Leftward ho! – Page 12

A real “Well, duh!” moment

Posted on March 16, 2022March 16, 2022 by Mike

A perennial favorite poses the silliest of questions.

Why Are Leftists And Elitists So Happy About Skyrocketing Gas Prices?

Brandon (Smith, not that other guy) knows the answer as well as the rest of us do, of course, and goes on to lay it out for us.

There is a narrative being spread within leftist/socialist circles by media celebrities and White House cronies, and it is this: Paying high prices for oil and gas is actually a GOOD thing. But why is it a good thing to these people? How do they benefit?

Spoiler Alert: It has nothing to do with punishing Russia economically.

As I write this article crude prices have somewhat stabilized around $110-$115 a barrel, which translates to a little over $4 a gallon for gas across most of the country. I don’t expect this to last very long. My guess is that regular gasoline will end up in the $7 to $8 per gallon range before US shale oil roars back and balances out the market. I realize that this is a conservative estimate and perhaps a best case scenario. Gas could go much higher depending on speculation in oil markets as well as continued government interference from the Biden Administration.

The big secret is that gas prices were already going to inflate to epic highs, the Ukraine event is not a catalyst, it’s just adding a little petro to the house fire. The fact is, there are some people out there that are desperate for prices to go much higher regardless of what happens in Ukraine.

Yep. Another example of the shitlib Leftocrats never letting a good crisis go to waste, confirmation of their rock-solid opportunism in the mad quest for more power.

Biden’s electric car initiatives are strange in light of the fact that inflation is already straining people’s pocketbooks yet the government is suggesting those same struggling Americans buy $50,000 to $100,000 vehicles. None of this actually addresses the root causes of the inflation we face. Rather, Biden and leftists seem to be saying “We aren’t interested in fixing the problem, you are just going to have to adapt in the ways we want you to adapt…”

Clearly, the establishment does not want the public to question the real triggers for the inflationary disaster we are witnessing. This is illustrated very well in an article I found by CBS declaring that any suggestions that high oil prices are somehow tied to Biden’s electric car program is “conspiracy theory” related to QAnon.

This is bizarre.

Nawww. It’s typical, is what it is. Smith then lists some of those pesky, debate-proof facts the Left hates like vampires hate garlic before winding up thusly:

To summarize, the elites are happy about rising oil prices today because first, they now have a perfect scapegoat for the disasters inflation will reap; disasters they are responsible for. And second, they now have a backdoor way to introduce their carbon agenda, starting with forced public dependency on expensive and less efficient green technologies and slowly progressing towards total carbon restrictions.

Average leftists are happy about rising gas prices because they ignorantly believe that sanctions on Russian oil hurt Putin. They also ignorantly believe in global warming and they don’t realize how drastically our standard of living will be reduced in the name of carbon dictatorship. In other words, this isn’t a conspiracy to force people to buy electric cars; most people can’t afford a Tesla anyway. But it is a conspiracy to undermine our prosperity and our freedoms through inflationary crisis as well as green energy mandates. Leftists have no understanding of this. They are happy because they are dumb.

Indeed so. They’re like a jilted woman who is so vindictive and hot for vengeance she’s perfectly willing to do things that will harm her too, even badly, just so’s she gets to score some points on her erstwhile man and do him damage in the bargain.

Milestone reached

Posted on December 4, 2021December 4, 2021 by Mike

Anybody remember when State Media ran those somber “grim milestone” reports each and every night on the TeeWee “news,” reminding everyone of Shrubya’s totally unacceptable body count in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Nah, me neither.

The total number of adverse reactions reported in the USA is 1,084,457 as of that date. Over one million adverse reactions…yet the media, and the medical establishment, trumpet how “safe” the vaccines are! If that’s “safe”, then I’m Mata Hari! (The reports for Europe are just as bad, if not worse in certain countries.) Of particular importance is the incidence of heart problems (particularly pericarditis and myocarditis) encountered among the vaccinated. Another looming issue is the rise in stillbirths among vaccinated pregnant women: “We are currently on pace to see a yearly total of 2,838 recorded fetal deaths following COVID-19 shots, while the yearly average of recorded fetal deaths following the vaccination of pregnant women for the past 30 years has been an average of 74 fetal deaths per year.”

Do bear in mind that those record-setting numbers come from the VAERS numbers, which even the CDC itself has admitted almost certainly amounts only to a fraction of the real total.

Medical “science” is racing to explain away those reactions (which, as the bottom graphic above shows, are worse than all previous vaccines of any kind since records began to be kept). Guess what excuse they’ve just invented?

Oh, I’m sure it’s a good one. The deadly OMIGAWD!!™ variant? White supremacists? Trump? The heartbreak of psoriasis? WHAT?!?

Guess what? It’s not the vaccines’ fault at all – it’s stress! That’s why so many vaccine recipients are dropping dead with heart problems!

Note, too, that this excuse will also be used to motivate more money for the medical establishment: “without at least doubling the current funding, the NHS will not be able to tackle the ‘trauma timebomb’, which could have potentially fatal consequences for those suffering with long-term PPSD”. Yeah, riiiiiiiiight. It’s not the vaccines’ fault, so go on foisting their poison on as many people as possible – and give us more money while you’re at it, so we can treat a wholly invented, non-existent stress disorder!

D’you ever get the feeling that the medical establishment as a whole is trying to play us all for suckers?

Sure, and why not? It seems to have worked out extremely well for them so far.

If you haven’t, I suggest you don’t understand the reality of the situation. Do they really think we’re that stupid?

Of course they do; who could possibly imagine otherwise? Have they ever given anybody a single reason to think that they don’t? The big question here is: ARE we? Because frankly, having put up with everygottdamned thing they’ve done over the last nigh-on two years at the very least without a murmur of complaint, I’ve not seen just a whole lot of evidence so far that says they’re wrong in that insulting assessment.

In all the previous pandemics in human history, nobody ever even thought about, or postulated, or theorized, or investigated this syndrome…yet suddenly, out of nowhere, it’s a major factor in fatalities among the vaccinated?

Hate to say it, but in a very sad way there may be a fairly plausible argument in support of the idea, especially when you consider the lamentable reality that the vast majority of Americans today are NOT the sort of stout, independent-minded, indomitable souls their forebears were. Not even close, they ain’t. In a nation populated shore to shore with thoroughly steercotted fruits, flakes, and nuts who get their panties in a bunch over some sane person offhandedly referring to them as “he” instead of “XHRSHIMX” or some other stupid horseshit, the real shocker is that falling over stone-dead because OHHH, I JUST CAN’T EVEN!!! isn’t a lot more common than it is.

Common culprit

Posted on November 25, 2021November 25, 2021 by Mike

I’ve been wondering when (or if) anyone was going to notice this, and was beginning to think it would be left up to me to bring it up myself. Thankfully, Glenn finally saved me the trouble, although even he doesn’t get it entirely right.

A common thread in Waukesha tragedy, Kenosha shootings: Government failure

See the problem there? It’s hardly an unusual mistake, and it’s one I’ve carped about more than once of late: an erroneous premise, assuming something not actually in evidence. Onwards.

