Hmmm… – Page 15

Moar Peanut fallout

Posted on November 3, 2024November 3, 2024 by Mike

The murder of Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon by the goons of New York State is an important and revealing story, not least because those who enjoy ill-treating animals smoothly advance to ill-treating people*.

Oh, but you’re worried about rabies? New York State has an accelerating rate of tuberculosis because “open borders” means no one has to undergo the health tests that I, as a reasonably disease-free Canadian and legal immigrant, had to go through. And indeed who’s really rabid here? Peanut and Fred? Or the foaming-at-the-mouth bureaucrats? At least in the more general sense of “extremely violent” and “going to extreme lengths” (Webster’s).

What explains such a perverse government priority? From a commenter at Ann Althouse’s website:

The squirrel was seen at the Capitol on January 6th.

But I wonder too if the fate of Peanut and Fred is not a metaphor for – and indeed a fearful premonition of – what is about to engulf America on Tuesday and in the days that follow. As you can see in that video retweeted by Elon Musk, Peanut provided hours of harmless pleasure to his over half-a-million followers on InstaGram – all fun and games, until a thug state decided to take him out – and that was that.

It’s pitiful to see defendants of the squirrel-killers (whose names should be known) make the case that the state executions were “legal”. That is not the distinction that applies here. Me exactly thirteen years ago – November 2011:

In my book, I also quote the writer George Jonas, back when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were revealed to be burning down the barns of Quebec separatists: With his characteristic insouciance, the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded that, if people were so bothered by illegal barn-burning by the Mounties, perhaps he would make it legal. Jonas pointed out that burning barns isn’t wrong because it’s illegal, it’s illegal because it’s wrong. A society that no longer understands that distinction is in deep trouble.

In the world they’re building before your eyes, you’re the squirrel and they’re the “conservationists”. Vote accordingly.

*[See, for example, the British state, which has just transferred Tommy Robinson to a prison with a forty per cent Muslim population and in which (during a previous incarceration) the Islamic gangs that run the place have already beaten the crap out of him. Much of the UK, US, Canada, etc are institutionally evil and need to be put down the way New York put down Peanut.]

Exactly, precisely so.

SIDE NOTE: Not that it matters terribly in view of, well, everything, but if the NY Post has it right, Mark Logan spells/spelled it P’nut. I’ll probably weave drunkenly betwixt the two spellings, but you’ll know what I’m talking about anyway, I trust.

P’nut the Squirrel’s grieving owner says he was treated like a ‘terrorist’ in 5-hour raid by NY state
An upstate man whose beloved squirrel was cruelly killed by the state said he was treated like a “terrorist” when 10 government agents descended on his home during a five-hour raid. Mark Longo, whose pet P’nut captured the hearts of 3 million social media users, was stunned when a convoy of vehicles carrying officials from the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Health arrived at his Pine City home Wednesday.

Longo, 34, cared for “P’Nut” for more than seven years, rescuing him when his mother was hit by a car.

“We rehabbed him for eight months, we released him for a day and a half, but he ended up getting attacked. He never developed the instincts to survive outside,” Longo told The Post.

P’nut slept in his own room in their house in Pine City, just south of Elmira, NY.

Fred arrived four months ago, after being dropped off at their front door, and split time between an outdoor enclosure and a room in their residence.

P’nut and Fred were targeted, and not other animals living on the 350-acre property, because they lived indoors.

P’nut was a star on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Even Elon Musk paid tribute to him on X today.

One post said, “President @realDonaldTrump will save the squirrels” and another lamented, “Government overreach kidnapped an orphan squirrel and executed him.”

“My phone is blowing up from people around the country saying how much they loved P’nut,” Longo said. “I have people who call me and cry more than I do.”

Crucial bits coming up, boldface mine.

The DEC said in a statement obtained by WETM that the raid was in response to complaints about Fred, the raccoon, but Longo claimed they used him as an excuse to get P’nut.

“The only time I ever talked to the DEC prior to this was when they got complaints from anonymous people on the internet for P’nut about five or six months ago and that was before Fred,” he said. “They used Fred as their go-to to get into my house.”

The DEC claimed P’nut bit one of its officials on the hand during the raid, but Longo said he did not witness that and that the officials’ hands were heavily protected.

“I watched everybody put gloves on before they entered my house. They had gloves that you get an eagle to land on,” he said.

Re: those last two boldfaced items, the DEC pussyfarts are quite obviously lying. Re: the first two, the cowardly anonymous complainants ought never to know another day’s peace for the rest of their worthless lives as far as I’m concerned. Which, to that end:

There appears to be some question as to whether this Keasler bint is actually one of the aforementioned complainants, although Twitchy questions the questioners:

UPDATE:

There are some people claiming it’s not her, although nuking all of her socials does not usually indicate innocence BUT we’re fair so we thought we’d share, just in case:

Follows, a vid from a friend of Keasler’s who makes a not entirely convincing case that she didn’t do it, but fair enough. This evil bitch, on the other hand, is incontrovertibly guilty as sin.

Gee, SHE doesn’t look like she has a lot to compensate for via killing people’s beloved pets, does she? Just what is it with these jackbooted thugs’ compulsion to kill pets, anyhow? I copped the above image from the reliably brilliant John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, who has plenty to say in his own right about this abominable mess.

Squirrel!
Safety first means nothing is safe.

This isn’t the first time that the dead hand of the zombie state has murdered innocent animal friends for the crime of being cared for without a permit.

The obvious line to take on this is that the government can’t seem to prevent illegal migrants from pouring across our various borders (indeed, it subsidizes them), while it will go all hands on deck to assassinate an illegal squirrel and his raccoon friend, but this is just anarchotyranny for you. This story isn’t really about the prefix of that portmanteau. It’s about the suffix.

We live in a society in which a vengeful busybody on the other side of the country can anonymously harness the implacable machinery of the state to ruin the lives of people they’ve never met, who are generally powerless to do anything to obtain satisfaction from the faceless bullies hiding within the miasma of the permanent bureaucracy.

We live in this kind of society because we have allowed our natural liberties to be nibbled away at, a little bit here and a little bit there, until there is practically nothing left of them. Like Gulliver, we are held down by thousands of tiny threads, a net of laws and regulations, all of them enacted ‘for our safety’.

We have put Safety First, and if safety comes first, it necessarily follows that everything else comes after safety. There is no price too high for safety, and so we pay everything for it.

No one believes that Peanut’s death made the world any safer, including the anonymous stool pigeon that sicced the NYDEC on him, or the mouth-breathing toughs sent by the NYDEC.

Peanut’s death was about power. The state’s goons got to rip apart someone’s house and snuff out the lives of helpless cute animals, which made them feel powerful, and the snitch got to snicker from the sidelines, which made her feel powerful.

Safety is just the excuse. It is a very effective excuse, one that the managerial state and its cultists and clients in the general population adore, because it morally disarms all opposition to their tyranny. It gives them all the cover they need. “I’m doing this because I like ripping the wings off of butterflies” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “I’m doing this to keep you safe from the butterflies”. No one has ever been hurt by a butterfly, you say? Well, perhaps, but you never know. If it saves even one life!

