Mask on, mask off

Anybody surprised by this? You shouldn’t be, really; people like me have only been screaming it from the rooftops since, oh, early 2020 or thereabouts.

The Harm Caused by Masks
A new study suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers can have major health consequences.

Evidence continues to mount that mask mandates were perhaps the worst public-health intervention in modern American history. While concluding that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” in preventing the spread of viruses, a recent Cochrane review also emphasized that “more attention should be paid to describing and quantifying the harms” that may come from wearing masks. A new study from Germany does just that, and it suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers may have substantial ill-effects on their health—and, in the case of pregnant women, their unborn children’s.

Mask-wearers breathe in greater amounts of air that should have been expelled from their bodies and released out into the open. “[A] significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven in many studies,” write the German authors. “Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2,” they observe, while chronic exposure at CO2 levels of 0.3 percent is “toxic.” How much CO2 do mask-wearers breathe in? The authors write that “masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments.”

In other words, while eight times the normal level of carbon dioxide is toxic, research suggests that mask-wearers (specifically those who wear masks for more than 5 minutes at a time) are breathing in 35 to 80 times normal levels.

The German study, a scoping review of existing research, aimed “to investigate the toxicological effects of face masks in terms of CO2 rebreathing on developing life, specifically for pregnant women, children, and adolescents.” The latter two groups, of course, have been among those most frequently subjected to mask mandates in schools, despite Covid’s low levels of risk for them and the evidence that masks don’t work.

Gee, who could’ve known that the shitlibs were right all along? That CO2—THE SILENT KILLER!!!™—would ultimately prove to be the death of us all? Or that, of course and as usual, it would prove to be WOMEN AND CHILDREN HARDEST HIT™ once more?

Setting aside my sarcastic glee for the nonce, there’s plenty more sciencey-type stuff to the article, which is well worth a read. Don’t tell any of your Karen friends about it, though; it’s long been my contention that, from here on out, panic-ninnies going about in public wearing the accursed things—ie, people who aren’t on-the-job doctors, nurses, and/or EMTs—will be effectively marking themselves out as likely targets when/if the shooting starts.

The wrong question

PJM’s Kevin Downey ax’s it.

The Warped Unreality of the Leftist Mind: How Many Lies Will These Idiots Swallow?

A: All of ‘em, as many as it takes. The REAL question, though, is: How many can they make the rest of us swallow, or at least pretend to?

There are people who can’t admit when they are wrong. Some folks are reluctant to admit they’ve been conned. But pinkos are emotionally weak toilet people who tie their political leanings to their self-esteem. They’ll swallow lie after lie, lest their political peers call them a horrible name — like, say, a “conservative.”

In other words, the Bolshies will eagerly lap up lefty lies to stay in the commie club, because it’s better than being considered a (gulp) Republican.

When asked why he was having trouble with working-class voters in the Midwest, then-president Obama said the following:

And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

In one sentence, the great orator managed to remind threaten people that those who do not vote for him are to be considered angry, racist, xenophobic, gun-toting hillbillies. Mind control 101.

Leftists also need to feel they are better — dare I say superior — to someone, and that someone is you.

The better to see hear genocide you with, my dear.

3

Fox dirt duly dished

The widow of Roger Ailes, whose sure hand guided Fox to the top of the cable-news heap and kept it there for nigh on two decades, ladles it up—and it’s delish.

Roger Ailes’s wife publicly attacks the Murdochs amid Tucker Carlson fallout
Elizabeth Ailes refers to Rupert Murdoch’s sons as characters from English nursery rhyme

The wife of the late Roger Ailes has publicly attacked Rupert Murdoch after Tucker Carlson was abruptly sacked by Fox News last month on the heels of the conservative network settling its billion-dollar lawsuit with the Dominion Voting Systems.

Ailes was appointed by Rupert Murdoch to head Fox News when it launched in 1996 and had fallen from grace two decades later after being obliged to stand down in 2016 in the wake of several sexual harassment accusations.

“Happy Heavenly Birthday Roger Ailes,” tweeted Elizabeth Ailes, wishing her late husband, who died at the age of 77, a year after his exit from the network.

“It took you 20 years to build Fox News into the powerhouse that it was and only 6 years for the Murdochs to wreak havoc,” she wrote, weeks after Carlson and Fox News parted ways as the network agreed to pay $787.5m to Dominion to settle a defamation lawsuit over election lies amplified by the channel’s personalities.

“Rupert thought he could do your job. What a joke. He has the checkbook but could never come close to your genius. RIP.”

“Karma is a b****” said Ms Ailes in a conversation with the Daily Beast. She said none of the scandals, including the Dominion lawsuit and Carlson’s removal, would have happened if her husband was still with the network.

“Roger never had his hand off the wheel when it came to Fox,” she told the outlet, adding that the Murdochs “weren’t born here and don’t have the same pedigree”.

She said her husband referred to James Murdoch, Mr Murdoch’s younger son, and Lachlan as “Tweedle Dumb” and “Tweedle Dumber” respectively.

She also described Mr Murdoch as a “jealous man” who fired Ailes because he “eclipsed Rupert on the world stage”.

She said Fox parted ways with Carlson because he became too popular. “That’s what the Murdochs did to Roger, Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling, and they did it to Tucker,” she said. Fox News has not issued a statement on the comments.

Sounds believable enough to me, especially that bit proposing that the whole Tucker thing, along with Ailes and the others, might be more to do with personal ego than anything else. On that level of wealth, fame, and power, such dustups quite often are. Sexual assault allegations seem to go hand-in-glove with it, also.