When white teenager Kyle Rittenhouse shot three white men who were violently assaulting him, it somehow got treated by the press and politicians as a racial hate crime. President Joe Biden (falsely) called Rittenhouse a white supremacist, and the discussion of his case was so focused on racial issues that many Americans mistakenly thought that the three men Rittenhouse shot were black.

But when a black man, Darrell Brooks, with a long history of posting hateful anti-white rhetoric on social media drove a car into a mostly white Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring dozens, the press was eager to wish the story away. (The New York Times buried it on page A22.) Even when a Black Lives Matter activist connected it to the Rittenhouse verdict, observing “it sounds like the revolution has started,” the media generally downplayed it.

Were the races reversed, of course, we all know that the press would be turning its coverage up to 11, with deep dives into Darrell Brooks’ associations, beliefs, friends and family and more. But doing that here wouldn’t fit the narrative.

In fact, though, there is a thread connecting the Rittenhouse shootings and the Waukesha mass murder. But the thread isn’t so much racism as awful Democratic politicians.

After police shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, sparking unrest, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) didn’t call up the National Guard and secure the streets. Instead, he sent out an inflammatory tweet, saying, “What we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country.”

What followed was a night of arson and rioting. Evers nonetheless sent only a trickle of National Guard over the next two days and declined federal assistance. The result was a huge amount of violence and property destruction (largely affecting the city’s working-class and poor neighborhoods) and a background of unrest that led Kyle Rittenhouse to try to guard businesses and help the injured — a teenager setting out to do what the government refused to do.

Likewise, the Waukesha mass murder was the result of government failure. Darrell Brooks had already been charged with deliberately running over his girlfriend at a gas station and, incredibly, had been released on a mere $1,000 bail. All told, Brooks had been charged with three felonies, plus resistance to arrest and bail jumping.

All that and only $1,000 bail?

Both the Kenosha shootings and the Waukesha mass murder happened because the government failed to do its job. Those are the wages of progressive politics. For the likes of Evers, Chisholm and AOC, the wages are good. But the rest of us pay.

Betwixt the above excerpt’s penultimate paragraph and the last one, Insty makes some good points, but the problem I mentioned above remains: as is almost always the case, these particular incidents are not examples of Demonrat policy failure, but success. Last year’s officially-endorsed chaos served the real purpose perfectly: it drove Trump from office, intimidated and terrorized the intended targets, and drove in the wedge between racial and socioeconomic classes further and more snugly—all vital and ongoing projects for not only the Demonrat Party specifically, but for the Uniparty/Deep State/TPTB generally.

Only to People of the Blue Pill, whose vision is distorted by the mistaken assumption that their goals and intentions are roughly the same as ours, can such resounding success look like failure. Once you let go and realize that there is actually not the slightest congruity between them, it all begins to make sense. Even the best mechanic can’t determine what’s wrong with the engine until he’s raised the hood.

Think they won’t?

Posted on November 8, 2021November 8, 2021 by Mike

Better think again.

The Biden Regime Will Turn the Military on the People Unless We Push Back
“The coldest of all cold monsters.” That is what the modern state is. Nietzsche’s devastating analysis in Thus Spoke Zarathustra hit the nail on the head: the state is an engine of death. It wages war on the people, its agents are “annihilators” who seek the destruction of everything vital and potent.

All who witnessed the last 18 months of the COVID regime and the biomedical tyranny imposed by Joe Biden and his handlers implicitly understand what Nietzsche meant. The bureaucrats who make up the arm of the state, who serve this cold monster, hate the people. They make their lives miserable. Lockdowns, vax mandates, mask orders, critical race theory in schools, transgender bathrooms…the list goes on and on.

Ritual humiliation is the point. The agents of state power see themselves as the rightful masters of the people. To these creatures of the institutions, citizens are nothing but human resources to be bent to their malformed will.

This perverse view extends even to the American military. The time is coming, soon, in which the armed forces will be turned openly against the people. The Biden inauguration lockdown in D.C.—replete with checkpoints, thousands of national guardsmen, and the full weight of the nation’s security apparatus—was only a taste of things to come.

The Biden regime has no moral compunction against using force at home to impose its will. The barriers are practical, not ideological. Biden, in June of this year, mocked “gun-rights advocates” as a defense against tyranny. They would need “F-15s and nuclear weapons” to defeat the state, Biden claimed.

Implicit in this apparently weird statement is the acknowledgement that his administration would not hesitate to turn its full military might, including atomic bombs, against the populace in a war. The state, the coldest of cold monsters, headed by an endless mob of Anthony Faucis would not hesitate to impose its will in the most brutal manner possible.

At this late date, I think it safe to say that anyone who doesn’t realize that ain’t ever going to.

As America becomes more divided and as the political class becomes more and more unhinged in its attempt to cling to power, the likelihood of state violence against the people increases. America is lucky. So far, there has been no real right-wing acts of terror against the regime. If there were, the situation might already have gotten out of hand.

And if the “right-wing” had demonstrated long, long ago that FederalGovCo would be prevented from breaching its Constitutional constraints by any and all necessary means, we wouldn’t have landed ourselves in this sorry situation to begin with. “Lucky,” you say? Show me a man content to rely on mere luck to safeguard his essential liberty and I’ll show you a man who’s already lost it, and won’t be getting it back anytime soon.

If Americans on the Right are to prevent the use of the military and national security apparatus against the people, we must defang these institutions. The most powerful weapon at our disposal right now is mockery.

GOTT IN HIMMEL, but I am so almighty tired of this crap. Allow me to rephrase my previous statement: Show me a man whose “most powerful weapon” is mockery, and I’ll show you a contemptible slave.

We must strip America’s surveillance state and our bloated military industrial complex of honor and deference.

As if they gave so much as a damp fart about honor, “deference” (whatever the hell he means by that twipe), or least of all what the Serf Class might think of them.

As a practical measure, we need to get public approval for the military to below 40 percent. Without a majority backing its actions, the armed forces cannot be used domestically without significant problems.

Problems such as…?!? Their public-approval rating plummetting all the way to 38%, say? The only “problem” that might keep these people up nights is the prospect of some lone American Patriot slipping stealthily into his house in the wee hours and quietly slitting his fucking throat, or the administration of a little .308 caliber justice from a great distance.

What Christopher Rufo did with critical race theory must be done with the post-9/11 security state.

You do know, I hope, that regardless of Christopher Rufo (whothehell ever THAT might be) and his stunning, peaceful, and entirely legal VICTORY!!! over the forces of darkness, CRT is still being taught in most government schools. Who knows, maybe if we subjected those who teach it to a searing blast of Extreme Mockery™ and strip them of all “honor and deference” they might change their ways, eh?

The Right needs to stay on message, pointing out over and over again that the military establishment is ideologically leftist and defends its own bureaucratic interest.

One more time: THEY KNOW THESE THINGS. THEY ARE PROUD OF IT. THEY DO NOT GIVE A FLYING FUCK AT A ROLLING DONUT WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THAT.

