led to those prosecutions, all of which were part and parcel of the original charges and trials and due to the acceptance of Biden’s pardons by those committee members is in fact a confession of guilt to those federal offenses.

As a direct result Biden’s preemptive pardons make the Jan 6 pardons by Trump not only objectively reasonable they became, at the moment Biden issued them, mandatory.

It’s the esteemed Karl Denninger, so of course there’s a hefty surplusage of italics, boldfaces, and underscores scattered throughout which I’m just too damned lazy to bother transcribing. Also, having been “pardoned” by ***”President”*** Bribem, if some enterprising soul in Congress doesn’t have Herr Fauci’s (at the very least) miserable, lying ass in the hot seat toot fucking sweet, then that notable omission will in turn serve to highlight the shambolic theater production the whole sordid FederalGovCo mess is, has been for years, and likely always will remain.

On moving forward, looking back, and standing still

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike

Any article that opens with Cromwell’s most well-remembered quote is bound to catch my eye, and this too-brief piece is some seriously heady stuff.

“Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say? I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”–Oliver Cromwell, letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland (3 August 1650)

Five years ago, I wrote a book about evolution and human cognition. This was a stretch for me, as I am a three-time English major, so I did a lot of research. It was fascinating research, which taught me a lot of important things about knowledge, human nature, cognition, and storytelling. It also taught me the single most depressing thing that I know, which is this: human reason did not evolve to help us find the truth; it evolved to help us defend positions arrived at in largely unreasonable ways.

The reasons for this lie deep in the reptilian corners of our brains. Natural selection selects for what is useful, which may or may not be what is true. Decisiveness is useful. Appearing confident is useful. Defending one’s turf is useful. And winning fights is always useful. But knowing the truth about abstract universal propositions involving beauty, truth, and God? Not so much. It turns out that appearing to know the truth about these things is much more valuable, evolutionarily speaking, than actually being right.

Culture reinforces these evolutionary dynamics in different ways. Mormon culture, for example, places an enormous premium on appearing to know the truth, especially in religious matters. Few people ever stand up in testimony meeting to proclaim that they think the Church is true, or even that they hope or believe the Church is true. From the time we can talk, we announce from the pulpit that we know the Church is true. We know it from the bottom of our hearts, with every fiber of our beings, absolutely, certainly, completely, just like Moroni promised.

But here’s the deal: you are wrong about stuff. I am wrong about stuff. We are all wrong about stuff. This is just math. Given the number of things that all of us believe (or do not believe) to be facts, the number of things that we consider (or do not consider) valuable, and the number of policies that we think (or do not think) will work, there is no possible way that we are going to be right about everything. We understand this retroactively. We can all remember times that we were wrong in the past. But such is the nature of human cognition that we can barely even fathom what we might be wrong about today.

And this is why Cromwell’s challenge–“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be mistaken”–is so important to us (and yes, I do realize how ironic it is to quote Oliver Cromwell on the possibility of being wrong). Another word for this is “humility.” This is important because it actually is part of our religion, and because it makes us people that other people can stand to be around. But it is also important because, as a matter of near-mathematical certainty, we actually are wrong about some religious things–and probably quite a few.

Yeah, well, with so many Leftards all around us nowadays, humility has necessarily become a quite scarce commodity.

Who’s thirsty?

Posted on January 16, 2025January 16, 2025 by Mike

All over the country, truck drivers are snickering up their sleeves at this one. Meanwhile, baffled Normals are going, “What? I don’t get it! What are you laughing at, you guys? What’s so funny about apple juice, fer cripe’s sake?!?”

4

Woke is a joke

Posted on January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Mike

Like Ed says, there’s so much tasty stuff here it’s tough to decide what to excerpt, or how much. In the way of our esteemed colleague John Wilder, to excerpt it is to ruin it. Or, as Salieri said of Mozart’s music in Amadeus: Displace one note and there would be diminishment, displace one phrase and the structure would fall.

The dawn of the anti-woke era
Having rejected the Democrats’ progressivist dogma, the American electorate is undergoing a social and demographic revolution.

In late November, a California judge rejected a demand by several women’s volleyball teams to disqualify a transgender player for San Jose State before this year’s tournament. Six opponents have forfeited games against the team this year rather than collude in what they see as cheating. The larger question of transgender athletes in college sports will be decided later, but the judge is defending a lost cause. Fewer than a quarter of Americans (23 per cent) support allowing transgender athletes to play on women’s teams. Teams that do field trans athletes are sometimes booed off the pitch. Such feelings go a long way towards explaining Donald Trump’s resounding win in November’s presidential elections.

