Hmmm… – Page 28

The losing tradition

Posted on March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Mike

David Solway examines some evidence that Real Americans are mired up to the axles in one.

Why Do We Almost Always Lose?
One of the besetting vices of the conservative disposition is the tendency to regard potential or likely victories in contested situations as inevitable. The conservative mind is not happy with the reality principle. It prefers not to see that menacing and intractable elements often lie beneath the cover of apparent failure. Such tranced insensibility is always quick to snatch fantasy from reality, proof that conservative analysis is often unreliable and prone to underestimating the cleverness and determination of the Left. This seems to be one reason (there are others) that conservatives have trouble winning.

Let’s consider three current examples of this unfortunate tropism.

1) Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake’s case against Katie Hobbs on grounds of electoral impropriety and mismanagement, citing compelling evidence that had many commentators confident of courtroom success, was predictably tossed by the presiding judge, Peter A. Thompson. I say “predictably” by which I mean “utterly obvious to anyone with eyes to see.” As I wrote in a earlier article for PJM, the belief that Kari Lake’s evidence-based lawsuit against electoral fraud would bear fruit — “Kari Lake Just Ended Katie Hobbs” is the title of one conservative video — is another indication of wishful thinking rather than sober insight. The evidence of electoral malfeasance was dispositive but, given the state of the judiciary in a heavily left-oriented county, there was never any possibility of a fair judgment. Kari Lake had truth and justice on her side, which, in the ideological universe of the Left, meant she didn’t have a chance. Any astute observer would have seen that.

2) Among conservative sites like Turley Talks, The Five, and others, the general jubilating consensus in the Fani Willis travesty was that Willis would surely be cited for various forms of obvious misconduct, possibly disbarred, and certainly would not be permitted to proceed with her election interference prosecution of Donald Trump. The list of misdemeanors was so absurdly extensive as to read like a plot by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, that is, like a comedy trying hard not to be a tragedy. Watching these programs and interviews, my wife and I were struck by the debilitating naivety of the various commentators. We knew well before the fact, and for a fact, that the presiding Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee would effectively punt the case, despite the overwhelming evidence that there was an actual conflict of interest, violation of ethical rules, perjury, and unprofessional conduct on the part of Willis. Alan Dershowitz and Victoria Taft have eviscerated the judge’s ruling, but it should have been plain from the get-go that the verdict was pre-ordained. We note also that McAfee will be facing a black primary challenger in in a Democrat-run, largely black county. Just saying.

3) Most significantly, many commentators have wondered why the Democrat Party would run an obviously senile, incompetent, corrupt, and half-demented failed president as a candidate for re-election against a hale and vigorous challenger. Following his clearly medically amped-up State of the Union Address, writes Matt Margolis, “we’ve seen Biden return to his usual low-energy, gaffe-prone self,” which does not augur well for his electoral prospects. Indeed, many of the pundits and talking heads representing the Republican side of the political divide are exulting in a sure victory, a decisive sweep of the electoral college, a favorable march of battleground states, and are perhaps even more exuberant than they were in 2020 and 2022 when victory was also presumably assured. They did not allow for a massive game of three-card monte then and, while acknowledging that the Democrats are up to their old tricks now, believe that Trump is sufficiently popular to effortlessly clear the margin of fraud.

Wrong again. The Democrats can run a doddering and decrepit excuse for a functioning politician and a demonstrably nasty human being because they are convinced that they will win again. We recall that Katie Hobbs did not bother to debate her immensely popular gubernatorial opponent Kari Lake, no doubt because she knew beforehand that, as Secretary of State presiding over the official certification, and with a compliant judiciary, friendly media sumpters, and biddable tabulators, she had the election won. Similarly, the federal Democrats are supremely confident that they have the election already in their pocket via a strategy of relentless lawfare and financial extortion against Trump, weaponized justice and policing agencies, a suborned media apparatus, digital collaborators, a degenerate university system, ballot harvesting tactics, a crew of vote counters, an army of mules to carry out their instructions, and, as Ben Bartee at PJM points out, the very real possibility of unleashing a COVID 2.0 pandemic “if and when they believe it will be politically expedient, potentially even existential, for them.” The Democrats are not to be underestimated. They could run a mummified cadaver and still win handily.

As Jeffrey Tucker points out, “this president is plunging us straight into lawlessness and dictatorship,” his dimwitted and narcoleptic condition notwithstanding. But enough of the dictatorial machine is already in place to plausibly guarantee a resounding triumph, since most of the votes will be Monopoly votes, no doubt deposited under cover of darkness as in 2020.

A-yup—as we shall soon see yet again, then refuse to learn from…yet again. One of my biggest gripes about Rush Limbaugh over the years was his mulish insistence that the FUSA was “a conservative-majority nation,” when that manifestly was, and is, NOT the case.

It’s doubtful in the extreme that seriously liberty-minded individuals have ever constituted more than a tiny minority in ANY nation, throughout human history. In this one, where even among self-proclaimed “staunch conservatives” the instantaneous reaction to any problem, conundrum, or conflict is always to tub-thump for more government involvement as the “solution”? Gedouddaheah, ya makin’ me laugh wid dat shit /end Brooklyn accent.

The EV “revolution” is over

Posted on March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Mike

We the People gave the wrong answer, so now the dictator steps in to correct the mistake.

Biden Administration Issues Rule That Would Phase Out Gas Cars
The Biden administration has issued its final rule governing tailpipe emissions that will force automakers to phase out gas cars by requiring up to 60% of new cars sold by 2032 to be EVs or hybrids. The emissions standards are so draconian that only a fleet dominated by EVs will meet the government’s standards.

The New York Times calls it “the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history.” It’s also virtually guaranteed to keep millions of Americans out of the new car market and create enormous chaos on the roads. The infrastructure, including enough charging stations and mechanics to service tens of millions of electric vehicles, simply won’t be there.

But in the name of “battling climate change,” no price is too steep, no inconvenience too stupid to endure.

“Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission,” said Mr. Biden in a statement. “Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal for 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”

“They may wish for us all to drive E.V.s or no cars at all, but at the end of the day that’s not their decision,” said Elizabeth Murrill, the attorney general of Louisiana. “There is a limit to their authority to remake society in their own vision and the court has realized that.”

Oh, has it? Has it REALLY? Perhaps somebody needs to remind them of it, then. See Barry’s post below for more.

Days that will live in infamy

Posted on March 17, 2024March 17, 2024 by Mike

Both of these bitter anniversaries tremendous losses for America That Was and all who loved her and now lament her death—murder, actually. First up, probably the most outrageous, destructive trampling of liberty in all of US history.

15 Days to Slow the Spread
This story first appeared in 1600 Daily, the White House’s evening newsletter. Subscribe now to get breaking news from President Trump before anyone else.

This afternoon, President Trump and the White House Coronavirus Task Force issued new guidelines to help protect Americans during the global Coronavirus outbreak.

The new recommendations are simple to follow but will have a resounding impact on public health. While the President leads a nationwide response, bringing together government resources and private-sector ingenuity, every American can help slow the virus’ spread and keep our most high-risk populations safe.

Leslie Eastman offers a few salient points.