Via Ace, who notes:

Megyn Kelly confirms that Ailes called Les Freres Murdoch “Tweedle Dumb” and “Tweedle Dumber,” stating that he said that to her all the time.

There’s a video embed of Kelly (who, somewhat to my surprise, is still quite hot-looking, and good for her) to back it up, too. It’s a pretty interesting segment, really; watch it if you have a cpl minutes, and care enough about this sort of thing to spend ‘em on it.

1

Diesel rules

God help us all if all the truckers finally realize just how much power they have over this faltering NiNO (Nation in Name Only), and decide to start exercising it.

Honestly, I kind of look forward to it, in a way.

HIGHWAY TO HELL
Trucks run America. Heavy trucks move the stuff we buy and sell along the largest highway network in the world. They clean our streets, control our disasters, fight our fires, and rush to our rescue during emergencies.

In the medium-heavy (Class V-VIII) truck world, trucks fall into two categories: “On Highway,” the trucks you see pulling trailers across the country, and “Vocational”, the dump trucks, cement mixers, ambulances, fuel trucks and a dozen other variations that keep every town in this country operating. Most these are powered by diesel. Diesel engines are ideal for commercial purposes, being more reliable, more durable, and with better fuel economy than gasoline. Over 99% of all trucks working in America today have diesel engines. Without these, nothing moves. Not food, not goods, not our industry, and certainly not our economy.

California, as usual, is leading the “Green” charge. This month, the California Air Resources Board voted 14-0 to pass a law that will ban the sale of diesel trucks in California by 2036. The board warned citizens that “the time for putting public health second to the economy is over.” The new law also stipulates that all trucks operating in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (home of 50% of US foreign trade) must be zero emission by 2030.

“Putting public health second to the economy”—oh, how I love that line. Tell me, genius, how healthy you think we’re gonna be when the food stops coming in, medical supplies and prescription meds become unavailable at any price, and nobody can buy any of it anyway because they lost their jobs when the economy goes kerblooey? Stupid shitlib doesn’t seem to realize that the two are inextricably linked; when the one goes pear shaped, the other will be drastically impacted, and not for the better either. Every. Single. Time.

As the bumper sticker says: if you have it, a truck brought it. It’s as true now as it ever was, representing a hard, implacable reality in which residents of California will soon be getting an up close and personal schooling when your moronic PC folly kicks in fully and long-haul truckers begin to refuse to go to the Golden State, no matter how much they’re offered to do so.

America is a behemoth. The United States faces logistical challenges greater than that of any nation in history. The distance from Los Angeles to Washington DC is roughly the same distance as Madrid to Moscow. Despite some local attempts to regionalize food production, feeding Americans is still a national effort. The ability to transport food, medicine, and spare parts across the vast American continent can only be achieved by trucks. Highway trucks move 75% of the nation’s freight from city to city, and from region to region. Everything you buy, everything you eat, and every medicine you take has at least one truck involved in the transportation chain.

Truck manufacturers don’t have the technology to replace diesel engines with equally capable zero-emission engines, nor the production capacity to replace the soon to be illegal diesel engines. The United States also does not have the electrical infrastructure to support that many Lithium Ion Battery vehicles. For decades we have depended on these engines to sustain us, and they have not failed.

Which is probably what shitlibs hate the most about them: they simply work, far better than any other technology humanity has ever come up. There’s a reason, after all, that the world abandoned windmills, electric vehicles, and solar power a century or more ago: those outdated, primitive technologies are incapable of powering a First World economy.

Instead of making what works better, we are about to attempt to replace all of them with vehicles that are four times the cost, but only capable of doing a quarter of the work…at best. Large fleets are already slowing, and in some sectors companies are cancelling existing “green” orders in favor of procuring diesel engines while they still can. CEO’s are doing the math, and recognizing that virtue signaling is not worth bankruptcy. But the damage may already be done.

When we think of military vehicles, we imagine tanks and jets, but logistics is what wins wars. For every tank, there are a half dozen support vehicles. Fuel tankers, runway sweepers, water trucks, and wreckers are all bought commercially off the shelf from civilian truck manufacturers. Every vehicle the military buys needs to be capable of running JP8 fuel: a high sulfur fuel, which simplifies military supply requirements and enables military vehicles to run on even the dirtiest local fuel sources. Government mandated changes to emissions have created a technology gap between the civilian and military markets. Sensors in modern trucks can no longer survive with high amounts of sulfur in JP8, and so manufacturers have begun to stop making trucks capable of running on a JP8 engine.

Progressives don’t want solutions that avoid a collapse.

Annnnnd BINGO, we have ourselves a correct answer, folks!

The ongoing logistical nightmares caused by the government’s response to COVID-19 is just a prelude to the horrors of this potential future. Factories that can’t get enough components, hospitals that can’t get repair parts on time for life-saving equipment, crops dying in the field while the people starve…That’s where we’re heading.

Yep—because that’s where the idiot Left is pushing us, whether we will  or no. When you get down to the nutcutting of almost every problem, impasse, or issue, no matter what it might involve on the surface, that’s what it always comes down to. What we have here is not a diesel problem, an economic problem, nor even a climatic one; we have a Leftist problem, plain and simple. Until we’ve dealt with that fundamental issue, unequivocally and forcefully, all the others and more will continue to plague us.

