Life in a once-great nation

Deception, intrigue, and coverup: the games they play

Posted on March 4, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

It didn’t begin with Decomposin’ Jaux, it’s a longstanding Presidential tradition.

Deception and Failure
From Wilson to Roosevelt to Biden, and beyond.

White House physician Kevin O’Connor recently proclaimed that Joe Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” The Delaware Democrat quickly raised doubts by stumbling up the stairs of an aircraft, a feat he once performed three times on a single ascent.

Dr. O’Connor failed to reveal how Biden’s mental competence test had turned out, or even if he had taken one. As on the fitness side, the evidence is already out there.

Joe Biden is sometimes unaware of his own location and mounts a public search for people who recently died, such as Rep. Jackie Walorski. Biden is also famous for spouting gibberish beyond any comprehension, such as here, here, and here, to cite only a few.

For all but the willfully blind, Joe Biden is not mentally and physically fit to exercise the duties of the presidency. To be fair, the Delaware Democrat is not the only White House occupant ever to be in such a condition. Consider, for example, Woodrow Wilson.

From there, the tale of the malignancy Wilson’s rapid-fire sequence of three (3) debilitating strokes and his wife Edith’s all-but-official assumption of the throne in his stead is recounted, along with the polio-stricken FDR’s now-well-known infirmity and the meticulous concealment of same by shadowy, skulking minions in the government he eventually was too incapacitated to “lead.” This specific incident of that long, sordid history is one I hadn’t heard about before:

During the 1944 campaign in New York City, Roosevelt rode in an open car for more than four hours and was “seen by millions, looked cheerful, animated, conversing, waving, throwing his head back with that famous contagious laugh…It seemed evident to all that day in New York that he was as strong, as resilient as ever.” The press and the public had no clue what was happening behind the scenes.

“At points along the parade route the Secret Service had commandeered garage space,” Gallagher recalled. “As the presidential cavalcade passed the garage, the president’s car was turned out of the parade into the warmth of the heated building. Secret Service agents quickly lifted the president from the car and stretched him out full length on blankets laid on the floor. They removed his clothes down to the skin. He was toweled dry and given a rubdown. He was redressed in dry clothes, brandy was poured down his throat, and he was lifted back into the car. The pit stop was quickly done and the president was soon back in the cavalcade.”

WOW. Okay, that is some SERIOUS skullduggery right there. Now, back to our contemporary contretemps.

Call it the Pangloss presidency, an ongoing disaster proclaimed to be the best of all possible worlds. And for all but the willfully blind, a Pétain presidency is also going on in the United States of America.

In Conrad Black’s phrase, Joe Biden is a waxworks effigy of a president, physically and mentally unfit for duty. This deception is not splendid and the failure already evident. The aftermath will likely be much worse than anything that took place in the wake of Woodrow Wilson or FDR.

Well, in Wilson’s case anyway, the nation was fortunate enough to have one of the very best American Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, to come along behind him and undo nearly all the damage Wilson had wrought. Alas, with national “elections” now reduced to patent farce—locked down tighter than Dick’s hatband via D卐M☭CRAT chicanery compounded by Vichy GOPe co-connivance and Praetorian Media’s unflagging efforts in support—this generation’s Coolidge would never get within shouting distance of the Oval Office.

Doesn’t much matter anyway, I’m afraid; at this late date, we’re way past all that sort of thing now. Far too much has gone on, far too much let slip for far too long. No, the die has long since been cast. If this mess ever is to be cleaned up, it can only be accomplished using means and methods a good bit more drastic, direct, and stringent than mere politics.

Chin up

Posted on March 3, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

I been rasslin’ ‘round in my head all day with how I might present this next without confusing the hell out of everybody, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything. So steel yourselves; gonna be a lot of jumping back and forth betwixt posts on this one. Instead of just providing one link for each excerpt as and when it’s first referenced, as is my usual wont, each time I shift to a different post I’ll re-link where it comes from. That’s the best expedient I can think of.

The Democrats Have Already Won the 2024 Election, Regardless of Who Either Party Runs

We don’t need to recap what happened in 2020, when Sundown Joe* campaigned from his basement and drove enough enthusiasm to have 81 million votes counted for him. The Democrats did a spectacular job of making their stolen votes completely unverifiable. “OK”, I thought. “The GOP has learned their lesson and won’t let this happen again, right?” Wrong.

Jump to 2022. We were ready for the Red Tsunami, which turned out to be a red trickle. Yes, there were factors. I pointed out that the Roe V. Wade victory was worth any temporary losses. Could we have had stronger candidates? Sure, Hershel Walker & Dr. Oz were far from perfect, but spare me that talk as an excuse. The Dems “won” with Raphael “Slum Lord Preacher Millionaire” Warnock in GA, Katie “Abortion Mouse” Hobbs didn’t even make any freakin’ effort to hide the election fraud that she committed! And don’t get me started on Uncle Festerman in PA. The dude got elected despite that fact that he is so clearly brain damaged that he couldn’t utter a single coherent thought! Even more so than the dementia patient who was installed as President after the 2020 election! No, a bigger problem is that the GOP Establishment didn’t want solid majorities in the House & Senate. Cocaine Mitch witheld funding for any candidates who would not kneel and kiss his ring, while barely veiled double agent Lindsey Graham decided to offer the Dems some great Get Out the Vote fodder by introducing a bill (that had ZERO chance of passing) to completely ban abortions immediately after the Roe ruling.

Then in the aftermath, the GOPe decided to spit in the faces of the Normals who they pretend to represent, with Cocaine Mitch proclaiming that sending billions of dollars with no accountability to Ukraine was the top priority of the GOP base. And in a head scratcher, the party decided to reward Mitt Romney’s niece, Ronna McDaniel as GOP Chair. I can see her appeal to the GOPe, as she is great at raising a lot of money from big donors while carefully avoiding producing results with that money (And no, I have no idea why Trump’s people whipped votes for McDaniel on election day).