This plague of safetyism infects everything.

Indeed it does. Trust me when I assure you that you really, really don’t want to miss a single word of Jeddak Carter’s typically dead-on essay, folks. As for that fat Karenness in the frumpy, frowsy neo-Gestapo threads pictured above, may her office phone be ringing off the fucking hook tomorrow morning with calls from righteously pissed-off people who are definitely NOT friends of either her or her loathsome Department.

One last important point, though: in the end, it isn’t the person in the office that’s the real problem here; t’is hers, t’was his, t’will soon be some other trash’s, to misquote the Bard. No, the real problem is the office itself, that it even exists in the first goddamned place. As long as it does, there will always be some vicious, heartless bureau-creep waiting with bated breath to fill the seat of Too Much Power and get busy making decent peoples’ lives miserable to the greatest extent they can contrive.

Update! Amy Curtis unloads in an extensive Twitter/X thread, and it’s a joy and a wonder to behold.

Here’s why Peanut and Fred have become such a rallying point for people:

We aren’t suddenly in love with a squirrel and a raccoon.

They represent the problems of a very broken, petty government.

That’s just for openers; this is another one of which you very much need to read the all. Curtis really says it all here, and says it extremely well, too. Elsewhere, Francis also nails it clean and tight.

Why did those arrogant bastards of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation seize and execute Peanut and his confrere, Fred the Raccoon? The rationalizations are plain: Mark Longo didn’t have a permit for them; there were allegations that Peanut and Fred were “unsafe;” there were anonymous complaints about “wildlife gone wild;” the state is responsible for “rabies control.” None of them hold water for five seconds. Here is the real reason:

BECAUSE THEY COULD.

They could do so without fear for their lives, their fortunes, their careers, or their ability to sleep at night. Doing anything justifiable — e.g., tracking down some actual abusers of animals and hauling them before a court – would have involved a lot more work, and possibly some personal danger. Hey, officer safety! That’s the mantra, don’t y’know. It’s not just cops who chant it to themselves and one another.

Mark Longo and Peanut were safe and easy targets. For one thing, Peanut had a social media presence. They knew where he lived. For another, Longo, a well-known animal-rescue activist, was highly unlikely to resist them with force. So they chose to go after the felonious squirrel rather than some more problematic target. Got to do something to justify their salaries and benefits, right?

They could. So they did.

It is to our everlasting shame and disgrace that this should be so, but yeppers, that’s about the size of it.

Updated update! Another longish Tweet, from which I’ll just go ahead and C&P the text entire and not bother embedding.

Let me tell you a short story. My wife had an uncle. “Had”, because he lived in a tony upscale suburban enclave, and he rescued wildlife. He didn’t have a sanctuary, or a farm. He just helped local animals in need as he came across them.

One of his neighbors complained repeatedly. So much so that they eventually said the right combination of words, and a SWAT team was dispatched to her uncle’s house in the wee hours.

They breached his house. They deployed tear gas.

Her uncle, completely confused and taken by surprise, grabbed his pistol, hid in his bedroom, and called 911.

My wife discovered the death of her uncle by coming across the story in the media, including the full 911 recording that contained the audio of the execution of her uncle by one of the SWAT members, while he cowered behind his bed, in his own bedroom, begging to anyone who would listen — on the phone or in the room — to be told what was going on.

All because he cared for injured animals, and because his leftist neighbors were…well, leftist neighbors.

So, you tell me.

The P’Nut saga is by no means a new one, alas for us all.

Update to the updated update! Having seen some moaning and groaning here and there about the folly of everyone getting all het up over a friggin’ tree rat, of all things, when there are so many way more important issues confronting us, I can only say that if you can’t see that the P’nut story is in fact EVERYTHING—the whole fucking magilla, the underlying cause of ALL our woes wrapped up in one ugly, too-representative package with a big ol’ bow on top—there’s probably no hope for you, I’m afraid.

As Fran suggests in the post excerpted above, one never knows which falling rock will be the one that kicks off the avalanche. If, against all odds, mass outrage over the undeserved fate of poor P’nut the squirrel turns out to be the impetus for a much-needed and long-overdue settling of accounts with the dimestore dictators who would be the lords and masters of us lesser mortals…well hey, fine by me, I’m good with it.

Throughout the ages Final Straws have come in assorted shapes and sizes; the trick has always been in knowing ‘em when ya sees ‘em, then disporting your Serf Class selves accordingly. To date, the historical record tells us that your average Mark 1-Mod-0 tinpot tyrant will either wittingly decide to ignore them or just miss them altogether each and every time, to his tremendous cost.

Updates, forsooth! The very latest, via WRSA.

Updated info on the wrongfully euthanized squirrel Peanut, & raccoon Fred…

Some ridiculous judge DID sign a warrant. For a squirrel? On a called -in “complaint” by this photog Monica Keasler to the DEC, for unknown reasons. The woman proceeded to brag on her now deleted FB account – she’s also ditched IG & Linked In because people found out who she is.

Reviewing facts, it’s a pathetic case of government waste, overreach, & misuse of resources.

These people rescued & raised Peanut as an orphaned kit. They had him for 7 years. The man created an animal rescue sanctuary as a result, and had allll the app. process done, & it was SIGNED. The only thing waiting on approval was an enclosure. This animal was not capable of wild survival. They tried that initially, but Peanut came back with injuries. Some rescued wildlife is not releasable – this is exactly why rehab sanctuaries will keep select animals after rehab capability is maxed.

A few potential reasons:

Missing limbs
Birds with lack of flight
Loss of vision or hearing
Predators unable to hunt sufficiently
Prey unable to evade predators
Failure to thrive due to health deficits
Captivity-raised lack of survival instincts
Conditions requiring ongoing medication

This RAID involved making the victims sit outside their home for 5 hours while these maniacs tore up everything. They were denied the right to call legal counsel. Feds went thru closets, leaving a complete mess. They broke soap bottles in the bathroom. They took apart the man’s TOILET upon escorting him before he could use it because apparently there could be some important squirrel propaganda hidden in there (I’m assuming in the tank). 😒 Please make it make sense.

Oh, THAT ain’t gonna happen, Miz Tala. Plenty more left at the link, so yet again: Read. It. ALL.

Smash the State

Posted on November 2, 2024November 3, 2024 by Mike

Oh noes, looks like Trump has murdered poor Peanut the Squirrel! You may laugh, but t’ain’t funny, McGee: you know as well as I do that it will be tomorrow morning’s NYT headline, and the subject of the next Kumhaula for ***”pResident”*** ad.

🇺🇸 PEANUT THE SQUIRREL ARRESTED IN NYC!?

New York wildlife officers raided Mark Longo’s home, seizing his rescue squirrel Peanut after complaints about “unsafe squirrel housing” and “wildlife gone wild” hit the department.

Peanut is an internet sensation known for donning… pic.twitter.com/HEPB6VKuYC

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal)

November 1, 2024

Operative words in this next one: “We complied.” That was your mistake, bud. NEVER comply with the whims of dictators and tyrants.

