Hmmm… – Page 68

DOG BITES MAN!

Posted on June 6, 2021June 6, 2021 by Mike

Another of those “shocking but not surprising” stories.

A person believed to be among the highest-ranking defectors ever to the United States from the People’s Republic of China has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for months, sources inside the intelligence community have told RedState on condition of anonymity. The defector has direct knowledge of special weapons programs in China, including bioweapons programs, those sources say.

The information provided to RedState corroborates and clarifies Thursday evening’s reporting by journalist Adam Housley.

RedState’s sources say that’s partially true. FBI Director Christopher Wray was “ambushed” with the information, they say, and Langley was also unaware. Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies.

UPDATE 12:30 PM PDT, June 4, 2021

Sources tell RedState the defector has been with the DIA for three months and that he has provided an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials. In DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate. Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector.

Andrea Widberg asks a silly question:

Are our federal intelligence agencies compromised?
A lot of people have been wondering why, suddenly, the leftist establishment is embracing the idea that COVID came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which is tied to the Chinese military) after denying the possibility for so long. The answer may lie in the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency has for months been debriefing a high-level Chinese Communist Party defector — but withheld the information from other agencies until recently because of fears that those agencies are compromised. In other words, it’s a twofer: China did create and release the virus, and our federal government cannot be trusted.

Well, I mean, DUH. On both counts.

The really shocking information is why we’re suddenly hearing about all of this now.

No, the real shocker is that we’re hearing about it AT ALL.

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s very unlikely that those “spies or sources” inside the federal agencies are people from China or people of Chinese descent. Instead, and again I’m guessing, they’re probably college graduates who were taught that America is an evil country, or they’re Marxists who see China as the way to advance Marxism in America, or they are such fanatic NeverTrumps that they were willing to compromise America’s national security to destroy Trump’s chances of reelection.

Fair enough, although I see no reason, as in so many other contexsts, not to embrace the healing power of “and” here myself.

When the next true patriot comes to the White House, whether it’s Trump, DeSantis, or someone else,

IF, you mean. And a very, very big “if” at that.

that president needs to recognize that the federal bureaucracy must be cleaned out with the thoroughness and ferocity that Hercules brought to cleaning the filth in the Augean Stables.

Which is precisely what Trump vowed he’d do, and for whatever reason, did not. Which means that the job will have to be done by We, The People, if it’s to be done at all.

The real clean-up starts with the Biden crime family, which, we hope, will be brought to justice at the earliest possible opportunity.

Yeah, hope in one hand, shit in the other. See which one gets full the quickest.

Home truths

Posted on May 30, 2021May 30, 2021 by Mike

Two articles that are chock-a-block with ’em.

Let’s be honest: the federal government hasn’t looked in tip-top shape for a long time, and now it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.

It’s made up of millions of petty bureaucrats who couldn’t care less about “serving the public.” Rather, they use their sinecures to exert power over (and not on behalf of) Americans and turn a tidy profit in the process. As was made clear while President Trump was in office, the president’s prerogative is routinely thwarted by an unelected administrative Leviathan that has no foundation in the Constitution’s division of government but does move to the Democratic Party’s marching orders. Congress is made up of below-average-intelligence scoundrels and prima donnas who pretend to be statesmen and lawmakers while outside lobbyists, corporate kingmakers, and foreign governments write the laws that punch the rest of us right in the gut. And the federal courts have become home to too many political hacks camouflaged in priestly robes who distort the rule of law in pursuit of partisan objectives.

Notwithstanding the timely re-emergence of fiscal conservatives every few years who promise to have an answer to America’s budgetary crisis and looming financial Armageddon, nobody honestly believes there is any way to arrest America’s runaway debt explosion and unfunded liabilities spiraling past 250 trillion dollars while one quarter of the money supply now in circulation has been created out of thin air in just the last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is engaged in war in some eighty countries — or nearly half the nations on the planet — and most Americans have no idea what kind of fighting is being done on their behalf or why. They do know that while the federal government finds the logistical legerdemain to engage in global conflict, it cannot (and will not) be bothered to use any of that skill to secure the southern border — preferring instead to enable drug-traffickers and criminal gangs to wage war against American citizens while at the same time demanding that Americans relinquish their Second Amendment rights to self-protection.

But do not worry. Have no fear. We have an Intelligence Community in America that is keeping everyone safe by reading all of our emails and text messages, spying on our phone calls, and generally making sure that any American objecting to the State-enforced political correctness struggle sessions of the day be added to the government’s growing list of “extremists.” The same bunch of propagandists who could be counted on to push the Russia hoax for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and who will now make sure that the origins of the Wuhan Virus get covered up for the political benefit of Joe Biden, are the wizards who regularly engage in national disinformation campaigns against the American people for their own good. Was the CIA lying about Russian bounties being paid for the killing of American soldiers in Afghanistan in order to manipulate White House policy? Sure. Is military intelligence pushing UFO sightings today to distract the American people from emerging crises on the horizon? Maybe. Is there any check whatsoever on the powers of the Intelligence Community? Not likely. Does anyone in Congress seem to care? Nope.