So what can we expect in 2024? At the top of my post Iinked to my anti-Trump take. There was a lot of disagreement, both in the comments and on various boards where I posted, and most of the disagreement was well articulated. But on top of everything I had to say, it looks like Biden* is trying to use Merrick Garland’s corrupt Department of Justice to go after Trump to keep him from being able to run. This wouldn’t be unprecedented – Tuca recently made a strong case that the Justice Dept. railroaded Nixon out of office. So let’s say that we end up having a bruising GOP primary that toughens the eventual winner, and whoever loses decides to put the country ahead of any personal disputes and endorses the winner. And in this scenario DeSantis is the winner, and we have a simple case of what too many pundits have called, “Trump without the baggage” and the GOP cruises to victory, right?

Well, no, not necessarily.

The first and most important angle to consider when analyzing this stance is the present reality of American elections. President Trump’s seemingly insurmountable election night leads in 2020, which were significantly larger than his leads throughout the night in 2016, somehow vanished into slim Biden victories. In other words: Without our corrupt election systems being corrected, it doesn’t matter who runs since the winner is predetermined. Trump didn’t cost us; the election was stolen. But for the sake of this discussion, we’ll say that our elections are free and fair.

Despite his alleged loss, Trump gained more than 12 million votes from 2016 (and likely more,) the largest increase in vote total for any sitting president in American history and the highest vote total by any presidential candidate ever, aside from Biden’s highly suspicious 81 million votes that same year. So, the media-manufactured Trump baggage has not had any negative impact on voter enthusiasm for Trump. Based on his vote increasing by millions, you could make the argument the baggage led to more people rallying to support him.

Prior to 2016, Conservative voter enthusiasm in the previous two presidential elections was abysmal. John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost convincingly to Barack Obama due in large part to their politically correct, low energy approach to politics when conservatives were looking for the exact opposite.

The “Trump baggage” can be summarized as a combination of his brash style of politics and the never-ending war waged on him by the media. Ironically, Trump’s style was the change America sought, and his exposure of the corrupt media is what has kept him so popular. In essence, Trump is a product of the corrupt environment the media has created, and their hatred towards him makes him more popular. The “Trump baggage” is what was needed to move the needle enough for Trump to win states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that Republicans had not won since the 1980s.

Most of the baggage from the Trump presidency was completely manufactured by media with the purpose of doing exactly what it is accomplishing to an extent now: Diminish enthusiasm for Trump at any cost, no facts needed. The goal was never to prove any of the false accusations against Trump. They knew this was impossible; they created them.

If those examples are considered “too much baggage,” could you imagine the media frenzy with issues of actual substance? Enter Ron DeSantis. To this point, it is obvious why the Florida Governor does not seem to have much baggage, and it isn’t because he has a squeaky-clean past. He currently has not declared a run for the presidency which is when most baggage is exposed (or manufactured.) There already are accusations ready to be weaponized when the time comes. Important to note, as seen with Trump: truth and facts are not needed to create baggage.

It’s a crucial distinction, since the list of DeSantis “baggage” is much ado about the exact same style of deceitful, ginned-up nothing the AmThink author dismisses with Trump. But, as Brother Bob notes, that ain’t the point.

Personally, I thought that the anti-Desantis shots in the post I just linked didn’t have much substance to them, but that’s not the point. To The Radical Left, charges don’t have to have any substance or facts behind them. Lefties will happily believe any lie if it supports their beliefs, and just look at the stupidity they believed about Trump. I could write a few thousand words, but can sum it up with the most egregiously unbelievable example that they all swallowed: Pee Tape, anyone? Of course, in this scenario The Radical Left will also forget their seething hatred for Trump, as one trait they’ve always shared is that they obediently march in lockstep to whoever their leadership labels their latest Emmanuel Goldstein. Ace lays down a few of the ways thet they will delude themselves that they actually like Trump compared to DeSantis. And of course, unless voter fraud gets addressed, pretending any nominee can overcome it is a trap.

Since you brought it up, let’s talk about traps for a sec.

DeSantis 2024 Is a Trap

If voter fraud is not addressed, it doesn’t matter who the candidate is, because democracy in America won’t exist.

Stop trying to take Ron DeSantis away from Florida. Just stop it. I understand the rationale, but it’s wrong. It may be quite reasonable to be jealous of Florida for its governor—the only governor in the nation to win my coveted “competent” rating on every major issue. But before we encourage DeSantis and Donald Trump to have a falling out that splits the party (or, rather, before we let the RINO simps do it at the behest of Democrats and lots of Chinese money), let’s review a few salient points.

First, governors really matter now. The worse Washington gets—and it gets bigger and worse no matter who’s president because the bureaucrats never change—the more important states become. We need to stop thinking of the presidential election as the be-all and end-all of politics. It was never supposed to be that way. States were once so powerful that the federal government had to fight a Civil War to smack them down. States formerly regarded themselves as coequal partners in the nation, not as subservient entities bowing to federal dictates. Whatever else the Civil War achieved, it did immeasurable damage to states’ freedom of action and, by extension, our own.

States have it in their power to undo this damage by protecting their citizens from federal agents who operate outside the law. (Case in point: ATF agents showing up without warrants at peoples’ homes, attempting to entrap gun owners.) But that would require boldness and courage on a level I don’t expect from any governor. Maybe Kari Lake would have done it. But she had her election stolen. DeSantis is the only sitting governor who could conceivably have the strength of purpose to lead a great reawakening of states’ rights. As I say, I don’t expect it. But he’s the only one who could do it—and he won’t do it if he’s busy trying to get himself elected president.

And here’s the other thing about DeSantis. We can call it “the main thing”: DeSantis isn’t going to win in 2024. No Republican is, unless voter fraud is addressed first. That means voting in person, on Election Day, and with a valid picture ID, not voting by mail over the course of a month. If we don’t fix that—and we’re not fixing it—it does not matter who the candidate is: Trump, DeSantis, or any other Republican. None of them have a chance in hell. It has nothing to do with who they are.

I’m going to say this again, simply because far too many “conservative” writers are ignoring it: Trump did not lose in 2020. Republicans did not lose in 2022. If we think we can win with a broader “big-tent” message or with someone who does less mean tweeting, we, in our innocence, are actively helping to destroy this country.

Pretty much, yeah. Back over to Brother Bob for the Big Question.