But without tyrannical government, who would send a multitude of officers to your animal rescue to protect you by confiscating and euthanizing your famous pet squirrel Peanut? pic.twitter.com/2vdVL6TpI9

— Truthstream Media (@truthstreamnews)

November 1, 2024

Happily, the squirrels know the appropriate response to murderous oppression. If only we humans were as intelligent as our furry four-legged friends.

You go, gi…uhhh, squirrels! Via Ed, an explainer for why this seemingly insignificant story really does matter.

In the midst of the decisive election campaign of our lifetimes, why talk about Peanut the Squirrel? Aren’t there more important issues like the polls, turnout, shenanigans, and all the day’s news?

Actually, the Peanut saga is the WHOLE story, in a nutshell.

Yeah, yeah, sorry. Onwards.

Yes, all those things matter. But the story of Peanut matters because it is a microcosm of what we are facing. A nameless, faceless, and merciless bureaucracy with no sense of proportion or empathy can, at a whim, upend people’s lives over what amounts to nothing. It can seize a beloved family pet, the mascot of an organization that does enormous good, just because some nanny-stater decides they don’t approve.

The streets of New York City are filled with criminals and migrants, billions are spent on hotel rooms for illegals, drugs are ravaging our communities, and lawlessness is spreading in ways that degrade our civilization. Those are big problems that are difficult to deal with, so the government turns its Sauron eye to Peanut because it can overwhelm the little guy with no problem.

Improving people’s lives is hard. Killing a squirrel is easy.

And far more satisfying to the kind of miserable parasite you find burrowed deeply into all goobermint bureaucracies, too.

We all get overwhelmed by the enormous challenges we face, but we can all understand the story of a squirrel. In our guts, we know what happened is wrong–what we need to understand is that this is how government works as often as not. The ostensible reason behind the raid and 5-hour squirrel (and raccoon) hunt in a man’s home is that Peanut could have rabies, and rabies control is a government function.

Oh, absolutely! Says so right there in the, um, Constitution. Not that anybody cares about that old thing anymore. Bottom line? Just this.

Fighting rabies in the wild is hard, and it is MUCH easier to euthanize a squirrel that lives indoors and could not possibly have rabies. Eight government employees can waste a day ransacking a man’s house, kill a squirrel, and call it a day without having to do anything that actually makes the public safer. Win!

PREACH it, bruh!

Them: “So how did you get radicalized?”

Me: “I watched the NYDEC murder a happy and healthy pet squirrel named Peanut for no reason other than some useless apparatchiks had too much power.” pic.twitter.com/GWDGj3qRgB

— Kiki (@kikisknees)

November 2, 2024

The last word is DOA’s.

“Whatcha gonna do with your head in a noose,” indeed. Although Joey Shithead’s response is “I DON’T KNOOOOW,” I most certainly do: nothing, that’s what.

Didn’t see THIS one coming

Posted on November 1, 2024November 1, 2024 by Mike

Bill “The meaning of the word IS” Clinton, telling the God’s honest truth without somebody holding a loaded pistol against his temple, about anything at all? If you’d told me thirty years ago this day would come, I’da laughed in your face and said you were an escapee from the Ha-Ha Hotel, on the lam from the boys with the butterfly nets and those odd jackets with the straps that buckle at the back. I mean, just…just…WOW.

Bill Clinton On the Palestinians:

“And the only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got… pic.twitter.com/kQZrqdU3zW

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613)

October 31, 2024

“Show more” workaround:

“And the only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They would have a capital in East Jerusalem.

I can hardly talk about this…. And they would have equal access all day every day to the security towers that Israel maintained all through the West Bank up to the Golan Heights.

All this was offered, including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and 2 of the 4 quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and his cabinet. And they said no.

And I think part of it is that Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable.

Well, I got news for them, they were there first before their faith existed.

They were there. In the time of King David, in the southern most tribes, Hadjardia and Samaria.”

The truth, the whole truth, and nuttin’ but the truth. From the mouth of a Clinton, yet. Man alive, “unexpected” doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it.

It’s turtles lies and lunacy, all the way down

Posted on November 1, 2024November 1, 2024 by Mike

You’d have to be crazy to believe this stuff…all of which just happens to be verifiably true and accurate.

The Democrats’ Insanity Defense
Republican activists say they have to water down the reality of their opponents’ agenda in focus groups. ‘They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.‘

In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. “She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president’s most radical past positions. “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”

The idea that the vice president “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser cited it in a column posted the next morning as an example of Trump’s lunacy: “What the hell was he talking about?” Glasser wrote of the trans operation lines. “No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’ point.”

That reaction was understandable—the idea of the operations was, as Trump himself said, a “thing nobody would ever think of.” The problem was that it is true. As CNN had reported that week, Harris, when running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, had written in an ACLU questionnaire that she supported publicly funded “gender-affirming care,” including transition surgeries, for federal prison inmates and detained illegal immigrants. Follow-up reporting from The Washington Free Beacon revealed that while serving as California attorney general, Harris had in fact implemented a statewide policy of taxpayer funding for prisoners’ sex changes, born out of a settlement in which she agreed to pay for the transition of a man convicted of kidnapping a father of three and then murdering him as he begged for his life. Harris later bragged, on camera, about this policy as evidence of her commitment to the progressive “movement”—in a clip that has since become a staple of Trump campaign ads.

The sequence of events neatly encapsulated a pattern that has played out countless times since Trump entered American political life. Trump says something seemingly insane, to many people’s outrage and disbelief, only to have his supposed “lie” revealed to be wholly or at least significantly true. Often the specific truth revealed—that the outgoing Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team in order to gather information for what later became the Russiagate hoax, to cite another example—is in fact “crazier” than Trump’s exaggerations or garbling of the details. The insanity of the policy becomes the front line of defense against potential blowback: Who would believe that anyone would actually propose or support something so obviously at odds with public opinion and basic common sense? Trump must be a raving nutjob, just like we told you he was.

The reason that this strategy has worked is because Democrats rely on all nonexplicitly right-wing media to adopt their framing of issues and cite the party’s preferred experts, which they do. The party’s influence over the country’s communications apparatus has, for the past decade, emerged into something like a political superpower, allowing it to act outside the normal bounds of American politics without suffering from political blowback.

“All of it,” said a Republican congressional staffer, “is insulated by their absolute confidence that they can just use their control over communications institutions to just say words, including change of language, right? Flip a switch and it’s now gender affirming care. Flip a switch and it’s now undocumented migrants, or undocumented Americans. Flip a switch and now you can change people’s pronouns.”

The result, for anyone skeptical of the Democratic Party yet bound to operate within the consensus reality of its discourse, is akin to living in a wilderness of mirrors. How to explain, for instance, that elected Democrats from the Biden White House on down support not only taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens, but policies that allow schools to “socially transition” children without informing their parents? How to explain, without sounding like a lunatic, that the newspapers and expert bodies that recommend life-altering surgeries for children, and defend them as “life-saving” or “medically necessary” care opposed only by cranks and Bible thumpers, either don’t know what they’re talking about or are lying to you for political reasons? That the claim that such surgeries were rarely if ever performed on children was also a lie? That when President Biden, the kindly old moderate, directed his Department of Health and Human Services to address the “barriers and exclusionary policies” keeping children from accessing “gender medicine,” what he was describing was a policy that would see members of his own administration pressuring medical agencies to allow procedures such as breast and penis removal be performed on young children, despite the lack of any proof that these measures contribute to greater mental or physical health?