Every last syllable a pure, 24-carat nugget of solid-gold Truth. But one way or another, directly or indirectly, all the above can be laid in the lap of the Evil Left.

Yes, I did say Evil. With a capital E. And I meant it, too.

This Weekend We Remember – The Left Is Evil
If you remember one thing this Memorial Day weekend, let it be this — leftists are horrible, cloven-hoofed sub-humans.

The word, “evil” gets tossed around like Marilyn Monroe at the Kennedy compound. Leftists believe voter ID, the wall, ICE, Trump supporters and Christmas are all “evil.” Words are like baseball mitts. The more you use them the softer they become. Kind of like how the word “racist” no longer has meaning.

FACT-O-RAMA: Using a word until it loses its meaning is referred to “semantic satiation.”

Let’s take a look down memory land and look at some classic evil.

He has a little list, consisting of but a few items. That’s okay, though; there’s no way in Hell (ahem) a complete one could ever be compiled, since there are too many new examples every day for any mere mortal to even keep up with. Anybody who tried would probably die from choking on all the sulfur and burning-pitch fumes anyway.

1

Heads up

Posted on May 27, 2021May 27, 2021 by Mike

Two tips for y’all that may very well come in useful in the days ahead. First, our old friend Chris Muir recommends that saner, non-Leftwit sorts seriously consider dumping PayPal for Authorize-dot-net.

I have no knowledge or experience with ’em myself; I’ll look into it and see what’s up. Having known Chris for many years now, I can tell you folks that I completely trust his judgment and smarts, and figure that any suggestion he makes along any such lines is likely a good one.

Second, entrepreneur extraordinaire Mike Lindell is launching a competitor for Amazon.

Mike Lindell is fighting back!

After he was canceled by retailers, Mike Lindell is starting his own online store: MyStore.com

MyStore is going to rival Amazon, Mike says.

“For years entrepreneurs and inventors have come to me with products and ideas. They don’t know how to market them, and I haven’t had the time to show them,” Lindell said in a video on the (Business Insider—M) site.

“I am going to put vetted products from great entrepreneurs on here, like you see a sampling of them here today, that are going to change this country,” he continued.

“We’re finally going to be able to see these products and be able to get these great entrepreneurs, their great ideas, out to you, the public.”

The site also proclaims that there are “hundreds” of products coming soon, and it includes a link to a form for people to submit applications for “products ready for market.”

Lindell has set himself a truly Herculean task with this venture, and I wish him every success. His “MyStore” can be visited here.

How the Tenth was lost

Posted on May 27, 2021May 27, 2021 by Mike

Unsurprisingly, the profoundly nefarious 17th played an important role in its destruction.

Michael Finch, the President of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has an excellent article over at the American Thinker making clear where the Progressives are in their fight against the Constitution. He identifies what the Biden administration intends to accomplish—nothing less than completing the project of centralizing power in the federal government begun by the Progressives over a century ago. Finch very correctly observes that “the 10th Amendment, with its clear limitations on federal power, has been seriously eroded over the past century,” and that Biden and his handlers intend to put an end to the remaining limitations on federal power.

The Progressives certainly have gotten away with trampling on the 10th Amendment for more than a century, but that raises this question: how did they manage to get away with doing that?

The answer is that the Progressives tricked Americans into repealing the 10th Amendment without realizing that was what they were doing. It was very cleverly done, so cleverly that even today Americans by and large do not understand what happened. When in 1913 America approved the 17th Amendment, the amendment that provided for the direct election of senators, the 10th Amendment was doomed.

How can that be? After all, the 10th Amendment says nothing about the election of senators. The point of the all-important 10th Amendment is that the Founders created a federal government of strictly limited powers. Here it is in full:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 10th says the powers of the federal government (here referred to as “the United States”) are limited to the enumerated powers, the limited powers assigned it in the Constitution; the individual states (here referred to as “the States”) retain all their powers not delegated to the federal government. But the important point for us to understand is that the Founders’ method for selecting senators was the key to keeping the powers of the federal government limited.

In the Constitution and in the original American republic, senators were selected by the state legislatures. The wisdom of the Framers is nowhere more evident than in this feature of their constitutional design. This was the central pillar of that design. It secured the 10th Amendment by the power of the Senate. As I wrote in my book about the founding entitled Common Sense Nation:

The Senate had been a barrier to the passage of federal laws infringing on the powers reserved to state governments, but the Senate has abandoned that responsibility under the incentives of the new system of election. Because the states no longer have a powerful standing body representing their interests within the federal government, the power of the federal government has rapidly grown at the expense of the states.