Patriotic Americans have no choice but to wage unceasing spiritual warfare

against our degenerate and corrupt ruling class within the foreign policy establishment. Social media provides an excellent avenue for doing so. Twitter, for one, is populated with a horde of high and mid-level military officers who are both extremely liberal and extraordinarily hostile to the citizenry. They must be exposed for what they are.

GREAT idea. Why, there must be at least forty or fifty people who don’t know what they are by now.

This spiritual battle is just getting started, but there is no time to waste. Americans must join the fray. Unless we push back, the use of America’s institutions of “national defense” will be turned against the people. Spiritedness in defense of our rights is our best weapon.

Complete rusty codswallop. I swear, I’m beginning to think the little gawdhelpus actually BELIEVES this horseshit. Oh, this battle is just getting started alright. But as long as we continue to handicap ourselves by insisting it is and must always remain purely spiritual, we will continue to lose.

An outsider looks in

Posted on October 26, 2021October 26, 2021 by Mike

Rose-colored glasses: OFF.

I am not an American. I am a native born Canadian who practiced law in Toronto and London before becoming a law professor. I have worked in law schools in pre-handover Hong Kong, in New Zealand, and for the last 16 years in Australia. I have had sabbaticals in the United States, Canada, and Britain. And yet despite not being an American I am going to be presumptuous enough to offer some comments about the United States. +

These won’t be disinterested comments because I like the United States a lot. I think America has been, and is, a force for good in the world. Who better today to be the world’s most powerful nation? Of course, I would have said the same about the British Empire up to its post-World War II petering out, so some readers may wish to stop reading right now. Yet my point is that I defer to no one in claiming the crown of being the most pro-American, non-American law professor there is working outside the United States today.

Start with how you run elections.

I won’t excerpt the next part—the point I want to cover comes later in the piece—but you definitely want to read it for yourself. Some may find it shocking. ALL of us should find it horribly embarrassing, infuriating, and…motivational, shall we say.

Then there is Joe Biden. I’d say he won firstly because of COVID (no COVID, no Biden presidency) and secondly because he sold himself as a moderate, safe pair of hands that suburban voters and so-called “NeverTrumpers” could convince themselves wouldn’t go too far to the political Left. Instead, and I quote a savvy political scientist friend here in Australia, “these suburban voters got precisely what they saw and knew, but pretended not to notice.”

This is a president who is barely articulate; who is unable to field two or three consecutive tough questions; and who looks to any disinterested observer to be significantly impaired in terms of his mental facilities. Think back to the sort of press conferences former President Trump fielded and the level of press hostility to him that oozed through the room, day in and day out, with all the back and forth. Were it not for a sort of journalistic praetorian guard around the current president, one that shields him from all but the softest of softball queries—and even these are frequently fumbled and make for excruciatingly embarrassing TV clips down here in Australia—we would all be openly wondering how much longer he could stay in office. This decline was obvious to any observer before last year’s election, of course. Trump Derangement Syndrome may have given lots of voters grounds “not to notice.”

But there is a price to pay for willful blindness. That price is especially high for voters on the Right of the political spectrum, those who very much disliked former President Trump’s coarseness, vulgarity and brawler’s instincts and hoped for a relatively painless return to civility in the political sphere without too much long-term damage. From this observer’s perspective that chimera was never on offer. It was a mirage, a fantasy. And any honest assessment should have concluded that was the case before last year’s election. Indeed, if today’s polls mean anything (an open question), then with Biden now down to below 40 percent approval and completely underwater not just with Republicans but with Independents, buyers’ remorse has set in. Big time. Alas, that is not how elections work. As President Obama made clear (when he won, not when Mr. Trump won), elections have consequences.

I’m with H.L. Mencken on this. Voters deserve to get what they wanted. And they deserve to get it good and hard. For more than a few suburban and NeverTrumper Republicans, I suspect that is precisely how they are getting it at the moment. Whether they can admit as much, to others or to themselves, is a separate question.

A fair enough point, with one crucial issue carefully elided, namely the patently fraudulent 2020 “election,” stolen in front of our very eyes with total impunity in what has to be the all-time record setter for Most Audacious In A Scummy Role. That successful hijacking suggests the need for a revision of Mencken’s classic aphorism, which in full says: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Updated to more precisely reflect contemporary American reality, it should run more along the lines of: American “democracy” is the theory that the common people deserve to get what they’re willing to put up with, good and hard.

That one should hold until such time as the limit on what we’re willing to put up with has been reached and overtopped, at which point everything goes pear-shaped, the more astute bettors cash out and quickly leave the casino.

Yes, Virginia, there IS a truck-driver shortage

Posted on October 24, 2021October 24, 2021 by Mike

And it was intrusive government that created it.

After a long cross-country flight, I made it out of LAX and into an Uber. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but the driver was. And hearing that I was a journalist, he wanted to tell me a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, but this may have been the most important one I let go.

He hadn’t always been driving an Uber at 11:30 at night. Not all that long ago he used to have his own business with 7 trucks before he was bankrupted by California’s insane regulations.

I listened, but didn’t pay enough attention. The impact of California’s Democrat legislative supermajority on truckers was just another data point alongside what was happening to freelancers of all kinds and a lot of small businesses. Stories like this were everywhere and there was little interest in them even in conservative circles outside the tarnished golden state.

I’m sure California’s meddlesome over-regulation isn’t helping matters any, but the truth is that the bigger, broader hand of FederalGovCo has done more damage by far. The driver shortage has been an issue since back when I was still trucking, and that was over fifteen years ago. I still talk now and then with a good few who are still out there on the job, including my own brother, and so am still more or less up on doin’s. And what’s crystal clear is that, due to numerous factors that all boil down to inept, staggeringly clueless government micromanagement, vanishingly few young guys have any interest at all in getting into the industry. Meanwhile, the increasingly-fed-up old hands are getting out just as quick as they possibly can.

Y’know, pretty much as has happened in every other corner of the economy that has felt the five-thumbed hand of government tightening around its throat for any significant length of time.

The massive supply chain mess that’s leaving stores empty and orders unfulfilled doesn’t have a single point of failure, but dozens of them. China’s energy shortages, the overhyped predictive powers of Big Data, the fragility of the global economy, fuel costs, and welfare state worker shortages are all players. But California’s truck bans are a key link in the great failure chain.

While I was riding home that night, California trucking companies were going bankrupt at a rapid rate. Few outside the industry were paying attention or understood what that might mean.

2019 was described as a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year. Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed. Many went into the expanding last mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon. But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.

Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority’s Assembly Bill 5 into law. While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law. (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)

AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions. The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism. One of the fields was trucking.

Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

AB5 was not only the assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats who were aggressively trying to unionize the industry and to impose environmental regulations on it.