(Via WRSA)

8
1

UNPRECEDENTED!!! Except when it isn’t

The author’s conclusion is spot-on, incontestable, and utterly priceless.

Senator warns about 1,200 year drought, torrential rains soak Front Range
Climate anxiety is so prevalent among the younger generation who are brainwashed to think they’ll die unless the planet is rid of modern conveniences and meat products, they’re turning to substance abuse to escape depression.

It’s no wonder, when we have the likes of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet warning his Twitter followers of an impending 1,200-year drought across the West.

Upon further investigation with informed scientist Dr. Google, it turns out we’re not facing a 1,200-year drought, as clearly signaled by the torrential rains sweeping the Front Range.

As The Guardian explains, weather climate has actually been around for centuries, but the last drought of this magnitude in Colorado and the southwest was the year 800 A.D.

Tim Kohler, an archaeologist and professor at Washington State University, says the current megadrought is different from prehistoric dry periods. “This one seems to be more severe than any of the previous droughts and just as long,” he says. “But the really bad news is all the previous megadroughts took place without the influence of increasing greenhouse gases. Now we are playing a new ballgame and scientists don’t know what to expect.”

In other words, the current drought that scientists say is the cause of climate change, is just like the drought we had 1,200 years ago before climate change. Only this is more serious, because we don’t know what to expect, because of climate change.

TA-DAAAH! A real masterpiece of pretzel-contorted Leftard “logic,” wouldn’t you say? Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™: is there ANYTHING it can’t do? Apparently not, no. In light of where I ran across this one, what can one possibly say but: Heh. Indeed.

(Via VP Stephen Green)

Shocking news

Saw this the other day and I’ve kinda held off on saying anything about it, just to see if maybe there was another shoe to be dropped. So far, there hasn’t been.

I have long said on this blog that a civil war is the last thing that we need. It is a last resort, because the person that you are, the life that you lead, is over. The cost is quite high, the outcome uncertain, and the pain will be nearly unbearable. Millions will likely die. We don’t take actions like that for light reasons, and we certainly don’t destroy a nation and our lives if there is a hope that we can accomplish our objective any other way.

Stop trying to be a Ray Epps. Put up, shut up, or go fuck yourself. Stop trying to urge others to do what you will not do. Frankly, I’m over it. Comments to this post will not be allowed.

This blog is closed until further notice.

And so it has been. Aesop mulls it over, at some length, and It. Is. Good.

We’ve been under attack for years. Like SAfrican farmers, the body count’s getting obvious to anyone looking, from anywhere.

Some people are going to decide they’ve had enough. The smart ones are going to do something about it, as they can, when they can, to whomever they can. They’re not going to advertise, or cock-a-doodle-doo. 

They’re just going to do what they think needs to be done.

They’re going to Shoot. Shovel.* And Shut Up.

Eventually, that may become noticeable. Whether it does or doesn’t, everyone is going to have to decide to get in that game, or just watch.

That’s a you problem, not a me or an us problem.

Because if you do it, I don’t want to know. And if I do it, I’m not telling. Not you, not anybody, not ever.

Anybody who does is a pure Grade AAA Idiot.

But It’s. Going. To. Start. Happening.

Exactly, precisely so. To coin a phrase, the first rule of Revolt Club is, or surely ought to be, you never talk about Revolt Club. Plenty more at the link, of which you should read the all. If you can’t see how that relates to what Divemedic was on about, then you got some more thinking to do, I’m afraid.

I’ve contended for a long time here that when/if the Rebellion does get cranked up in earnest, Jurassic Media and TPTB will do their level best to keep it hushed up, for as long as they possibly can, after which point all bets are well and truly OFF. I do hope Divemedic will be back at some point; Our Side needs all the strong, uncompromising voices it can possibly get in this struggle, and DM was certainly one of those. But in any event, I wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors, whatever they may end up being.

8

Ahh, THAT explains…well, pretty much everything, actually

As Bud Light sales continue to crater, along with other Transheuser-Busch brands, a credible rationale for InBev’s folly finally rears its ugly, frightening head.

Transheuser-Busch is still scrambling over the Mulvaney beer can as sales continue to tank. But it’s caught between a rock of customers and a hard place called “GARM,” a WEF-backed operation which was subpoenaed Friday by @Jim_Jordan and the House Judiciary. Here’s why:

One might think that Bud Light could just apologize and admit that men aren’t women. But no matter how much Bud Light and parent company AB InBev might wish to reign in the radicalism, they can’t abandon the agenda. They’re mired in World Economic Forum/ESG gobbledygook. 

Budweiser claims to be “a beer rooted in the heart of America.” But in 2008, the Belgian company InBev bought AB for $52 billion, putting “a fixture of American culture into a European rival’s hands,” per the NY Times. Now it’s beholden to elites at the WEF, UN, and EU.

AB InBev has embraced a litany of woke initiatives, from ESG to DEI, along with a full endorsement of transgenderism. They now foot the bill when employees choose to mutilate their bodies.

AB InBev not only indoctrinates all their managers with “unconscious bias training”; it also insists that *external* suppliers submit to the pro-trans “diversity” agenda too.

The World Federation of Advertisers, whose members include mega corps like Ab InBev, Adidas, BP, CVS, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, McDonalds, Merck, Nike, P&G, Hershey, Disney, Unilever, and Walmart, among others, have created a monster known as “GARM.”