Before the 17th Amendment, the state legislatures controlled the upper chamber of Congress. There was no way the federal government was going to usurp the power of the states. The 17th Amendment disempowered the states, and the 10th Amendment promptly began eroding away.

Americans in 1913 were fooled by the Progressives because too many Americans no longer understood the Founders’ design for liberty. You have to give the Progressives credit. They did understand the Founders’ design, they picked their target brilliantly, and by selling the 17th Amendment as a reform, they won a great victory.

And America That Was, in consequence, has been circling the drain ever since, spiraling ever faster as it slips down the pipe to its ultimate doom. Mike’s Iron Law #1,246: whenever Progressivists win, America loses.

1

No place to run, no place to hide

Posted on May 22, 2021May 22, 2021 by Mike

They are coming. Yes, for you too.

The attempt of America’s ruling class to convict 455 persons of “armed insurrection”—i.e. of waging war against the United States, a species of treason—for protesting insufficient scrutiny of the 2020 election on January 6 in the Capitol, while at the same time it excuses and even cheers the burning and looting of courthouses, police stations, and downtowns all over America, is not the exercise of a “double standard.”

The people in and out of government who do this are not corrupt. Instead, acting as part of the regime—the oligarchy—they are replacing the American republic and waging war to crush its remains.

The sooner Americans realize that we are being governed by people at war with our Constitution and contemptuous of ourselves, the sooner those people may be treated as the enemies they are.

Today’s Justice Department, acting as part and parcel of the oligarchy that calls itself “our democracy” has pushed partisanship to the point of war by one regime in favor of another. Inevitably, this has created the horrid reality of political prisoners among us—people who are being punished for supporting the republic against the oligarchy. When regimes war on each other, whose side you are on becomes the practical definition of justice.

The Bill of Rights has long since applied to the states. Erasing the distinction between what had been public and private, between the powers of those in political office and those of corporations, institutions, etc., is oligarchy’s essence.

Arguably, the imposition of very cruel penalties on persons out of step with people and institutions that are part of the ruling oligarchy is contemporary America’s most prominent feature. These include deletion of careers and livelihoods, public imputations of racism, etc. They amount to something like outlawry.

And for what, specifically? Loud and clear is the ruling narrative: “our democracy” is under armed assault by hordes of white supremacists who lurk throughout society, ready to unleash another, deadlier version of January 6. But the reality is that “trespassing is still only trespassing.”

To keep this reality in context, one might recall Arlo Guthrie’s hilarious 1967 song “Alice’s Restaurant,” the saga of a hippie arrested for dumping trash, whom the legal system throws in with “all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people…Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers!…nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me!…And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest Father raper of them all…he said, ‘What were you arrested for, kid?’ And I said, ‘Littering.’ And they all moved away from me.”

Humor and irony, however, are powerless against the logic of warring regimes. The oligarchs are not fooling around. Appealing to the Constitution can only increase their determination to bury its remnants under the administrative powers it creates or enhances. This is a regime alien and inimical to ours.

That is good as well as bad news. The good aspect of it is that we who swear to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic owe no allegiance whatever to the oligarchy that now runs this country. Nor can we persuade them about right and wrong. If we are to avoid becoming the oligarchy’s mere subjects we can and must treat them as the enemies they are: deny their legitimacy, and rebuild the republic amongst those of us who love it.

All fine and well, I suppose. On the other hand: when The Power marches forth its men at arms, as it most assuredly will, under orders to deny us our God-given right to “depart from (them) in peace,” wishing upon our antagonists no farewell more onerous or threatening than that “posterity (may) forget that you were our countrymen”…well, what then? Can there possibly be a man among us so dewey-eyed and hopeful that he still cherishes the delusion that we will be permitted to “rebuild the republic amongst those of us who love it” by people who have so doggedly worked to destroy it utterly, and erase all trace of its existence?

“Rebuild the republic”? How? Where? Most importantly, to what end? Our forefathers built the original version fully alive to the sacrifice the project would require of them. They expected the cost of the former Republic’s construction to be quite dear—a cost tallied in blood, personal ruin, and death—and paid that bill without flinching nonetheless. Are we, their inheritors, really so foolish as to hope that we might somehow be spared the exaction of a similar price? Is there any reason to think that construction costs have dropped over the long years, rather than rising steeply as time passed?

The maintenance and upkeep which was our sacred duty was neglected, gradually causing the House of Liberty to fall into a state of near-ruin. The inevitable process of disintegration, however, was not entirely a natural one. It was endlessly helped along by the very ones from whom some of us now seem to expect bland forebearance as we go about the business of undoing the damage they intentionally wrought. Sorry, not bloody likely. Nations, most of them anyway, are brought forth not in peace, good will, and charity, but in violence and bloodshed.