It was not, nor was said assault limited to California or ever more onerous “Save Gaia!” measures. The willful destruction of the trucking industry is multifarious and complex, from the implementation of nearly incomprehensible tangle of hours-worked limitations to electronic-log requirements to the absurd Regen mandate, which is my personal fave. Regen is so pluperfect an encapsulation of FederalGovCo stupidity as to beggar belief. To wit:

There’s no such thing as a good time for downtime, especially when it’s unexpected. And one issue many fleet drivers don’t plan for is forced regens.

If you haven’t experienced this issue yet, consider yourself lucky. A forced regen occurs when soot builds up inside the diesel particulate filter (DPF) to the point that the vehicle is no longer operable. When this happens, a driver has to pull over and initiate a self-cleaning process that can take up to 40 minutes — valuable time that could have been spent on the road.

If that sounds confusing, it really isn’t. The DPF traps the soot; the DPF gets full; driver must pull over IMMEDIATELY for a “forced regen” when the warning light comes on, lest severe damage be done to the engine of a truck he just paid 150k or a good bit more to purchase.

Now, here’s where a sensible person’s head will start to spin like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. Know what a “forced regen” is? Why, nothing other than the process of ALL THE PARTICULATES AND SOOT THE FILTER REMOVED FROM THE ATMOSPHERE BEING BLOWN BACK OUT INTO THE ATMOSPHERE AGAIN. Only instead of it being done gradually, over a wide area, the gunk is expelled all at once, in a single spot. Whenever you’ve seen a big rig sitting on the side of the highway, a thick column of smoke belching skyward from the stacks, what you’re witnessing is the hand of FederalGovCo in action, just another Superstate Success Story™.

Ahh, but let’s not be offering any congratulations or humble thanks to our Lords and Masters on another Job Well Done quite yet, folks. Because as always, there’s more.

Last year, the California Air Resources Board issued a press release boasting that it had taken a “bold step to reduce truck pollution”. The bold step required switching to electric trucks.

“We are showing the world that we can move goods, grow our economy and finally dump dirty diesel,” Jared Blumenfeld, California’s Secretary for Environmental Protection, sneered.

Oh, is THAT what you think you’re “showing the world”? Because what the world is actually seeing looks not at ALL like what you just said. But hey, you do you, Poindexter. Live your truth, by all means. The snickering you’re hearing only means that we’re mighty impressed by your achievements, that’s all. Awestruck, even. Carry on.

While the ultimate truck ban was scheduled for 2045, an initial phase-in of 5% to 9% begins in 2024. Last year, California’s DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. With “green” trucks costing $70,000 more, this was a non-starter for already troubled independent owner-operators and even larger companies.

That was part of the plan.

Well, of course it was. These oozing chancres are always and forever working a Plan, a trait not limited to just the Califrutopia-localized sub-genus of the Rodentia Bureaucraticus species either. Bad as the worthless parasites have made our national situation already, the one certainty is that things are going to get much, much worse. That’s what they are, it’s what they do.

“The Government Is Not Your Friend, No Matter What Politicians Tell You”

Posted on October 1, 2021October 1, 2021 by Mike

Any questions?

The dirty little secret about government is that its purpose is not really to make the lives of citizens better but, rather, to accumulate power at the expense of citizens. Not sure about that? Ask yourself, how many government agencies have put themselves out of a job because they succeeded? There’re a few that technology left behind, like the Steamboat Inspection Service; others that served their purpose, like the Defense Homes Corporation; while others were merged into other agencies like the General Land Office, subsumed into the Department of Interior. In our history, there have been fewer than 100 federal agencies that have actually been shuttered, and most of those existed in the early 20th century to deal with the Depression or the two world wars.

According to the Federal Register, the federal government has 457 different agencies. That’s 457 agencies covering virtually every aspect of American’s lives, most of which are staffed by unelected bureaucrats, all of whom spend your money and many of whom write regulations that carry the force of law which the government’s police power enforces. This includes everything from the State Department to the Geographic Names Board to the International Broadcasting Board to the ATF.

And that 457 is misleading. While it includes a dozen organizations tied to Defense, there are dozens more agencies that come under it that are not listed in the Federal Register such as the DoD Education Activity or the Office of Naval Research. Wikipedia lists a more realistic, but still lacking, 1,500.

The American government has become a leviathan. It’s everywhere, involved in virtually every aspect of American’s lives, and it’s perpetual, regardless of its record of dismal failure.

The government spends $30 trillion over half a century and reduces poverty by 1%. The government spends more on education than virtually every nation on the planet yet 85% of the students in its biggest (and most minority-filled) school districts fail basic reading and math, the building blocks for success in our dynamic society. And we’re supposed to believe government works for us?

American governments spend more money on education and social programs than anything else, more than the GDP of most countries. Yet even as they fail, year after year, decade after decade, the funds keep growing, regardless of their catastrophically abysmal track record.

And that tells you everything you need to know about the nature of governments. Their goal isn’t to solve problems. They’re not here to make life better for citizens. Their goal is not to protect the lives and liberties of citizens. No, government is the Borg. Its raison d’etre is simple: Grow revenue and increase power for itself and unions.

Proof? Despite the fact that the United States has 3,143 counties in 50 states spread out over 3,796,742 square miles, nine of the twenty richest counties are in a circle less than 100 miles across with Washington DC at its center. And what is the industry that drives that wealth? Finance? No. Entertainment? No. Steel or autos or high tech? No. One thing: Government power.

Accumulating power is the fundamental nature of government, and our Founding Fathers understood that which is why they gave us the Bill of Rights and particularly the 9th and 10th Amendments. For the first 150 years of our nation, those guardrails stood relatively firm, but today they are simply gone. Sadly, America has become so detached from our Constitution that 90% of what our government does is unconstitutional.

Oh, I wouldn’t say “detached from our Constitution,” exactly. With at least twenty to thirty percent of the country completely in the dark about what it says and what it means; another fifty percent implacably hostile to everything it represents; and fully one hundred percent of the gott-damned goobermint ignoring it—on the rare occasions when they aren’t actively striving to flush it down the toilet altogether—what chance does the poor, dear old thing have, realistically?

On principles and motivations

Posted on September 12, 2021September 13, 2021 by Mike

When you know the Who, the What, and the How, all that remains to suss out is the Why. Which, when it’s government under discussion, is never all that tough to do.

The question is on every thinking person’s minds – though the answer varies. What is this all about?

The Push for the Jab?

The most benign explanation is that they – the pharmaceutical cartels that wield shocking influence over the government – are determined to use the government they bought and paid for to get a return on their investment, via enshrining mandatory and universal forced-medicine. People are fools if they believe that this is a one-time thing.

I have been screaming into the wind for decades about the importance of understanding precedents. If they can make you do A then they can make you do A1. So, if it becomes a requirement that you roll up your sleeve for this Jab, you will be required to roll up your sleeve for future Jabs – and perhaps much more than just Jabs.

Which is exactly what I was screaming into the void about right from the “two weeks to flatten the curve” phase of the even-now-escalating Fauxvid scam: You do not, MUST NOT EVER willingly lay Principle on the altar of Safety, no matter what cause, what purported emergency, is put forth as justification. Period, full stop, end of story. Historically speaking, the purpose of an altar is sacrifice. Allow yourself to be gulled into forgetting that—even once, even momentarily—and whatever dear, imperiled thing placed thereupon will almost certainly be lost to you, for all time.