The same GOP staffer, who is currently working on a competitive congressional race, told me that one problem his campaign regularly faces is that aspects of Democratic governance are simply too insane for voters to find credible, even when they are documented as official U.S. government policy. “When you outline the Democratic agenda, you have to water it down, because in both polling and focus groups, people just don’t believe it,” he said. “They are critical of things like boys in girls’ sports, but they tune out stuff about schools not informing parents about transitioning their children. They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.”

Ahh, but there’s the rub. Shouldn’t be, naturally, but can’t? Sorry to bust any bubbles or anything, but…well, there it is.

Via AoSHQ, the article is a long ‘un, but be sure to stick with it to the very end. This next section I have a couple of quibbles with, which problematic statements I’ll put in bold for y’all fine folks.

A similar dynamic plays out in foreign policy. On the one hand the Democrats conjured out of thin air the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, which was, we now know, a conspiracy theory concocted by ex-spies and Clinton campaign operatives and seeded in the intelligence agencies and media by the outgoing Obama administration to cripple the new administration. That is to say that it is not a matter of partisan political opinion; it is simply false. Yet as of 2022, nearly half of U.S. voters, and a majority of Democrats, still believed that Trump was elected in 2016 due to Russian interference, and the hoax remains a mainstay of Democratic rhetoric. It even played a major role in the 2020 election, providing the predicate for the Biden campaign to collude with tech companies and retired spooks to censor reporting about Hunter Biden’s foreign influence-peddling schemes, which turned out to be entirely real.

SO, let’s do this then.

QUIBBLE 1: It was NOT a “conspiracy theory,” but a deliberate stratagem, a ploy in the age-old Clinton mold
QUIBBLE 2: They were NOT Hunter’s “schemes,” but his worthless father’s; Pedaux Jaux used Hunter as his bagman; Hunter is much too dull-witted, careless, and crack-damaged to come up with any sort of “scheme” on his own hook

Semantics aside, the author’s overall point still stands.

Worst President EVAR

Posted on October 26, 2024October 26, 2024 by Mike

Reviewing the most deplorable in a very big basket of ‘em.

Woodrow Wilson made democracy unsafe for the world
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The U.S. role in World War I had disastrous consequences.

Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916 based on a campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But Wilson had massively violated neutrality by providing armaments and money to the Allied powers that had been fighting Germany since 1914. In his war speech to Congress, Wilson hailed the U.S. government as “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and proclaimed that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

American soldiers fought bravely and helped turn the tide on the Western Front in late 1918. But the cost was far higher than Americans anticipated. More than a hundred thousand American soldiers died in the third bloodiest war in U.S. history. Another half million Americans perished from the Spanish flu epidemic spurred and spread by the war.

In his speech to Congress, Wilson declared, “We have no quarrel with the German people” and feel “sympathy and friendship” towards them. But his administration speedily commenced demonizing the “Huns.” One Army recruiting poster portrayed German troops as an ape ravaging a half-naked damsel beneath an appeal to “Destroy this mad brute.”

Wilson acted as if the congressional declaration of war against Germany was also a declaration of war against the Constitution. Harvard professor Irving Babbitt commented in 1924: “Wilson, in the pursuit of his scheme for world service, was led to make light of the constitutional checks on his authority and to reach out almost automatically for unlimited power.” Wilson even urged Congress to set up detention camps to quarantine “alien enemies.”

Wilson unleashed ruthless censorship of any criticism. Anyone who spoke publicly against military conscription was likely to get slammed with federal espionage or sedition charges. Possessing a pamphlet entitled Long Live the Constitution of the United States earned six months in jail for a Pennsylvania malcontent. Censorship was buttressed by fanatic propaganda campaigns led by the Committee on Public Information, a federal agency whose shameless motto was “faith in democracy… faith in fact.”

The war enabled the American equivalent of the Taliban to triumph on the home front. Prohibition advocates “indignantly insisted that… any kind of opposition to prohibition was sinister and subversively pro-German,” noted William Ross, author of World War 1 and the American Constitution. Even before the 18th Amendment (which banned alcohol consumption) was ratified, Wilson banned beer sales as a wartime measure. Prohibition was a public health disaster; the rate of alcoholism tripled during the 1920s. To punish lawbreakers, the federal government added poisons to industrial alcohol that was often converted into drinkable hooch; ten thousand people were killed as a result. Professor Deborah Blum, the author of The Poisoner’s Handbook, noted that “an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place.”

The war provided the pretext for unprecedented federal domination of the economy. Washington promised that “food will win the war” and farmers vastly increased their plantings. Price supports and government credits for foreign buyers sent crop prices and land prices skyrocketing. However, when the credits ended in 1920, prices and land values plunged, spurring massive bankruptcies across rural America. This spurred perennial political discontent that helped lead to a federal takeover of agriculture by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s.

And the rest, as they say, is history. As Glenn mordantly reminds us: Well, worst President so far.

Just another Biden fuckup

Posted on October 25, 2024October 25, 2024 by Mike

Not so much, this time out. After all, to him and all the rest of his scum-gargling radical Left ilk, she IS dead now.

Biden suggests very alive former Rep. Gabby Giffords is dead after bizarre remark: ‘Nothing wrong with me’
President Biden appeared to suggest Friday that former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) is either dead or divorced— and no longer his friend — in an apparent gaffe shortly after he told members of a Native American community that there is “nothing wrong with me.”

“Thank you to Sen. Mark Kelly, a great friend — who also was married to an incredible woman who was my friend,” the 81-year-old president told the Gila River Indian Community, just south of Phoenix.

Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, has been married to Giffords — who is very much alive — since 2007.

Explanatory backstory for my above punchline—in reference not to Giffords but to Wonder Woman Tulsi Gabbard, which is probably the person Stupefied Jaux thought he was talking about anyway. Or talking TO, perhaps; who even knows anymore with that addled, staggerlicious old feeb. In any event, I’ve had this one sitting in an open tab for a cpl-three days now, and I’m a-gonna use it, by gum.

Tulsi Gabbard announces that she’s ‘joining the Republican Party’ at Trump rally
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday that she’s “joining the Republican Party.”

Gabbard, a former Democrat and independent, made the declaration during a North Carolina rally for former President Donald Trump, as the GOP nominee for president – her inspiration for making the party switch – stood nearby.

“The Democrat Party has no home for people like us, but we do have a home in the Republican Party – where we are welcomed with open arms by President Trump and so many of you who love our country,” Gabbard said.

“And it is because of my love for our country and specifically because of the leadership that President Trump has brought to transform the Republican Party and bring it back to the party of the people, and the party of peace, that I’m proud to stand here with you today, with President Trump, and announce that I’m joining the Republican Party,” she declared.

Trump, 78, later noted that he wasn’t expecting Gabbard’s announcement.