SO, pretty much every multinational corporate Leviathan on the planet, then. Plus, y’know, “others.” This globe-spanning monster has its clawed tentacles into basically everything and everyone, everywhere. Or hey, maybe we could just boycott…umm, eating, banking, filling our prescriptions, shopping, candy and/or snacks, personal hygiene products, clothing, and entertainment.

Did someone say “frightening” just a moment ago? Why yes, I believe someone did at that.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is a “cross-industry initiative” (i.e., an agreement of the world’s largest and most powerful advertisers AND platforms) to demonetize what they consider “harmful content.” 

To achieve this, lib-captured companies such as AB InBev & Big Tech platforms such as YouTube & TikTok created standards that limit or demonetize content that contains “hate speech” about “gender identity,” “insensitive…treatment of debated social issues,” and “misinformation.”

Now, what could make this enormous team of woke corporations even worse? Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum swallowed up GARM as a “flagship project” under their “Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport.”

Don’t look away. If we don’t put an end to this growing scheme of control and deceit, Bud Light’s inability to apologize and admit that men can’t be women will be the least of our problems.

Said a real mouthful there, bub. Worst part with things like this is, by the time you find out about its existence, it’s too late to do anything about it, assuming you even could. Anything nonviolent, I mean. Luckily, there’s always shooting motherfuckers in the fucking face to fall back on.

(Via Ace)

3

Another righteous blast from the past

In this instance, from 2018, involving none other than Tucker Carlson, showcasing his newly-red-pilled status in his pre-Fox-juggernaut days. Via Brother Bob:

An Interview With Tucker Carlson on What Makes Trump a ‘Political Genius’
Tucker Carlson, host of the popular Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” spoke to Daily Signal Editor-in-Chief Rob Bluey at The Heritage Foundation’s 41st annual Resource Bank meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Carlson received the prestigious Salvatori Prize, recognizing his work to uphold and advance the principles of America’s founding. The full video, plus an edited transcript of the interview, is below.

Rob Bluey: It is a true honor to celebrate the work that you’ve done, and I want to begin with the advice that you left this audience on how conservatives can take back the culture. You had two pieces of advice. Tell us about them.

Tucker Carlson: Well, have more children. I grew up in a world where it was considered embarrassing to have more than two children. I don’t think that’s the case now among middle-class, upper middle-class people, but it was.

First of all, it’s the most rewarding, greatest, most fun thing you can do. But it’s also the most profound thing. If you don’t like the direction of the country, have children, raise them the way that you want, consistent with your beliefs. It seems like all the answers are basic, nature-based answers, in my opinion. To everything. That’s the most basic of all, have more kids. Raise decent children.

And the second was just say what you think is true. I don’t actually think you get a ton out of confronting people and getting in people’s faces. I don’t think you’re going to convince anybody that way. But I think there’s inherent value in speaking principle out loud without shame or fear. And again, without the expectation that you’re going to win people over right away, because most times you’re not going to.

Aggression really doesn’t help much. I’ve definitely concluded that after years of being aggressive. But I think telling the truth is an inherently valuable act.

Bluey: You’ve had tremendous success with your show. It’s highly rated and millions of people are tuning in. How does that last point inform the work that you do on a day-to-day basis?

Carlson: The show’s successful because it’s on Fox News, which is successful. I’ve worked at a lot of different TV networks, and the network is what matters most.

I don’t imagine that my show is successful because I’m so great. I do think much more about what I say because there’s a bigger audience and because we’re in the middle of this revolutionary moment, and I’m counterrevolutionary.

I don’t say a lot of things without thinking them through, which is good. I mean, occasionally I do and get in trouble for it. But I really try to think through what I really believe and what I really think is true.

Good stuff so far, to be sure, but now we come to the real meat of the matter, at least in regards to the Trump mention in the piece’s title (bear in mind, Trump was still President at the time this interview was published).

Bluey: But I’d say the topics you cover and the way that you conduct your questioning is different and unique from other TV hosts.

Carlson: Well, I don’t have a lot to add. I would just say two things. I think President Trump is interesting, and I agree broadly with his agenda. I certainly agree with immigration, that’s for sure. But I don’t think that every story is about Donald Trump, and most other people at the other networks think every story is about Trump.

I don’t have anything to add to that; I don’t think it’s that interesting. I don’t want to talk about Trump five hours a week, I just don’t. And not because I have some political agenda and it’s bad to talk about; I’m just not that interested, actually. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. I try to talk about that.

…The book, like the show, is based on the most obvious questions. I’m not a super-clever person, I try to keep it very simple. Why would America elect Donald Trump president?

And the explanation in Washington is, well, they didn’t really. Putin did. Or voters were just so dumb, they didn’t know the difference. Or America’s racist, so they elected a racist. Those are contemptible nonexplanations. Those are stupid.

The real answer, obviously, is that people were so dissatisfied with the leadership in place as of the first Tuesday in November of 2016, that they decided to punish them by electing Trump.

This was a referendum on the ruling class; and by the way, we have a ruling class, and I’ve lived in it most of my life, so I know it’s real. It’s not a conspiracy, but we have a class system, increasingly, in this country.

The people in charge have done a really bad job on the big things, on foreign policy and the economy; and they’ve gotten us into a number of counterproductive wars. That was a bipartisan effort. It was started by Bush, but it was applauded by Clinton. So it wasn’t one party, it was both parties.

They made a bunch of assumptions about the economy that turned out to be wrong, and they helped destroy the American middle class, and then they don’t care. So they’re terrible. They’re deeply unwise and selfish and stupid.