This is the vital point: The announcement and associated policies were suppose to be about slowing the spread…not stopping it cold. The idea was that the virus’ effects on the respiratory system were so bad, that slowing the spread was imperative to get the medical resources into position so the healthcare system could handle (it).

I would like to note that two weeks earlier, I was growing concerned about the nature of the Trump administration’s response to the virus. I urged the implementation of the severe flu protocol that had been successfully used in years previously. I also highlighted risk factors for severe infection that could only be addressed on an individual basis.

Subsequently, “15 days to Slow the Spread” morphed into a liberty-crushing horror with impacts that we are still feeling across the nation (and in many other parts of the world).

Now, the nation is facing the choice between the two top candidates:

Trump, who foisted Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx on this country.

Biden: The senile occupant of the Oval Office who mandated the vaccines and prolonged the pandemic response.

Personally, one part of my decision-making will be based on which candidate will not repeat the mistakes in the covid response…and avoid entangling this nation with the World Health Organization’s “Pandemic Treaty“.

I will never forget March 16, 2020.

Nor should you, nor should any of the truly liberty-oriented among us. Next, another costly loss, one which, in its own small way, might almost be considered as badly damaging to Real American prospects as the ScamDemic stampede has been.

Hushed Limbaugh
How did this nation ever get to the point where a man once considered nothing more than a tacky, loud, nouveau-riche liberal NYC real estate mogul/celebrity, with an orange complexion and a crazy pompadour/combover, would be transmogrified into the ultimate scapegoat for the failings, crimes, and corruption that have plagued our government and society since at least the end of the Second World War; the locus and symbol of the most unbridled hatred by the very same global elite that, in point of fact, are guilty of those sins and that he once perhaps was a part of? If I had to venture a guess, I’d say in nearly the same manner as “just some guy in golf pants” (as he once described how the elites tagged him) who at one time happened to have the largest sustained radio audience in history.

Last week marked the third anniversary of Rush Limbaugh passing away after a yearlong battle with terminal lung cancer. In a career that spanned nearly a third of a century, Limbaugh become far and away the most listened-to talk radio host in broadcast history. The conventional wisdom, which is something that Limbaugh defied on a daily basis, was that he had some sort of Svengali-like appeal over masses of mostly white, male, Bible-thumping bumpkins from flyover country by telling them what to think. In point of fact, it was just the opposite. Limbaugh’s success was being able to articulate what a vast swathe of the nation felt—a well-founded angst about the direction of the country especially since the beginning of the Clinton years and for sure with everything in the wake of the 9/11/01 attacks.

Last week marked the third anniversary of Rush Limbaugh passing away after a yearlong battle with terminal lung cancer. In a career that spanned nearly a third of a century, Limbaugh become far and away the most listened-to talk radio host in broadcast history. The conventional wisdom, which is something that Limbaugh defied on a daily basis, was that he had some sort of Svengali-like appeal over masses of mostly white, male, Bible-thumping bumpkins from flyover country by telling them what to think. In point of fact, it was just the opposite. Limbaugh’s success was being able to articulate what a vast swathe of the nation felt—a well-founded angst about the direction of the country especially since the beginning of the Clinton years and for sure with everything in the wake of the 9/11/01 attacks.

He, more than any other political and cultural leader, held both a moral high ground and most crucially a bully pulpit that gave voice to a true silent majority. In examining the life and times of Limbaugh, as well as the gigantic sword of Damocles above Donald Trump’s head, and collectively whatever is left of the United States as we knew or imagined it, a bit of reflection on how we got here, or to coin a phrase, how we—or at least I—got “woke” to the world as it is, is in order.

Although he passed just as the three years-plus FauxVid dumpster fire was really starting to blaze, Limbaugh was astute enough to see what was coming well beforehand.

I’m watching this coronavirus thing, and even the media that you would think would be on whatever we would call “our side,” they’ve lost it too. To them, this is nothing more than a story, and they can’t wait. I mean, everybody is waiting for the next worst headline, the next worst scenario, the next worst possibility. They can’t wait for it and they can’t wait to report it, and they can’t wait to talk about it. And that’s not me.

I resent this. I could never be a journalist. And these people, they’re a pack now. And I don’t care what network you’re talking about or website—there might be some exceptions to websites. Can’t read ’em all, don’t know. But you can’t turn on TV without seeing the same thing on any network. It doesn’t matter what network it is during the news coverage portion. Not so much the opinion programs and prime time. But the news coverage portion.

I mean, it’s now conventional wisdom that the country’s gonna shut down. It’s conventional wisdom that 150 million people are gonna get infected. It’s conventional wisdom that this is deadly, it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened, oh my God. It’s horrible. It’s worse. And nobody’s ever had it as bad or worse. And everybody gets caught up in it. As I watch the media, I don’t see one doubting Thomas. I don’t know how you do that.

JJ notes well the date of this tragically prescient analysis.

That was on March 13, 2020, literally just as the ChiCom/Anthony Fauci-created COVID-19 was just starting to swamp us. Or as Limbaugh seems to have clearly understood, the artificially generated fear of it. We now know, or at least we should know, that it was all one massive lie; from its origins, to its lethality, to the at-best uselessness to at-worst lethality of the vaccines. Yet anyone who back then stepped up and claimed the mantle of a “doubting Thomas” faced destruction.

America, the land of the First Amendment, has now openly toyed with the notion of “Disinformation Governance Boards,” a fancy name for what is essentially a Ministry of Truth. Universities that were supposed to be bastions of the free exchange of diverse viewpoints now silence anyone and anything even a micrometer to the right of Leon Trotsky. Our government is working hand in hand with Big Tech to have them act as censors for ideas, opinions, and facts that run contra to the narrative that they are putting out as truth, to be accepted blindly and unquestioningly without examination or critical review.

The only reason this is happening is because they no longer have a monopoly on the dissemination of information. Lacking that, as everything they have done to this country that has utterly collapsed our economy, erased our border, endangered our citizens at home, and threatened our national security abroad nearly to the point of a global conflict, the junta has no compunction about completely ignoring even the most basic red lines of ethics, morality, and the rule of law to silence all critique and squash all political opposition.

It’s academic as to whether or not we would have come to this point without the coming of alternative media to question the narrative, or what Limbaugh described as “the daily soap opera.” If nothing else, the mere presence of Rush Limbaugh and then Donald Trump has forced the junta to reveal itself for what it is, not for what their erstwhile media gatekeepers used to be able to bamboozle the public with ease. Trump’s greatest achievement as president isn’t actually what he achieved policy-wise (and they were some of the most incredible achievements ever); it was his mere presence as an oppositional force to the hypocrisy and corruption of the past eighty years that caused the masks and illusions of an America that no longer exists to drop. And there couldn’t have been a Donald Trump without a Rush Limbaugh to pave the way.

Mega dittos owed and mega dittos given.

Indeed so, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. May Rush Limbaugh forever rest in peace, much though it must pain him to look down from Heaven upon all that’s transpired since he departed this Earthly plane. Although I admittedly had problems with him over the years—enough so that by the time he died I’d long since stopped listening to him altogether, out of sheer frustration—it’s to our incalculable detriment that we shan’t ever see his like again.

Update! The Panic, and the damage done.