So what do we do now? We’ve already heard talk about the GOP adopting ballot harvesting techniques, as has already been successfully done in California. While I get the idea of using their tactics against the Lefties, that only goes so far, as the moment it becomes truly effective for us Normals is the day we get FBI raids on the homes of every Republican participating. If you don’t see that happening, look no further than all of the BLAMtifa domestic terrorist walking free while the victims of the January 6th Reichstag Fire rot away in the Garland Archipelago. Even if that threat didn’t hang overhead, I still don’t like it. For one, it gives a huge advantage to the GOPe versus any grassroots Republicans given the monetary and organizational advantages. Second, and more importantly, why should we Normals have to surrender a huge tactical advantage to The Radical Left? And if we become over reliant on harvesting, how soon until Democrats figure out that it’s a great way for them to measure how many fraudulent votes they need to find on election night? On this tactic, I share the brief, profane opinion toward Heinecken that Dennis Hopper offered in the movie Blue Velvet. Side note, but why aren’t any of us Normals pushing how ballot harvesting takes away the right of the secret ballot?

At this point you might be wondering if I’m going to offer anything remotely constructive, assuming you haven’t already put your fist through your screen hoping it will reach my nose. Adam Mill lays out the interesting scenario of boycotting the 2024 election.

I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, either. Completely sitting out the election means an electoral bloodbath downticket and wipes out representation for us Normals at the state and local levels, as well as in the School Board fights, where our base has shown new life. What if we still voted, but all voted a write in for President, such as John Galt? I’m sure that many of you disagree with me, but if I’m right (and I sincerely hope I’m not), how many rigged elections and tyranny at the hands of the Democrats do we put up with before we realize that we’re fighting the last war, and that we lost it years ago? Are we at that stage? I don’t know. Can we avoid reaching the stage where our election process has gone full banana republic, or was 2020 our Pearl Harbor, and 2022 was our Phillippines? I’d like to say that our Midway will be 2024, but based on what I wrote here I don’t see it. Calling out the regime’s illegitamacy is only a starting point, and things will get worse before they get better. But America remains the greatest country to ever exist, warts and all. My uncle didn’t get shot up by Rommel’s Africa Corps to return and live a productive life, while my great uncle didn’t get gunned down on the beaches of Normandy for me to squander what they sacrificed.

We will win this fight, as tyrannies always fall eventually. Some take longer than others. But if Germany could overcome being ruled by literally Hitler, and most of Eastern Europe could throw off Russian tyranny, there’s no reason we can’t do the same. And while we’re not as far along the road as those nations wound up, it’s impossible to ignore the path we’re on. But I’m not giving up.

Nor should you, nor should anybody else. Whatever the answer might turn out to be—and like Bob, I don’t claim to have any good ones myself—there is in fact one out there, just waiting for us to find it. Hope is only ever lost when it’s been abandoned. And that we must not, we cannot, do.

State of (perpetual un)readiness

Posted on March 2, 2023March 2, 2023 by Mike

PopMech takes a look at yet another disastrous multi-billion-dollar boondoggle from the once-mighty US military—a bigger one, probably, than even the F35 Turducken.

How the World’s Greatest Aircraft Carrier Became a $13 Billion Fiasco

Can the military save the USS Gerald R. Ford?

Wrong question. The real question is: should it?

The late 20th century was a time of supreme American confidence and rapid innovation. The Cold War was drawing to a close, the digital age was around the corner, and the Pentagon saw an opportunity to capitalize on peacetime and begin preparing for future conflict. With few diplomatic or military distractions, the United States ushered in a revolution in military technology.

Out of that boom period came ambitions for a new class of aircraft carrier headlined by the transformational USS Gerald R. Ford, a ship featuring an expanded flight deck, a boosted power plant, and support for almost two dozen emergent technologies. Expectations were high. The Ford’s nuclear reactor and propulsion system would triple the electrical power of the preceding Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Its state-of-the-art weapons elevators would move 20,000 pounds of munitions at speeds of 150 feet per minute compared with the Nimitz‘s speed of 100 feet per minute. Its new launch-and-recovery system would be able to handle 270 planes in a single day. From bow to stern, the ship’s innovations—designed to save time, costs, and crew—would revolutionize the way the U.S. military built and used carriers. The Ford would be a symbol of American superiority, one that would project power to American adversaries for five decades of dependable service.

Well, they got the “transformational” bit right, anyway; the Ford definitely IS that. It’s just that it’s part of a decidedly wrong-way transformation: from a capable, powerful military—along with fighters that can’t fight; tanks that can’t tank; rifles more prone to jamming than a pimply, teenaged Stevie Vai wannabe at Sam Ash on a Saturday afternoon; and battalions of mincing, simpering dick-choppers who only signed up so they could get their bulbous naughty parts lopped off by an Army surgeon for free—into a hapless, bumbling, incompetent one.

“There was this thinking of, ‘We are so far ahead of everyone else that we can afford to take a strategic pause and take risks on our acquisition and try new and untested technology,’” says Eric Wertheim, a defense analyst and expert with the U.S. Naval Institute, of the nation’s mindset after the Cold War. “And there was this feeling that the rest of the world is at least 20 years behind us.”

But after two decades of development and delays, the audacity that conceived the Ford seemed to usher its doom. Expected to save the military $4 billion during its life span, the Ford has actually cost billions more than initial estimates. First expected to deploy in 2018, it has been projected to deploy as far out as 2024. When the ship reached the Navy after construction, it was already two years behind schedule, with work outstanding on thousands of items. In 2015, Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Navy aviator, called packing all that tech onto the Ford “the original sin” that damaged the program.

Even the Navy’s top officer acknowledged the problems that have plagued the carrier. “We had 23 new technologies on [the USS Gerald R. Ford] which, quite frankly, increased the risk of delivery on time and cost right from the get-go,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday at a virtual talk before the Navy League’s 2021 Sea Air Space exposition. “And I think industry’s in full agreement with this: We really shouldn’t introduce more than maybe one or two new technologies on any complex platform like that, in order to keep risk at a manageable level.”

