To “boldly” go where no man has gone before we’ve already been a dozen or so times

Forgive me and all, but I’m finding it mighty hard to get excited about this.

Half a century ago, the future felt different. Take 1969, quite a year in the aerospace biz: In one twelve month period, we saw the test flight of the Boeing 747, the maiden voyage of the Concorde, the RAF’s deployment of the Harrier “jump jet” …and Neil Armstrong’s “giant step for mankind”. Buzz Aldrin packed a portable tape player with him on Apollo 11, and so Sinatra’s ring-a-ding-ding recording of “Fly Me To The Moon” became the first (human) music to be flown to the moon and played there. Had any other nation beaten Nasa to it, they’d have marked the occasion with the “Ode To Joy” or Also Sprach Zarathustra, something grand and formal. But there’s something marvelously American about the first human being to place his feet on the surface of a heavenly sphere standing there with a cassette machine blasting out Frank and the Count Basie band in a swingin’ Quincy Jones arrangement – the insouciant swagger of the American century breaking the bounds of the planet.

In 1961, before the eyes of the world, President Kennedy had set American ingenuity a very specific challenge – and put a clock on it:

This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

That’s it. No wiggle room. A monkey on the moon wouldn’t count, nor an unmanned drone, nor a dune buggy that can’t take off again but transmits grainy footage back to Houston as it rusts up in the crater it came to rest in. The only way to win the bet is with a real-live actual American standing on the surface of the moon planting the Stars and Stripes. Even as it happened, the White House was so cautious that William Safire wrote President Nixon a speech to be delivered in the event of disaster:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace…

Yet America did it. “Fly Me To The Moon/Let me sing forever more.” What comes after American yearning and achievement? Democratization: “Everybody Gets To Go The Moon”. That all but forgotten Jimmy Webb song from 1969 catches the spirit of the age:

Isn’t it a miracle
That we’re the generation
That will touch that shiny bauble with our own two hands?

Whatever happened to that?

Four decades later, Bruce Charlton, Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham in England, wrote that “that landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans.” That’s a good way to look at it: The political class presented the boffins with a highly difficult and specific problem and they solved it – in eight years. Charlton continued:

Forty years ago, we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have not been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability.

Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer wanted to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something… But I am suggesting that all this is BS… I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since.

Can that be true? Charlton is a controversialist gadfly in British academe, but, comparing 1950 to the early twenty-first century, our time traveler from 1890 might well agree with him. And, if you think about it, isn’t it kind of hard even to imagine America pulling off a moon mission now? The countdown, the takeoff, a camera transmitting real-time footage of a young American standing in a dusty crater beyond our planet blasting out from his iPod Lady Gaga and the Black-Eyed Peas or whatever the 21st century version of Sinatra and the Basie band is… It half-lingers in collective consciousness as a memory of faded grandeur, the way a nineteenth century date farmer in Nasiriyah might be dimly aware that the Great Ziggurat of Ur used to be around here someplace.

So what happened? According to Professor Charlton, in the 1970s “the human spirit began to be overwhelmed by bureaucracy”. The old can-do spirit? Oh, you can try to do it, but they’ll toss every obstacle in your path. Go on, give it a go: Invent a new medical device; start a company; go to the airport to fly to DC and file a patent. Everything’s longer, slower, more soul-crushing. And the decline in “human capability” will only worsen in the years ahead, thanks not just to excess bureaucracy but insufficient cash.

“Yes, we can!” droned the dopey Obamatrons of 2008. No, we can’t, says Charlton, not if you mean “land on the moon, swiftly win wars against weak opposition and then control the defeated nation, secure national borders, discover breakthrough medical treatments, prevent crime, design and build to a tight deadline, educate people so they are ready to work before the age of 22…”

Houston, we have a much bigger problem.

As Steyn notes with a wince and a groan, how depressingly far we’d fallen by the time Bathhouse Barry decreed that NASA would make “Muslim outreach” its top priority, so as to make sure the Muzzrats would feel better about their grotesquely exaggerated “achievements” in mathematics and science 800 and some-odd years ago. The sad, sorry denouement:

It’s easy to laugh at the likes of Abu Hamza, although not as easy as it should be, not in Europe and Canada, where the state is eager to haul you into court for “Islamophobia”. But the laugh’s on us. Nasa is the government agency whose acronym was known around the planet, to every child who looked up at the stars and wondered what technological marvels the space age would have produced by the time he was out of short pants. Now the starry-eyed moppets are graying boomers, and the agency that symbolized man’s reach for the skies has transformed itself into a self-esteem boosterism operation. Is there an accompanying book – Muslims Are from Mars, Infidels Are from Venus?

