Hmmm… – Page 70

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.

From American Dream to American Nightmare

Posted on April 15, 2021April 15, 2021 by Mike

Fundamental Transformation, no kind of accident, with plenty enough blame to go around.

For most of the ninety years since James Truslow Adams coined the term American Dream, most Americans still believed the fairy tale of the American Dream, that no matter how humble your beginnings, everyone had a fair chance to become a success in America, based upon your individual talent, intelligence, work ethic and a society that rewarded those who exceled. Sadly, that dream is no longer achievable for most Americans. Our society has devolved into an oligarchy since The Epic of America was published in 1931, where a powerful few rule over a willfully ignorant many through propaganda, mistruth, fear, and an iron fist.

The real questions are why did the American dream turn into an American nightmare and is there a pathway back to the kind of country our forefathers created? There are numerous reasons why the country has fallen far from its original conception as a proud defiant Republic to its current state as a dying empire of depravity, decay, debt, and decadence. The conspiratorial creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of a Federal income tax in 1913 marked a true destructive turning point for America.

Our world is now ruled by a tyrannical few who have used the system, created by their class, to accumulate immense wealth and power, sustained by a government they manipulate by buying politicians and having their cronies and thugs write and enforce the laws. The misinformation, propaganda, and fake news dished out by a mainstream media, owned, and controlled by the ruling oligarchy, creates a smokescreen to obscure who wields the true power in this country. The Deep State is no longer a looney conspiracy theory, but the reality of how this country is now controlled and run.

Radical Communist professors infest our universities. With 76% of K-12 teachers being female, the feminization of boys from twelve years of indoctrination has been unavoidable. They have been forced to feel and emote, rather than think, question and experience life outside prison classrooms. When boys act like boys, they are diagnosed by women as having ADHD and immediately drugged into submission. School is now a detriment to learning and irrelevant to a person attaining wisdom and understanding.

Irrelevant, hell. It’s an actual, active obstacle.

The rot within our educational system does not appear to be a mistake. It seems to be a calculated goal of those controlling the system. Our overlords want obedient, easily manipulated, non-questioning, conformist, robotic consumers of material goods who believe debt equals wealth, the family unit is irrelevant, systematic racism is real, there are 65 genders, a flu with a 99.7% survival rate is a reason to surrender their remaining freedoms and liberties, and an all-knowing benevolent government is here to help them.

The dystopian American nightmare into which we are descending is not solely the fault of the globalist cabal. Americans need to look in the mirror and honestly assess their role in this plunge into madness. The once independent, self-sufficient individualists that populated this country have become dependent, government reliant, materialistic, quivering shadows of the patriots and frontiersmen who created this country.

In the name of safety and security, the American people have allowed their government to accumulate complete control over every aspect of our lives. The American Dream has become a nightmare as we have allowed individualism, materialism, and selfish greed to override our duty to be good citizens, good fathers, good mothers, good neighbors, and going as far as our ability and hard work would take us.

Up until 1913, the American Dream, where every person had the opportunity to live a richer and fuller life, was achievable. Up until that time, every generation born in this country had an excellent chance to live a better life than their parents. Relentless progress was the American way. Based on the actions of those controlling the direction of this country, I doubt my three sons will live a richer and fuller life than myself. The debts are too extreme, the military overreach too excessive, the looting by the financial class too great, the political corruption too extensive, suppression of truth speech too stifling, and opportunities too few.

The dream of a social order where everyone could rise to the highest level of their capabilities, regardless of their birth, has been systematically crushed by those who prefer the masses to be debt slaves doing the menial labor necessary to keep their money-making machine running. With all out assaults on the First, Second and Fourth Amendments by those who find the U.S. Constitution inconvenient to their despotic intentions, time is running out for those who still believe in and will fight for their country.

We have ignored our obligation to the past and the future. The Founding Fathers created an imperfect Republic. Ben Franklin knew its future depended upon the people administering it well. The founders did not want a national religion to be misrepresented as keeping religion out of America. The Founders were religious men. They believed religion and morality were vital to the country, being administered in a moral ethical way and guided by a code of conduct. As God, religion and morality have been disparaged by those in power we have moved further and further from the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Only a people with a strong moral backbone can be trusted to honor the Constitution.