Codevilla’s perception is as crystal clear as ever, and his closing prescription isn’t necessarily invalidated by the last-lap failure to look the problem squarely in the face. But still. The question for which the world awaits an answer, at this point, isn’t really about the advisability or practicality of this or that specific course of action. No, the question that truly matters today is the eternal one confronted by our most honorable Founders: whether or not their rightful heirs will flinch.

1

MOAR IDAHO, STAT!!!

Posted on May 21, 2021May 21, 2021 by Mike

A good start? Or much ado about nothing?

Five Oregon counties voted on Tuesday to instruct their county commissioners to promote moving the Oregon border so they can join the state of Idaho. Voters in Malheur, Sherman, Grant, Baker, and Lake counties all approved referendums that would grow the state of Idaho to encompass the 5 rural counties that voted in favor of the referendum along with two others — Jefferson and Union counties — who approved measures last year.

“This election proves that rural Oregon wants out of Oregon. If Oregon really believes in liberal values such as self-determination, the Legislature won’t hold our counties captive against our will,” said Mike McCarter, a conservative activist who heads the Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho group. “If we’re allowed to vote for which government officials we want, we should be allowed to vote for which government we want as well.”

Ace quips:

The left is excited, because they think “this opens the door to URBAN SOVEREIGNTY!!!” — cities detaching themselves from those useless rural areas that produce nothing but food, healthy families, and no crime.

As I always say, t’is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But it ain’t gonna happen, of course.

Actually moving the lines would require a vote from the Oregon legislature, which is firmly controlled by Democrats. Oregon and Idaho would have to strike a formal deal, which would then need to be ratified by the U.S. Congress.

It’d be nice if Real Americans could rid themselves of their urban Leftist antagonists in a peaceable fashion, but it’s increasingly obvious that said parasites will never allow it, leaving just the one option open.

SO—the hard way it is, then.

Mulder was right

Posted on May 18, 2021May 19, 2021 by Mike

The truth is out there.

One month before the director of national intelligence and secretary of Defense are expected to deliver a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) intelligence report, Navy pilots and other former government officials are speaking out and describing their encounters with the mysterious sightings.

David Fravor, a Top Gun naval flight school graduate and commander of the F/A-18F squadron on the USS Nimitz, appeared on CBS’ “60 minutes” with Lt. Alex Dietrich, who was flying at his wing in 2004 when they say they saw a UFO, or unidentified flying object, together with their back seaters.

Fravor said that they saw something “better” than their airplane. Dietrich said she never wanted to appear on national television, and this was her first time talking about the subject.

The UFO encounter, which happened 100 miles southwest of San Diego, California, was documented by means of radar, camera, and four naval pilots.

It came after a new advanced radar on the USS Princeton had been detecting “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles” for a week, according to operators. The “vehicles” were able to descend over 80,000 feet in less than one second.

I’ll refrain from further comment myself, beyond saying that it’s a fascinating story—one of quite a few of ’em. Also: a ROD of better than 80k per second? DAYUUUMMMM!!

The Con con

Posted on May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 by Mike

Conservatism as commodity, bought and sold in the marketplace.

Every once in a while, a post or series of posts comes along that captures why conservatism never amounted to much. This post in the ironically named American Conservative is a good example of the genre. The topic is how to deal with the privatization of authoritarian power, primarily in Silicon Valley. The argument put forward is that using the state to tame these rogue companies is morally wrong, so we have to find some new way to contend with these out-of-control tech firms.

The first thing you should notice is the style is exactly what we get whenever the topic of immigration in on the table. The obvious answer is dismissed. In the case of immigration, that means shutting down the border and cracking down on employers who use helot labor. The open borders crowd always says that is impossible or harmful in some way. Instead, they offer a collection of overly complex solutions that have no chance of succeeding but will keep the punditry busy.

In the case of Big Tech, we have laws on the books to put an end to this reign of terror, but enforcing those is socialism, according to the usual suspects. We cannot have that, even if it would work. Instead, let us have a twenty-year series of international commissions to study technical standards and pass a bunch of laws that no one reads, but have cool names like “Data Portability Act”. In other words, the people who cannot build a wall along the border are going to fix the internet.

Interestingly, the rodents from Conservative Inc. always use the same trick the Left is so fond of using, which is the false dichotomy. “We can shut ourselves off from the world or embrace globalism” is how they frame trade. “We can become a hermit nation or remain a nation of immigrants” is how they frame immigration. Now it is “We can choose central planning or preserve an open internet” with Big Tech. It is the same partisan game the Left plays, just tailored for a middle-class white audience.