Four years ago, Las Vegas’ casinos shut down for 78 days. The fallout was brutal
About a month after casinos in Macao were closed for 15 days to slow COVID’s spread, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak on March 17, 2020 ordered all casinos as well as restaurants, bars and other nonessential businesses in the state to close for 30 days.

Brendan Bussmann, a gaming industry analyst with Las Vegas-based B Global, recalled the dark start of the shutdown.

“I still remember driving the Strip the next morning and there was nobody there and it either looked like we were occupied or that a bomb had gone off,” he said.

As a result of the 78-day closure, the Nevada Gaming Control Board estimated Nevada’s 219 major casinos lost $6.2 billion, a 25.2 percent decline from revenue generated a year earlier.

An estimated 26,140 people from a workforce of 162,066 lost their jobs and the unemployment rate soared to 33.4 percent. With demand for travel to Las Vegas lost, airlines canceled hundreds of flights.

As Ed quips, the operative words here might be—should be, in fact MUST be—THEN-Governor. Or, as a Fremen oath from Frank Herbert’s sprawling sci-fi epic Dune has it: Never to forgive. Never to forget. Damned skippy.

Based America’s final stand

Posted on March 15, 2024March 16, 2024 by Mike

Knoxville attorney TJ Harker posts a truly magisterial essay.

2024: The Stand of the Based Americans
For the first time in more than twenty years, the ruling elite’s stranglehold on the nation’s power structures threatens to collapse. Simultaneously, ambitious mandarins in big tech, high finance, big law, and the administrative bureaucracy vie for supremacy in the face of a power vacuum that grows with Biden’s deteriorating mental faculties. Meanwhile, millions of ordinary Americans seek a common political principle around which to organize a coherent defense of their way of life. 2024 is shaping up to be the year in which the existing balance of power between these two groups is consolidated or upended. 2024 will be the year that the new based Americans finally join the battle against the established ruling elite and its regime mandarins.

The Ruling Elite and Its Regime
Though Ross Perot is a distant memory, his 1992 third-party presidential candidacy catalyzed the ruling elite into self-awareness. Surprised by his 19% of the vote, the ruling elite took notice of itself as an independent political force and realized it had to act to maintain its power. Quickly it consolidated control of the major party systems. Simultaneously, it developed a cadre of loyal, mandarin-like sycophants within the administrative state, most legacy media institutions, big law firms, and virtually all of high finance. Later, it welcomed big tech into its mandarin classes. Today, this organizational structure, together with a lowly class of prole-like enforcers and useful idiots, is “the regime.”

For the five consecutive presidential elections from 1996 through 2012, the ruling elite used the regime to become rich and powerful, almost entirely at the expense of ordinary Americans and the nation’s interests. But, in the absence of any serious challenge to their power, it became arrogant and increasingly incompetent.

Today, this process has culminated in a Washington D.C. clown show, in which nearly every apparatchik is incompetent in the most clinical sense of the word. Thus we see children holding senior administration positions; mediocrities with literally zero subject-matter experience appointed to cabinet level positions; caricatures of Darth Vader in positions of extreme sensitivity despite catastrophic failures; spineless shills routinely embarrassing the nation in international affairs; and milquetoasts who decide whether to enforce the nation’s laws based solely on regime-approved criteria.

Their self-congratulatory “the grown-ups are back in charge” mantra notwithstanding, the regime is not blind to its own widespread incompetence. But it also knows that it has no quick solution. There is no standby legion of elite technocrats to which it can turn for technical competence. The “scientific government” of John Dewey and the mid twentieth century progressives is a distant memory. This leaves the regime with no choice but to lie … about everything. Thus, in a weird way, the regime’s growing mastery of political propaganda is a consequence of its technical incompetence

The Based Americans
Standing against the ruling elite and its regime are a widening circle of based Americans. Say what you will about Donald Trump, he deserves credit for at least one thing: His 2016 presidential victory pulled the wool from the eyes of many benighted Americans. For the first time, millions came to perceive, however dimly, the growing incompetence of the regime.

Today, the nascent political awakenings of 2016 have begun to sink roots. It is slowly accreting a litany of unlikely allies into an increasingly coherent political force. From homeschoolers to homesteaders, Bitcoin enthusiasts to cattle ranchers, evangelical Christians to Hasidim, secular jews mugged by reality to second-generation Hispanics, wilderness survivalists to moms for liberty, and neo-Nietzschean GigaChads to walkaway homosexuals, plus thousands of other vital human beings, first millions then tens of millions, and perhaps more than one hundred million Americans, have now awakened to the grave threat posed by the regime. Politics make strange bedfellows, and all that.

If in 2016 Trump’s supporters knew something was up, if not quite what, today this ground swell of based Americans has also realized that the regime is a threat to their liberty and property; that its unifying purpose is to subjugate them; that it uses propaganda systematically to conceal its unbelievable incompetence from them; and that it is both incredibly dangerous and grossly incompetent.

It is that combination–the awareness of the regime’s desire to subjugate, its power to do so, and its gross incompetence–that resonates with Americans more effectively than any specific political agenda. We Americans are freedom-loving and action-oriented people, deriving our wealth and success from a combination of fierce independence, self-reliance, know-how, expertise, craftsmanship, tacit knowledge, experience, and technique. As such, we are highly attuned both to threats to our liberty and to professional incompetence. We know that plumbers who can’t fix pipes aren’t plumbers. Electricians who can’t wire a house aren’t electricians. Pilots who can’t fly aren’t pilots. And tyrants who can’t do anything else will work to subjugate us.

Based Americans stand flummoxed by the regime’s fantastically childish climate agenda that erodes our national strength by prohibiting the search for, and production of, abundant energy. This is to continue until we ordinaries are cold and hungry, weak and frail, and stranded in the duplexes we rent from Blackrock. We won’t own anything and we’ll be miserable.

Based Americans now know that the CDC and the NIH fund gain-of-function research deep in the bowels of our greatest geopolitical rival, knowing that such research will be used to synthesize bio weapons of astonishing horror. Meanwhile the CDC—the Center for Disease Control—lectures us that “gun violence” is a public-health epidemic.

In short, based Americans now understand that transgender, dog-mask wearing generals aren’t warriors and won’t be able to defend us. That boy-faced small-town mayors with traffic circle design experience aren’t logistics experts and can’t unfuck the port of Los Angeles. That noble-prize winning “economists” who think war increases wealth have no idea how to enrich us. That beneficiaries of our racial-spoils system appointed to high positions in elite universities don’t know how to educate us. That medical “experts” who deny biological sex can’t be our children’s pediatricians. That public health officials who think “gun crime” is a health crisis, are not prepared to combat pandemics. That prosecutors who excuse mass violence by regime favored races while wildly overstating the frequency of so-called “hate crimes” will not protect our communities.

A rather lengthy excerpt, yes, but at 2500 words plus, there’s still plenty of great stuff to read here. Harker covers all the bases, and covers them extremely well. Great stuff it most certainly is; in fact, I’d go so far as to say the piece is nothing short of brilliant, and I urge you to read it in its entirety.

Unfortunately, Harker appears to be a victim of the same “political solutions ONLY” syndrome all too many of our best and brightest writers are afflicted by, and I won’t try y’all’s patience further by restating my views on that. Buck Throckmorton, via whom etc, shares the Harker view:

When Harker talks of the brewing rebellion, he is talking about a political rebellion. We need to win this fight at the ballot box, but part of the battle we must fight is not to politely acquiesce again to ballot fraud.