The people have allowed the country to be corrupted by evil self-seeking men, and as a result, we are on a course towards despotism. We are descended from rebels and revolutionaries. The future of our country requires the restoration of that revolutionary spirit of dissent and opposition among a sufficient number of patriotic citizens, as there is no longer a chance to vote ourselves out of this predicament. Sadly, bloodshed will be required in any effort to regain control of our country. Time is growing short.

The author covers one hell of a lot of territory in this one, pulling together what could fairly be considered a politico-historical Theory Of Everything. It’s the deepest of deep dives, it’s lengthy, and it makes for some mighty uncomfortable reading in spots, which you should nonetheless do.

Raise ’em Right

Posted on April 10, 2021April 10, 2021 by Mike

Another fine idea whose time has…well, not come, exactly. More like been crammed down our throats.

Whew, digging a 300 square-foot bunker suitable for young children is hard work. My back isn’t what it used to be. So far, we’re 50 feet down in the backyard and are about to pour 10-inch thick WiFi-proof concrete walls. The kids will have goldfish, coloring books, a Kindle that contains all of Western classical literature, Play-Doh, and a hose for drinking water. They’ll be lowered into the hole when they turn six, and we’ll let them climb out when they turn 18.

We plan to tell any nosy neighbors that we sent the kids away to a new progressive anti-racism academy.

Cruel, you say? Not if you’re trying to insulate your precious children from the all-powerful wokeness algorithm. In fact, it’s the only way to be sure.

Will I miss them? Sure, but I’m comforted knowing they’ll be among the few who survive the radioactive wokelear fallout released this year.

Oh, you don’t want to chain your kids up in the basement and seal all the doors? Rather not ship them to an ice floe off Greenland, or a yurt in outer Mongolia?

Then, friends, you’re going to need to become a master of anti-wokeness.

They—you know who I mean—wish to consume your children: skin, muscle, bits, and bone. You must therefore make your children taste awful, like the little orange tree frogs who coat their skin with poison so hungry toucans spit them out. Force society to spit your children out of their ravenous maws. Make your children undesirable. Make them unbearable to the predations of the Left. It’s your job to ensure that the only way to change your kid’s minds is under threat of death, which, if present conditions hold, we may be approaching before they reach adulthood.

No one is pumping the brakes, like, at all. It’s only getting faster. You’re going to have to leap off the train, and push your babies out ahead of you. Fingers crossed you land on a soft patch of hay in a quiet ravine with no Wi-Fi or public schools within 100 miles. But you’ve got no choice. You are their only hope! Do not fail them. If you do nothing else as a parent, you must do this: prevent wokeness from colonizing their developing brains.

I dunno, but I get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, the author intends this piece to be taken as satire—it’s just so hard to tell nowadays. Be that as it may, the first recommendation seems practical enough.

ONE: Speak truth to gender, and never shut up.
I spent years pointing out decrepit junkies by the freeway on-ramp to my kids as a real-life anti-drug lesson. “See that sunburned hobo covered in open sores, Son? When he was a teenager he smoked pot once—once—and now look at him.”

When it comes to gender, beware! Lack of confidence and moral uncertainty in otherwise normal, educated parents have given the Pronoun People an easy port of entry into your child’s hungry cortex, and they are rushing into the breach.

Despite what the clowns running this circus want you to think, it actually IS possible to be 100% certain which gender your baby will identify with, as long as you commit as a parent to stopping entry of brain worms. Fake gender identities are a modern progressive social epidemic induced by the Internet, so it requires some avoidance techniques to prevent this infection.

First, you must shun gender neutrality. Dress your girls like ladies and your boys like off-duty firemen. If your little boy requests to wear a dress to school, tell him firmly that boys do not wear dresses, only girls do, and you refuse to allow him to entertain fantasy notions. If boys are allowed to wear dresses at your school, find a new school. If your children insist there are more than two genders, spend some time at the zoo and challenge them to identify these elusive other genders.

Oughta clear things up nicely, I believe. When it comes to dispelling the shitlib brain-fog, there’s no better fan than reality.

Evil is real

Posted on April 10, 2021April 10, 2021 by Mike

And must either be confronted, or yielded to.

Elections in America have always been contentious things, as the point of them is to get all sides as agitated as possible. If you wanted to find the point at which our elections turned ugly it would be when the concept of turnout became the focus. The surest way to get your guys motivated to vote is to convince them that the alternative is pure evil, the worst thing imaginable. Since one side will always lose, it means something close to half the country is always angry at the result.