“Wow, that was a surprise,” the former president said, calling it a “great honor” to have influenced Gabbard to join the ranks of the GOP.

Well said, Tulsi, and good on ya for it. Don’t look now, but there may well be another, more apposite reason for Gabbard’s sudden switcheroo, and America’s Only Trustworthy News Source knows what it is.

Tulsi Gabbard Finally Realizes She’s Far Too Attractive To Be A Democrat
WASHINGTON, D.C. — There was great rejoicing in the GOP yesterday as former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard finally realized that she’s far too good-looking to be a Democrat.

Sources close to Gabbard say the realization was a long time in coming, but that she finally decided to switch sides after realizing that she didn’t blend in at all.

“I’d felt very out of place for a while now,” Gabbard said as she announced she was now a Republican. “Everyone around me was either a creepy perv like Walz or a mummy like Pelosi or some uggo like Kamala. And then half of the Dems were just trans and pretending to be the other gender, honestly. I’m just glad to be joining the party with all the lookers, you know? Finally settled that one. Second Amendment, can I get an amen?”

Attractiveness experts agreed that Gabbard no longer had a place among the “sea of androgynous bags” that make up the Democrat Party. “We’re so glad she finally realizes how gorgeous she is,” said attractiveness expert Bubbs Bronson from Fort Wayne, Indiana. “Easy on the eyes, that’s for sure!”

The smokin’ hot, intellectually agile, leggily sexadelic, and unashamedly patriotic Ms Gabbard is certainly a breed apart from the blubberous manatees; bloated bipedal hippopotami; green-bewigged Manwomen; bong-ripping, dorm-dwelling Reluctant Femmes sporting nasty, smelly white-girl dreads; and mange-rife screech monkeys which constitute pretty much the complete taxonomy of feminine “pulchritude” in today’s D卐M☭CRAT Party. Not since the famously fugly Mrs Franklin D Roosevelt have we beheld such a gorge-raising gaggle of fairer-sex gargoyleens. Gruesomighty! Next to these present-day specimens, even Her Herness HILLARY!© Clinton begins to look pretty darn fetching.

So welcome aboard, T, we’re mighty glad to have ya with us adorning the side of good ol’ Truth, Justice, and the American Way; far as I’m concerned, you’re making us look better already. And it’s early days yet; if we can persuade you to reconsider some of your holdover Leftist ideas and opinions in the days and years to come, our joy will be boundless. Not that looks are everything, of course. Then again, they aren’t exactly nothing, either. Certainly, in politics as in many other aspects of life on this here blue marble of ours, they don’t hurt.

Entirely coincidental sequence of events

Posted on October 23, 2024October 23, 2024 by Mike

First, McDonald’s confirms what we all already knew about HoTUS: she never worked a day there in her life, contra her baldfaced lie claiming otherwise. Then came Trump’s triumphant handspring from off the top of the Golden Arches, designed to rub Kumhaula’s pathetic, pandering lie in shitlib faces. So could an attempt at a little goobermint-stage-managed payback for Mickey D’s be long in coming?

No. No, it could NOT.

McDonald’s Quarter Pounders sold at restaurants across the country may have been contaminated with E. coli, according to a warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC says at least 49 people have contracted E. coli through this recently identified outbreak, including one person who has died and 10 who have been hospitalized.

Most of those illnesses have been reported in Nebraska (9) and Colorado (27), but have also been identified in eight other states. The one death was described as an older resident living in Colorado.

Officials say the CDC and McDonald’s have yet to determine which ingredient is contaminated and responsible for the outbreak.

Bold mine, and dispositive. Gee, nice timing, Mr Man. Clearly, FederalGovCo wants you to be afraid, be very afraid of this deadly global pandemic brought to you directly by the hated pedophile Ronald McDonald, and has only the best interests of We Duh Peepul foremost in mind. Of course, and as usual. INLINE UPDATE! Just remembered a most apt embed:

Meanwhile, don’t pay any attention to this crazy bimbette. She is, after all, crazy.

Harvard Doctor Confirms that Human ‘Brains Need Meat’
Dr Georgia Ede, a Harvard-trained nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist, says eating meat is essential for good mental health.

According to her research and findings, “the brain needs meat.” She shared her views on a radio broadcast recently.

…[D]espite the health halo that vegan diets have been given over the last few years, she claims that giving up meat could be detrimental for mental health.

‘The brain needs meat,’ she told KIRO News Radio.

‘We’re used to hearing that meat is dangerous for our total health, including our brain health, and plants are really the best way to nourish and protect our brains.’

‘But the truth of the matter is that it’s actually — that’s upside down and backward.’

Ede has written a book on the subject: Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind. Chapters are dedicated to the impact of each food group on mental health, which are not promoted by insect-pushing globalists.

Apparently, meat is the only food that contains “every nutrient we need.”

What a pack of crazy, preposterous lies this obviously crazy woman is puking forth all over the landscape. We did mention she’s crazy, right? Via Glenn.

Goose, please allow me to introduce Gander

Posted on October 17, 2024October 17, 2024 by Mike

Hey, anybody remember when foreign interference in Amerikan “elections” was a BAD thing? Nah, me neither.

British Labour Party sending staff to campaign for Harris in US swing states
WASHINGTON (TNND) — The left-leaning British Labour Party is sending nearly 100 members to U.S. battleground states to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the presidential election.

Sofia Patel, head of operations for the Labour Party, shared the plans via LinkedIn Wednesday. She claimed current and former party staff will target key swing states like North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

“I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will sort your housing,” Patel offered in the post.

Patel also noted she plans to arrive in the U.S. two weeks prior to the election and stay in Washington, D.C., for a few days afterward.

Patel’s profile shows she previously spent time in the Hillary Clinton campaign from October to November of 2016. She included the description “travelled to the US to campaign for Clinton in the presidential election.”

Leave it to MTG to make with the stinging, snappy riposte, in her accustomed gadfly role.

Reacting to Patel’s post was Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who suggested via X it was “yet another reason to vote for President Trump.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., also weighed in, telling the Labour Party it is breaking Federal Election Commission law.

“Foreign nationals are not allowed to be involved in anyway in U.S. elections,” Rep. Greene wrote via X. “Please go back to the UK and fix your own mass immigration problems that are ruining your country.”

And of course, the rock star I know affectionately as the God-Emperor of Earth put his own oar in as well.

X owner Elon Musk wrote simply “this is illegal” in his own post on the matter.

Well said: pithy, straight to the fucking point, no BS, no mincing of words or surplus verbiage—only this and nothing more, as Poe once said in a slightly different context. You tell ‘em, Elon ol’ boy. Back to Limey-land witcha, MSXZZ Patel, and most ricky-tick; do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

Dog bites man

Posted on October 17, 2024October 17, 2024 by Mike

Liberalism delenda est.

Halperin: Trump Win Will Trigger ‘Unprecedented and Hideous’ Mental Health Crisis
Many have been wondering how the left will take it if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election. According to veteran political analyst Mark Halperin, a Trump-Vance victory will trigger “the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.”