Trump is the result of decades of unwise, selfish, and stupid leadership. It’s so obvious. I’m not a genius, I’m hardly a genius. It’s just so clear, and no one says that. I’m not sure why.

Lots more to it yet, and it’s all fascinating. I’ve read before in many other places that Tucker was a pretty solidly anti-Trump guy early on, and maybe he was at that, I couldn’t really say. But from this interview, it’s quite clear that Carlson really GOT the whole Trump phenomenon better than just about any other of his big-media confreres did, well before they did—those few of them who actually did come around to understand it, that is.

Perhaps unrelated, but purely in the interests of safeguarding my prized rep as a gadfly-contrarian against any unfounded accusations of being a Trump-licker, I’ll just throw this in too, from Margolis’s Meme-manic Monday email.

Trump Licker NOT

For whatever it’s worth, I checked a cpl of the above quotes I wasn’t totally sure about, and yes, it appears he really DID say all those puzzling-at-best things. I dunno, go figure; I ain’t even gonna try to explain what, if anything, it might mean. I’ve defended Trump plenty over the last six-eight years; I’m just about all “defended” out over here, frankly.

At this point, either you love him or hate him, and are probably no longer subject to persuasion either way. As I’ve said, I believe Trump could still have a significant, positive role to play in what’s to come, but not as President; that, he oughta just give up and walk away from, it’s a total waste of his time and effort.

Counteroffensives

Molly and Mark Hemingway offer a counter-revolutionary counterproposal.

Unrigging Our Elections
Republicans need a serious counter-offensive if they want to stand a chance.

It might not matter whom Republicans run for president in 2024.

MIGHT not? You funny, girl. Git on witcha bad self.

America’s propaganda press traffics in disinformation. Its Big Tech oligarchs censor news and information helpful to conservatives, while elevating biased news and information that helps the Left. And its election systems have been overrun by privately funded groups that run Democratic “get out the vote” campaigns to traffic ballots into ballot boxes. We catalogued this particularly complex problem in Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

Instead of election day, we now have an “election season”—during which, over a period of months, we flood homes across the country with tens of millions of mail-in ballots, regardless of whether secretaries of state or local registrars have any idea if those ballots are being sent to the correct addresses. This in a country where 11% of residents move every year. We then wait for sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires and run by ideological statisticians to round up those ballots in entirely selective ways.

In this world, concerns about candidate quality are irrelevant. If we don’t fix this complete capture of election infrastructure, it might be impossible for anyone with a sincere desire to prioritize the interests of voters over the ruling class to win a national election.

AGAIN, with that “might” bushwa. Mark and Molly go on to offer serious proposals for unfucking this seriously fucked-up mess, at least some of which might actually have merit. But honestly, I couldn’t get interested enough to finish reading ‘em. For my money, even Buck Throckmorton’s not-quite-despairing cynicism only barely begins to express it.

There is a vicious smear campaign going on by Democrats and their media allies against conservative Supreme Court justices, especially Clarence Thomas. The purpose of these attacks, of course, is to neutralize the authority of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and perhaps to even remove a member or two by impeachment. Others in conservative media have done a great job covering this coordinated media attack, so that is not what I am writing about today.

Beyond removing justices, the left has made it clear that if it has lost its iron-fisted control of the judiciary, then the judiciary’s role in governing the country is henceforth illegitimate.

Good. I agree. The judiciary’s role in governing our lives is illegitimate, and has been for a very long time.

A country that considers itself a “democracy” (or a “representative republic,” or whatever term indicates that the people elect their government) cannot have an unelected, unaccountable, and unreplaceable judiciary that has arrogated unto itself the power to govern, irrespective of laws and lawmakers.

Don’t misunderstand, wherever the right has gained control of the courts, we should use the courts to advance our agenda, just like the left did. There is nothing principled about judicial restraint if only one side employs it. But any control we currently have over a subset of the nation’s courts is itself fleeting, since the left conquers all unelected institutions.

Bottom line, for me at least: despite whatever fleeting and temporary inroads we might have made during Trump’s one and only term as PoTUS, the simple fact remains: Amerika v2.0 is clearly not a country that is capable of self-government. Not in any meaningful sense, it ain’t. As such, it is also no longer deserving of the opportunity.

There are many, many other issues more immediately in need of addressing before whatever emerges from the existential conflict against the Evil Left can renew any claim to be capable of self-government. Which doesn’t mean that any and all avenues such as those suggested by the esteemed Hemingways aren’t worth attempting, at least; they probably are. That said, though, I can’t say I expect much from ’em.

As I’ve so often said, I’d be happy indeed to be proven wrong about this. Alas for us all, I won’t be. In my view, any “counterrevolutionary” movement that preemptively rules out the very means by which America That Was itself was founded—ie, revolt by force of arms, violence, and bloodshed—is preemptively doomed to failure. Until sufficient numbers of us have confronted that fundamental truth and made their peace with it, all else is no more than futile head-shedding. The Left is now too firmly entrenched, the institutions it has co-opted too massive and powerful, for it to be otherwise. No amount of optimism and misplaced “hope” can overcome that.

Update! My longtime chum and compatriot Aesop spells it out frankly and explicitly, with nary a punch pulled, as is his usual wont.

You believe in individual responsibility? Great. Stop looking for Fearless Leader to hold your hand, wipe your butt, and tell you what to do, when, where, or to whom.

I’m not telling you to do or not do anything.