There’s your American decline right there: From out-of-this-world to out-of-our-minds, an increasingly unmanned flight from real, historic technological accomplishment to unreal, ahistorical therapeutic touchy-feely multiculti.

So we can’t go to the moon. And, by the time you factor in getting to the airport to do the shoeless shuffle and the enhanced patdown, flying to London takes longer than it did in 1960. If they were trying to build the transcontinental railroad now, they’d be spending the first three decades on the environmental-impact study and hammering in the Golden Spike to celebrate the point at which the Feasibility Commission’s expansion up from the fifth floor met the Zoning Board’s expansion down from the twelfth floor.

And there you have it: the Überstate’s metastasization into the strangling, all-powerful Gorgon it has now become was well under way back in Kennedy’s day, but America still had stones enough to make it to the moon and back repeatedly even so. Now, under the aegis of senile old Pedo Jaux and encumbered by a federal bureaucracy so stupendously vast it can’t even figure out how many people “work” for it? Sorry, but we lost that mojo long, long ago. Unless Elon Musk is involved, I’ll believe it when I see it.

3
2

Buyer’s Market

“Women control access to sex. Men control access to marriage.”

The first part of that modern homily is mostly true, at least in Western, non-shithole countries. Almost any straight woman who wants to get sex can get it by walking into almost any bar and announcing her intention to get laid. A man wishing to do the same faces anything from laughter to arrest.

The homily’s second part is also mostly true. Maybe not as true as the first part but still mostly true when it comes to forming a marriage or other strong commitment. Men are mostly content with hookups, maybe exclusive, maybe not. It’s usually the women who want the bended kneew, the ring, the ceremony, and legal status, and the security.

Riddle me this: When a couple moves to marriage, why does the man have to make the move? Why is the man expected to buy a diamond ring?

The woman benefits more from the marriage. This is certainly true in the US. It appears to be true in the rest of the Anglosphere and northwestern Europe but in this essay I’ll be focusing on the US.

Marriage is a contract, a promise which can be enforced by the government. Each side needs to give something and each side needs to get something. The husband traditionally provided security, both financial and physical, and chores which were easier for a man’s muscles or skills. The wife traditionally made a home and provided him with sex and children.

Traditionally.

Nowadays, the husband almost always works and the wife probably does. Most of the financial security comes from the husband, as before, between greater income and the probability of women spending more than they bring in. In most families the wife has more say over spending than the husband does: more “me” money from the joint bank account, stuff for the house which she wants and the husband doesn’t care about, probably a newer car than the husband drives, and even getting the family to move to a more expensive house or apartment because the wife isn’t satisfied with the old one.

Most married couples have children, though that’s on the decline, with almost a majority of young adults not wanting children. If a couple has small children and the wife works, there’s a good chance that the wife’s entire paycheck goes to childcare and expenses related to her working.

(This does not address the issue of the couple having married only because the woman was pregnant, either because someone was careless or because she baby-trapped him.)

Financially, men continue to perform their traditional role.

Making a home? What does that mean anymore? It used to mean making meals, keeping the house clean, taking care of the children, and providing peace and comfort when the husband came home from work. Now, the husband is expected to do half of the cleaning (and all of the mowing and snow shoveling). Get up in the middle of the night for the baby or “I heard something downstairs” even when he has to go to work the next morning and she’s on maternity leave. The wife providing “peace and comfort”? That’s a joke, right? “Happy wife, happy life” means that most wives feel no obligation to provide a peaceful home environment for their husbands and many take offense at the suggestion that they should. Worse, if a woman is unhappy or stressed, she’ll generally take it out on her husband because he’s a safe, acceptable target.

As for sex, it’s more than just a joke that sex declines within months of the wedding and drops like a rock after the children are born. It appears that 20% of marriages in the US are sexless. (Though “sexless” can mean anything from “less than once a month” to no sex at all for a year or more.) It doesn’t matter whether it’s her choice because she’s too busy or is punishing him or just isn’t interested, or it’s his choice because she gained a hundred pounds or because of her personality. Sex is one of the major lures to get men into a committed relationship and almost no men get as much as they want and some get none at all.