Halperin sat in on Tucker Carlson’s show this week for a wide-ranging discussion. When Carlson asked him what he thought would happen if Trump wins, Halperin predicted a psychological holocaust on the left that would fall somewhere between “The Purge” and the zombie apocalypse.

“I say this not flippantly,” began Halperin. “I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country. I think tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to their vision of what their future — for them and their children — could be like. And I think that it will require an enormous amount of access to mental health professionals. I think it’ll lead to trauma in the workplace. I think there’ll be some degree of —“

At this point, an incredulous Carlson asked Halperin if he was being serious.

“A hundred percent serious. A hundred percent serious,” the political prognosticator assured him. Then he returned to his litany. “I think there’ll be alcoholism, there’ll be broken marriage—“

“What?” interjected the host.

“Yeah. They think he’s the worst person possible to be president,” Halperin explained. “And, having won by the hand of Jim Comey and fluke in 2016, and then [Trump] performed in office for four years, and denied who won the election last time, and January 6 — the fact that, under a fair election, America chose, by the rules pre-agreed to, Donald Trump again, I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America.”

From there, the light-hearted banter delved into speculation about the potential for violence. “Yeah, I think there’ll be some violence,” Halperin confirmed. “I think there’ll be workplace fights. There’ll be fights at kids’ birthday parties. I think there’ll be protests that will turn violent. I hope they’re not, but I think there will be some.’

The seasoned analyst went on to plumb the nature of the imminent despair of the American left. “I think it will be less anger and more a failure to understand how it could happen. You know, like the death of a child, or your spouse announcing that she’s a lesbian and she’s leaving you for your best friend — like something that’s so traumatic that it is impossible for even the most mentally healthy person to truly process and incorporate into their daily life.”

The most mentally healthy Democrat, he should have specified. Republicans and patriots face political defeat and alienation from their own country on a regular basis without going bonkers.

SO—shitlib D卐M☭CRATs will flip out, go insane, and generally run amok if Trump “wins” the “election,” eh? And we’re supposed to distinguish this unusual, once in a lifetime event from any other day of the week ending in “Y”…HOW, exactly? Thorne concludes:

Should a Trump-Vance victory come to pass, remember to bring in the pets and children and lock the doors before you start popping champagne corks.

Fuck that noise—load extra mags, zero rifle sights, establish good fields of fire, make sure your perimeter is well-lighted instead, among other things.

TRIGGERED!

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Mike

To hell with Presidents, of any and every partisan stripe: Elon Musk for God-Emperor of Earth, I say.

Elon Musk works another miracle as Lilliputian progs snipe
Elon Musk is working miracles with rockets, but a bunch of California apparatchiks want to stop his launches because of…his tweets.

The immigrant genius stunned the world Sunday as his SpaceX landed a reusable Starship booster back on the launchpad.

This is a huge tech advance, bringing launch costs down by a factor of ten and advancing space exploration and exploitation by decades.

Meanwhile, the California Coastal Commission just rejected the Space Force’s request for more frequent SpaceX launches on the Golden State’s Central Coast by a vote of six to four, with some of the “nays” specifically citing Musk’s political speech.

Ayn Rand must be spinning in her grave…or laughing at how so-called “progressives” spurn actual progress when driven by a truly independent mind.

Meanwhile, bet on Musk to beat the Lilliputians: Expect him to launch the first manned mission to Mars from Texas, which has the good sense to welcome him and all his businesses.

“Lilliputian” would definitely be the mot juste here.

Virginia Tech academic: Stop sending humans into space — it’s ‘imperialist’
The ‘inclusion of more social scientists’ needed at NASA, etc.

Yet another university academic is warning about continued human space exploration due to its “imperialist mindset.”

Savannah Mandel, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech and an “outer space anthropologist,” adds to what seems to be a trendy argument about investigations into outer space.

According to Virginia Tech News, Mandel’s book “Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration” argues that “rushing to send more humans to space […] mirrors an imperialist mindset that harms Earth’s humanity and environment.”

Maybe if you threatened to hold your breath until you turn blue, sweet-cheeks. That usually works for ya, right?

Whither the Renaissance Man?

Posted on October 12, 2024October 12, 2024 by Mike

CF friend KT—she of Saturday Pet Thread renown, among other notable things—hips us to an intriguing VDH column. Sefton linked it earlier this week, but I let it get by me somehow.

We Are in Need of Renaissance People
The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88.

Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with then-spouse and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he formed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.

In other words, Kristofferson was a rare Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly narrow specialization and expertise.

At certain times throughout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.

Classical Athens produced polymaths like Aristotle—tutor to Alexander the Great, logician, student of music, art, and literature, educator, think-tank founder, biologist, philosopher, and scientist. Later Greeks like Archimedes and Ptolemy, as men of action, mastered six or seven disciplines and applied their abstract knowledge in ways that made life easier for those around them.

But we associate the idea of a “Renaissance man” mostly with Florence, Italy, between the 15th and 16th centuries. In that brief 100 years, the Florentine Republic hosted multi-talented geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci—master painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, and inventor—best known for the Mona Lisa and Last Supper.

The American Revolution was a similar embryo of Renaissance men. Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most famous example of unchecked abstract and pragmatic genius displayed in almost every facet of late 18th– and early 19th-century life—main author of the Declaration of Independence, third U.S. President, founder of the University of Virginia, inventor, agronomist, architect, and diplomat.

But Benjamin Franklin may best approximate the model of the Florentine Renaissance holistic brilliance—journalist, publisher, printer, author, politician, diplomat, inventor, scientist, and philosopher.

And here’s where it gets really interesting.

The best American example of the current age is the controversial Elon Musk, a truly Renaissance figure who has revolutionized at least half a dozen entire fields.

Huh. Much as I’ve come to like and admire him, I hadn’t thought about Elon as a modern-day Renaissance Man before, but now that VDH brought it up it seems obvious. Onwards.

No one prior had broken the Big Three auto monopoly of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

Musk did just that. He exploded all three companies’ dominance with his successful creation of the first viable electric vehicle, Tesla, whose comfort, drivability, reliability, safety, and power rivaled or exceeded the models of all his competitors.

His spin-off battery storage and solar panel companies allowed thousands of families to go off the grid and stay self-sufficient in power usage.

Musk’s revolutionary Starlink internet system—a mere five years old—provides global online service to over 100 countries. Through its some 7,000 satellites, Starlink brings internet service to remote residents far more effectively and cheaply than do their own governments. When natural disasters overwhelm utilities or war disrupts the normality of peace, all look to Musk to restore online reconnections to the outside world.

Musk, almost singlehandedly, transformed the U.S. space program from a NASA 60-year-old government monopoly to an arena of fervent private-public competition. His Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) created a rocket and spacecraft program that has kept the U.S. preeminent in space exploration and reliable satellite launches. When NASA and old aerospace companies falter, the government looks to Musk to bail them out.

Musk, at great personal cost, radically transformed the old Twitter—poorly managed, censorious of ideas and expressions not deemed progressive, and mired in scandal for partnering with the FBI to silence news deemed possibly injurious to Democratic candidates and left-wing campaigns.