Left undiscussed is how, exactly, this proposed “non-polite acquiescence” might be accomplished—let alone why, exactly, the mere idea of violent resistance to a tyrannical regime should be taboo in a nation which was founded, established, and secured by the selfsame methods we now preemptively forswear as utterly unthinkable, even as a desperate, last-ditch measure. The logical contradiction from which this puzzling conviction proceeds is as blindingly obvious as is the piss-poor result it must inevitably yield. I can only refer you to last night’s Heinlein quote-a-palooza for the antidote to such weak-tea sob-sister-ism.

Apart from that regrettable averting of the eyes, it’s nonetheless a fantastic piece—its central thesis enheartening, its language straightforward, its examination of the hows, whys, and wheretofores that brought us to this dismal pass impeccably reasoned—of which you should read the all.

In your FACE, Normie!

Posted on March 14, 2024March 15, 2024 by Mike

Stridently, obnoxiously “queer” online newsragazine Them whines like a little bitch.

Lady Gaga Stands Up for Dylan Mulvaney: “Hatred Is Violence”

And so, right out of the gate we know how utterly full of horseshit of the purest ray serene they are. Wanna learn how stark the difference is between “hatred” and violence is, fucktards? Go on Fucking Around as you are and you’ll surely Find Out sooner or later. Get the hell out of our faces, on the other hand, and we’ll be perfectly happy to stay out of yours.

On Monday, March 11, Gaga shared a post of her own featuring a photo of herself and Mulvaney, writing, “It’s appalling to me that a post about National Women’s Day by Dylan Mulvaney and me would be met with such vitriol and hatred.”

“When I see a newspaper reporting on hatred but calling it ‘backlash’ I feel it is important to clarify that hatred is hatred, and this kind of hatred is violence,” the singer-songwriter continued. “‘Backlash’ would imply that people who love or respect Dylan and me didn’t like something we did. This is not backlash. This is hatred.”

Gaga noted that while this response is unfortunately “not surprising,” she feels protective of Mulvaney and the larger trans community “who continues to lead the way with their endless grace and inspiration in the face of constant degradation, intolerance, and physical, verbal, and mental violence.”

“May we all come together and be loving, accepting, warm, welcoming,” she added. “May we all stand together and honor the complexity and challenge of trans life — that we do not know, but can seek to understand and have compassion for. I love people too much to allow hatred to be referred to as ‘backlash.’ People deserve better.”

Anybody else besides me good and goddamned sick of being endlessly lectured about what hard-core Leftists think they “deserve”? Of their intentional, casual distortion of the sun-bright distinctions between “hatred,” “violence,” and “genocide”? Divemedic spells it out clearly and concisely, in such a fashion as permits no misunderstanding whatever.

So if a man says he is a woman, and you use objective reality to disagree with him, you have just committed violence against him. Why are they saying this?

So they can justify the actual violence that they are about to use in eliminating you. Make no mistake, this is the attitude that they will use to come after you, to unperson you, deny you services, and place you into reeducation camps. You will deserve it in their minds, because you called Dylan Mulvaney a ‘he’ instead of a ‘she’ while not allowing him to celebrate being a woman.

Annnnnd bingo, there you have it. Jump back and get over yourselves, you stupid, lying sissymarys. Scree scree scree as you will about what you do and do not “deserve”; we see through your silly game, and aren’t gonna dance to your shrill, rancid tune anymore. Period, full stop, end of fucking story. You, along with every other hoomon on Earth, “deserve” exactly, precisely nothing whatsoever you haven’t worked hard to earn, and that’s flat.

If you don’t believe it, try this little experiment: shag your sorry ass on out to the middle of the Gobi desert, sit down on a dune, and wait for a benevolent, caring universe to present you with all those wonderful things you insist you “deserve” thanks purely to being another useless eater and little or nothing else besides. Assuming you survive—PRO TIP: you won’t—you’ll emerge from the experience knowing at long last all about what you “deserve”—a real FAFO lesson you won’t soon forget.

Update! In his magisterial Starship Troopers, the peerless Robert Anson Heinlein explicates the basic principle at issue here far above my poor power to add or detract. From Chapter Eight’s recounting of the course of classroom instruction under the redoubtable, unforgettable COL DuBois:

“The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand — that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their ‘rights.’

“The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature.”

Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. “Sir? How about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?”

“Ah, yes, the ‘unalienable rights.’ Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called ‘natural human rights’ that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

“The third ‘right’? — the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

Far as I’m concerned, nobody’s ever said it better, either before or since. Yet another reason I’ve always maintained that anybody who hasn’t read and closely considered Heinlein’s stuff really, really needs to.

Updated update! Since they bear such uncanny relevance to our situation today, it would be grossly remiss of me not to include Chapter Eight’s penultimate ‘graphs.

“Mr. Dubois then turned to me. “I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms.

“‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.

“And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’…and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.”

And so, unsurprisingly to Heinlein devotees, it hasn’t.

The three L’s: liberty, law, and ‘lections

Posted on March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Mike

Francis has an excerpt from Clarence Carson’s seminal 1970 book on the subject.

[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one’s spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the “democratic process.” A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

Effective disagreement means not doing what one does not want to do as well as saying what he wants to say. What is from one angle the welfare state is from another the compulsory state. Let me submit a bill of particulars. Children are forced to go to school. Americans are forced to pay taxes to support foreign aid, forced to support the Peace Corps, forced to make loans to the United Nations, forced to contribute to the building of hospitals, forced to serve in the armed forces. Employers are forced to submit to arbitration with labor leaders. Laborers are forced to accept the majority decision. Employers are forced to pay minimum wages, or go out of business. But it is not even certain that they will be permitted by the courts to go out of business. Railroads are forced to charge established rates and to continue services which may have become uneconomical. Many Americans are forced to pay Social Security. Farmers are forced to operate according to the restrictions voted by a majority of those involved. The list could be extended, but surely the point has been made.

Porretto’s conclusion mirrors my own oft-stated one:

I could start to rant about the Deep State, whose insulation from electoral processes is a great part of the reason for the diminution of our freedom, but I’ve done it before, and I dislike to repeat myself. My actual purpose here is to remind my Gentle Readers of the essential truth about freedom:

Freedom is not granted.

It is taken:

Whether by you, or from you.

Freedom’s price is always paid in advance. It’s usually denominated in blood. How, then, should we who have paid nothing expect to retain it?

As recent FUSA history has shown, we cannot expect to—because, assuredly, we WILL not retain it. “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Well, we couldn’t, evidently. The one and only thing our tainted “elections,” at least at the national level, guarantee us is more of the same old shite.

Big Boeing trouble

Posted on March 13, 2024March 13, 2024 by Mike

Well, THIS certainly doesn’t stink to high Heaven or anything, now does it?

Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead of ‘Self-Inflicted’ Gunshot, 787 Suffers Another Mishap
Former Boeing Quality Manager John Barnett was found dead in a Charleston, S.C., parking lot on Saturday from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to local police — opening up yet another bizarre chapter in the troubled aircraft maker’s recent history.