And, well, here we all are.

If, after all, the precedent is established that you must submit to a medical procedure because you might otherwise get sick and might otherwise get others sick, then other medical procedures will be similarly required – and justified on he same basis. If the precedent is accepted, there is no way to argue against such an expansion – the principle of the thing having been conceded.

It is like the income tax, or the property tax on your home or any other tax. If the principle is accepted that you “owe” the government a penny because the government decrees you “owe” it a penny, what is to prevent it from decreeing you “owe” it a dollar? If the precedent is allowed to stand that the government can just take your penny, there is no principled objection to it taking more.

There may well be more to it than just money – and the control it will enable over the lives of every American who is compelled to work in order to earn his daily bread. We certainly know it is not about our “health,” a fatuity that would be funny were it not for the tens of thousands of deaths and serious, life-altering Adverse Events (as these are styled) that are undeniably associated with the Jab. It is ridiculous – it is evil – to demand that people who are perfectly healthy and whose health is in little, if any, serious jeopardy from a sickness that does not kill 99.8-something percent of the healthy population take the risk of being Jabbed.

Imagine the government ordering people to buy and drive a car that has racked up a body count even 1 percent of the total reported to VAERS – the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System. Well, take that back. The government has effectively ordered people to buy and drive electric cars – which present a known and inherent risk of fire, due to the nature of high-capacity electric car batteries and the known fire risk associated with “fast” charging them. The government has also turned a blind eye to the known risk of defective air bags, which it recalled but which it also refused to allow to be disabled until they could be replaced.

The reason for that being the precedent that would be set, if it did allow it. The government cannot admit error anymore than Dracula can sunbathe. It would be to concede non-omniscience. That it does not always know best. That its decisions sometimes result in…adverse effects.

Let’s just make it another of Mike’s Iron Laws: Place not your trust in government. For it is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

I don’t give a damn whether Washington said those last lines or not, they’re still true, and ought always to be kept foremost in mind.

Lessons learned

Posted on September 11, 2021September 11, 2021 by Mike

All of them harsh, ugly, unsettling ones.

Some days back a friend asked me what we have learned twenty years after 9/11. I sent these answers:

1) That our enemies have taken our measure, and we never took theirs. Bin Laden’s strategic predictions vis a vis Afghanistan and the United States have been vindicated: 9/11 was for the other side a massive, generational strategic success.

2) That the entire American governing apparatus is incapable of real strategic thought.

3) That the federal government of the United States is much more inventive, determined, and relentless in curbing its own citizenry than it is in curbing those who would slaughter that citizenry.

4) That the federal government of the United States will allow foreign-power interests — specifically Saudi and Pakistani — to override and eclipse the just interests of the American citizenry.

5) The preceding item exists, of course, because we are ruled by an elite with much stronger social ties to other elites than to the people of our republic.

6) That our generational response to 9/11 guarantees that 9/11 will happen again and again.

This twentieth anniversary is even more depressing and cruel than they usually are. We didn’t suffer as a lot of Americans did that day — my wife made it out of Lower Manhattan alive, for one thing — but because we are Americans, we suffered. Our leadership class was utterly incompetent to the moment, and remained so for the succeeding generation. Today we have inflicted upon us the twin bookends of blundering who mark the two-decade span. In Pennsylvania, President George W. Bush speaks: the man who cared more for Saudis than Americans while the fires still burned, who abandoned the hunt for the immediate perpetrator mere weeks after the massacre, and who cynically leveraged the moment to pursue his own disastrous projects. In Manhattan, President Joe Biden speaks: the lone figure of significance who opposed the raid to get Osama Bin Laden, and the man who presided over the shameful humiliation of defeat in Afghanistan.
A healthy and virtuous republican citizenry would shun them, and erase their names from the record.

Some questions arise. Now that we’ve decided it’s fine for Al Qaeda and the Taliban to have a country of their own again, can we at least abolish the TSA? Now that we’ve given Al Qaeda and the Taliban a stupendous cache of arms and ammunition, can we eliminate all federal gun-control law? Now that we’ve decided we have a community of interest with the Taliban — including its Al Qaeda elements — can we release everyone jailed on account of January 6th?

Hey, just asking. It hardly seems unreasonable for Americans to ask Washington, D.C., for treatment as generous as Washington, D.C., accords the terrorist movements who slaughtered thousands of us in our own streets.

Not gonna happen, which, as his bitter sarcasm indicates, the author well knows already. Things having worked out so swimmingly for our oppressors, with authoritarian tyranny so comfortably settled in and secure on American shoulders, it’s obvious our masters learned a few useful lessons themselves. Out of all of them, the rewards gained from the mutually-reinforcing virtues of patience and single-mindedness would have to be near the top of the list.

Getting schooled updated! More damning and damaging are the lessons we DIDN’T learn.

America has not learned the lessons of 9/11. The lessons were lost as they were being learned.

Foreign pressure on political leaders in Washington, intellectual laziness or dishonesty in the intelligence community, and political correctness-turned-wokeness made it so.

American society repeated those unlearned lessons as the global pandemic spread from China.

The unlearned lesson goes like this: Trust your instincts about who was responsible for crimes perpetrated against you. Ask tough questions to find out who was behind them, and ruthlessly hold those top enablers accountable. Suspect those who deny the obvious and who discourage honest inquiry. Resist those who abuse their authority and erode constitutional rights in a misguided quest for “security” and “safety.” If you see something, say something loudly and ceaselessly.

In both man-made cataclysms, powerful foreign interests imposed extraordinary pressure to prevent the American public from demanding that the obvious funders and state sponsors be held accountable.

This is not a partisan issue.

The George W. Bush Administration actively discouraged its political allies at home from asking questions about the then-Saudi regime’s state and family-sponsorship of jihadist movements. It refused to entertain questions about involvement of the jihadist regime of Qatar.

For certain, al-Qaeda did not represent the beliefs of many of the world’s Muslims and Islamic clerics and scholars.

Oh? Name three. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

But it absolutely reflected the beliefs of elements of the Saudi regime of the time, and the entire Qatar regime then as now, to say nothing of the international Muslim Brotherhood that they funded.

In a goodwill bid toward Muslim people everywhere, Bush gave his “religion of peace” speech at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C. All well and good. And all proper wartime public diplomacy.

And all a lie, every damned word of it. It was the opening class in Unlearned Lessons 101, a course of instruciton for which the syllabus might easily read: Never go to war against an enemy you’re forbidden to call by his rightful name.

So here we are, 20 years after the jihadist terrorist attacks that redefined our country, triggered a global techno-security system with endless mission creep, handing over our Afghanistan sacrifices to the Taliban and Xi Jinping.

We failed to learn the lessons necessary for victory. And as we don our toylike masks and fight one another over whether or not to take experimental vaccines, and enter everybody into an ever-growing global database, we fail yet again to understand those who attacked us all.