OK, sure, looking at it from the wife’s side, some husbands don’t provide income or don’t do anything around the house or bully their wives. Wives are justified in leaving an abusive husband and may be justified in leaving a non-contributing husband.

Here’s the thing, though: A wife who leaves an abusive husband will have full societal approval and full legal support. The same for a wife who leaves her husband because he doesn’t provide her with money or because he doesn’t help around the house. And the same even for a wife who leaves her husband because she’s not happy or thinks she can do better.

Switch it around: If a wife spends so much on herself that the power bill can’t be paid, how much support would the husband get if he stopped the shared credit card she’d been using and cut her off from the bank account? None, and he could be accused of financial abuse. If a stay-at-home wife does nothing around the house and tells her husband that if he wants supper he can make it himself, what would neighbors, friends, and coworkers say if he told his wife that she had to start doing something or he’d leave her?

Financial and legal aspects of divorce go in the same direction as the societal approval and can’t be as easily ignored. I sure that I don’t need to go into detail on the numbers: In a divorce or other breakup, expect the woman to get the kids and the child support and at least half of the cash (that which she didn’t pull out just before filing for divorce) and half of the retirement and most likely the house though not the mortgage.

It doesn’t much matter who filed for divorce, nor the reason. The wife having committed adultery — wives in the US commit adultery more often than husbands do, now — and gotten pregnant by the affair partner — an estimated 10% of fathers named on the birth certificate in the US did not father the child — has very little effect on child custody, child support, or division of marital assets.

One should never enter into a contract with someone who will be rewarded for breaking it.

It should come as no surprise that in the United States, women initiate around 80% of divorces. Even without social pressure or postulated innate female nature to always try to get something better, women have a lot of incentive to divorce and very little incentive not to.

Given all of this, let’s return to the riddle posed above: Why is it the man who is expected to save thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to buy an engagement ring? A few centuries ago the valuable ring was something of a surety that he wasn’t wasting her time and wouldn’t walk away, before or after the marriage. Women had something to lose, some of their innate value of youth and virginity, and insulating them from the potential loss made sense.

These days, men have much more to lose from a failed relationship. Men deserve some form of surety against spousal betrayal or abandonment.

Women want commitment and marriage at least as much as men do, especially when the woman gets around thirty years old.

It’s time for women to step up and pay for what they want. Most men won’t want something basically useless like an expensive ring, but instead something durable and practical. A garage full of tools would be good.

Do the math, gentlemen, and know your worth. Don’t settle for a woman who doesn’t value you.

6
11

Preview of coming attractions

They got away scot-free with it in 2020, so they’d NEVER try it again. Right?

Wrong.

The signs of impending election manipulation on a national scale are all around us, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear them.  It’s already manifesting itself in a minor way, and that’ll gear up to a hurricane by November.

Consider these recent headlines:

  • Something Stinks in Colorado – How did an unknown candidate like Mike O’Donnell manage to garner as many votes as a national political figure like Tina Peters? This question, ladies and gentlemen, is what leads you down the rabbit hole of America’s bogus election system.
  • How Did A Zuckerberg Charity Stooge Win A GOP Primary In Colorado? – Isn’t it strange that the director of Mark Zuckerberg’s private election charity for Democrats (on temporary leave!) just won the most important election integrity race in Colorado — and a GOP primary no less — as a write-in candidate with a 35 point polling swing with no money and no visible support from Republicans? One more thing: Colorado uses Dominion Voting Machines.
  • Several NYC Election Sites Had ‘No Republican Ballots’ During Last Week’s Primary.
  • The Fix Is In – Democrats Start to Prep America for Their Mid-Term Steal.
  • Letter from a Reader on the Democrats’ Plans to Steal the 2022 Election.
  • EXCLUSIVE: FOIAs Reveal Progressive Money Fueling FBI, DOJ, Leftist Activist and Election Official Coordination – Freedom of information requests have uncovered oddball and opaque relationships between some state election officials, federal officials, corporations, progressive activists, and those trying to influence the conduct of those same election officials…this fluid consortium has built structures that match powerful funding—with fringe ideological activists, with government offices—in an effort to…reorient the administration of elections in ways that benefit progressives, such as wide use of automatic mail voting.