Barnett had given “stark warnings” about quality control issues on two models of Boeing passenger jets, including substandard parts and using Dawn dishwashing soap as a lubricant. The 62-year-old had also claimed that Boeing executives were hiding the company’s safety issues rather than addressing them.

“My concerns are with the 737 and 787 because those programs have really embraced the theory that quality is overhead and non-value-added,” Barnett told TMZ after the infamous Jan. 5 incident when a door plug blew off an Alaska Air 737 MAX 9 that depressured the cabin and exposed passengers to open air shortly after takeoff.

Brian Knowles was Barnett’s attorney and described in an email to Corporate Crime Reporter what happened in the days leading up to Barnett’s death:

John had been back and forth for quite some time getting prepared. The defense examined him for their allowed seven hours under the rules on Thursday. I cross-examined him all day yesterday (Friday) and did not finish. We agreed to continue this morning at 10 a.m. (co-counsel) Rob (Turkewitz) kept calling this morning and his (Barnett’s) phone would go to voicemail. We then asked the hotel to check on him. They found him in his truck dead from an ‘alleged’ self-inflicted gunshot. We drove to the hotel and spoke with the police and the coroner.

If you’re thinking the whole thing stinks, we’re in agreement.

Oh, pish-tosh; don’t be ridiculous, you paranoid, cynical old grumpy Gus. I mean, just ’cause the poor guy shot himself six times in the back of the head with a bolt-action rifle, then hung himself, then ran himself over with his own car, then set himself on fire and swallowed a gallon of Drano, there you go getting all suspicious and untrusting-like.

Why, I have it on very good authority that Hillary Clinton was nowhere NEAR Charleston that night, for starters.

Update! Problem: SOLVED.

Boeing Proudly Announces It Has Fixed Malfunctioning Whistleblower
ARLINGTON, VA — In response to mounting public criticism of its quality standards, aerospace corporation Boeing proudly announced it has fixed its malfunctioning whistleblower.

The longtime industry leader in commercial aircraft manufacturing had been in hot water following a string of highly publicized malfunctions and accidents involving its planes, leaving the company desperate to find a solution to its problems.

“That should take care of everything,” a Boeing spokesman said. “After extensive investigation into the recent engineering and design quality issues, we determined that many of these problems could be traced back to this whistleblower. We are proud to announce that we have, in fact, fixed the whistleblower. Permanently.”

Following the decisive action taken to resolve its whistleblower issue, Boeing expressed confidence that it will be smooth sailing moving forward. “We don’t foresee any more problems,” the spokesman said. “Everyone here at Boeing feels much safer now.”

When asked how fixing the whistleblower would solve ongoing issues with the design and assembly of the aircraft, the spokesman offered the following response: “There aren’t any more problems. Got it? If you disagree, you can take it up with our newest board member, Hillary Clinton.”

Heh. Her Herness© DOES seem to keep popping up whenever one of these “fixes” is needed, doesn’t she? I mean, this makes twice just in this post alone. HMMMMM…

The “virtual lifestyle”

Posted on March 11, 2024March 11, 2024 by Mike

Is compromised all to Hell and gone, fraught with risks and hazards we know not of, but dismiss or ignore at our direst peril.

The planet seems to have some teleological drive to save itself, a kind of immune system. Notice: in all the ongoing debates about the wonders and dangers of A-I, and Bitcoin, and suffocating surveillance, nobody ever talks about the sketchy condition of the electric grid that all these worrisome phenomena utterly rely on. In our chatter over Peak Oil, there’s little awareness of oil production’s utter dependence on steady capital flows. In all the guff about centralized control emitted by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, there’s no mention of the centrifugal forces driving human affairs to re-localization, dis-aggregation of large states, and down-scaling of many activities. In our zeal to become Gods, we miss a lot.

Imagine: Bitcoin shoots up to a million dollars. You’re a zillionaire! Uh Oh…somewhere outside Zaneseville, Ohio, a squirrel takes a final chaw through some old insulation on a wire coming out of a transformer. His head blows up in a blue arc flash, and in a few seconds all the electricity goes out from Chicago to Boston. It turns out that seventeen substations in ten states have blown relays, transformers, and switchgear. Some of those components were forty years old and are now manufactured twelve thousand miles away in a country that doesn’t like us anymore. The replacement parts get held up in a Chinese port. The power doesn’t come back on for weeks. Nobody who lives in the eastern USA can get to his Bitcoin wallet, which is just a virtual entity made of computer code residing in a digital “cloud,” i.e., nowhere real.

Of course, in an event that bad, a lot of other things would fail — really just about everything that comprises modern life — but for sure you could kiss your Bitcoin goodbye, perhaps forever, because by the time the juice comes back on (if it even does), nobody will ever again want to invest their wealth in digital “money” they can’t access, and Bitcoin will go back to whence it came: zero.

Likewise, the financial system we depend on is a gigantic apparatus grown extremely janky from over-elaboration and hyper-complexity — to the degree that all kinds of things denoted as having “moneyness” are simply hallucinations of the markets that trade them. How many quadrillions of dollars do “derivative” financial instruments represent on the landscape of “money” these days? Most of these things amount to little more than bets that some number — an interest rate, a currency, a revenue flow — will change either up or down. That is, they are figments.

Bitcoin has gone “hockey stick” the past month, meaning on a chart the move up looks nearly vertical. Do you know why it’s going up? I’ll tell you: it’s going up…because it’s going up. People and groups of people (wealth funds, banks) see the up-trend and deduce that Bitcoin is going “to the moon.” Meanwhile, they view the tea leaves of the currency scene and see a lot of brown, crumbly debris where there used to be “capital.” The money itself is losing its “moneyness” all over the place. The most vulnerable module of the system now is the bond market.

Many sentient beings viewing the scene warn us that the bond market is liable to blow, and with it most of the other modules in the current MMT-driven system. That will be the magic moment when a big theory gets disproven rather vividly and injuriously. The price of everything will vaporize in a mushroom cloud of malinvestment and when the dust settles — which might take a long time — everything will be priced differently, including many things to zero.

This is the kind of world we’re in now, and all this is why I don’t worry quite so much about the machinations of the various blobs that have self-assembled to defend their particular special interests while doing harm to many of us: the military-industrial blob, the censorship blob, the fake news blob, the intel blob, the corporate monopoly blob, the medical blob, the central banking blob. The systems we depend on to make all things blobish function are looking pretty ill, like they’re not going be working a whole lot longer.

Unlikely though it may seem, the tale has a happy ending (of sorts), which you’ll want to click on over to read.

No, I am NOT a robot

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Mike

Not that those CAPTCHA tests they force you to click on really care. That, after all, isn’t what they’re really all about. Of course, and as usual.

This is what clicking that ‘I’m Not A Robot’ button REALLY does — and it’s probably not what you’re thinking
This security method is known as a CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The Turing Test, originally named the Imitation Game, was created by British computer scientist Alan Turing in the 1950s and is designed to put Artificial Intelligence to the test and determine whether it’s indistinguishable from a human mind.

So, is Google simply checking whether AI is smart enough to know to click on the “I’m Not A Robot” button? Not quite.

As revealed by the researchers from BBC’s QI in an episode that first aired in 2020, ticking the box allows Google to trawl your internet browsing history to determine whether you’re a real user or a bot trying to force entry.