Even though, in our inner consciences, we understand very well.

Well, some of us anyway. As prep for our final exams, we will discover how many of us do, and whether that number will be high enough for a passing grade.

To Sefton

Posted on September 7, 2021September 7, 2021 by Mike

So my very first blog-stop every day, after I’ve painfully hauled my creaky, clanky old carcass out of bed, grabbed a cuppa Joe, and lit the first smoke of the day, is always JJ Sefton’s reliably-excellent Morning Report over at the ol’ AoSHQ. As y’all no doubt know, last Thursday I did a post (“Time to wise up, dont’cha think?“) gingerly (well, for me) taking Sefton to task for this passage in that day’s edition of the MR:

Emphasis mine, because with all due respect to the author, RUFKM? We’re going to play by rules which the other side not only never does but now never needs to because the game, the stadium and the entire league has been wiped out?! Please. Let’s stop pretending. The thugs and terrorist goons of Antifa and BLM are already assaulting us in the streets while the crooked cops, DAs and judges are throwing us into political prisons just for daring to show up in public. But, that said, I think it’s crucial to still show up and vote, not so much being confident that Dao-Min Yen can’t steal the election, but that in the likely event that that happens it will just underscore the fact that America is no more and that we are being held hostage, in many ways just like the hundreds or thousands of Americans left behind in Afghanistan.

I registered my (frankly niggling) disagreement with JJ here with as much caution and reserve as I could muster—neither of those things being what anybody would call my long suit, since I never have had a whole hell of a lot of ’em to begin with—and did so with great reluctance and trepidation. I’ve been a tremendous fan of Sefton’s skillful, astute blogging since before he even came on board at the ol’ Ace Place. JJ is a damned fine writer, and in my opinion has made a valuable contribution at AoSHQ since taking up the post there. The last thing in the world I’d ever want to do would be to antagonize him, slight or insult him, or hurt him personally in any way. As I said in the post: he’s one of Our Guys, and a highly admirable and valuable one at that, one of the most indispensible players on Team Liberty’s first-string squad of heartbreakers and lifetakers.

With that mind, I published the Thursday post with no slight trepidation, although in truth I also didn’t really think it too likely that JJ would ever even see the damned thing. For one thing, there’s never yet been a link to CF from the HQ to my knowledge; honestly, I have no idea if Ace or any of the cobs over there even look in on this site at all. Which, y’know, that’s perfectly okay, I got no gripe with ’em for it. Although I rely a good bit on the HQ as a blog-fodder source, I’ve had no more than a brief and perfectly cordial email exchange or two with Ace over the years, and no such correspondence with any of the cobs. Which, too, is perfectly okay. They do their thing, I do mine. I like their work, I respect them, I check their site more than once a day. We have a great many beliefs and opinions in common, but not all of them. That’s as it should be, too. Anyone who finds himself in one hundred percent, across-the-board agreement with someone else is probably crazy as a shithouse rat, a certified headcase.

The folks over there have made AoSHQ a genuine blogosphere juggernaut, one of the biggest of the Bigs, by dint of a lot of what Heinlein called “skull sweat,” dedication, and effort. Having been on this beat myself for twenty years now almost to the very day, I know full well how much work it is, what it requires of the person doing it. Trust me, this blogging gig takes a lot more out of a fella than most who haven’t tried it probably realize— it’s way more time- and labor-intensive, more just plain exhausting, than you might think. The people at AoSHQ didn’t rise to their current lofty position by either coincidence or dumb luck, I assure you.

So in light of all of the above, imagine my surprise to see this earlier today:

Good morning, kids. Tuesday and it’s back to work and school after the long Labor Day weekend. Or at least it would be if we were living in normal times. But this is the “new normal” where we are through a glass and darkly. I don’t usually respond to criticism but in this instance I feel it will help make my point about the state of play and what it means for all of us. Mike over at Cold Fury was a bit irked with my observations on elections in a post-2020 world:

I do hate to look as if I’m jumping all over JJ here; I have tremendous respect for him, and always enjoy his posts. Thankfully, after the above-noted momentary swerve into the “Vote HARDERER!TM” ditch, he righted himself and got back on track again with those closing ‘graphs. But I declare, if I see one more of Our Guys (and Sefton surely is that) so much as bring up American “elections” again as if they still mattered as anything other than pure theater, I may just start rending my garments, tearing out what hair I have left, and swallowing my tongue over it.

It’s a fair point, because I too have on more than one occasion called out pundits, respected and otherwise, who write the most perceptive essays on where we’re at yet shit all over them in the end with exhortations to organize and/or “Vote HARDERER.” In my own defense I will chalk it up to not adequately articulating and organizing my thoughts insofar as my perception of things, so with that let me see if I can get it right. As I said, through a glass and darkly. It’s some sort of alternate reality where everything appears to function as before but it’s all wrong. Terribly wrong. For me that happened 20 years ago this week. Shock, numbness, and denial. After that comes acceptance and G-d help me if I ever feel that because I’ll have to stick my head in an oven. Assuming we haven’t banned natural gas by then.

A perfect response, in my opinion, adroitly and handsomely done. JJ goes on from there to make another point I’ve been meaning to get around to myself, but haven’t yet found time or opportunity for it:

Some people, and absolutely justifiably so, are calling for the impeachment and removal from office of Joe Biden.

The Afghanistan disaster has surely taken out what little fetid wind was left in the sails of Nancy Pelosi’s Trump-hate, January 6 committee. Instead of a Monrovian “era of good feelings,” America is having and executing a time of increasing unease over bad policy failings in every important field, ostensibly presided over by an opinionated but incoherent man approaching the last extremity of cognition adequate to hold such a great office. It cannot go on like this and it won’t.

Joe Biden is not up to the job. Barring a miracle (and they do occur sometimes), he will not go on for three-and-a-half years. The powers that be in the Democratic Party appear already to be trying to shuffle the vice president out of the deck and bring in someone who might be able to hold the commanding heights of American government through what is building up to be a broad consensus for radical changes of personnel and policy.

Aside from his blind worship of FDR which has rendered more than a few otherwise cogent essays unreadable, I really like and respect Conrad Black. But here too, the “miracle” he’s relying on is not Biden lasting until 2024, but of a leopard changing its spots. Joe Biden is merely the proverbial deck chair on the Titanic. The entire Democrat Party, and sad to say most of the GOP, are at best incompetent grifters and at worst anti-American ideologues. Even if you got rid of both parties we’re still left with the Leviathan bureaucracy – including our military – that is 100% Marxist/socialist and a seriously corrupted judiciary which is just as bad. And that’s just government. The same rot has infected our schools, private sector and even our houses of worship. I am in total agreement that some sort of miracle is required at this point. But replacing Biden and even Harris along with him, is not it.

Black, like so many people, is still under the illusion that America functions under regular order, with the rules, conventions and norms associated with them respected and followed. Canadian or not, the fact that he and so many others cannot or will not see that the USA as of last January 6th has been overthrown is troubling to say the least. Troubling but understandable. It’s human nature to not want to face that horrible, undeniable truth. Maybe that’s why I dithered or sent mixed signals about voting.