I still have contacts in the Department of Justice, dating back to my days as a prison chaplain. Some of those with whom I had contact in those days, in more than one federal agency, have now reached relatively senior rank. I spoke with a few of them last week, and every one confirmed that there seems to be an air of blithe confidence in the upper reaches of federal government bureaucracy that the Biden administration will be able to continue with its programs, no matter what happens in November. It’s being blatantly referred to as “business as usual, before and after November”. Strange, that, when you read headlines like “Joe Biden and Democrats Stare Into the Abyss After Latest Poll Drops”. It doesn’t sound like the progressive left is staring into any abyss that worries them, does it? – particularly when you read the articles linked above.

Supporting links throughout, which as usual I didn’t transcribe. Bayou Pete has tons more, nearly all of it as disheartening as it is deeply, deeply disturbing. In sum:

Folks, we saw massive electoral manipulation in November 2020. Call it what you like, legal or illegal, valid or invalid, it’s my personal opinion that it amounted to nothing more or less than electoral fraud – a deliberate distortion of the overall popular vote by manipulating certain targeted areas and their voters. I think what we saw then is a pale shadow of what we’re going to see in November 2022. The powers that be are bound and determined that they’re not going to lose control of the House and/or Senate, no matter how unpopular their party may have become; and they have (or believe they have) the tools to make sure that happens, no matter what the will of the electorate may be. They’re going to use every one of those tools, and then some, to win. They are already using them, as the articles linked above demonstrate.

As individuals, we can’t affect what may happen on a national scale;  but we can affect what happens on a local scale. If you care about our constitutional republic, and the democratic expression of the will of the people, please get involved. Volunteer as a poll watcher, or a vote counter, or whatever posts may be available in your area. Support those who are trying to run the election honestly, and watch like a hawk those who are doing otherwise. Speak out. Make sure the election administrators in your area know they’re under scrutiny. Get their names, addresses and other information that may help in future when it comes to dealing with the consequences of any shenanigans.

We know the electoral manipulation tsunami is coming. Let’s start preparing now, so that in its aftermath we can deal with the damage and minimize its long-term effects. Also, no matter how optimistic the forecasts, don’t assume that any side or party has the November 2022 elections “in the bag”. Anything can (and may well) happen between now and then. I expect the dirty tricks to fly thick and fast before we get to the voting booth.

At this stage of the game, Praetorian Media’s continuing, nonchalant dismissal of “Trump’s baseless, unsupported charges” of election chicanery are enough to make any Real American want to puke…or, perhaps, do something a little more, shall we say, kinetically proactive in response.

You guys already know my feelings about all this, so I’ll spare you any further belaboring of that particular point for the nonce. As I’ve said before, it really makes one wonder just how long such shenanigans have been part and parcel of our national “elections,” do it not?

6

Will Russia take on the job Americans just won’t do?

That would be the job of taking down a tyrannical, frankly illegitimate US goobermint. The real question, though, is: why on earth would they bother?

WHY RUSSIA WILL DEFEAT THE UNITED STATES
Like many boys in the 1980s, I dreamed of being a “Wolverine.” If you hail from Generation X or you are a late-stage Millennial, you know that is not a reference to a Marvel superhero with retractable metal claws. It is a reference to the teenaged freedom fighters in the movie Red Dawn. Raised on a steady diet of American patriotic zeal and a hatred for communism, boys my age fantasized of killing Russian invaders. Those days are long gone. The United States is no longer the “good guy,” and Russia is no longer the “bad guy.” We are the Marxists, now.

If we go to war with Russia, which I suspect will likely happen, Russia will win. The reason is simple: ideologies never defeat national identity. This has been true throughout time. Whenever an ideological army attempted to conquer a defined people, the defined people have always won. Even within the ideological proxy wars of the 20th Century, fighting was defined as contests between peoples. Communist North Vietnam framed its war with South Vietnam as one in which Vietnamese patriots fought European-American imperialism and manipulation. The Soviet Union was trounced in the early years of World War II for a multitude of reasons, but one of those reasons was that early propaganda tried to frame the struggle as one between fascism and communism. Soviet peasants could care less about the global proletariat. When the political messaging was re-framed within the context of a “Great Patriotic War,” Russians galvanized and hardened their resolve. Many such examples exist.