Meanwhile, naval advances by U.S. adversaries have added urgency to the Ford’s troubleshooting. The ship’s critics point to its expanding budget and timetable as evidence that the U.S. military should reconsider developing massive nuclear carriers as a foundational element of its naval program. Military advisor Norman Polmar points out that America’s most recent conflicts in the Middle East didn’t even use the Nimitz class to full capacity. “Look what we did in Iraq,” he says. “We launched [just] 20 or 30 strikes a day from a carrier that has 70 airplanes.” And Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has questioned whether the Ford’s price tag justifies its utility. During a 2021 Brookings Institution discussion, Smith asked if there are other ways “to get unmanned systems closer to the fight that don’t cost $12 billion.”

All part and parcel of the truism that generals and admirals are always preparing to fight the last war, in this case WW2. Out of the myriad mistakes, flaws, and failures of the Ford, this one remains the most jaw-dropping to me.

One standout feature of the Ford—albeit a troublesome one—is its state-of-the-art Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG). Prior to Ford, American carriers used a hydraulic arresting system to slow and stop landing aircraft, but the AAG uses an electric engine and a water twister to accommodate a broader range of aircraft—including unmanned aerial vehicles. Engineering and manufacturing of the AAG began in 2005, with 2009 the targeted end date. But a 2016 Pentagon Inspector General report noted that developmental testing for the AAG would continue through 2018; the system still hadn’t proved capable or safe enough to test on the Ford. Between 2009 and 2012, the AAG’s power conditioning system failed across multiple tests, and both its inverter system and cable shock absorber required redesigns. The setbacks ballooned the AAG’s development cost from $143 million to more than $1 billion, according to a report from Sen. McCain’s office.

(Now-retired Navy captain Talbot) Manvel says he resisted AAG on the Ford as early as 1998, wanting to push it onto the subsequent ships in the class after its design had matured. He had his way until Rumsfeld stepped in with his transformational vision. “This was transformation run amok,” Manvel says.

That it surely was, sir. Which, once the temptation of it is yielded to, is what usually tends to happen.

It all makes for a depressing read for anyone who grew up believing that the American war machine was nigh-invincible, without Earthly peer or parallel amongst its adversary nation-states. That’s simply no longer the case, if it ever really was. Which, given certain harsh realities of life on this here planet, it almost certainly wasn’t.

The final straw

Posted on March 1, 2023March 1, 2023 by Mike

It’s now official: Trump really IS a moron. Either that, or he’s a damned liar, a useful idiot playing right into the hands of the Evil Left, willingly acting as their cat’s paw in his completely futile, vainglorious quest for the US Presidency. Either way, another thing is now official: I’m all done with him, and will neither endorse nor support him in said fore-doomed quest.

For God’s sake, Soros did not “endorse” Ron DeSantis
George Soros wants to destroy the Republican Party. He’s made that very clear many times. So when Trump loyalists started spreading a video of remarks he made recently purporting to show Soros endorsing Ron DeSantis over Trump for the Republican nomination I knew there was something very fishy going on.

Soros did express hope that DeSantis is the Republican nominee, but not because he thought the governor would make a good president.

He hates DeSantis just as he hates Trump. What he wants is a 3-way race for president, which would guarantee a Democrat victory.

He is convinced that if DeSantis wins the Republican nomination that Donald Trump will jump into the race as a third-party candidate and lead to a Democrat landslide in the 2024 election.

Seems obvious enough, doesn’t it? Ace spells it out even more directly:

I really do not like this level of low dishonesty. Superficially the lie works — you watch the video, you see Soros say the words.

But then two days later you see the full clip and you see you’ve been duped. Now you know the guy who put the video together is a liar, and you have a bad taste in your mouth about the candidate he’s supporting.

It’s just so stupid and it winds up boomeranging back against the candidate it’s supposed to be helping. People remember when other people try to trick them, and when other people act as if they’re fools.

Treating people as if they’re fools to be duped is treating them with disrespect.

And no, that doesn’t mean Trump is treating people with disrespect. He didn’t create this meme. (I assume.) He has nothing to do with it…unless he retweets it.

I hope he doesn’t retweet it.

Sadly, that hope turned out to be every bit as vain as Trump’s “Presidential” ones, because the idiot Trump did precisely that:

Actually, it ought to have told you something, genius. As Rand Paul once famously put it: “THEY endorsed ME, but I didn’t endorse THEM.”

But who even knows anymore, maybe the fucking stupe is just hoping we’re all too blind and/or stupid to catch onto the grift, as his newest bestest buddy Soros does. Umpty-bazillion-dimensional chess, anyone? Meh. Whatevs.

Back to Ace.

Well, I was hoping that Donald Trump wouldn’t retweet the stupid lie that George Soros had endorsed Ron DeSantis, because that would just force his supporters to defend this lie, but of course he did just that today. Of course. How could he not?

Ah, I’m sure he’ll do the right and honorable thing and retract when he finds out it’s bogus.

(LOL.)

T’ain’t funny, McGee. I’m with BCE, fully and firmly.

Art makes a good point that they’re setting (“Nikki” Haley) up for the 2028 run, as it’s looking like (for now) Orangemanbad vs Floridaman. Personally, I just want Orangemanbad to go the fuck away. He makes me tired… weary…his ‘flash in the pan’ moment is OVER and he dropped the fucking ball on ‘cleaning up the town’ like a motherfucker. He’s also too fucking old and a member of the Geriatric Brigade that seems incapable of stepping aside and enjoying all that “me!me!me” money that they sucked out of the system. If there ever was anyone who symbolizes the Degenerate Yuppie/Boomer Scum, it’s “The Donald”.

DeSantis, man I pray that he’s not running.

He needs to stay in situ, and become Dictator of GeorgiFloriBama when the wheels come fully off.

Yes indeedy, right down the line.

As I’ve said here before, when I was living in NYC I considered Trump to be little more than a tiresome annoyance, what with his constant appearances on the TeeWee, promoting himself and his various endeavors, pimping for the Clintons ceaselessly as he did back then. I changed my mind about the guy when he started saying all the right things in 2015 as a long-odds-against candidate for Prexy, and was behind him all the way even when, as President, he reneged on his oft-repeated campaign vows to “drain the Swamp” by “hiring only the best people” (*coughcough ComeyPenceSessionsBarrMattisGarlandetcetc ad infinitum ad nauseam coughcough*).

“So much winning you’ll get tired of all the winning”? Yeah, about all that…

No longer. Enough, at long last, is enough. At least, for me it is. YMMV, of course and as always.