Ironically enough, I’m smack in the middle of work on a post saying almost exactly the same thing. Mine will undoubtedly be a lot wordier than his, with wild stream-of-consciousness digressions, overlooked typos, and miscellaneous other grammatical, syntatical, conceptual, and structural atrocities scattered throughout. Hey, you get what you pay for, people. Now, to the thrilling conclusion:

But there’s no denying that the enemy is doing all it can to consolidate power, control elections, flood the country with foreigners (now including unvetted Afghanis in the thousands), and continue to use a phony health “crisis” as a means to eviscerate whatever shred of the Constitution still existing. Did I mention sick a feral law enforcement and intelligence apparatus on anyone who dares object, soon to be aided and abetted by a military that can’t fight the PLA or the Taliban but has its weapons trained on the climate and “insurrectionists” but mostly average G-d fearing Americans.

So, what do we do? If you vote, they’ll steal it or otherwise create some other pretext to cancel the elections to avoid being ousted, Dao-Min Yen notwithstanding. If we don’t vote, they win automatically and declare a mandate (which is what they do win, lose or draw anyway). Do we take to the streets peacefully? That risks being arrested for insurrection. Do we do nothing? I wish I knew what to tell you. We are out of time. Either there is a mass movement of civil disobedience where people really do have to risk everything here and now or else it’s over over here. And there for 500 years as the Pox ChiCom-ica replaces the Pax Americana.

I’ve never felt so helpless, useless and hopeless in my entire life. I’m just sick and tired. Maybe I just need to eat something.

Fret not, my friend. The way things are going, NOT feeling the way you do would be something to worry about. Your reaction, though certainly discomfiting and unpleasant, is the only sane, appropriate option for any American whose moral compass and integrity remain intact and functional. The problem here ain’t with you. It’s with them—with what they’ve done, and continue to get away with doing. It’s a bona fide litany of outrage and evil so excessive, so brazen, so mind-bendingly perverse that it might make even Lucifer himself blanche and recoil in disgust. As a decent and honorable man yourself, if you weren’t positively choking from despair, gloom, and incandescent rage over the whole sordid mess, it would be an indication that there’s something seriously, seriously wrong with you.

A new “ism”

Posted on September 4, 2021September 4, 2021 by Mike

Same as the old “ism.”

The Goal of Covidism is Communism
Most of us have heard the phrase: “The goal of socialism is communism”. Perhaps, at its core, the statement is a reference to creeping incrementalism, or, stated another way: Give Marxism an inch and it takes a mile.

Just like Covidism: it was given an inch and it took a mile. In only eighteen months America advanced, incrementally, from Flatten the Curve® and lockdowns to mandatory vaccinations: All because of a virus that mostly endangers the elderly and those with serious health concerns.

Don’t be surprised if another false flag were to occur the next few days – or around September 11, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of 911.

Believe it or not, such an event would further the cause of Covidism. Yes, Covidism.

At the start of the “pandemic”, on April Fool’s Day 2020, I posted an article entitled “In the New Age of Deception, Coronavirus has Hastened the Old Collectivism” whereupon the following observations were made:

The COVID-19 outbreak has proven to be a perfect coup de grace on America, and in ways we’re only beginning to realize. It has caused We the People to turn on each other under the guise of caring for one another.Or, Essentialism, twisted from the words of collectivist revolutionary Karl Marx (1814 – 1883): From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Indeed, Covidism is the New Marxism as the natural rights of Americans have been subsumed by The Collective. Covidism has also decimated the American middle class and small businesses while the billionaire oligarchy, and multinational corporations, have further consolidated power and centralized supply chains around the globe.

Politically, under Covidism, a quiet revolution occurred on November 3, 2020 when a handful of Democrat Party-controlled precincts in a few swing states, altered the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. It marked the beginning of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”. Since then, Covid vaccine mandates have been implemented throughout the U.S. government, military, and Covid-subsidized health systems – as “private” corporations have forced jabs for jobs policies upon employees.

The social architects behind Covid are, in fact, the central party planners of Covidism. Correspondingly, modern transnational corporations have become de facto collectivist entities fused together by big government, financial corruption, and globalism.

Big Government, statism, fascism, Big Business, corporatism, or corrupt and coercive centralization by any other name: when staring down ostracism, harassment, potential unemployment, homelessness, starvation, incarceration, and, ultimately, death…what’s the difference?

Not much that I can see. But ain’t that always the way with these Leftards: the name is always changing, but it remains the same old game.

Dead things

Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Mike

Steyn on going with the flow.

G K Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man “about the direction in which the world is going. People were so certain about the direction that they differed only about the pace”. But America’s politics barely musters that profound a conflict: AOC wants radical judges to overturn the remnants of the constitutional order; Lindsey Graham votes to confirm them all anyway. It’s not an argument about the pace, only one’s publicly stated enthusiasm for it.

As to their certainty about “the direction” we’re headed, Chesterton remarks a paragraph or two later:

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

There are a lot of “dead things” going with the stream. The United States military is utterly dead, at least in terms of being a force of influence in the world for anyone other than German supermarket managers dependent on the local base’s patronage. Thoroughly Modern Milley goes with the flow because he’s all ribbons and no chest. Pentagon press releases read like Teen Beat in the Seventies. Last Wednesday, as the chaos at the gates of Hamid Karzai International was beamed around the world, the United States Army stayed on message:

V Corps Hosts ‘Don’t Date A Jerk’ Workshop

FORT KNOX, Kentucky — V Corps Soldiers took the opportunity to enrich their personal lives during the chaplain-led single Soldiers Strong Bonds retreat in Mason, Ohio, Aug. 20-23.

The retreat, themed “How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk,” taught Soldiers relationship enhancement with a focus on the importance of picking a future partner that leads to a healthy, sustainable relationship.

The United States has picked the Taliban as its “future partner”. Are you really going to take relationship lessons from Milley & Co?

The following day, as near two hundred poor souls were blown to smithereens, the Pentagon’s irredeemably oblivious wankers were Tweeting up a storm about “Women’s Equality Day”, even as the women they abandoned are being fitted for their Sharia body-bags.

I saw on Twitter some veterans objecting to Tucker Carlson’s ongoing mockery of a military that boasts of new flight suits for pregnant fighter pilots: Yeah, right, they scoffed at Tucker, let us know when you’ve been through boot camp. The only point of boot camp is to assist in the winning of wars. If you can’t win a war, boot camp is bollocks: it does not fulfill its purpose. How can you be so tone-deaf, so self-unaware that you don’t realize that it’s not just some Faux News blowhard but near the entirety of the planet that’s laughing at you? You’ve just given the guys who pulled off 9/11 a victory bonus of 22,174 humvees to ride around in, and you’re so bloody out of it you want to talk about boot camp? Every veteran should be joining that poor shmuck who got fired the other day and demanding mass resignations at the Pentagon. And, if you’re not, carry on with the boot-camp braggadocio for the next seven decades of unwon wars, and see what things are like by then. The US military needs to be much smaller, leaner, meaner, and way savvier about the world.