QI host and comedian Sandi Toksvig explained: “Ticking the box is not the point. It’s how you behaved before you ticked the box that is analysed. To be honest, I can’t tell you all the details because they keep it secret because they don’t want people trying to cheat the test, but broadly speaking, you tick the box and it prompts the website to check your browsing history.

“For example, before you tick the box you watched a couple of cat videos and you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg, you checked your Gmail account before you got down to work — all of that makes them think that you must be a human.”

Google, which is behind much of the CAPTCHA security tests you’ll come across online — usually under its reCAPTCHA brand name, can’t access your entire search history. Instead, it’s likely checking websites that it owns (Gmail, YouTube, searches on Google, Google Maps) or those where it has some visibility thanks to the “Sign-In With Google” buttons, analytics or advertising, or the CAPTCHA itself.

That’s a huge proportion of the internet.

So, there must be SOME way out of this—some way of safeguarding your personal privacy and security that doesn’t cost an arm, a leg, and a lot of hassle to protect yourself from yet another Goolag intrusion into what, in the end, is really none of their goddamned business, right? RIGHT?!?

No. No, there is not.

Unfortunately, if you think that using a private browsing mode in your web browser, like Incognito Mode in Google Chrome, keeps your data out of reach ― that’s not the case. In fact, Google was recently forced to add a new warning to its Incognito Mode feature to keep users in the loop about the risks.

The only way to keep your browsing history completely out-of-reach is to encrypt everything with a Virtual Private Network. NordVPN is an example of a VPN that keeps everything you do online locked away— so that even Google or your broadband provider is unable to see what you’re doing. Prices start from £3.19.

As well as trawling a slither of your recent internet history to work out whether you’re behaving like a real human being, there is another use for the CAPTCHA quizzes that you complete. Picking the correct image of a fire hydrant, zebra crossing, or school bus is actually helping to train Artificial Intelligence behind-the-scenes.

Not a single bit of which most if not all of us are interested in helping them out with, or so I’d bet. Bastards.

I must say, Tor looks better and better all the time.

(Via Stephen and Ed)

TRUE empowerment

Posted on March 9, 2024March 9, 2024 by Mike

To adapt Jerry Seinfeld’s memorable line in praise of black-and-white cookies: look to the titty.

How the breast was won: The week Sydney Sweeney’s boobs exploded
It’s official. The State of the Union is…boobs.

Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz posted — and then deleted — an image on X of a wide-eyed President Joe Biden walking into Thursday night’s speech alongside a picture of “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney – the photos situated so his gaze was fixed to her ample cleavage spilling out of a black dress.

Two of this week’s viral moments fused in perfect accord.

When called out by a Politico reporter, Moskowitz responded, “It was inappropriate. I took it down.”

But given the week Sweeney’s breasts have had, it’s only fitting they found their way into the D.C. discourse.

For those not living perpetually online, Sweeney’s au naturale double D bombs set off one of the most brutal, bloody battles in our raging culture wars.

While co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, the 26-year-old actress leaned into her famous bust, playing a stacked Hooters waitress in one sketch.

During the show’s wrap-up, she donned a plunging black frock that showed off her girls, bouncing as she enthusiastically dished out the customary thank-yous.

The image of the blonde’s embonpoint boomeranged online, drawing lusty appreciation from dudes.

Only one correct response to that last.

You all know what comes next, I’m sure: the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth over the unfairness, the injustice of it all.

And then, blowback from the left flank: a flurry of angry tweets including one from writer Ali Barthwell who admitted she couldn’t get past the paywall to read Phetasy’s analysis but called Phetasy’s premise, “fatphobia, misogyny, anti-blackness, transphobia just rolled into one” anyway.

“These weird conservatives are lifting up sydney sweeney for being a thin cis white blonde with big boobs because they are mad other body types have also been on tv,” she wrote.

Actually, Bimbelina, we “weird conservatives” don’t give three whoops in Hell what body types are “also on TV.” What frosts Normals is having scantily clad land whales and morbidly obese manatee-facsimiles crammed down our throats by finger-wagging Wokester bluenoses such as yourself—on TeeWee, in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues, in Victoria’s Secret catalogs. These disgusting tubs of sebaceous goo have us surrounded nowadays. Lumbering and wallowing across the landscape, displaying more square acreage of jiggly flab than your average WalMart parking lot can boast, they’re everywhere you look, there’s really no avoiding them.

Bottom line? Simply this.

And whatever the societal implications of her bustline, Sweeney seems to be winking at us all, from the driver’s seat.

The ultimate feminine power play.

Heh. Suck on THAT, “liberal” scolds, harridans, and harpies. Normals are fed to the eyeteeth with your bullshit head games at this point, and we ain’t playing anymore. How horrible it must be for you, having the tables turned on you like this.

Calls for a little Superior Dance to de-stress the shitlib Church Ladies and soothe their anguish over Miss Sweeney’s bodacious fun bags—said anguish exacerbated by her polite but firm refusal to bend the knee to their demands that, as a pretty young white woman, she must don the hairshirt of PC penitence and be properly ashamed of the gifts God (and good genes) gave her, choosing rather to enjoy them, to revel in them, even. You go, girl.

Sorry, Big Bertha: contra the sweet-sounding lies those who are using you as a political prop have told you, being grossly overweight is not healthy, not beautiful, not attractive or desirable or “sexy” AT. ALL. Deep down, in the places you don’t talk about at AYCE buffets, you know it’s true.

So don’t fall for the lies. Update your thinking, adjust your attitude, make some positive, meaningful changes in your daily routine. Take charge of your life. Diet. Exercise regularly: lift weights, speed-walk or run, do calisthenics, try a hot-yoga class. Make physical fitness your long-term goal.

No, it won’t be easy or quick; it will require a lot of hard work, sweat, and resolve. But I promise you’ll be much happier for it in the end, pumping up your confidence and self-esteem as you begin to see real results, feeling stronger and more energetic as you progress. Instead of cringing with dread at the mere thought of getting off the sofa and going out into public view, you’ll rediscover the sense of personal pride and satisfaction which comes hand-in-glove with genuine accomplishment.

Once the vicious cycle of ennui and self-destruction has been broken, one thing tends to lead to another, then another, then another. It’s amazing to watch it happen, but happen it does.

You’ll sleep better at night. Your monthly grocery bill will drop, although your membership fees at the gym might offset that gain. Your newfound confidence will re-energize your social life, providing the impetus to get out there and mix and mingle now and then, instead of spending the evening alone in front of the TV…AGAIN. You’ll meet interesting people, make new friends. You’ll probably live longer.

Really, now, what have you got to lose? That you honestly, sincerely consider worth hanging onto, I mean?

WHOA, big fella

Posted on March 9, 2024March 9, 2024 by Mike

Somebody really, really needs to sit The Donald down for a serious talk about this. It’s a severe mistake he’s making, one that’s highly likely to come back and bite him on the ass good and hard before all is said and done.

Supporters Blast Trump on Truth Social After He Takes Credit For COVID Jabs
Former President Trump is facing fierce blowback from his own supporters on his social media platform after taking credit for the vaccines that “saved us” from COVID-19.

Trump posted a “live, play by play” of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Thursday night to Truth Social, blasting his remarks on a number of issues and describing the address as “angry” and “polarizing.”