Washingtonians are often asked what it feels like to watch the second age of Trump dawn. Oddly, it does not feel much like his first arrival in 2016. It feels more like Barack Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1992 – less a political than a social revolution, in which philosophical habits will be broken along with political hierarchies. This particular social revolution owes most of its energy to a revulsion against woke. That is the source of the new era’s promise and danger.

Trump left office only four years ago. Washington rejected him – somatically, as in a botched organ transplant. Having squeaked into power on an anti-establishment platform, he arrived in the capital to find the establishment bloodied but unbowed. Hostile neighbours on Tennyson Street hung rainbow flags in front of the house where his vice-president Mike Pence was staying during the transition. By the CVS drugstore at Connecticut Avenue and McKinley, activists waved signs at honking motorists throughout December. The day after the inauguration in 2017, over 200,000 women, decked out in “pussyhats” and led by establishment celebrities from Scarlett Johansson to Emma Watson, descended on the Mall. It shook the city: it was the largest collection of protest marchers since the Vietnam War, and drew a considerably larger crowd than the inauguration ceremony. The mood was defiant.

There’s none of that now. The mood in Washington’s progressive neighbourhoods is more one of muttered commiseration. (And they are all progressive neighbourhoods: in the capital city, Harris defeated Trump 93 per cent to 7 per cent.)

The result was revolutionary, and not in the way Democrats intended: anyone with a sense of fair play would be tempted to vote for a fellow who had been, as the playwright David Mamet put it, “raided, indicted, convicted, sued, slandered and shot”. But at this point, to do so would be to declare the judicial system corrupt. In the end, half the country did just that: suburbanites wore T-shirts with Trump’s mug shot on them. Grannies danced giddily on TikTok: “Here’s how it feels to vote for a convicted felon!”

The country is floating free of its laws. That is what gives the present its feeling of open-ended promise and peril. If Trump decides to investigate the Biden administration’s connection to these cases, will it be sauce for the gander, or a sign of authoritarian tendencies? Hard to say. Every elected official poses some risk of turning authoritarian. Mostly, we assume it’s one in 100, or one in 1,000. But the more discontented an electorate is, the higher a risk it may run.

There, that ought to be sufficient motivation for y’all to click on over and read the whole thing. Of course, Caldwell throws in some of the usual “Trump lost in 2020 fair and square” bushwa which has become de rigeur for Old Media essayists these days, along with the now-obligatory “baseless” codswallop I railed about last night. All in all, though, it’s a good piece; his brief rundown deriding Trump’s “34 felonies” is especially pungent, and the rest is well-written and quite insightful at the very least.

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On reality

Posted on January 11, 2025January 11, 2025 by Mike

And, y’know, NOT.

No, you aren’t
So I saw a dude (and yes, it had the adam’s apple, so a dude) wearing a skirt with leggings (and really nice heels) and a shirt that said “Everyone is entitled to their own view of reality” I couldn’t help but tell him: “No, reality is what it is, denying it makes you a fool and an idiot.” He got mad and pouted. No matter, he’s still a man, in a skirt. Not a chick. “Don’t call me Stupid!” say he. “Then don’t act stupid or say stupid shit, says I”…He flounced off in a huff. I laughed out loud at his back.

Just because a woman wants to think “Big is Beautiful” doesn’t mean that fat girls are as pretty or attractive as women who take care of themselves. Shy’s lying to herself or to her fat friend. Trans people (I.E. Men that pretend to be women or women who pretend to be men) are not the opposite sex just because they put on a skirt or pants. To believe otherwise is stupid. Trans men can’t have babies or nurse, and trans women are not strong men, even with supplements of Testosterone. Saying otherwise is stupid.

I can believe I can fly all I want, right up ’til I step off that cliff. Being upset when reality (and the ground) smacks me in the face is stupid….Stepping off the cliff is stupid. Don’t like the truth? Reality and the world just don’t care. Being upset that you can’t fly is also stupid.

Man or woman (and those are the only choices), to deny reality is stupid and it really is stupid to think otherwise. Reality is what it is. Deal with it. Stop being foolish.

We, as a society, need to stop pandering to people, be they straight or trans or gay, men or women, old or young, that feel that their alternate view of reality is just as valid.

Seems simple enough, no? Obvious; beyond argument; plain for all with eyes to see; as fair as fair ever gets in this life—none but a fool, a madman, or a stubborn, spoiled child would think to object. So readily apparent is it, in fact, that it shouldn’t have to be said at all; even the most rudimentary powers of observation will confirm that to contend otherwise is a pointless waste of time and/or energy.

And yet, somehow…well, here we all are nonetheless.