I’m telling you to figure it out for yourself. And do what seems best in your own mind. Nobody can hack that, nobody can read that, and nobody else can ever predict that. If in any one month 1000 Leftards randomly selected had themselves an accident, by the month after that, the species would be on the Endangered List.

And that could no more be stopped – by anyone – than you could command the waves to cease crashing ashore.

And the minute any thousand people on one side decide it’s time to dish out their own version of a cut apiece, the Death Of A Thousand Cuts stops from the other side. With all the suddenness of Moldylocks getting punched in the face, or Trayvon becoming a good little criminal, or a BLM rioter or two getting Rittenhoused.

Without any plan per se, no video, no trials, just a sudden surplus number of casualties of what has been, thus far, a largely casualty-free operation: the destruction of civil society.

When egregious civilizational destruction needs skin in the game, the lemon will rapidly become not worth the squeeze.

As an added bonus, the other side is suddenly 1000 Useful Idiots lighter on the scales.

Excellent advice, seems to me. His closing line is nothing short of priceless, IMNSHO. Bravo, my friend.

3

An unwelcome resurrection

“Expert” me no “experts.” Nor no “intellectuals,” neither.

The Return Of The 20th Century Pestilence
The pestilence of the 20th century that killed millions was not the Spanish flu, not communism, not fascism. It was intellectuals. Intellectuals laid the foundation and rationale for communism and fascism, which resulted in millions dead, and science, art, history being stunted.

It is no wonder that both George Orwell (“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot”) and Eric Hoffer (“When you look into the question of what it is about this country that brings out all the malice and hatred of the American intellectual, you discover that what he can’t stomach is the mass of the people”) had an intense hatred for intellectuals.

Before I continue, I must define my terms. Intellectuals are persons who have a mastery of words and are good at only words, or as Thomas Sowell has so deliciously phrased, they are “masters of verbal virtuosity.” Some disciplines’ entire raison d’être is based on this ability; examples are lawyers, journalists, pastors, writers, and several college disciplines.

This is not a modern phenomenon. It has been with us ever since some individuals were gifted with verbal diarrhea. In Ancient Greece, there were intellectuals called sophists, who were so known for this that the word “sophist” has come down to us to mean someone who is glib at advocating an absurd or immoral viewpoint. And in Roman times, Cicero observed that, “There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.”

When I first went to study at a university, one of the things that I learned to my surprise is that anything can be argued for and justified. Anything! I mean anything!

Well, not necessarily, or not convincingly, anyway. Not for anyone who is truly intellectually-astute, at any rate, as the author seems to be. To wit:

Today’s leftist intellectuals offer arsenic by calling it honey, censorship of free speech by calling it hate speech, dictatorship and fraudulent elections by calling it democracy, racism by calling it inclusiveness and diversity, methods to prevent electoral fraud are called voter suppression.

Like all pathological liars, they know they are most convincing when they act like they really believe it while simultaneously knowing it is bulls**t – and many do, through the process of doublethink. Read and listen to all of the justifications that liberals use for the purpose of censorship.

The interesting thing is that their rationale at first sounds logical. It kind of makes sense. For example, you can see this phenomenon in reading the rationale for all the countless things that liberals now label “racist” (the outdoors, disliking body odor, organized pantries, horse riding, weight reduction, philosophy, preventing cheating, white paint, proper grammar). When you read the arguments, they sound reasonable, they have a certain logic to them. Except that it’s all BS. You may not be able to initially voice why the argument is BS, but you know it’s BS.

The same is true for just about every other liberal obsession. Like euthanasia, or “reparations,” or solutions for climate change. One of those solutions is that because cow flatulence is a greenhouse gas, we should kill the cows (except a handful, reserved for the elite), do away with farms, and have everyone eat crickets and cockroaches.

There is a certain logic there.

Except it’s bulls**t.

Yep, t’is. Which means that, by definition, it ain’t really logic at all. Being intellectually discriminating enough to discern the difference betwixt the geniune article and the steaming, stinking, fly-blown pile has become something of a lost art in these, the latterly days of our managed decline. And that ain’t no kind of accident, neither.

1

Course syllabus for How to have a civilization 101

Lesson 1: make sure you have plenty of Whypeepuh around, just to maintain it and keep it running smoothly.


Man, how could you not just HATE everything about that picture, and everyone in it? Dunno myself, asking for a “liberal” friend.

4
1
1

Rand was RIGHT

Over lo, these many years, he’s developed a funny little habit of that.

Rand Paul says Democrats know the ‘consensus is switching’ on Fauci
Rand Paul says Democrats are “quietly” beginning to understand they got it wrong on COVID orthodoxy and the imagined infallibility of Anthony Fauci.Remember back when the senator would question the nation’s top doctor about the U.S. funding gain-of-function research and Fauci would get mad?

“Sen. Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about. And I want to say that officially: You do not know what you’re talking about!”

After jousting a few more times in Senate hearings, Paul kept asking important questions that no reporter was ever going to ask about the U.S. National Institute of Health’s alleged involvement with the Wuhan lab in China.

Fauci just kept saying, pretty much every time, that the senator didn’t know what he was talking about.

Then we learned Paul knew what he was talking about.

In a broad interview about the pandemic and its legacy released this week, Sen. Paul told Free the People’s Matt Kibbe (who is on the board of BASEDPolitics) that Democrats have been humbly admitting to him and other Republicans that they might have got some of the pandemic narrative wrong. 

On Fauci and gain-of-function research in particular.

“Even now, Democrats are quietly coming to us, they know the consensus is switching on this,” Paul said.