In sum, then, to hell with Trump. And, even though he’s accomplished more of real, lasting import in his tenure as Governor than Trump managed in his one and only term as PoTUS, should DeSantis go back on his previous declaration that he wouldn’t be running, to hell with him too. NeverTrump, OnlyTrump, whatthefuckever—a pox on ALL their houses, I say.

Woke kills

Posted on February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 by Mike

Wait, you mean to tell me “diversity” might NOT be a strength after all?

A recent epidemic of airline near-misses deserves both attention and reflection.

In mid-December, a San Francisco-bound United Airlines Boeing 777-200 airliner, just a little over a minute after taking off from Maui, Hawaii, suddenly dived. It lost more than half its altitude and came within 800 feet of crashing into the Pacific Ocean before pulling up.

About a month later, an American Airlines jet crossed the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport just as a Delta Air Lines plane was accelerating for takeoff. The two aircraft nearly collided.

Then in February, a FedEx cargo jet at the Austin, Texas, airport missed crashing into a Southwest Airlines airliner by a mere 100 feet.

The same month, an American Airlines Airbus A321 was being towed out of the gate at Los Angeles International Airport and smashed into a bus carrying passengers between terminals, injuring five.

These near and actual accidents come amid a general landscape of aviation chaos.

Gee, wonder if this story has anything at all to do with it—or rather, might be emblematic of the REAL issue here.

Tucker Carlson tells the sad tale of one Conrad Jules Aska from back in 2019. Conrad is a pilot of color as you can see…

Born in Antigua he was quite the pilot….

….except for the whole “grossly unqualified and unsuited to be a pilot” thing.

“The first officer in this accident deliberately concealed his history of performance deficiencies, which limited Atlas Air’s ability to fully evaluate his aptitude and competency as a pilot,” said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt.

The report said Aska’s “tendency to respond impulsively and inappropriately when faced with an unexpected event during training scenarios at multiple employers suggest an inability to remain calm during stressful situations.

Acted impulsively you say? Of course his family tried to sue…

They claimed maintenance and poor pilot training was to blame although even at this point the NTSB realized it was pilot incompetence and error. Of course had Conrad Aska being fired for incompetence, his family likely still would have sued because of racial discrimination.

As I said in yesterday’s post, America Has Too Many Qualified Doctors And Pilots!, if you have an incompetent toll booth attendant, perhaps you get back incorrect change but an incompetent pilot? Your plane goes into the ground.

Yep. VDH sums it all up:

Many of the major airlines have established racial and gender quotas for government pilot training programs. United Airlines has set quotas to ensure half of its trainees will be minorities or women. Since 2013, the FAA has been lowering standards for air traffic control qualifications to achieve de facto race and gender quotas.

In sum, our government is playing with our lives as it prefers diversity, equity and inclusion over ensuring the best-qualified employees are hired on the basis of racially and gender-blind competitive tests and experience.

Again: Yep. In Amerika v2.0, it’s Wokeism über alles; Leftard dogma trumps all other considerations, every time, no matter what. Thus, the FederalGovCo megalith doesn’t give a toss about how many of their hapless subjects they have to kill off in order to establish that Politically Correct is, so to speak, the only way to fly.

THIS is Africa

Posted on February 24, 2023 by Mike

And, as African expat Kim DuToit always says: Africa wins again.

Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, I had the opportunity to work in Senegal for several months. My very first experience in-country was that the rental vehicle wouldn’t start. While the friendly and talkative mechanic repaired the jeep, he inquired if this was my first trip to Africa. “No,” I replied. “Ahhh!” he said, “then I don’t have to explain the meaning of ‘TIA’ to you.”

But I’d never heard that term or what it meant. When I asked, he explained, saying, “This is Africa; nothing works!” Indeed, in my travels, it was much the same in Latin America and other places I have lived, worked, or visited back in the day. When I returned to the U.S. it was a joy to drop a quarter into a payphone and hear a dial tone, or find that the nearest toilet always had toilet paper at hand.

But, in 2023, in Biden’s America, the acronym takes on a whole new meaning. Last week my wife’s car wouldn’t start, and after several return visits to the dealership, the problem remained undiagnosed. The service tech apologized and said, “it’s TIA.” I asked him what that meant, and he said, “This is America; no one knows how to fix things anymore.” Talk about a reflective moment.

Yep. And as I always say: that’s neither accident, nor coincidence, nor happenstance. It’s part of a plan.

“Presidents Day” questions

Posted on February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 by Mike

Dave Renegade has a few most (im)pertinent ones to ask.

I will confess that I do not like “Presidents’ Day”. Coupling George Washington with Abraham Lincoln is secular blasphemy (although we are told that this day celebrates “all” US Presidents).

So the questions on this auspicious day are:

1. Is the valid President of the United States in East Palestine, Ohio or is he in Kiev, Ukraine?

2. Is the valid President working to help US citizens who are in the midst of a chemical crisis or is he in Ukraine trying to initiate WWIII?

3. Is the valid President sapient or is he cognitively impaired?

4. Do you want a President who puts America first or one who puts America last?

The office of the Presidency has become the seat for global terrorism. Many would disagree but the pandemic, J6 political prisoner incarcerations, Nord Stream bombing, election theft of political offices at every level and the bankruptcy of the nation to fund their power and slush funds are a few examples.

Not even a tithe of ‘em, alas for us all. As for Question #4, it’s not as if it matters a single whit what we might want, seeing as how we have no real say in that anymore. Assuming we ever really did, that is.

Update! About that above-referenced Real Presidential visit to East Palestine.

Trump to visit East Palestine in wake of train derailment

Former President Trump plans to visit the town of East Palestine, Ohio, where a train derailment led to the release of toxic chemicals, next week.

Trump posted on Truth Social in response to a report that he was planning to make the trip that the residents of East Palestine are “Great people who need help, NOW!” He later posted that he will visit on Wednesday.

The 2024 presidential candidate’s son, Donald Trump Jr., posted on Twitter that his father will visit the town.

“If our ‘leaders’ are too afraid to actually lead real leaders will step up and fill the void,” Trump Jr. said.