The fact is, enforcing Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act as intended puts a halt to the most egregious violations of our rights. Twitter can choose to be a publisher or an open platform. If it is the former, they can censure their platform however they like, but they are accountable for the content. If they choose to be an open platform like Gab, then they get the protection of Section 230. There is no need to reinvent the internet to solve the biggest problem with Big Tech.

Similarly, the obvious collusion that goes on with these big firms could be crushed with the use of existing law. There are plenty of examples of the tech companies colluding with one another to ban people from their platforms. If we can give a cop 20-years on civil rights violations for shooting a fleeing suspect, we can give the harpies of Silicon Valley a few years for violating the civil rights of Alex Jones. One lawsuit is all that would be required to end that practice and restore some sanity.

Of course, the author of the AC piece is clearly trying to strike the libertarian position, which is a blend of hiding under the bed and shilling for global capital. This is what is wrong with the libertarian-conservative commentariat. They are not interested in advocating conservative interests. Instead, they are focused on making sure their corporate donors are free of government interference. If that means the rights of conservatives are trampled, well “whoopsie!”

As with any swindle, if you can’t figure out who the mark is, it’s you. Z’s title brought to mind an old Mad cover:

“The Big Con” is as on-point a description of modern “conservatism,” the NeverTrumpTard punditry, and the Vichy GOPe as you’ll ever find.

“At What Point Do We Realize Bill Gates Is Dangerously Insane?”

Posted on May 17, 2021May 17, 2021 by Mike

Oh, ‘long about now, I reckon.

This isn’t an overreaction to Gates’ latest foray into the news cycle. It’s an observation based on a long pattern of statements and behavior by the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men who has ever lived which, were any of us normal people guilty of them, would result in our being institutionalized.

Bill Gates is crazy. And he’s dangerous, because he’s willing to put untold sums of money toward making the insane things he believes a reality – and all of those insane things hurt people.

What this comes down to, though, is that Bill Gates has been so rich for so long that he’s spent the bulk of his adult life without anyone telling him he’s wrong. That has the same corrosive effect on character and sanity that you see in the case of kings and dictators. People want some of Bill Gates’ money, so they constantly suck up to him and tell him his ideas are great even when they’re atrocious, and the guardrails normal people live between don’t exist in his case.

So he throws money around at insane things. That he isn’t outwardly off his rocker like Howard Hughes was is small comfort; Hughes mostly kept to himself in that hotel suite in Las Vegas as he descended into madness. Gates is everywhere.

Gates said that he modeled his charitable foundation after the one the Rockefeller family founded. But the Rockefellers took decades to become obsessed with globalist-utopian causes; Gates fell out of the philanthropic womb that way.

It’s a problem. There needs to be some limiting principle governing this man’s excesses. But where that will come from is a good question. When he’s openly discussing destroying an industry that directly employs a half-million Americans for the purposes of “climate change” (formerly known as global warming, until it couldn’t be denied that there was no statistically significant warming going on) when we’re in the middle of the worst cold snap much of the country has seen in decades, finding ways to check this increasingly nutty bull in a china shop begins to become an urgent necessity.

I can think of several excellent ways of checking this cracked wierdo’s ass, a few of which don’t even require the use of any Aimpoint or Bushnell products to aid in getting this vital task done.

Covid Coup lessons: learned?

Posted on May 16, 2021May 16, 2021 by Mike

Two problems with that formulation:

Did we really learn anything from the shamdemic scam?
Can any observant, thinking person seriously say that there’s anything among the cited ten that we shouldn’t have already known?

Neither of which complaints is meant to suggest that these 10 lessons aren’t perfectly valid nonetheless, natch. If we haven’t learned them yet, rest assured that we’ll have to retake the test again and again until we finally do. This is a strictly pass-fail examination, impossible to rig or manipulate, and will definitely NOT be graded on any kind of curve.

Here are Ten Things We Have Learned During the Covid Coup.

1. Our political system is hopelessly corrupt.
Virtually all politicians are hopelessly corrupt. No political party can be trusted. They all can be, and have been, bought.

2. Democracy is a sham.
It has been a sham for a very long time. There will never be any real democracy when money and power amount to the same thing.

3. The system will stop at nothing to hold on to its power and, if possible, increase its levels of control and exploitation.
It has no scruples. No lie is too outrageous, no hypocrisy too nauseating, no human sacrifice too great.

Those opening three are quite serious issues to be sure, as are all the rest. But the biggest problem, since it’s the one that underlies and enables all the others and then some, is spelled out in Number Six:

6. Most people in our society are cowards.
They will jettison all the fine values and principles which they have been loudly boasting about all their lives merely to avoid the slightest chance of public criticism, inconvenience or even minor financial loss.

Amerika v2.0 is the Land of the Unfree precisely because it’s the Home of the Not-brave. You just can’t have the one without the other; they go together like…well, like this.