The thing is though, it was always a game and most people got it. The candidates would say the vilest things about one another, but then carry on like old pals during a debate, showing the world they did not really mean those things. In fact, this is why the Left has controlled the country. Everyone else has always been sure the Left was not really serious about what they were saying. Despite it all, many people remain convinced that the Left today is just putting on a show.

That may be one of the factors creating the current crisis. The eruption of mass media over the last couple of decades puts the Left in our face all the time. There is no escaping politics today, which means there is no escaping the Left. Watch a sporting event and there will be lefty political preaching. Check the weather for your trip to the beach and you get a lecture on global warming. Go outside and you see people wearing three masks in their car, letting you know they are in that cult.

Of course, social media is like standing in front of a firehose. Even if you only want to follow something banal like entertainment news, you will be drenched in political commentary, almost entirely from the Left. The carnies all fashion themselves as philosophers now. The athletes have made politics a feature of their act. These are the dumbest, crudest people in our society, but they are sure you need to know what they have to say about current events.

There is another part to this. Along with not being able to escape the left-wing crazies, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no living with them. Politics, regardless of the system, is about compromise. The opposing sides find some middle ground that they can accept or some combination of their proposals that prevent either side from feeling cheated by the other. In a democracy, compromise is based on the understanding that both sides want what is best.

How do you reach a compromise with someone who thinks invisible men from a faraway land used mind control to change an election? On top of that, they were perfectly willing to destroy the country over it. If one side is sure the other side is evil, there can never be a compromise. The best you can get is a truce in the hostilities, but eventually one side will attack again. After all, any compromise with evil is immoral on its face, so the only more thing to do is confront it.

The larger issue isn’t that one side believes the other is evil. The most pressing issue is that one side is, in fact, EVIL. When one identifies the Left as capital-E Evil, one is neither exaggerating for effect nor issuing an unfounded charge.

The problem is redoubled—nay, retripled, reFOURPLED, even—by the fact that the non-evil side is extremely reluctant to acknowledge that the Evil side is, in fact, EVIL. Then redouble it again owing to the Not-Evils’ dread of being thought of as—GASP!!—impolitic, overwrought, or just goshdarnit RUDE should they dare to conduct themselves according to the acknowledgement that they didn’t want to own up to in the first damned place, and…well, it won’t be long before everybody throws up their hands in despair, says to hell with it all, and heads on back home for a nice, frazzled-nerve-soothing nap on the couch.

Some of our Non-Evils really need to ask themselves a few things, and should not be allowed any dessert until they’re able to provide a satisfactory answer:

Do you truly believe that Leftists—Progressivists, liberals, Democrat-Socialists, whatever—are in fact Marxists/Statists/Commies/totalitarians/whatever?
Do you truly believe that Marxism/Socialism/Communism/totalitarianism/collectivism/whatever is in fact an evil ideology?
Can you explain why, exactly, having just admitted to truly believing both those things, you find it so difficult to just say so right out loud?

This, in turn, brings to boil a whole kettle of other most pertinent fish, a standout among which is the cognitive dissonance created by recognizing Evil and at the same time denying yourself any effective means to combat it. Some of the others I’ll likely be going into in a later post.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda

Posted on April 8, 2021April 10, 2021 by Mike

You’ve all seen the hysteria, the hyperbole, the agenda-driven misrepresentation. Now have a gander at what might have been.

The FBI isn’t alone in claiming the January 6 Capitol protest was the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11. A substantial share of nominally Republican politicians has joined that chorus. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went so far as to say that Donald Trump will have “a place in history” for the Capitol riot: “They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all.”

If only.

When Graham says this, he knows perfectly well that he is lying. Trump asked the hundreds of thousands of Americans who came to show their support to walk with him peacefully to the Capitol. He made “peaceful” explicit. Nonetheless, every corrupt politician and newscaster in America has been able to find the violent subtext buried somewhere in Trump’s speech.

Well, try this on for size: Suppose if, instead of saying “let’s walk to the Capitol peacefully,” Trump instead had said what everyone accuses him of saying. Suppose he’d said, “The election is being stolen from us and I’m not giving up power.” (Remember how the Left fantasized Trump would have to be removed from the Oval Office by force?) Suppose Trump continued: “I am calling on my supporters to defend my presidency with violence. Come to Washington. Bring your guns! Bring every weapon you can lay your hands on. Don’t let anyone stop you. No justice, no peace!”