Heh. Well said, young feller. But don’t think for a moment that our “leaders” are afraid of it, or much of anything else. They just don’t give a moist fart, that’s all, and want us all to know they don’t too. Unless and until they’ve been forcefully reminded that there’s a damned good reason that they ought to be, their disdainful contempt for the wishes of We The People will continue as before. Worst part of all is, that contempt will be justified.

Buttplug in absentia

Posted on February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 by Mike

Gee, who woulda ever thunk that two disastrous terms as the fumbling, bumbling mayor of a small-ish Indiana town might not turn out to be preparation aplenty for the job of US Secretary of Transportation?

Pete Buttigieg fails the Woody Allen test

He’s been called the future of the Democratic Party, and the smartest man in the swamp. Pete Buttigieg serves as transportation secretary in the Biden Administration. And one could argue that, outside of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, there isn’t anyone in the administration who has performed as poorly as the former mayor of South Bend, Ind.

This perspective comes after Buttigieg was once again several days late and many dollars short in his response to a 50-car train derailment on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, that resulted in four kinds of cancer-causing chemicals being released into the area’s air and water. Fish and poultry have died as a result, while frightened residents are complaining of nausea, headaches and respiratory issues.

During any catastrophe, leaders must get out of their offices and travel to the disaster site to assess the damage, weigh what resources can be utilized and show solidarity with the affected people.

Buttigieg has done no such thing, perhaps taking his cues from President Biden, who also has avoided any public acknowledgment of the situation. It’s a head-in-the-sand approach that has many Ohio residents angry.

“Where’s Pete Buttigieg? Where’s he at?” one resident asked East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway.

Now on the defensive, Buttigieg has resorted to blaming (you guessed it) former President Trump for what is happening in Ohio.

“We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe,” Buttigieg tweeted. “And of course, I’m always ready to work with Congress on furthering (or in some cases, restoring) our capacity to address rail safety issues.”

So, despite Democrats having controlled the House, Senate and White House for two years, Buttigieg claims his hands are tied because of the administration that has been gone for 25 months.

A supply chain crisis; baby formula shortages; a U.S. commercial airline industry in chaos. And now evacuations, a federal investigation and a cancer-causing chemical scare that continues to stress residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Woody Allen said that 90 percent of success in life is just showing up. On that front, Pete Buttigieg continues to fail.

If he wants to be president one day, Buttigieg must show more effort, urgency and competency than what the country has witnessed so far.

He won’t, and nobody with a lick of sense ought to be expecting he ever will. Truth is, being an incompetent boob cut from the same raggedy, moldy cloth as his (titular) boss, he CAN’T. He was manifestly a Bribem junta diversity-hire, brought in exclusively due to being a loud-and-proud homosexual and no other reason whatsoever. As they say in Texas, Pete Buttplug is all hat, no cattle. If Affirmative Action were ever to be put on trial, he’d be Exhibit A for the prosecution.

Is Sy Hersh’s account of the Nord Stream incident credible?

Posted on February 17, 2023February 17, 2023 by Mike

Oliver Alexander looks into the nuts-and-bolts details and says no, probably not.

Seymour Hersh’s recent Substack post claims to provide a highly detailed account of a covert US operation to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines in order to ensure that Russia would be unable to supply Germany with natural gas through them. All the information in Hersh’s post reportedly comes from a single unnamed source, who appears to have had direct access to every step of the planning and execution of this highly secretive operation.

When first reading through Hersh’s account of the events, the level of detail he provides could add credence to his story. Unfortunately for Hersh’s story, the high level of detail is also where the entire story begins to unravel and fall apart. It is often stated that people who lie have a tendency to add too much superfluous detail to their accounts. This attempt to “cover all bases” is in many cases what trips these people up. Extra details add extra points of reference that can be crosschecked and examined. In Hersh’s case, this is exactly what appears to have happened. On the surface level, the level of detail checks out to laymen or people without more niche knowledge of the subject matter mentioned. When you look closer though, the entire story begins to show massive glaring holes and specific details can be debunked.

Already in the accounts of the early top-secret planning meetings between high level US military, CIA and Biden Administration officials, some of the proposals seemed more akin to Tom Clancy fan fiction than plausible suggestions. The US Air Force officials reportedly proposed “dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely”. One could write an entire post on the reasons why (this) sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail.

During the supposed initial planning of this operation, from the way it is described by Hersh and his source, it appears that the CIA and entire interagency group were unaware of the fact that the Nord Stream pipelines were in fact pipelines.

Okay, that sounds a LOT more in line with what we know about USG and military levels of competence nowadays.

As Hersh’s article begins to move into the detailed account of the supposed operation, this is where the factually incorrect statements that can be crosschecked begin to appear.

The next major question mark comes after this description by Hersh of how the Norwegian navy found the “right spot” to sabotage the pipeline. It makes it sound like the explosions all took place in close vicinity of each other. There was in fact 6.17km between the site of the two blasts that caused the two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The third blast which caused the leak in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was 80km away from Nord Stream 1 blasts.

Immediately after this Hersh begins to mention some of the details of the diving aspect of the operation. He starts of by mentioning that the divers would deploy off a “a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter”. No Alta-class minesweepers took part in BALTOPS22. One Oksøy-Class mine hunter, the Hinnøy, did take part in the exercises though. The two classes of ship are very similar, though not identical.

While this ship took part in the exercise, its positioning during the time period does not match what would be expected of a ship supporting deep sea divers.

Joe Galvin used open source AIS data to track the Hinnøy during BALTOPS22 and as we can see from the map in his tweet, the movements of the Hinnøy are not consistent with three lengthy dives at the locations of the three seperate blasts.

That’s only a small sample of what amounts to a quite interesting analysis. I still have no trouble at all believing that the Biden junta would attempt such a thing, particularly in light of the fact that various admin puppeteers had openly declared their intention to eliminate the Nord Streams, up to and including Pedo Joe himself.

That said, though, the chief justification for skepticism still comes back to the motive/opportunity/means triad, with the FederalGovCo buffoons falling far short in the “means” department. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that the Insane Clown (Car) Posse could ever actually pull off such a complex and difficult op without the whole thing blowing up in their faces like an exploding cigar.

(Via Bayou Pete)

Hilariouser and hilariouser

Posted on February 16, 2023February 16, 2023 by Mike

Spy balloons, schmy balloons.