(Via WRSA)

My first bleg

Posted on April 27, 2021April 27, 2021 by Mike

Okay, so I somehow ran across mention of an open-source porting of the loathsome Google’s Android datamining and espionage platform called LineageOS, which sounds interesting for all sorts of reasons. It seems worth at least considering the switch, so for the last cpl-three days I’ve been employing whatever Duck Duck Go-Fu I possess and researching this thing a little. As the inveterate and irredeemable tinkerer y’all know me to be, I’m as intrigued as I am intimidated. Some of the forum posts I’ve seen have been downright terrifying, frankly; since I eke out my meager living with my phone, it ain’t as if I can afford to wreck the damned thing.

But still…intrigued.

So my question is this: any CF’ers out there have any experience with Lineage, know someone who does, or perhaps can offer recommendations, predictions of doom, or other sage advice to Ye Olde Blogge Hoste? I ain’t exactly a doot-brained noob when it comes to cellphone hackery, having rooted one or two in the past, but I wouldn’t call myself any kind of guru either. What say ye, gang?

Whereupon I begin to wonder whether life is really worth living

Posted on April 26, 2021April 26, 2021 by Mike

Oh great, yet another thing to worry about.

Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science conducted flush tests in a public restroom with both a toilet and a urinal.

“After about three hours of tests involving more than 100 flushes, we found a substantial increase in the measured aerosol levels…with the total number of droplets generated in each flushing test ranging up to the tens of thousands,” said study co-author Siddhartha Verma.

Pathogens that can cause Ebola, norovirus and even COVID-19 can be found in stagnant water, as well as in urine, feces and vomit.

According to the research team, flushing can generate large amounts of airborne germs, depending on flushing power, toilet design and water pressure.

Few public restrooms in the United States have lids, and urinals are not covered.

Droplets were detected at heights of up to 5 feet for 20 seconds or longer after initiating a flush, the findings showed.

The investigators detected fewer droplets when the lid was closed before flushing, but the number wasn’t much less. This suggests that aerosol droplets escaped through small gaps between the cover and the seat.

I read someplace a good while back that toilets typically spray droplets of, and I quote, “their contents” out to a distance as great as twenty feet when flushed—which means you get a face-full of piss and/or shit-mist every time you pull that trigger. Far as I’m concerned, that’s WAY more disturbing than some damned disease. Col Kurtz, it turns out, was onto something.

Didn’t see THAT coming

Posted on April 26, 2021April 26, 2021 by Mike

The French get froggy.

Mister President,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Government,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

The hour is serious, France is in peril, several mortal dangers threaten her. We who, even in retirement, remain soldiers of France, cannot, in the current circumstances, remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country.

Our tricolor flags are not just a piece of cloth, they symbolize the tradition, down through the ages, of those who, whatever their skin color or faith, have served France and given their lives for it. On these flags we find in gold letters the words “Honor and Fatherland”. However, our honor today lies in the denunciation of the disintegration which strikes our homeland.

– Discrimination which, through a certain anti-racism, is displayed with a single goal: to create on our soil unease, even hatred between communities. Today some speak of racialism, indigenousism and decolonial theories, but through these terms it is racial war that these hateful and fanatic supporters want. They despise our country, its traditions, its culture, and want to see it dissolve by taking away its past and its history. Thus they attack, through statues, ancient military and civilian glories by analyzing words that are centuries old.

– Discrimination which, with Islamism and the suburban hordes, leads to the detachment of multiple plots of the nation to transform them into territories subject to dogmas contrary to our constitution. However, every Frenchman, whatever his belief or his non-belief, is at home everywhere in France; there cannot and must not exist any city or district where the laws of the Republic do not apply.

– Discrimination, because hatred takes precedence over brotherhood during demonstrations where the authorities use the police as proxy agents and scapegoats in the face of French people in yellow vests expressing their despair. This while undercover and hooded individuals ransack businesses and threaten these same law enforcement agencies. However, the latter only apply the directives, sometimes contradictory, given by you, the rulers.

The perils are mounting, the violence is increasing day by day. Who would have predicted ten years ago that a professor would one day be beheaded when he left college? However, we, servants of the Nation, who have always been ready to put our skin at the end of our engagement – as our military state demanded, cannot be passive spectators in the face of such actions.

It is therefore imperative that those who run our country find the courage to eradicate these dangers. To do this, it is often sufficient to apply existing laws without weakness. Remember that, like us, a large majority of our fellow citizens are overwhelmed by your dawdling and guilty silences.

As Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, said: “When prudence is everywhere, courage is nowhere. “So, ladies and gentlemen, enough procrastination, the hour is serious, the work is colossal; do not waste time and know that we are ready to support policies which will take into consideration the safeguard of the nation.