If only.

What do you suppose would have happened then? Do you think that the only person to be shot that day would have been an unarmed protester? If Trump had one ounce of the autocratic, dictatorial tendencies the press accuse him of having, he need only have asked his supporters to defend him with force. They would have.

It’s hard to say what would have followed, but it would not have been pretty. If Trump had actually encouraged violence, the “Capitol Riot” would have been a bona fide riot. We wouldn’t be able to count the death toll on a single hand. It would take hundreds, or thousands, of hands. If Americans had come to Washington actually seeking to “kill them all,” as Graham so despicably insists, you can bet that they would have succeeded in killing at least some.

By some estimates, 1.5 million Americans showed up on January 6 to protest the theft of their right to vote. They were angry as hell, but overwhelmingly peaceful. Even with the FBI in maximum repression mode, there has been a grand total of 127 arrests. No one burned cars or besieged police stations. What, in contrast, would a million-and-a-half Antifa have done to Washington, D.C.?

Hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans would have answered a call to arms from President Trump. That he never made such a call is patently obvious, most of all to the liars and blackguards who make these accusations. They feel safe to say whatever they want because they know that Trump is a vastly better man than they: Trump believes honestly (and in my view correctly) that he won reelection. He believes the most powerful office in the world was stolen from him. Yet he loves America far too much to bring it to violence on his account. His accusers know this, or else they wouldn’t dare utter a peep—because it would actually be dangerous for them.

How ironic, then, that Trump’s sincere patriotism and reluctance to thwart the coup against him by any means required should result in the permanent loss of the very nation he so cherished. Now, all anyone can do is watch as the dismal drama plays out to its unhappy ending, with all the horror and grief that will inevitably ensue after the curtain falls. We’ll never really know all the reasons for it, but whatever they were, Trump’s failure to “cross the Rubicon” didn’t come without its own cost, and it was steep.

Another point worth mentioning: Whereas Trump loves an America that has ceased to exist, Leftards have always reserved their allegiance for a muzzy dream of some future “America” that bears absolutely no resemblance to the one conceived, created, and bequeathed to us by our Founders.

Mike WHO?

Posted on April 6, 2021April 6, 2021 by Mike

Now ain’t this rich.

Reports are that former Vice President Mike Pence is “laying the groundwork for [a] 2024 Presidential Run.”

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

But the only groundwork Pence should be laying is for his retirement. His surrender to the Democratic Party in the final days of the Trump presidency disqualifies him. Pence may very well be a “good man,” but he’s also a weak man and America’s future depends on men who are both principled and strong.

And most especially on principled men who are strong enough to honestly confront the fact that there’s no longer any hope to be found in elections. But now we come to the part I found interesting.

The contested election of 2020 was not unprecedented. In fact, it bears a striking similarity to the contested election of 1876. The Democratic Party in 1876 was comprised of ex-confederates, who had lost the Civil War, but had not lost their pro-slavery opinions. A Democratic victory foreshadowed a regressive future that Southern blacks feared would return them to slavery and Republicans feared would guarantee a proliferation of white supremacy. The fate of the nation hung in the balance.

The fate of our nation hung in the balance in a similar way in 2020. A Democratic victory foreshadowed a regressive future in our time, which has come to fruition because of the Biden Administration. In only three months’ time we have seen an unprecedented assault on our Constitution—our country is less safe, our border is less secure, our future prosperity is less certain, and our unalienable rights are methodically stripped away.

Republicans in 1876 were as concerned about rampant Democratic Party election fraud as we were in 2020. Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Presidential candidate 144 years ago, predicted that his defeat would be “by crime—by bribery, & repeating [voters]” in the North and by “violence and intimidation” in the South. Trump likewise predicted that the 2020 election “will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country.” Both Hayes and Trump were right. I won’t rehash every instance of Democratic voter fraud in 2020—it would be redundant for this audience and also would fill a binder as thick as the Democrats’ latest pork-ulus bill.

There are two stark differences between the contested election of 1876 and the contested election of 2020. One, unlike Hayes, who went to sleep on election night certain of defeat, Trump went to bed certain of victory. Two, unlike the congressional Republicans in 1876, who refused to concede and fought tooth and nail to prevent the Democrats from installing their illegitimate presidential candidate Samuel Tilden in the Oval Office, the Congressional Republicans in 2020 folded like cheap lawn chairs.