At one point in the speech, Biden boasted that the “vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to beat cancer, turning setback into comeback.”

PRO TIP: If Faux Jaux Biden is praising a thing to high Heaven, then no sensible, decent soul ought to touch said thing with a barge pole—verbally, bodily, or as part of some fleeting, idle daydream, purely in his head. Period, full stop, end of story.

Trump responded to Biden’s remarks on Truth Social.

“’The Pandemic no longer controls our lives. The Vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat Cancer – Turning setback into comeback!’” Trump wrote, quoting Biden. “YOU’RE WELCOME, JOE, NINE MONTH APPROVAL TIME VS. 12 YEARS THAT IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU!”

The post was considered problematic for several reasons.

Since the COVID mRNA shots were rolled out, western nations have been dramatic increases in myocarditis, blood clots, neurological disorders, and many other previously rare ailments.

Cancer rates, alarmingly, have also risen exponentially and researchers think they have discovered why.

Last April, Microbiologist Kevin McKernan, a former researcher for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Human Genome Project, discovered the presence of DNA contaminants in the products, which can affect unintended parts of the body and lead cancer, including mesotheliomas, lymphomas and cancers of the brain and bone.

Many of Trump’s own supporters are very aware of these links between the mRNA jabs and the increase in excess deaths in the United States and don’t believe that “Operation Warp Speed” is anything to brag about.

That’s because it’s, y’know, NOT.

Most of these commenters indicated that they still support the former president, but voiced dismay that he continues to promote the COVID jabs.

“Mr. President…Please stop promoting these vaccines. They are killing and injuring 1000s of us,” one follower wrote on Truth Social. “I fully believe they are causing the uptick in cancers. I fully support you on everything except vaccines! With all due respect…it’s a hard NO for me sir!”

“I stand with you on most things but DISAGREE COMPLETELY ON THIS! The #DeathJab MURDERED MY FATHER AND 20+ of my friends!” another supporter wrote.

“Sir, please drop the vax. There is more evil and ill wrapped around the vax. The bad actors behind it must be held to account. I believe you were fooled and have not seen nor understand what has been done,” a commenter wrote respectfully.

“I love and support you on most issues, but I strongly disagree on this one. The covid vaccines are NOT safe, Mr. President. Please do more research!” one woman advised.

Some Truth Social users were not as polite.

Trump stopped bragging about the COVID shots at his rallies in 2022 after he was repeatedly booed by his own supporters.

On X, lawyer Viva Frei, a Canadian Trump supporter, said the blowback against the former president is justified.

That’s because it, y’know, IS.

Of all Trump’s mistakes as President—yes, there were indeed a good few, starting with his puzzling, uncharacteristic failure to make good on his oft-repeated campaign pledge that he would “hire only the best people”—passively allowing Deep State homunculus Fauci and the rest of his perfidious band of grant-grubbing FederalGovCo rumpswabs, charlatans, and white-smocked hangers-on stampede him on the Plandemic hoax/panic and the follow-on fake-Vaxx fiasco has to rank way up high among the verymost devastating of them. Even some on Our Side, including quite a few who had been solid Trump supporters right along, have been calling it “the Trump vaccine” for a goodish while now, which appellation is NOT to be taken as in any way, shape, or form complimentary.

Never having been the kind of man for whom admitting error comes easily, doing so here would be an especially bitter pill for Trump to swallow, or so I’d imagine. Nevertheless, he does himself no favor by continuing to resist owning up fully and frankly as all the facts about this grievous national catastrophe emerge, rather than hitching his big-boy britches up and just getting it over with. He’ll be forced to do so one way or another, and the sooner he bites the bullet and puts the whole sordid mess behind him the better off he’s going to be, in all sorts of ways.

Surely there must be someone in Trump’s inner circle that has his ear and is possessed of balls, integrity, reputation, and self-assurance enough to discreetly pull Da Boss aside for what senior NCO-types used to call “a real no-shitter” on this situation. If so, he will win immediate renown amongst his Team Trump confrères as “the man who saved Trump from himself,” as well he should.

Is Woke broke?

Posted on March 8, 2024March 8, 2024 by Mike

I don’t really give a tinker’s damn about the two main topics at hand here—the Wokester incursion into comic books, and Gamergate, whatever the hell that was and/or is—being neither a reader of comic books nor a video game person—but I love the “Cancel Pig” epithet so much I’m running with it anyhoo.

The story: A Boston comic retailer complained that he could not sell a lot of the crap comics the industry was spamming out. (Obviously he is very sensitive to bad, unsaleable comics — they murder the retailers who are tricked into buying them, but then cannot sell them for full price, or even for half price. Comic books are not returnable.)

One major complaint he had was that the nitwit writers were not writing classic, very manly characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers in-character. Rather, they substitute their own femmy, Current Year concerns, phobias, and anxieties make man’s men parrot their own Twitter freak-outs.

The typical Cancel Police immediately attempted to cancel this man. They made fun of him for being, well, a comic book fan — he was overweight, older, not-too-stylish, and a bit awkward. One obese comic book writer attacked him for being fat.

A woke black comic book artist — well, a low-level artist — named Jerome Igle decided to brand him a racist, not based on anything he said (he did not mention race at all, nor did he allude to it), but based on the fact that he said this guy reminded him of a disgusting, dirty comic book shop owner he had known who was racist.

See, this guy reminded him of someone else, and that guy (he claims) was racist, so: Q.E.D.

Wow, Jerome — good to see your many, many accusations of racism are built upon a firm foundation.

The cancellation train was beginning to chug along and approaching top speed, when suddenly it ran into a problem: star comic book writer Mark Millar, writer of Kick-Ass, the Kingsmen, and a bunch of bestselling comics turned into movies and TV shows, stepped up and defended the comic shop owner, echoed his complaints about storied characters being written as if they were 25-year-old Twitter Addicts, and castigated people for attempting to cancel a man for merely offering his (unobjectionable) opinion.

Suddenly the comic book “pros” who were attempting to cancel him fell into retreat. The obese comic book writer who’d made fun of the comic shop owner for being overweight now clarified he didn’t mean to call him “fat” as an insult, no, not at all! He had merely called him fat to show that fat comic book nerds should stand in solidarity.

One by one, the would-be cancellers made excuses and softened their objections.

Then Millar coined a new term for then — he called them “Cancel Pigs,” which a pungent, memorable, and highly accurate term for these scumbags. That term, “Cancel Pigs,” has now exploded in popularity and is the most popular way to refer to these miserable fascists.

And rightly so, too. Well, except for the gratuitous insult to actual, y’know, pigs, of the four-legged, oink oink oink, rooting and wallowing in slop persuasion. They’ll just have to bear up under the strain somehow, poor dears. As to whether Woke is finally on the run or not, all I have to say about that is it’s about fucking time.

Summing up the position

Posted on March 4, 2024March 4, 2024 by Mike

In the course of putting together tonight’s Eyrie meme post I ran across an oldie-but-goodie sitting in my voluminous “Memes” folder that I felt would be made best use of in its very own CF main-page spot.

Hopefully that’s big enough for older eyes like mine to read; not sure if the old “click to embiggen” wheeze will do the trick or not, honestly. If not, give me a shout in the comments and I’ll see if I can work out how to fix that.