Via Bayou Peter, who adds:

This blatant falsehood manifests itself particularly in the “You can’t criticize me! You can’t judge me! You can’t say I’m wrong!” crowd. Look, if what you’re believing, or preaching, or doing, flies in the face of objective fact and natural reality, I can judge you (your actions, at any rate – not your soul, that’s God’s business) and I can say you’re wrong. I will. Loudly and frequently. To indulge your false fantasy would make me as guilty of ignoring reality as you are!

I saw this particularly as a prison chaplain. We had psychologists on staff whose job was to help inmates figure out where they’d gone wrong, and help them to change. The problem is that far too many of those psychologists tried to lead the inmate to come to the right conclusions on his or her own, without actually telling them they were wrong. In many cases, those inmates had never been taught how to think, and had none of the normal frame of reference (morality, civics, etc.) used in our society. To expect them to come to the “right” conclusions when they were filled with the “wrong” personal history, information (or the lack thereof), relationships, etc. was nonsensical – yet those psychologists persisted in that approach. They had to. That’s what the “system” demanded – and that’s why we have a 70%+ recidivism rate among US prison inmates over the first five years after they’re released.

Plenty more at both links, all of it well worth reading.

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PERsecution, not PROsecution

Posted on January 10, 2025January 10, 2025 by Mike

What an ugly, sordid mess.

Donald Trump will not go to jail or be put on probation for being convicted of 34 charges that never should have been brought against him by a prosecutor who could never articulate the criminal conduct that led to those charges and sentenced by a judge who claimed that Trump’s election put him above the law.

Partisan hatred and revenge drove this prosecution. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, brought charges against Trump for falsifying his business records to hide payments made to pornstar Stormy Daniels.

Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. But in order to bump the charges up to a felony, Bragg claimed that the records were altered for political purposes and that Trump tried to hide the payments because they would have damaged him so severely that he would have lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“We allege falsification of business records to the end of keeping information away from the electorate,” Bragg said in a January 2024 interview with NY1. “It’s an election interference case.”

The business records that Bragg said Trump altered to get elected were dated from Feb. 14, 2017, to Dec. 5, 2017. That’s right. Bragg was making the case that the falsified records allowed Trump to defeat Clinton after the election was already held and Trump was in the White House.

Did that stop the media from claiming that Trump “interfered” with the election?

Of course it didn’t. That’s why doing anything other than just shooting them in the fucking face outright, in job lots, is a complete waste of time. It’s something dumb fucks like Boehner, Romney, Juanny Mav, et al never seem able to grok: no matter how much or how long you try to make nice with Progtards, they will always, always, ALWAYS turn around and bite you the instant they think it will help them advance Teh Agenda. If they’re going to do that—and they are, every single time, no matter what—then why bother trying to make nice with them at all? It wastes your time and annoys the pig, as the old admonitory joke goes.

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Reasons why

Posted on January 7, 2025January 8, 2025 by Mike

I didn’t obtain permission to run this from the author, which perhaps I ought to’ve. Ah well, hopefully he won’t be offended; knowing him as well as I do, for as long as I have, I really don’t think he’ll have any objection.

Received a short email from a fella who’s been hanging around this h’yar hogwallow since the Aulden Thymes, a kindred spirit and all-around righteous dude with whom I’ve enjoyed a cordial e-correspondence for years. The latest example, name and location of course omitted:

Mike,

I’ll keep this brief, but wanted to thank you most sincerely for the recent series of postings. I had despaired of ever feeling anything like that again at Christmas in my twilight years. Better that Christmas should arrive late in my heart than not at all. Today, at least, I have hope for this miserable world that, in spite of (nay, because of) current happenings, it cannot deny God’s grace and mercy.

Have a most blessed Christmas, friend.

The emaiI’s subject line was “The Sounds of Christmas,” arriving just after the third and final installment of this year’s Christmas music fest had been published. I’m sure I don’t need to tell anybody here how thoroughly this missive made my day, my week, my whole damned year. Made me feel good in a way I haven’t in way too long.

As I’ve related here several times, there have been occasions over lo, these many years when I decided I was all done with this blogging business; I’d said all I had to say, was bored to tears with the whole kit and kaboodle. I would announce my “retirement,” leave that post up for a week or so, then back up the whole site and database, download the backups to the trusty iMac, and delete everything from the server forever. Nobody cared, least of all me. Blogger burn-out is real; I’ve always felt that stepping away from the Innarnuts for a few days is an absolute necessity for anybody who wants to maintain his sanity, his sense of proportion, his psychological equilibrium, if any.