“They still don’t want to be part of it because Fauci’s the leader of the Democrat party now for them,” Paul told Kibbe. “He’s this icon and they don’t want to do anything that tarnishes him. And they see it as a partisan effort.”

Paul continued, “They’re coming quietly to me and saying, ‘well, we probably would work on a bill to maybe regulate gain-of-function research, how taxpayer dollars are spent on this.’”

Hrm—maybe I’m wrong on this, but it’s been my understanding all along that gain-of-function research already WAS illegal in the US, which is why Fauci had to sneak his megabucks into other nations’ facilities to get it done more or less under the radar. Bold in the original, by the by, not mine.

Question now is, when will the homunculus Fauci be made to PAY for his decades of evil skullduggery and blithering incompetence? Instead of being allowed to just quietly slink away into a plush, cozy retirement, overgenerous Federal pension fully intact?

3

Moar Tucker

I repeat: If you strike him down, he shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

‘I’M PROBABLY THE FIRST UNEMPLOYED PERSON YOU EVER INVITED TO SPEAK’: TUCKER CARLSON TO SOLD OUT CROWD
Tucker Carlson had a great joke for a sold out crowd in Alabama as he talked about being ‘fired’ and some other things. The crowd wasn’t huge, but it was sold out as 1,189 people showed up to see him speak at the Oxford Performing Arts Center for a fundraiser for Rainbow Omega. Jokingly, Tucker Carlson started off with the epic one-liner saying “I’m probably the first unemployed person you ever invited to speak.” Then Carlson said, “It’s funny. I never give speeches because I’m working. When I accepted this speech six months ago or something, I didn’t realize how much free time I would have. One never knows, does one?”

What else did Tucker Carlson say during his speech? Well, here’s some quotes thanks to AL.com who posted it in a news story about the former Fox News host:

I accepted for two reasons, one shallow and one a little deeper. One is, I do love Alabama. I’m not just saying that. We spend a lot of time in rural Maine, which is so close to this culturally, you have no idea. In a great way. The food is not very good in rural Maine. The food here is unbelievable. I’ve spent a lot of time in this state, and part of the reason is you have great hunting and fishing. The real reason is it has everything that I like. It has really nice people. It has amazing food. I have the world’s worst eating habits and here that’s not judged. Fried Oreos? Okay! I love that. I love the lack of judgment.

The perceptions, national perceptions kind of shift very slowly, then you wake up in the morning and everything’s different. The rest of the country’s view of Alabama is one of those things that just changed completely. Nobody makes fun of Alabama, at all, because they realize actually that’s how you’re supposed to be living. The only way to know what people think about something is to not listen to what they say, I say this as someone who has talked for a living for a long time, ignore the words. Watch what they do. Watch how they live. That’s the only accurate measure of what people really think. Ignore that. Be like your dog, who understands not a single word of what you’re saying but knows exactly who you are.

Are people moving to Alabama? Oh, yeah. I love that. Why are they moving here? They’re moving here because Alabama’s everything that you would want in a place that you live. It has cohesive communities, super-nice people, gentle people, people who care about their neighbors, and it has an abundance of nature, something that we I think undervalue. We went through this weird, kind of mass hypnosis where everyone was convinced we had to move to some horrifying concrete city in order to make a living and forgot that actually you need to see green, or else you’ll go insane. If you’re alienated from God’s creation, you become fundamentally alienated. Nature is the most beautiful thing. Driving around here today, I thought to myself, you think of Alabama, if you don’t live in Alabama, as a place that has a lot of past attached to it. And I thought today, especially reading the numbers about what’s happening in your state, Alabama is not the past, Alabama’s the future.

We’d damned well better hope it is, yeah. Thankfully, as Tucker implies, that’s something that just kinda-sorta happens when nobody’s really looking, or expecting it to.

2

Grand Alliance v2.0

An idea whose time has come is long overdue.

For the first time in history, the ruling class of a powerful nation has abandoned its fellow citizens. What is happening in America today is more than a return to feudalism, although the new economic model into which we’re being herded is correctly compared to feudalism. The reality is actually much worse: America’s elites view ordinary citizens as no longer necessary. Because of globalism, they are replaceable. Because of automation, they are superfluous. Because of environmentalism, they are unsustainable.

These factors explain what is otherwise inexplicable: Constitutional conservatives and Christians, and the values they profess, are now stigmatized by establishment institutions as often, if not more often, than they are praised. Nationalism and religious faith empower individuals and communities to resist a ruling class that has abandoned them. That makes them a threat. They recognize that the ideology of America’s ruling elites is itself leading to disaster. They recognize that America’s elites have decided the nation’s middle class is disposable, and this is the real reason they are pushing an agenda of woke degeneracy and extreme environmentalism, designed to lower birthrates and reduce standards of living.

It’s hard to imagine how America’s elites could get things more wrong. Their transhuman and transnational vision is provoking a clash of civilizations at the same time as they are destroying the human foundation of their own civilization. Nations where nationalism or religion remains the prevailing ideology are not about to emasculate their populations and eviscerate their energy sectors.

Winston Churchill titled the third volume of his World War II memoirs The Grand Alliance. It described an alliance against a threat more obvious and imminent than the one we face today, uniting partners more intrinsically opposed than those who need to join together today. Instead of Western democracies uniting with Communist Russia to fight the fascist dictatorships, we have merely to unite a critical mass of Americans who want to save their nation from an elite that has declared war on their way of life and their future.