The hot air of spy balloons

Originally, General Milley — who promised to warn Red China if we would sneak attack Beijing — and Biden tried to keep the balloon from the public.

They would have gotten away with it, if not for the meddling Billings Gazette publishing photos of the balloon snapped by that pesky Larry Mayer.

This weekend, it was like a shooting gallery as an embarrassed Pentagon fired 4 shots to take down 3 balloons. Top Guns, our pilots are not.

They fired their guns but the balloons kept a-comin.’ There wasn’t as many as there was a while ago.

One of targets was over Lake Huron, which is next to Michigan and its population of 178 people per square miles (24 times Montana’s density). As Woody Hayes once said in a quote I just made up, “Michiganders are expendable.”

Chairman Xi said the first balloon was his but not the other ones. Xi is right because “the call was coming from inside the house!”

These were our balloons. On August 2, 2019, Lisa Kaczke of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in South Dakota, reported, “Pentagon launching drug surveillance balloons over Midwest.”

Ooooops. And then there’s this small revelation.

Bottlecap Balloon Brigade – an Illinois hobby group – claims its $13 weather balloon last pinged near Yukon on February 10 – hours before F-22 brought down UFO in SAME area with $400k missile

A mystery object shot down by U.S. fighter jets amid ongoing hysteria sparked by a Chinese spy balloon may have been a $12 inflatable launched by a hobby group in Illinois.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) reported one of its balloons ‘missing in action’ around the same location – and at the time time – a U.S. Air Force jet downed an unidentified object near Alaska using a $400,000 Sidewinder missile.

NIBBB said its ‘K9YO’ balloon last reported its location shortly before 1am GMT on Saturday, February 11 (8pm EST on February 10), near the coast of southwest Alaska.

Later on Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared an ‘unidentified object’ was downed over Canada’s Yukon territory, several hundred miles from K9YO’s last known location.

Modeling shared by NIBBB shows its balloon was headed in the direction of Yukon before it vanished – and opens up the possibility it was one of the suspicious objects down by the U.S. military.

Hey, fret not, people—Jao Bai-Deng’s crack team of “experts” is ON. THE. JOB—defending US airspace and protecting the American people from mysterious alien incursions!

A shocking revelation

Posted on February 12, 2023February 12, 2023 by Mike

Although the part I find most shocking might not be the one that comes immediately to mind.

In appearances on two Sunday talk shows, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) said that China sending a high-altitude spy balloon across the continental United States “was an act of espionage in plain sight” and revealed that the balloon had a greater capability than satellites to gather and collect imagery, and left open the possibility that these signals and images were still transmitted to Beijing even though US intelligence officials claim that they “mitigated” the damage.

On “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo,” McCaul said:

“These spy balloons have great capability to gather and collect intelligence, I would argue moreso than even satellites in the sense that they’re flying at, say, 40 to 60 thousand feet above the earth. The imagery that they can capture and other intelligence data that I can’t be specific about can be captured and then transmitted back to the mothership in Beijing.

“This was an act of espionage in plain sight, plain view of the American people.”

So far, so “well, DUH.”

McCaul’s first statement in the interview was that one of his priorities as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is to stop the export of American technology to China “that then goes into their most advanced weapons systems” (such as stealth technology, which CFIUS allowed to be sold to a company majority-owned by the Chinese government). Brennan asked if it made McCaul uncomfortable as a conservative “to have government try to control private business investment. How do you do that?” In his answer, we learn exactly why he’s comfortable doing that, and what a massive national security issue it is (emphasis mine):

Well, we have what’s called an entities list. The Department of Commerce had jurisdiction over the office within their — the Department of Defense has one.

We need to harmonize those, make it more security-focused. You know, capital flows is one issue, but technology exports into China that they use to turn — that maybe eventually turn against us, we have to stop doing that.

And I think we can do it by sectors. They do it by companies now. Obviously, they identified the six. I think, shockingly, when the balloon was recovered, it had American-made component parts in there with English on that. It was made — you know, parts made in America that were put on a spy balloon from China. I don’t think the American people accept that.

Bold in the original, not mine. And that’s where the part I found shocking comes in: “American-made component parts”? Really? Man, I had no idea we still made anything at all in this country anymore.

Just around the bend

Posted on February 9, 2023February 9, 2023 by Mike

TL sees trouble up the road.

At the end of almost every empire has been the corruption of the system that brought it to power and fueled the great successes it had while strong, culturally homogenous and patriotic. Typically, this death-era is marked by having corrupt and/or insane rulers in place, debts and financial obligations far exceeding national production, spiritual crises, infiltration and rising external powers to challenge them.

Right now, I’m going about my daily business with this feeling in my gut like I had just before the 2008 banking crisis. There were a lot of signs that things weren’t right. People were getting loans that should never have been made by institutions that seemed to be operating outside the boundaries of logic and common sense, but it all just kept rolling along until that one day in September 2008. While a lot had been going on behind the scenes and reports were all warning us of a big problem, September was the line, at least to me, that crossed into insanity. Until then, I thought that with all of the focus on the markets, that sanity would ultimately prevail. It didn’t and it may not now, either.

We’re headed down a dangerous, stupid road and it’s intentional. The communists like Barack Obama, George Soros and globalists like Klaus Schwab want to see the end of the United States. They see their utopia on the horizon, which, keep in mind, is funded, fueled and provided by slaves unable to raise a resistance to any level of debasement and humiliation the elite might impose. America and its freedom, its armed population and independent thinkers are the enemy to those who simply want eternal compliance.

So, it seems, they will drive us to war with Russia through the destruction of Ukraine and should the United States put up a reasonable defense, China will likely take that opportunity to engage and conquer Taiwan, ending our supply chain of advanced chipsets that will disable almost the whole fleet of American vehicles, both government and private, cars, trucks and semis along with, not surprising at this point, a great deal of our military equipment.

We have a lot of problems in this country, most of them created by the unwillingness of our politicians and government to recognize and respect individual rights, choosing the elevation of one part of society while denigrating and violating the rights of the other part. In this lack of cohesion and promotion of division, the cultural homogeneity needed to rise as one nation, with one goal, i.e., to defeat the external enemy, is no longer possible due to internal enemies. A good portion of the population openly seeks its destruction while several million illegals don’t care one bit about the survival of the United States of America.