Read on for more fascinating stuff. The contrast between the actual statesmen we were still blessed with back then and the contemptible curs we’re plagued by now couldn’t be more striking—or appalling. This is the kind of true American history they just don’t teach in school anymore, and that ain’t no accident, either.

Springtime for psychotics

Posted on April 5, 2021April 5, 2021 by Mike

Land of the Woke, home of the insane.

All social hysterias run their courses. They run out of new gags, and out of new recruits. Their tropes grow tiresome, even comical, such as the Woke mainstays of “racism,” “misogyny,” and “white supremacy.” Their promptings reveal themselves as obviously dishonest. The punishments they seek seem increasingly warped and sadistic. The behavior they induce begins to look patently insane. That’s where America stands now.

To keep the flywheel of hysteria spinning during the Covid year of 2020, the Dems turned the death of George Floyd into a new-and-improved second coming of Michael Brown in order to juice BLM for the fall election. This time there were video cameras galore on the scene to capture what turned out to be an ambiguously deceptive storyline. Half the world flipped out at the sight of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck at that Minneapolis intersection. It sure didn’t look good. Now that former officer Chauvin is on trial for Murder 2 and 3 plus manslaughter, the prosecution spent a week demonstrating indeed how bad that looked, with one witness after another who described how bad it made them feel to watch George Floyd die. Of course, watching anything die can be horrifying. It was, in essence, a wholly sentimental case for the prosecution.

The defense is ready to present facts that tell a different story: of a multiple violent felon and drug abuser hopped up on dangerous levels of narcotics and stimulants, with an impressively dire array of medical problems including Covid-19, who refused to follow police instructions, and in a manner that appeared deranged, leading to his being subdued by an approved police procedure to prevent harm to himself and others. The Minneapolis city council already queered the trial before it started by granting a $27-million settlement to the Floyd family, officially imputing guilt on Mr. Chauvin’s side. BLM has made it clear that they will not accept an acquittal.

Even a conviction is liable to inspire riots as the victory dance revs into the warm spring nighttime. Judging by last year’s BLM uprisings in city after city, the precedent has been established that mob violence is justified and holds no consequences. Something tells me that this particular error in political thinking will not be indulged this time around. The Woke hysteria and the hustles that grow out of it have shot their wad. Something else has awakened in this land: a recognition that we are in serious trouble, that our adversaries are having their way with us as we act stupidly, that we have become our own worst enemies, that being insane is not a virtue.

Was it ever? It would give me the warm fuzzies if the string-pullers behind the Harris-Biden junta decided to shock all hell out of the BLM/AntiFags and shut down the upcoming orgy of rioting and destruction on opening night, with extreme prejudice. I don’t seriously expect it to happen, but who knows. The Democrat-Socialists’ ruffian army have served their purpose and aren’t really needed at the moment, so maybe this summer we’ll see some real entertainment to compensate for all those shuttered movie houses, bars, and concert halls.

May Day Mask-off

Posted on April 5, 2021April 5, 2021 by Mike

Goalposts on wheels? Chock ’em.

On May 1, Let’s All Tear Off Our Masks

Oh. HELL. Yeah. I keep telling y’all: if we ever hope to end this charade, we must end it ourselves.

One hundred days.

That’s what President Biden asked for before he was inaugurated – 100 days of masking. That was the linchpin of his plan to end the coronavirus pandemic. It was in his executive order requiring people to wear masks when they are on U.S. Government property, including national parks and forests, even when there are no other people around for miles. Just give him that 100 days and everything will be fine.

Well, April 30 is the 100th day. On May 1, we can take off our masks for good.

Well, maybe. But probably not. In fact, Biden has said as much.

By now we should know that the goalposts won’t be where they were when we began this latest touchdown drive. They never are. It seems to be an inviolable law of nature that when the government imposes restrictions to deal with a temporary crisis, those restrictions hang around long after the crisis has passed.

Some of you older folks may remember the national 55 miles per hour speed limit on the interstate highways. President Nixon signed it into law in January 1974 to reduce fuel consumption during the Arab oil embargo of October 1973. The embargo ended in March 1974, but the law hung around for another generation, only the excuse became “highway safety” – which as studies found, the law did nothing to improve.