This isn’t as hard as it seems for two reasons. First, because most Americans don’t want to live in a degenerate culture. They don’t want to live in a culture that has devolved to cater to society’s lowest, most abnormal, deviant, hedonistic, psychotic, sociopathic, dishonest, crooked, lazy, defiant, bizarre, militant cohorts of individuals, regardless of the fact they’ve become politically organized and demand equality of outcome in every imaginable context. Most Americans understand the inherent necessity and benefits of nuclear families, hard work, and immutable standards for achievement and recognition. There is a deep, latent unity among Americans. It needs only a few sparks to immolate the thin film of oil on the surface.

As Pogo used to say, WOWF! Quite a powerful ‘graph, that one. Kinda surprising to see such no-punches-pulled stuff in a mainstream newspaper. Also, extremely encouraging.

Second, what is the nature of this oil that smothers America’s ocean of common sense and unity? It is a fractious coalition of fanatics and lunatics, relatively small in number, who harbor an innate antipathy toward each other that is only held in check by rivers of money flowing to them from globalist billionaires, opportunistic corporations, environmentalist pressure groups, and government unions. Their resources are money and anger. They win elections because all that money, and all that anger, is used to brainwash voters into thinking that tolerating decadence and chaos is compassion, people who oppose extreme tolerance are bigots, and recognizing the indispensability of fossil fuel is, somehow, “fascist.” The brainwashing, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, is wearing thin.

In his 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe, British journalist Douglas Murray suggests those forces still extant in Western societies and still resisting the derangements of our time—the secular and the religious—put aside their differences and unite to save Western civilization.

Finding a new synthesis of Western culture capable of addressing the questions of the 21st century may be a topic of active debate in think tanks. Still, to date, it hasn’t filtered down to retail politics. On the street, politicians trying to overcome woke insanity have limited themselves, at most, to rolling back the insanity. They have not expressed a new vision for America that unites religious and secular conservatives.

This is regrettable, but it also presents a tremendous opportunity.

Overly optimistic? Perhaps, maybe even damned likely so. Worth trying anyway? Absolutely; right now, anything that stands a ghost of a chance of staving off an actual shooting war is. What the hell, it provides Real Americans with something to do until the shooting war comes along.

Via Porretto, who has more to say his own bad self.

We look at the actions of the Usurpers and their allies at the state and local level, we note the obvious, easily predictable consequences of their policies, and we shake our heads in disbelief. The consequences are always bad for ordinary Americans. Every one of them conduces to a poorer, less safe, less peaceful, less fecund, and (of course) less free society. And the majority of Americans say wonderingly, “Isn’t that as obvious to them as it is to me?”

Well, duh! The people doing this to you are not stupid. Evil? Yes. But they know what they’re doing. It pleases them that so many of you continue to think them misguided rather than malevolent.

The Tennessee Star editorial proposes a “grand alliance” of the great mass of us who want our country back as it was. The Usurpers hope to prevent exactly that, which is the central reason for their policies. As they force Us the People to struggle ever harder to keep ourselves and our loved ones alive, adequately provided for, and reasonably safe, they drain us of the energy that would make it possible to resist them. A man who’s barely succeeding at “treading water” can spare no thought for anything but survival.

Does that sound like anyone you know, Gentle Reader? Does it sound like you?

I imagine it does sound quite familiar at that, to all sorts of people. At least, it damned sure ought to.

1

Self-pWnage

Stephen asks the pertinent question.

Are These the Worst 9 Seconds of Joe Biden’s Political Career?

Worst YET, Steve. YET.

When we’re talking about Presidentish Joe Biden’s increasing senility, it’s difficult to choose the worst, most embarrassing moment of his time in office.

Okay, I gotta admit: I like that “Presidentish” formulation so much, I’ma gonna be purloining it for my own use. Fair warning.

Like most folks suffering from Alzheimer’s, senile dementia, or maybe the long-term effects of two brain aneurysms, Biden has good moments and bad ones. But the bad ones seem to be becoming more frequent.

Honestly, it seems impossible that we’d ever see a moment more revealing than this one from last week. I’m a fan of it, so to speak, because this particular moment didn’t just reveal Biden’s creeping senescence but also showed the world how our pliant press pretends POTUS is compos mentis.

You know, it’s one thing — not a good thing, mind you, but perhaps a less-bad thing — when the American press hid from the world how feeble FDR had become, particularly during the last two or three years of his life. It’s quite another to pretend that a nuclear-armed POTUS is still capable of even friendly give-and-take (with) the White House Press Corps(e).

Put them all together and it’s like the opposite of a greatest hits collection. But as any record collector can tell you, no greatest hits album is complete without at least one new song to force die-hard fans to buy it. And that’s exactly what I have for you today.

Here’s the Quick & Dirty VodkaPundit Transcript (from one of several YewToob vids emdebbed in the post—M):

[unintelligible, sounds vaguely like “I’m a puff”] Florida’s small business… winner… award winner… of, uh, the, uh, business week winner… [slams mic on lectern] YOU WON.

Who won exactly what is, like the workings of whatever is left of Joe Biden’s mind, a mystery.

Anyone still in doubt about just how much relevance the show-office of US “President” might still retain to the day-to-day machinations of FederalGovCo is hereby cordially referred to the Biden Puppet’s obvious inability to string together three words intelligibly. This, mind, with a giant-print cheat sheet in palsied hand. As I’ve said, at this point the Rutabaga In Thief isn’t even in charge of his own morning bowel movement, much less the central government.

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