It was my feeling at such moments that, while in my opinion I’d done a bang-up job of designing, setting up, and running the blog these last twenty-some-odd years, and that I still drew some enjoyment from writing essays here, I was finally gonna quit. I think—screw that, I KNOW—that I’m a good writer, that I’m smart, that I’m blessed with an unusual outlook and worldview. My life-experience is unique and multifaceted; I have definitely been there and done that, whatever “there” and “that” might be. Drawing on those not-inconsiderable gifts, I know I can provide like-minded folks with entertainment, food for thought, maybe a hearty laugh now and then.

Even so, I felt the time had come for me to move on, God only knows to what. There ain’t any money in this blogging stuff, not for small-fry types like myself anyway; although I’m deeply grateful for every red cent of it, losing the tiny trickle of subscription/donation money generated by CF and the Eyrie wouldn’t hurt too much. I suppose it’s a different story for big fish like Ace, Reynolds, Hoft, etc. Be that as it may be, the fact remains that I ain’t them, and they ain’t me.

And each and every time this end-of-blog-days mood came over me and I was ready to pull the plug at long, long last, an email would come over the iMac transom from some grunt or Gyrine (even one Blackhawk pilot, which is a whole ‘nother amazing story in its own right; a senior career chopper-jock with extensive combat experience, he was actually involved in…um, never mind, I’m sworn to secrecy on that op) in Iraq, Afghanistan, or another of the world’s garden spots, saying something along these lines:

Dear Mike,

Can’t thank you enough for the Cold Fury blog. Each morning when we roll out of the sack my fire team/squad/platoon-mates brew up some shitty issue coffee, then we all gather around the laptop/cell phone/whatever to check out your latest posts. We all agree that your blog is just about the only thing that keeps us going in this shithole day after day, we all enjoy it more than you’ll ever know.

Reading your blog gives us something to look forward to in this God-forsaken desert/jungle/mountain hellhole—something to talk about while we’re out on patrol, in the mess tent, pulling guard, or just kicking back and chillaxin’ behind the wire. Keep up the good work, HOO-YAH!!!

And BANG, ZOOM! There it all was, hurled right into my teeth by a stern God whose sardonic sense of humor can never be gainsaid, in the very nick of time before I took certain irrevocable steps I would later regret. There was but one correct response to such a jawdropping compliment, which was to grin, shake my head, square my shoulders, and tell myself, “You pathetic puke! Quitcher bitchin’, get yer sad-sack ass over to the desk, and get back to work! Nut the fuck up, check the attitude, and stand the fuck TO, you simple sumvabitch…”

Just that quick, just that easy, suddenly I was reinvigorated. The good old creative fire blazed anew within a spirit that had mere moments before been suffused with weariness, ennui, and indifference, the desire to reflect, research, and write fully restored. If I no longer wanted to do it for myself—which I knew deep down had never really been so in the first place—then I could damned well do it for them.

The brief email up top gave me the same feeling, the same quickening, the same rush. I mean, come ON, man! How many of us can lay claim to doing such a worthwhile thing all unawares for someone, for anyone? When I discussed it with my brother Jeff yesterday, we agreed that it was more or less the same with the band: you sweat, you strive, you put it out there scattershot just as far and as wide as you can without ever really knowing who your work might be affecting, or how. In fact, you CAN’T know, not really, which is as it should be.

Ultimately, every writer, every musician, every worth-his-salt artist in every creative discipline is in the business not of receiving but of giving—endlessly, profligately, every minute of every day, forever and ever Amen. Professional or amateur, struggling, successful, or somewhere in-between, the day comes for each and every serious artist when he or she will be smacked in the face with that home truth, HARD, a life-lesson none of us ever forgets. If you fancy yourself a Creative Type yet chafe at this bedrock principle you’re definitely in the wrong line of work, and should trot your happy ass off and put in an application at Wal Mart or Red Lobster or EZ-Park or some other such outfit you’re better suited for temperamentally toot fucking sweet.

You nock the arrow, bend your bow, release the bow-string, and let the arrow fly straight and true towards a target you can’t even see. Once in a rare while, though, you get to hear the THUNK! when your arrow plunges dead-center into the target. If that’s the one and only reward on offer, best latch onto it with both hands then, and hold on with all your might. Otherwise, that precious jewel will get away from ya every time. As rewards go it might not seem like much, but it damned sure ain’t nothing, either.

When all’s said and done, the rock-bottom truth is that the work is its OWN reward; anything beyond that is just gravy. Be honest, be humble, and above all be grateful; keep that in mind, keep your chin up no matter what, and you’ll be all right. Calls for a rerun of another personal favorite, I believe.

Here endeth the lesson.

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