SOIA yet?

Posted on March 4, 2024March 4, 2024 by Mike

Walsh is.

THE COLUMN: Now They Tell Us
Breaking news from 2020: “It’s Official: We Can Pretty Much Treat Covid Like the Flu Now.” What do you mean “now,” white man? From the Wall Street Journal:

A case of Covid no longer means isolating for five days, according to the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. It’s the latest sign of the virus’s normalization four years after it upended our lives. You should now follow the same precautions with Covid as you take with the flu, according to new guidelines from the CDC. That means staying home until you’ve gone a day with no fever and symptoms start to improve. Take other precautions for the next five days, including wearing a mask and limiting close contact with others. Those are the same steps the CDC recommends for other respiratory viruses.

At what point have we had enough from these people?

Some of us reached that point long ago; others never will, no matter what. Still others are actually all for it. I call those perfidious “people” The Enemy.

The Malevolent Midget is gone now, pulling down his handsome pension for his “service,” but the evil that he did lives on after him. Should Trump actually overcome the forces arrayed against him and actually pull a Grover Cleveland and get re-elected to the office from which a “fortified” election forcibly ejected him in 2020, a just universe would allow him to deal out some well-deserved payback for the forces behind the Russia Hoax, the Climate-Change Hoax, and the Covid Hoax, not to mention the abrogation of American sovereignty at the southern (and northern) borders, the collapse of the American military into a sob-sisterhood of feminist resentment and gay and “transsexual” triumphalism, and all the other ills currently attendant upon these United States.

What lessons can we learn from this belated admission that the entire clusterkluge was a “mistake”? How to compensate for those who watched their loved ones die from behind a plate-glass window in Mengele Memorial Hospital? For those who — like a dear friend and mentor of mine — died from a second shot of the “vaccine” in the early days of the panic? For the families disrupted, restaurants closed, businesses destroyed, industries wrecked — and all with the witting complicity of the mainstream media, which so enthusiastically hosanna-ed the official narrative, despite the evidence of their own senses?

“Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.” Isn’t that how the saying goes? I wrote my answer in this space almost a year ago. Never forgive, never forget, I advised.

Agreed, wholeheartedly—with an addendum: Make. Them. PAY. Every single last one of the rotten bastards, be he great or small. Mike is on board with that.

Hoaxes like these will never end until you do something about it. They will continue to pile on “catastrophe” after “catastrophe,” demanding that we do something about it right now, including changing some of our most fundamental laws and principles in order to combat a non-existent “threat.” The only thing these people understand is power. Not logic, argument, evidence, moral suasion. And the only way to respond to them is with greater power. Ask yourself this: what would the Romans do? To ask the question is to answer it.

If that’s a bit too oblique for ya, the answer is explicitly spelled out in one of the post categories below. The Bee gets the last laugh.

CDC Officially Changes COVID Guidelines To Whatever Your Uncle Frank Said About It Years Ago https://t.co/jCRp9ZSPto pic.twitter.com/iJPiHRbYc1

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee)

March 3, 2024

Turns out ol’ Frank was right about a lot more than just FauxVid.

Gibson amps are BACK, baybee!

Posted on March 3, 2024March 3, 2024 by Mike

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The Falcon Returns | Gibson Roars Back Into the Amp Game
As a “solo act,” Gibson began making amplifiers way back in 1935, summiting with the coveted yet cultish GA series amps of the early rock era, until ceasing production in 1967. Awesome amps, but unappreciated—even with cool names, such as Raider, Invader, Titan, Hawk and others. Gibson tried again in 2005, and made some wonderful-sounding amps, but through no fault of Gibson’s, the earth still did not move.

That all may change with the 2024 introduction of the Gibson Falcon 5 and Falcon 20 amps—a collaboration by Gibson and Northern California boutique-amp innovators, MESA/Boogie. Shazam!—peanut butter and jelly.

The future of the new Falcon amps is yet to be written, of course, but that future looks absolutely luminous.

Brought to the fore by Gibson’s acquisition of MESA/Boogie in 2021, the partnership was also nudged forward by a “Gibson Amp Club” within the company, the increasing values of their vintage amps and a somewhat overlooked sonic characteristic—when cranked to maximum volume, ’60s Gibson amps produce a uniquely riotous overdrive that is, in a word—ferocious.

The Falcon project was also championed by Gibson President and CEO Cesar Gueikian (who acquired a bunch of vintage examples for the company) and Vice President of Product Mat Koehler (a member of the Gibson Amp Club, a talented guitarist and an aficionado of the ’60s-era Gibson GA-19RVT amp).

“The MESA/Boogie acquisition basically added a layer where it was like, ‘Why would we not do the new amps with Boogie?’” explained Koehler.

Boogie’s contribution to the dynamic duo is two legends in the field of guitar amplification—Founder, President and Designer Randy Smith, and Director R&D Doug West. Here, West and Koehler—yes, another duo—share how the Falcon project kicked off, as well as its design strategy, tone challenges and breakthroughs.

Follows, an in-depth interview with the Koehler/West dynamic duo recounting the how’s, why’s, and wherefore’s of getting the Falcon project off the ground and soaring which is bound to be of interest to guitar amp aficionados. Certainly, the new Gibsons are serious eye-candy.

*Simple, elegant, NO master volume–now THIS is what a control panel ought to look like!*

Years ago I owned one of the vintage Gibson amps, a 57 GA-6, I think it was called. Lemmesee if I can find a…hold on…damned stupid Innarnuts…AH, here’s one!

Yep, that’s like mine, or close enough for rock and roll anyway. The Gibson was a nice enough rig for twangin’ and bangin’ at the house, but not really suitable for actual gigs in a room of any size, being way underpowered for such usage. The sound was as muddy-brown as could be: strong on the lows and low-mids, but far too weak in the higher tonal ranges to appeal to my born-and-bred-on-a-Marshall self.

As described in the interview, there’s distortion aplenty when cranked up to 11, but no real punch or presence like I’d grown accustomed to from the 100 watt Marshall half-stack I had as a teenager. In terms of the several qualities a lead guitarist needs most in an amp, the Gibson didn’t have any. That being so, the poor little Gibson box was extremely vulnerable to being completely lost in the mix onstage, particularly if the drummer had any balls at all.

Even back in their modest (not to say lackluster) heyday the Gibson amps, while a fair few jazz cats swore by ‘em, just weren’t up to bringing the rock and roll thunder, thus were left in the dust of their Fender, Marshall, Vox, and Ampeg competition—soon to wind up discontinued, forgotten, and unmourned by all but a handful of amp-collector geeks bent towards the less-pricey oddballs, orphans, and exotics of the trade.

Can’t recall when I got rid of my old Gibson amp, nor what the specifics of the deal in which it was offloaded were. Most likely, I used it as trade-bait on a gutsier amp with the kind of ferocious OOOOMPH I required. It was in mint condition the day I bought it, and same-same the day I sold/traded/whatever the hell I did with it, having lived peacefully at the house all the years I had it. Hopefully, it ended up in a good, loving home.

With the MESA/Boogie brain-trust helming the design and build, I expect Gibson’s new amplifier line will be bigly improved over the old good-but-not-great models. If so, I wish them nothing but success.

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