I find most of the US news coverage of what’s happening somewhat narrow: on the right, it’s all about leaving no American behind; on the left, it’s about leaving none of the 4.7 million (at the time of writing) Afghan interpreters behind. Everywhere else, it’s about a world leaving America behind.

But so what? Most Americans have little appetite for the tedious chores of global hegemon; they’re already shrugging off Afghanistan for the exciting victories closer to home: Harvard’s new “chaplain” is an atheist; DC’s most elite private schools have decided that “physics classes will include discussions of social justice such as kneeling during the national anthem”; in California, high-schoolers now place their hands on their hearts before the LGBTQWERTY flag and teacher Kristin Pitzen declares, “I pledge allegiance to the queers.” There is nothing progressive or edgy or groovy about these weary provocations: American education is merely another dead thing, inert and decayed and drifting with the stream. The contempt in which it is held by Xi and Macron alike is entirely deserved.

Out there, in towns you’ve never heard of, among people you’ve never heard of, there is still life in America, but to survive they will have to give up reflex veneration for institutions that despise them. The urgent objective is to throw off this awful diseased albatross of a self-enriching know-nothing Sino-suck-up elite whose chosen frontman’s decrepitude was designed to teach voters that electoral politics is entirely irrelevant as a mechanism of change. Any meaningful course correction will not come from McConnell and McCarthy: You have to shift the direction, and the dead thing of Conservatism Inc will drift along with the flow.

To the rest of the planet, the last fortnight has made the legendary “moderate” a too perfect embodiment of the superpower as rotting cadaver. Oh, but the corpse knows who his enemies are: After British cabinet ministers were quoted in the Washington press as calling Biden “senile” and “doolally”, the Telegraph reports that Joe is bent on revenge.

Yeah, sure, whatever…

The world is moving on.

Our sole consolation is that all our precious, mollycoddled white-shitlibs here at home, Mr and MX Karen and Ken Pissypants, are really not going to enjoy where it’s going.

Totalitarianism is NOW

Posted on August 31, 2021August 31, 2021 by Mike

It’s no longer coming; it’s here.

I say that’s the direction we’re going because everybody seems to have a slightly different definition of what totalitarianism encompasses and very few people would say that we are actually living in a totalitarian society right now.

After all, this is “the land of the free.” This is “the freest country on earth.” Totalitarian? Hey, we fought those guys — and we won!

But the truth is we are actually living in a totalitarian society right now. And we’d better recognize that so we can deal with reality.

Is it as fully developed as Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, or North Korea’s socialist paradise? Of course not. But do you have to wait for the day-long bread lines or the boxcars full of doomed Deplorables to recognize the nature of a thing? Most people probably will wait — until it’s too late. But Western society — led by the Five Eyes countries of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, and trailed faithfully by most of Europe — has already gone totalitarian with dizzying speed.

Totalitarianism is not “down the road.” It’s not merely in politicians’ dreams. It’s not merely something one administration wants that can be undone by v*ting in a different bunch of liars, thieves, con artists, and slave-masters. It’s not merely a temporary condition that will be lifted once the current crisis (whichever current crisis is being used as the excuse) has abated. It’s here. It’s the new nature of our society and the everyday practice of our ruling class.

Tons and tons more I could excerpt, but I’ll just say it’s the esteemed, estimable, and in fact gifted Claire Wolf’s latest two-part opus, so I trust you’ll all click on over to read the whole thing. There is one more thing I just have to excerpt, however. Claire helpfully provides a quite copious list of what she defines as “bullet points for totalitarianism,” by way of laying out the warning signs. She opens with these, then continues on from there:

Strong central rule by a single interconnected cadre or class

An elite corps of managerial “experts” attemping to shape society

Extensive surveillance networks, both directly run by government and consisting of volunteers eager to report on neighbors, family members, co-workers, and strangers

An obsession with keeping the elite’s own secrets while taking away everyone else’s privacy

Sweeping away of legal, social, religious, and political traditions

Iron control over the economy; government either owns the major means of production is in clubby collaboration with those who do

Control over the means of communication; constant barrage of propaganda

Censorship of any dissenting views, even when such views are based on facts

Increasing misery for the people it claims to represent

Police using arbitrary violence and terror as a control tactic

The law is whatever those in charge say it is

Tragically laughable elections (if any) with unashamedly absurd outcomes

All dissent is branded evil and harshly punished

Sound familiar? Because anyone of even modest intellectual means would have to find these confirmations of our current status absolutely marrow-freezing, seems to me.

I swear, I’m flattered and honored damned near speechless at this humble l’il websty’s inclusion on her blogroll page. No idea how that might’ve happened, but my grateful thanks to you for it, Claire.

First admission, more to come

Posted on August 28, 2021August 29, 2021 by Mike

Screw it all, I’m just gonna say it: I told ya so. Right from the start, I did.

AUSTRALIA- NSW Gladys Berejiklian announces there is no return to normal life.

Even if there are no COVID cases and 80% of the population are vaccinated, social distancing and restrictions will remain for good.

Total state control. Always#COVID19 #covidnsw #NoVaccinePassports pic.twitter.com/ZoHSNCiVAR

— Bernie's Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) August 23, 2021

Your move, Aussies. The whole world’s watching.

Coming soon, to an Occupied nation very near you.

(Via surakblog)

The truth gets loose

Posted on August 19, 2021August 19, 2021 by Mike

Look, over there! A SQUIRREL!

25,687,041 Total population of Australia as of 30th June, 2020

COVID & VACCINE STATS AS OF AUGUST 18th FROM GOVERNMENT SOURCES:
40,774 total Covid cases 970 total Covid deaths
10,195,842 individuals with at least one dose of vaccine.
ADVERSE REACTION REPORTING AS OF AUGUST 4th

28,487 Astrazeneca Adverse Reactions 254 Astrazeneca Deaths 16,816 Comirnaty Adverse Reactions 166 Comirnaty Deaths

Vox unpacks it:

The first thing that leaps out is 420 reported vaccine deaths compared to 970 total Covid deaths. Even if we leave out the assumption that adverse reactions are under-reported, assume that all of the Covid deaths are actually OF Covid rather than WITH Covid and are of the unvaccinated, and ignore the natural mutation of the virus to more contagious, less lethal variants, the relative risk factors make it clear that it is riskier for the average Australian to become a vaccine recipient than to remain unvaccinated.

Chance of unvaccinated individual contracting and dying of Covid = one in 26,481

Chance of vaccinated individual dying of an adverse vaccine reaction = one in 24,275

So, even in the most favorable possible case for the vaccines, the average individual’s risk of death is essentially the same. And once you begin factoring in comorbidities, age, the decreased lethality of the Delta variant, the number of vaccinated deaths, the possibility that the patient died of something else while Covid-positive, and the mounting evidence that the ADE scenario is in effect, it is clear that the vaccines pose a greater threat to human life than does the virus.

There’s more, of course. These days, when isn’t there?

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