Or more recently, remember “two weeks to flatten the curve”? Two weeks in national lockdown to avoid overwhelming the hospitals with Covid-19 cases. Two weeks that turned into a month, then two, three, four months, and more. The hospitals were never overwhelmed – in fact, they were laying off healthcare workers – but state governors continued the lockdowns, only now the excuse was to “slow the spread.” Except that in states that didn’t lock down, coronavirus didn’t spread any faster than in states that did.

What our mask masters don’t seem to get is that our bodies need oxygen, and to get the required number of free oxygen molecules into our bloodstreams, we must inhale a certain volume of air. This means we also must exhale about the same volume (although about 20 percent of the free oxygen we inhaled has been exchanged for carbon dioxide). The only sure-fire way to keep from getting or spreading Covid-19 is to put a tight-fitting plastic bag over your head. After that, you will have no more worries about Covid-19 – or about anything else.

Hey, I could get behind that idea too. After all, I never did don the Mask of Submission, so this new plastic over-the-head variety wouldn’t affect me any more than the first one has. A vigorous campaign promoting the Bag On America!™ movement might go quite a way towards closing the yawning Darwin’s Law loophole we’ve been increasingly plagued by in recent years.

Here’s a clue: the mandates have nothing to do with the pandemic. There is no valid medical reason for healthy people to keep wearing masks, especially if they’ve been vaccinated. No, the reason is political, not medical. Like the tricolor cockade worn during the French Revolution, a mask demonstrates your submission to your rulers.

There is only one way to end the endless mask mandates, and that is to just stop wearing them. President Biden asked for 100 days of masking. All right, As of May 1, he’ll have had his 100 days. On that day I propose that we all remove our masks and keep them off. It is time the American people let their rulers know they will no longer tolerate arbitrary and useless mandates that seem to be more about controlling them with fear than protecting them from disease. The goalposts have been moved for the last time.

And May 1 is an especially appropriate date for the great unmasking. May Day is the traditional international socialist holiday, and the pandemic has been used as an excuse to deprive us of our freedoms and advance the socialist agenda (e.g., see the recently-passed $1.9 trillion “covid relief” package). What better day to stand up to these would-be Stalins?

A May Day Mask-off is a swell idea; don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. But history teaches that there IS a better way to stand up to our Stalin wannabes—actually, that there’s really only ONE sure-fire way of getting the job done—and that eventually, any society that wishes to be rid of them must resort to it.

A look ahead

Posted on April 4, 2021April 4, 2021 by Mike

CW v2.0, secession, and/or the breakup of the FUSA will not be anything like what some seem to imagine.

IMHO, whatever the red-and-blue patchwork remnants of the US map look like, they’re going to be run by corporations or warlords, or both. The a-holes that are currently riding herd on the this giant ponzi scheme are not just going to take their ruin philosophically.

And as crappy as the laws are at protecting our rights, liberties, and property now, they are going to be worse.

Also, there isn’t going to be some dramatic moment when “its over.” No one’s going to announce the end of the United States. They aren’t going to board up the doors of the FBI offices. They’re still going to have presidential elections. They’re still going to play the national anthem at your son’s basketball game.

Its going to be like the Warlords Period in China. There’s going to be areas where the government doesn’t assert control, doesn’t go – could be mountains, could be cities. You’ll hear rumors of ugly things happening there, but you won’t see any videos because Youtube will take them down. Decent people will leave those areas. Then one day out of the blue, some armed men are going to show up and want your stuff – you don’t know who they are, where they’re from. They don’t care about you or your politics, or your particular take on Edmund Burke or transgender bathrooms, but they’re going to take your F-150 and any gas you have. And maybe your food too. And that’s how you’ll find out that the United States has collapsed.

In my opinion this forecast is a lot nearer the mark than others I’ve seen put forth out there, although of course we won’t know it until we’re neck-deep in it. Bracken’s fantastic Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, which I’ve mentioned here previously a time or three, is another slice of grim prescience that I think is right on target. Simultaneously depressing and gripping, I simply can’t recommend it strongly enough.

Blame it on the dog

Posted on March 31, 2021March 31, 2021 by Mike

A likely story.

One of Biden's dogs pooped on the floor, per pool

"Champ and Major were spotted in the hallway outside the Palm Room doors in front of the Diplomatic Room. There was dog poo on the floor. It’s unclear which dog was responsible for it"

— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) March 31, 2021

With a senile, decrepit old wreck like Cadaver Joe in residence, White House staff shouldn’t be in any rush to wag an accusatory finger at the dogs. One of them may very well be the culprit, sure. But I wouldn’t be willing to put any money on it.