His new X replacement is an unfettered platform for free expression. And the more the left abhors their loss of the monopolistic old Twitter’s ideological clearing house, and vows to flee X and start their own new left-wing, censorious Twitters, the more they stay on X.

There’s more yet, and it’s…well, like I said, it’s intriguing.

SIDE NOTE: I haven’t looked in on Hanson for a goodish while—nor American Greatness itself, for whom he used to write a regular column, and perhaps still does—but for many years practically every piece he published was linked and excerpted approvingly here at CF; in particular, his post-9/11 output looking into the Moslem supremacist threat and how the West might most successfully deal with it was reliably excellent—very insightful, well-written, and steeped in the historical perspective. I see now he has his own website, The Blade Of Perseus, which I didn’t know about before. Duly bookmarked and blogrolled.

Update! Just checked and yep, looks like Hanson is still posting over at AmGreat. A little taste of another good piece, this one with an overly optimistic title.

Try a Little Honesty About Israel
Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

Honesty? From these congenital liars?!? *snort* Yeah, as if. That’ll be the day.

It was the terrorists of Hamas who surprise attacked and murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians during peace and a Jewish holiday.

Their slaughtering torturing, raping, and hostage-taking revealed a level of precivilization barbarism rarely seen in the modern era.

Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah that would eventually number over 20,000.

It did not respond to the bloodbath with a full-scale invasion of Gaza until October 27, some three weeks after the slaughtering.

During that interim, for most of the Muslim world and both U.S. Muslim communities and on American campuses, there was rejoicing at the news of slaughtered Jews.

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: attack the Jewish state and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did in unison.

And will go right on doing so, unless and until we finally pay heed to LeMay’s sagacious advice.

Curtislemay1 2x.

Read all of that Hanson piece at AG, folks, and expect to see more of the man ‘round these h’yar parts henceforth. I have been remiss, now I intend to make it up to y’all. What the hey, it’s the least I can do.

Terrorists to Israel: “Let’s stop fighting, we’re losing”

Posted on October 10, 2024October 10, 2024 by Mike

Finish ‘em off, Bibi.

Hezbollah Wants a Ceasefire Now. Here’s Why Israel Shouldn’t Give Them One.
Ceasefire now? As much as Kamala Harris wants one and would capitalize upon one if it did materialize, the answer must be a firm no.

After exploding pagers and a series of carefully targeted Israeli airstrikes have completely decimated Hezbollah’s senior leadership, the jihad terror organization now wants a ceasefire with Israel. This will come as music to the ears of the Biden-Harris regime, which would like nothing better than an October peace agreement between Israel and one of the major players that are arrayed against it.

The Harris campaign could wave this agreement in the air every time someone pointed out that the world during the Trump years was a much more peaceful place than it is now, and use it going into the election as evidence of Kamala Harris’ superior negotiating skills. But for a number of important reasons, Israel should resist all pressure from Washington.

So far, the pressure for the moment is coming not from Washington, but from Hezbollah itself. CNN reported Tuesday that Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem, who is the highest-ranking official in the organization at the moment (after Israel took out longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several of his designated or potential successors) said, “We support the political efforts led by (Parliament Speaker Nabih) Berri under the banner of achieving a ceasefire. Once the ceasefire is firmly established and diplomacy can reach it, all other details will be discussed and decisions will be made collaboratively.”

Ceasefire! Diplomacy! Qassem knows how to push all the right buttons to get the U.S. State Department, the European Union, and the United Nations on his side, and even to shower billions upon his straitened organization. Kamala Harris has already sent $157 million to Lebanon, which means to Hezbollah.

Nevertheless, Antony Blinken and his henchmen in Foggy Bottom are likely to take Qassem’s endorsement of Berri’s ceasefire proposal with the utmost seriousness, and start badgering the Israelis to accept it. If they prevail upon them to do so, they’ll only be enabling Hezbollah to survive and get back on its feet after the heavy losses it has recently suffered. This is certain from what Islamic law teaches about when treaties, including temporary truces, should be concluded with a non-Muslim foe.

Yep, those “temporary truces” being known by a specific name in Muzzrat circles: hudna, that would be, a strictly temporary cease-fire intended to allow an exhausted, nearly defeated Mooselimb antagonist to re-equip, refit, and reinvigorate for the next round of jihadi conquest. Thus:

The concept of hudna deserves a close look: It is not a Qur’anic term, nor is it the only Arabic word for a cease-fire or truce; others include: muhadana, muwada’a, muhla, musalaha, musalama, mutaraka, and sulh. But hudna is the most prominent. It is the first word used in Muslim history to mean cease-fire, specifically in the context of the seventh century Truce or Treaty of al-Hudaybiyya, often termed the Sulh al-Hudaybiyya (peace of al-Hudaybiyya).

Named after a village outside Mecca, the truce came six years after Muhammad and his followers abandoned Mecca for Yathrib, today’s Medina. This move, known as the hijra (emigration) is of enormous significance for the classical understanding of jihad, inasmuch as it sets a pattern of retreat followed by regrouping and rearming, which permits an attack on the territory previously left behind.

Spencer, for his part, understands what’s actually going on here perfectly well.

Blinken and his colleagues are dogmatically committed to the proposition that Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict between Israel and its jihadi enemies and can illuminate nothing about that conflict, but the facts are otherwise.

Islamic law does not envision a state of permanent peace between Muslims and non-Muslims. Instead, the Qur’an instructs Muslims to “fight them until persecution is no more and religion is all for Allah” (8:39). If Muslims must continue fighting non-Muslims until “religion is all for Allah,” that means that there is no place in Islam for the “coexistence” that the left professes to value so highly. There can be no coexistence, but only perpetual warfare, although there can be sporadic periods in which a temporary peace prevails.

Islamic law is very clear about when these pauses in the war can go into effect. It only allows for a truce if the Muslims expect their foes to convert to Islam, or if the Muslims are weak and need to gather strength to fight later more effectively: “If Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud… Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of numbers or materiel, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim…” (Reliance of the Traveller, o9.16).

This idea is founded on the Qur’an: “So do not falter and cry out for peace when you have the upper hand…” (47:35).

Hezbollah is crying out for peace because it does not have the upper hand. It is calling for a ceasefire because it is weak, and needs time to gather its strength. This would, therefore, be the worst time to conclude a ceasefire. Heedless of all this, however, and hating Israel as they do, Biden, Harris, and Blinken will keep pressuring Israel to accept a ceasefire. Netanyahu should stand strong in rejecting this pressure.

And there you have it. Once again, I must repeat: Kill. Them. ALL. Contra the constant teary squeals of “genocide” from idiotic Western shitlibs and, embarrassingly enough, Crackpot Rightists in this context (neither Hezbollah, nor Hamas, nor Paleosimian, nor even Muslim itself constitutes a race, therefore definitionally rendering the claim of “genocide” entirely null and void), there really is no other long-term solution for Western Civ than just this.

Update! Francis asks the pertinent question.

I strive to use words according to their exact meanings. The word existential has such a meaning: “of, relating to, or affirming existence.” Thus, an existential enemy is one whose aim is to end your existence. There can be no greater threat than such an enemy; he poses an existential threat.