On the other hand, if nothing is done, laxity will continue to spread inexorably in society, ultimately causing an explosion and the intervention of our active comrades in a perilous mission of protecting our civilizational values and safeguarding our compatriots on the national territory.

As we can see, there is no more time to procrastinate, otherwise, tomorrow the civil war will put an end to this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will bear the responsibility, will number in the thousands.

Backstory:

A massive group of former and current French military personnel signed an open letter this week warning of the imminent danger posed by so-called anti-racist ideology, and urging French President Emmanuel Macron to work quickly to prevent a civil war.

The letter, published in French magazine Valeurs Actuelles, was signed by 20 former French generals, 100 officers and over 1,000 other military personnel.

It accused the French government of kowtowing to destructive ideologies such as anti-racism and Islamism, which it said were being leveraged for the purposes of sowing unrest in French communities and risking a descent into full-blown civil war.

The signatories expressed grave concern with the government’s push to deconstruct and decolonize its own history in an attempt to placate a growing Islamism that has wracked the nation with violence and argued that radical Islam is being used to subject neighborhoods to dogmatic rules that go against the French Constitution, creating an unconstitutional parallel Islamic state.

Notably, the letter explicitly linked the growing threat of an Islamic insurgency in France with the everyday terror of violent socialist and anti-racist riots that have frequently piggybacked off of the chaos of the Yellow Vest protest movement.

The letter went on to state that anti-racist ideology is actively promoting racial enmity and that its proponents are partisans seeking an all-out race war.

Thankfully for the French, it looks like their military will not fall in line with the tyrannical dictates of social justice dogma, and will step forward should they need to protect the citizens of the republic and their noble traditions.

On all accounts, American leadership might have something to learn from these old soldiers.

Not precisely, no. It’s actually the American people who have something to learn from this inspiring example. As in France, American leadership is the source of the problem, so it’s a different lesson altogether that they need to be taught.

(Via WRSA)

How it happened

Posted on April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 by Mike

Wherein a most intriguing case is made in support of a somewhat unusual proposition: the origins of our national woes, pretty much all of them, are directly traceable to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

For over fifty years, it has been a recurring promise of conservative candidates running for election that they will stand up for our constitutional rights and support the appointment of judges and Supreme Court justices who will uphold the Constitution.

Yet time after time, the left seems to win both ideological and legal battles on monumental issues such as abortion, marriage, gun control, immigration, racial preferences for minorities, and the ever-expanding size and scope of government — no matter what the text of the Constitution actually says.

In The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, (2020; ISBN 978-1-5011-0689-7) author Christopher Caldwell advances the thesis that the Constitution of 1788 has been effectively nullified by our elites and supplanted with a “new constitution” that originated in, and reflects the values of, the “Civil Rights Era” of the 1960s. Though the civil rights movement began as a reformist movement within the old order, it evolved into a “revolution” that has nearly triumphed over the polity created in the 18th century:

The changes of the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible[.]…Much of what we have called “polarization” or “incivility” in recent years is something more grave — it is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail: the de jure constitution of 1788…with centuries of American culture behind it…or the de facto constitution of 1964, which lacks this traditional kind of legitimacy but commands the near-unanimous endorsement of judicial elites and civic educators and the passionate allegiance of those who received it as liberation.

Caldwell argues that the new “de facto constitution” has been used to supersede the Bill of Rights and the black-letter law of the traditional Constitution. Forced busing and forced integration violated the First Amendment right to freedom of association, as did affirmative action for blacks and women. Racial and sex-based preferences offend the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These policies were enacted despite opposition from most Americans. Speech codes and political correctness designed to cater to the sensitivities of minorities infringe on the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The “right” to an abortion, which existed nowhere in the traditional Constitution and was opposed by a majority of the people (with limited exceptions), was essentially created by the Supreme Court.

Lest anybody be inclined to assume that Demonrat-appointed Justices and Presidents are entirely to blame, or nearly so, that erroneous notion is handily dispensed with. After the infuriating way in which Trump’s eagerly-anticipated USSC picks have performed so far, that comes as no big shock. Caldwell even goes so far as to rip Saint Ronald of Reagan a new ‘un for his own not-insignificant contribution to the national trainwreck. Then, from there:

If Caldwell’s thesis can be criticized, it is for understating his case — things have proven to be worse than he described.

In hindsight, the Trump presidency exposed the fact that the elites and the Deep State are now completely untethered by the original Constitution of limited and enumerated powers and by the Bill of Rights. They have demonstrated that they are willing to use the FBI to surveil presidential candidate and to fabricate a false narrative for the purposes of impeaching him. They have demonstrated that they will side with illegal aliens over American citizens, and that they will freely let black BLM and communist Antifa agitators run riot in the streets while ruthlessly prosecuting and suppressing as “domestic terrorists” patriotic and nationalist groups who caused a ruckus at the Capitol. They have demonstrated that they are willing to turn a blind eye to vicious and violent attacks by blacks against whites, but drop the hammer of “hate crimes” on any “deplorable” white who has the slightest dispute with a black, or on any cop making a traffic stop of a black criminal. They have demonstrated that they will continue to expand so-called “civil rights” to include all manner of insanity and freakishness, such as “transgenderism.”