Better days

Posted on March 31, 2021March 31, 2021 by Mike

I’ve posted on this before, but…in NYC? SRSLY?!?

This month, more than 100,000 city public school kids walked out to protest gun violence — but last century some students attended class armed with their rifles and practiced shooting on school grounds.

Many of the city’s public high schools had shooting clubs and a few even had gun ranges on their premises, according to accounts from the Department of Education and others.

There were at least three shooting ranges in public schools, the DOE said, including Curtis HS on Staten Island and Erasmus Hall HS in Brooklyn.

Another inside Far Rockaway HS in Queens, which closed in 2011, is shown in a black-and-white archival photo from May 1929 displaying a compartmentalized gun range with at least five windows to shoot from and cranks for students to pull the targets back and forth.

“To accommodate the kids, they even made them these little pull-out benches they can kneel on to shoot from that position or even lie down to shoot,” said Darren Leung, owner of Westside Rifle & Pistol Range in Chelsea, describing the equipment seen in the 89-year-old photo. “What an excellent design.”

“Even in New York City, virtually every public high school had a shooting club up until 1969,” gun-rights advocate and academic John Lott Jr. wrote in his 2003 book, “The Bias Against Guns.”

In an incredibly bizarre twist also noted by Glenn, this was also an era when school shootings were unheard of. Why, one could almost be forgiven for concluding that the modern-day phenomenon of government-school mass murders might possibly be attributable to some cause other than guns!!!

I know, I know, that’s just crazy talk there.

Red Air rising

Posted on March 31, 2021March 31, 2021 by Mike

This is one is as fascinating as it is…well, unusual. WELL off the beaten track, let’s say.

As a young Green Beret, I learned to watch the moon. The Apaches and Comanches and the other able fighters always knew the moon. As do the Taliban. I reckon Pashtun fighters are like modern Apaches but with AK-47s.

There is much to learn from Afghan fighters. Old school. Adhering to principles. Such as patience.

They wait for the right conditions. Including the moon. Six months, a year, or more.

Tracking, being tracked. Shadows confer much advantage in tracking. Fighting from the shadows. Avoiding the tremendous winds and sun of daylight fighting that favor those with longer rifles.

Often they attack in broad daylight but they usually consider the continuum of the light-dark cycle. Pashtun may attack by night and literally go straight to field to harvest without so much as going home to change shoes.

When eclipse of Moon or Sun, Afghans will rush outside to fire rifles into the sky to save the Sun or Moon from Satan. This idea is common the world ‘round. Europeans of past did similar. Ringing church bells, clanging pots and pans, blasting fireworks.

When Taliban attacked our massive base, Camp Bastion, destroying Harrier jets and killing our Marine Commander on the ground, I was away from Afghanistan. But I knew immediately there was no Moon. Taliban make such attacks under what we call “Red Air.”

As for Afghanistan, the Moonless attack on Camp Bastion that destroyed our jets on the ground was an epic study in the incompetence of leadership tasked to guard the base.

If they had studied basic tactics, and our incredibly able if illiterate Taliban enemies — American and British Commanders would have realized they were fighting the equivalent of Apaches or Comanches. Those guys kick ass. They may be the enemy, but we must respect or they will destroy our jets on the ground and shoot the Commander dead. And they did.

A Marine intelligence officer on the base contacted me saying my dispatch was amazingly accurate other than a couple small points, which he did not clarify. Given I did that assessment off the cuff — I figured something had to be wrong — but I know how Taliban operate and knew basically how they pulled it off. I had warned many times about such Taliban tactics.

And tonight I see the moon high over Panama. I am in Panama City. The phase is Waxing Gibbous with 98% illumination. Weather tonight over the Southern border of United States is perfect. I checked for El Paso: A cool 62 Fahrenheit, and clear.

The migrants will be storming the border in high numbers during this moon.

Tomorrow the Moon will be full. If no clouds, your body will cast a shadow on the desert. Go there tomorrow, to the border by Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California — and watch during the full Moon as huge numbers of people cross into America.

Strange stuff in a lot of ways, but read it all anyway. It’s Michael Yon, who is definitely someone I’d be most hesitant to gainsay.

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