The old USA is already gone; it no longer exists, hasn’t for a good while now. And I can’t say I care one bit about the survival of Amerika v2.0 my own self, honestly.

Another FederalGovCo cash grab

Posted on February 7, 2023February 7, 2023 by Mike

The goobermint is your enemy.

Those 87,000 new IRS agents that you were promised would only target the rich…

They’re coming after waitresses’ tips now: “monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer’s point-of-sale system.”https://t.co/WAvh0t2cNN

— Mike Palicz (@Mike_Palicz)

February 7, 2023

Hey, no need to fret, it’s a purely “voluntary” program. For now.

“Ace” Biden saves America!

Posted on February 6, 2023February 6, 2023 by Mike

I haven’t been able to verify it as of presstime, but rumor has it that this is the very aircraft flown by China Joe Bribem himself to shoot down that Gook spy balloon.

FlyingTigerP40

For his part, Bitter Centurion reminds us that, ultimately, this was about a heckuva lot more than some overinflated old gasbag.

ALL A BUNCH OF HOT AIR?

I didn’t go too far in depth in one of my last posts on the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon debacle, mainly because I didn’t have enough information available to me to make a definitive call on whether or not it actually was what the media is telling us it was. I more or less wanted to address the fact that, regardless of whether the story was legit or not, China DOES have the west by the balls in many different ways and we have largely been paying lip service to the whole entire issue.

My own thoughts are that it’s certainly possible that the media is telling the truth this time *COUGH, COUGH* BULLSHIT *COUGH, COUGH*….whew, excuse me. Yeah, anyway, the balloon may well be a device that is Chinese in origin used to conduct aerial espionage or perhaps reconnaissance. I mean, it isn’t like they don’t already have several spy satellites in orbit that can obtain this same information far less conspicuously, right?

Actually, there are plenty of perfectly good reasons for using balloons rather than satellites, for one that it’s orders of magnitude less expensive to just float a balloon overhead than to lob a satellite into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). For another, you get a much more clear and detailed view of whatever you want to look at from angels 60 than you can from orbit. Loiter time also factors in to the equation, with balloons winning out there too.

The US uses balloons for these very reasons, as do many of not most other players on the multinational stage.

Aesop points out another aspect of this kerfuffle that most probably haven’t taken into consideration.

As I noted elsewhere, and as anyone from SAC Norad or the Silent Service from 1946-1990 can tell you, don’t tell your enemy how early you can detect him, and you frequently just sit back and watch what they’re doing, because it gives you more intel on what they can do and what they’re interested in, than any intel they think they’re getting from you.

We did that with Russian subs and aircraft for decades at the height of the Cold War, with far more at stake.

Similarly, the whole point of China’s gambit may well have been not to glean intel on the missile silos in Montana, but to test US capabilities and reaction time to such an incursion, which would be highly valuable intel in its own right. Back to BC for what I still believe to be the bottom-line issue.

So, no. I absolutely don’t think that communist China is going to launch an attack on mainland North America, or anything to do with North America. No ‘Chinese blue helmets’. No bio weapons (I mean, no worse than the ‘Coronapocalypse’, but I’m starting to wonder if that was a massive screwup judging by how things played out). They’re not gonna launch chemical weapons, or ‘nuke’ us, or fry our grid with an EMP or cyberattack. And IF they do this, it probably won’t be anything large scale and it wouldn’t be for any other purpose than to harass us and keep us occupied, while they do other things. If the Chicoms are gonna attack anyone anytime soon, it’ll be Taiwan. That could go either way, really.

China is more than content to watch us tear each other apart over manufactured ‘social’ bullshit like gender and racial equity or reparitions, or whatever ’cause du jour’ we conjure up (with some prods and nudges from certain influential folks getting bennies from the CCP) due to our society’s massive inferiority complex, developed because we haven’t actually accomplished anything worthwhile in a few generations because we’re lazy and spoiled. China is quite content to watch us squander our wealth and our children’s futures away in never ending, massive conflicts that further tear our social fabric and destroy our faith in the institutions that our forefathers initially granted permission and responsibility to in order to take care of everything. China is quite pleased to see scores of migrants and ‘refugees’ pouring over the southern border, and in some cases be flown or bused, right into the United States, causing massive issues domestically from rising crime rates and homelessness to stretching taxpayer funded government and social services – everything from nurses, to cops, to teachers – to the point where they’re almost ineffective. On that last point, I still strongly believe China has funded and driven much of that, as I believed they did during the massive migrant surge in Europe back in 2015.

The thing to keep in mind here is that China doesn’t need to hit us with anything in terms of conventional warfare. We’re far too busy kicking our own asses and we’re actually doing a pretty fucking bang up job on that. All the Chicoms have to do is fry up the jiffy pop, enjoy the show, and wait.

Pretty much, yep.

Peace through strength

Posted on February 6, 2023February 6, 2023 by Mike

Or chaos through senility.

It is worth remembering that during Donald Trump’s first term as president (note that I say “first term”), America and indeed the world was a more pacific place. Russia did not invade Ukraine. Iran was bottled up. The Abraham Accords brought peace to the Middle East. Amazing.

How did he do it? By taking a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook. Next to “Make America Great Again” (and perhaps laments about “fake news”) the phrase that one heard most often from the Trump campaign and, then, the Trump Administration was “peace through strength.” It was born of Trump’s understanding that weakness is provocative and destabilizing while recognized strength encourages peace and social order.

Biden has depleted our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, shuttered the Keystone Pipeline, and put the kibosh on fracking. He has gone a long way towards transforming the United States military into a gender fluid sensitivity camp while also undermining the U.S. economy by incontinent spending and by pursuing other inflationary policies. Biden and his puppet masters tried to stymie Trump by turning his catchphrase “MAGA” into a negative epithet (and if “MAGA” is bad, how much worse is “Ultra MAGA”?). As Julie Kelly remarked, “if the balloon was an unarmed female veteran, the government would have shot it by now.”

But it didn’t work. So-called MAGA policies really did “make America great again”—richer, more secure, more confident and patriotic.

Which is precisely why they so desperately, fanatically hated it. And him, and us.

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