Caldwell does not propose a solution to this situation. But recognizing the problem is a necessary first step in finding one. “Civil rights” has been used as an effective battering ram against conservatism and against the Constitution of the 1780s; conservatives can no longer allow themselves to be browbeaten by “civil rights” activists. The rigged election of 2020 and the double-impeachment of Trump should have awakened conservatives to the fact that merely voting Republican and asserting your “constitutional rights” is no longer enough. But it may be too late.

In 2014, Gov. Cuomo sneered that conservatives have no place in the state of New York. Increasingly, our elites have adopted the attitude that conservatives have no place anywhere in the country, and they are willing to act on it.

They’ll do precisely that, unless/until enough Real Americans nut up and demonstrate a willingness to act on a few things their own selves…in a way that won’t soon be forgotten, is impossible to ignore or minimize, and will leave a smarting, stinging welt.

Facts: faced

Posted on April 20, 2021April 20, 2021 by Mike

Frances puts the thing plainly.

We read and watch the reports of rampant looting and violence in our cities…and we sit, appalled.

We hear the Left’s mouthpieces denounce anyone who stands against them, threatening them with everything but canonization…and we shake our heads.

We read of the advance of totalitarianism in Europe, Canada, and parts of these United States…and we express disbelief.

The Left has taken the offensive. It’s seized our federal government and many state and local governments. It dominates our entertainment industries. It’s controlled the major media for many years. It owns the schools, from kindergarten all the way to the highest of the universities. And it is advancing wherever it stands forth.

We cannot win – nay; we cannot survive — if we restrict ourselves to “playing defense.”

Not long ago, Matt Bracken left this as a reply to something I said at Gab.com:

“In the absence of orders, find a Communist and kill it.”

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Even Communists have a right to life, don’t they? I mean, if they have freedom of expression, they must have a right to life!

Time was. Before they went on the attack. But matters have “progressed” too far. They’re openly maneuvering for the power to kill, enslave, and expropriate without let or hindrance. The violence in the cities is merely the most visible manifestation.

Note that in nearly all the riot-torn cities, the “forces of order” have stood aside while the rioters have rampaged. When they’ve acted, it’s usually been against people who dared to oppose the rioters with weapons, such as the McCloskeys of St. Louis. That puts the “forces of order” on the side of the rioters and despoilers: Communists de facto, despite their badges and uniforms.

Think about what’s being done to Kyle Rittenhouse, because he used lethal force to defend himself from a potentially lethal assault by a marauding gang. Put yourself in his place…because as sure as the Sun will rise tomorrow, if we remain on the defensive while the Left presses its attack, you will be.

Ordinary, normal Americans, being decent, peaceable, civilized sorts rather than deranged zealots, are extremely reluctant to own up to the harsher realities of our time, which include:

The escalation of opponents into enemies
The steadily increasing aggression of a fanatical foe long accustomed to victory, emboldened by the transparently fraudulent 2020 election
The comprehensive corruption and lawlessness of every branch, department, agency, and bureaucracy of the federal Leviathan
The marrow-deep hatred, intolerance, and ruthlessness of an implacable enemy driven by one desire alone: the wholesale destruction of America as founded, every last thing it represents, and all who still revere it
The betrayal of a treacherous political party they had long trusted to oppose, resist, and hinder the Democrat-Socialists, rather than colluding and cooperating with them
The wearing stress of being relentlessly defamed, denounced, shunned, mocked, threatened, and even physically assaulted—of being unable to avoid political conflict every minute of every hour of every day, subject to ceaseless harrassment and harangues without hope of respite

Confronting those ugly realities, and plenty more besides, can’t be avoided or shied from for very much longer without those decent, good-hearted, reluctant Normals putting themselves in serious jeopardy. In truth, they already are in jeopardy. Unfortunately, the currents of history are powerful, indifferent, and far beyond human ability to direct or defy. Normal Americans must choose whether they will confront unpleasant reality and defend their birthright, or be swept off and overcome by history’s cold current.

The entire world has been more than adequately schooled in Communism’s black history, which teaches that to countenance its spread is to invite societal catastrophe. Despite my own fondness for it, nowhere in the Bible does the phrase “Thou shalt not suffer a Communist to live” actually appear. Perhaps the Good Book needs to be revised to include it. Or, in the words of another original adage of mine: It’s never too early to start shooting Commies. But it CAN be too late, and nobody ever did himself any favors by procrastinating.

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.