Is there a point – a defensible rationale – to negotiating with such an enemy?

A: No. No, there most certainly is not. In such a circumstance, you have but three (3) options: Kill him, surrender, or die your own self, the last two of which amount to the same thing when all’s said and done. Period fucking dot, all there is to it, end of story.

Catastrophic near-miss

Posted on October 10, 2024October 10, 2024 by Mike

Oh frabjous day, calloo callay! Well, almost.

Anderson Cooper drilled in face by flying debris during live on-air Hurricane Milton report: ‘That wasn’t good’
Cooper, known for his on-site coverage of hurricanes, took the incident in stride and continued his report of the water from the Manatee River rising above the river bank and onto the walkway above.

Aw dammit, I was rooting for casualties when I saw the headline. According to the article the “flying debris” in question was only a small piece of styrofoam (sigh) and not a brick, iron bar, V8 engine block, live alligator, or something else a bit more, umm, lethal, shall we say. Oh well—next time, perhaps.

Can’t stop the steal

Posted on October 9, 2024 by Mike

Still think Trump/Vance will defeat Kumhaula and Tampon Timmeh the Pillsbury Doughpyrsynz©, do ya? If so, may I ask why, exactly?

North Carolina gives counties affected by Hurricane Helene voting flexibility
Voters in the western part of the battleground state, which was hit hard by the storm, will be able to drop off completed absentee ballots to any county election board.

North Carolina’s election board voted Monday to give residents in the western part of the state, which was hit hardest by Hurricane Helene, greater flexibility to vote by mail and run their elections.

Voters in 13 counties heavily affected by the storm will have more ways to obtain and deliver absentee ballots, while county boards will have more ability to modify their election administration plans. The changes, approved by unanimous vote of the bipartisan board, come 10 days before early voting begins in the battleground state and as mail voting is already underway.

Voters in those counties who want to cast ballots by mail will be able to request and receive them in person until Nov. 4, the day before Election Day, rather than the Tuesday before, under the usual rules. They will also be able to drop off their ballots at any county board of elections in the state or any polling sites in their counties. Previously, voters were limited to dropping absentee ballots off at the board of elections or early voting sites in their counties.

The ballots will be counted if they are received by 7:30 p.m. ET on Election Day.

The emergency provisions will allow county boards, with bipartisan majority votes, to change their early voting hours and schedules if necessary. They will be able to move polling sites as necessary and even move them into other counties if necessary.

Greenfield says it, no fuss, no muss.

Come on, you knew this was coming. Never let a crisis go to waste. Instead of providing immediate aid, the Biden-Harris administration worsened the crisis in North Carolina. Because a crisis justifies setting aside election rules.

While some flexbility makes sense after a natural disaster, this is a formula for flooding the election with unaccountable mail ballots aimed at counties under the firm control of partisan political machines.

Who benefits? That’s a tough one.

Ain’t it, though. Ain’t it just.

Unless and until we get back to One Man, One Paper Ballot, One Day, concluding with purple-inked thumbs before being permitted to exit the polling place—ie, no EZ-Hack electronic voting machines; no Election “Season” nonsense; no mail-ins or early voting except for military personnel stationed overseas; hand-counted in a scrupulously monitored tabulation facility before observers representing all participating political parties; no interruptions, pauses, or breaks until the count is done, however long that may take—it’s all just stuff and nonsense.

Let election-riggers, -tamperers, and -fraudsters caught red-handed at their nefarious jiggery-pokery be indicted, prosecuted, and promptly executed for High Treason, pour encourages les autres. If Real Americans don’t take their national elections seriously enough to nut-up and adopt the aforementioned measures—extreme though they may look to daintier, more squeamish eyes—there can be no real possibility of ever unfucking America’s national “elections,” and the disgraceful traveshamockery will carry on as it presently does.

Lost America

Posted on October 8, 2024October 8, 2024 by Mike

GREAT piece on the opening-credits sequences of those classic old 70s sitcoms.

Opening credit sequences are a lost art these days. “Lost” because the ritual of collective TV watching is a thing of the past with no real place here in the streaming era. And yes, once upon a time, Network TV watching was a ritual. Like a formal State dinner with seventeen different kinds of spoons and a new glass for each course, Network TV viewing came with a set of rules and an irresistable order. All over America families gathered around the TV set at the appointed time, tuned our sets to the proper channel and waited for the opening notes of the songs we all knew by heart, excited to spend half another hour with characters we’d come to think of as friends.

There was something gratifying too about the idea that all across the country millions of our fellow Americans were doing the same exact thing at the same exact moment. If you are of a certain age, you probably have a memory of getting up during a commercial break on a warm night, maybe to let the dog out, and hearing the sound of the same commercial you were just watching coming from your neighbor’s open window. There was something special about that sense of shared culture, all of us participating at the same time, no matter where or who we were…city mouse and country mouse…doctors, lawyers, electricians and plumbers. There was an irresistable allure to being a part of something magical that would only happen once and then never again.

Streaming TV viewing, by contrast, is a solitary act with no real sense of time or place and where nobody knows your name. By the time a popular 70’s show entered syndication, a committed fan would have watched the series opener one hundred times or more. But memorable credit sequences are more rare now, a function of their incompatibility with the churn-and-burn binge-viewing nature of the streaming model. Easier to just click the “skip” button, or “next episode”, and get on with it.

Instant gratification saves time, certainly, but in the process something is lost that perhaps should not have been. There is value in waiting. Part of what makes Christmas so special is the month long run-up that precedes it. There is also something captivating and mysterious about the idea of being treated to a show. To the knowledge that we can’t speed things up at a whim. That we can’t just skip to the good stuff. It is satisfying in a way that the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am rhythm of streaming will never be able to deliver. And it’s hard not to wonder if the old ways of network TV might not have been good for us in some critical way we can no longer recall.

Sit down, relax…be still. Someone else is in charge for the next 26 minutes and you can’t skip ahead. You are not in control. If the episode ends in a cliffhanger, you’re going to have to wait a week to find out what happens. And that’s OK.

Everything moves faster now. And while it may be an article of faith at Wharton Business School that the customer is always right, there is no immutable law that says the customer will always be happier, or even better off, once they get it.

“Sometimes you wanna go…where everybody knows your name…and they’re always glad you came…”

The above closing line, of course, comes from perhaps my personal favorite of all the shows featured in the post’s embedded videos:

Cheers, Taxi, KRP, Kotter, M*A*S*H—they’re all here, folks, and it’s one hell of a great ride. No true child of the American 70s will want to miss this one, and definitely shouldn’t.

(Via Stephen Green)

Update! The comments-section discussion betwixt myself and Barry compels me to append a typical, wonderfully silly cab-depot exchange featuring Andy Kauffman as Latka Gravas and the incomparable Christopher Lloyd as the Reverend Jim Ignatowski in Taxi.

Heh. LOVE that show. What kinda disturbs me is that, what with all the things that have slipped from my increasingly unreliable memory over recent years, I can still recall both Kaufman’s and Llloyd’s characters full names without batting an eye.

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