Today, there is no American people. The United States has been intentionally redefined. American identity is rooted in post-nationalism.  It is ideologically globalist, combining the totality of the economic coin – Marxist on one side, free market capitalist on the other. In so doing, American political and cultural leaders have created an ideology that supplants God with Cultural Marxist societal elements – from homosexuality and transgenderism to subjectivity versus objectivity in all facets of decision making (e.g., “Common Core” math). Simultaneously, free market capitalism has been weaponized as a democratization process, creating a world of consumers addicted to cheap trinkets and material comforts that transcends sacrifice for one’s national best interests. This is evident from outsourcing manufacturing to the importation of cheap labor en masse. The United States that you once knew is dead. The guardians of this new American dystopia – the DOJ, FBI, IRS, and DOD – will target those who question the paradigm shift. Consequently, J6 protestors are hunted with impunity while the antifa – i.e., those who fight most violently for this new ideological state – are protected from prosecution.

Russia, generally speaking, has none of these problems. Russians know they are Russian. Russians are not seeking a globalist new world order. Russians prefer a world order led by Russians, but in the absence of that power, they would be happy to have a regional hegemony that protects Russian interests. In other words, unlike the globalist ideologues that lead Americans and their Western allies, Russians are nationalists. In a war, you need nationalism to win. If you think I am wrong, consider the U.S. military’s current struggles to recruit. It dovetails with a drop in patriotism. It turns out that the U.S. DOD never realized that transgender black dancers with a victim mentality do not volunteer to fight for a country they perceive to have oppressed them; misguided patriotic Southern White boys do – and less of them now want to be part of it. Putin’s military leadership enjoys no such confusion.

The US military having been reduced to a mincing, dress-clad paper tiger of indeterminate gender thanks to Woke leadership, I have little to no doubt the Rooskies could defeat it handily, all else being equal and assuming the Ukrainiain thorn had been removed from the Bear’s paw. But the US domestic political situation being what it now is, the bond between Heritage Americans and the US military is nothing like as strong as it once was, always a seriously bad omen for any nation’s defensive prospects.

On the other hand, the occupation phase is liable to be a stone bitch, I imagine, a fact I’m confident the Russian leadership is every bit as cognizant of as I am myself. On the other other hand, the Left has trashed this place so comprehensively, over so long a period, one has to wonder what Russia would really gain from such a chancy move. In sum, they probably COULD do it, sure. Which doesn’t mean they SHOULD.

I have to say, I can’t wait to see what Aesop’s take on this speculative proposal might be.

(Via WRSA)

OUR day

NOT Theirs.

Independence Day has been a far more somber holiday for me and many others for many years, more akin to sitting around drinking after the funeral of a friend who used to be hearty and hale but in his later years became weak and frightened. We try to remember him as he once was in his health, not how he was in his dying days.

Gone are the recollections of the history of heritage Americans and the declaring of their independence from England. We don’t even call it Independence Day anymore, just “The Fourth Of July” as if the date is just randomly chosen to get a day off so we can grill burgers.

The thing about Independence Day and what it celebrates is that it is an entirely White male achievement. The famous painting of the presenting of the draft of the Declaration to the Congress by John Trumbull is noteworthy for what it doesn’t include: there are no women, no “people of color”, no transvestites or Jews or Muslims. Just a bunch of White men.

As America slides rapidly into minority-majority status, Independence Day will mean less and less to each successive generation of increasingly non-White citizens. Why shouldn’t it? The story of America isn’t their story, they contributed basically nothing to our founding and the development of America as the greatest country on Earth. Independence Day has no real historical significance for blacks or Chinese, mestizos or Jews. Hell there was only a single Catholic signer of the Declaration, most were Episcopalian/Anglican, Congregationalist or Presbyterian. It is interesting that the current Supreme Court has six Catholics, only two Protestants, and one Jew.

It only makes sense that a first generation Mexican immigrant or a Somali refugee would have no clue what Independence Day was really all about or have any sort of positive feelings about it. It isn’t their day and never will be. 

Just as the day is losing any meaning, the principles that inspired the Declaration of Independence mean less to each successive generation of America. Try asking a young person today what these words mean:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….

Good luck. You might get a reasonable answer from a smart kid from a good school but Da’quan or Mohammad from some inner-city slaughterhouse of a high school? Forget about it.

It is nice to get a day off, and shoot off some fireworks, but this day has otherwise lost all meaning, all solemnity and all significance. It is just a relic of a nation that no longer exists, an annual funeral service where we drink toasts and offer amusing anecdotes about a dearly departed friend. 

Perhaps the remnants of the American people will one day have cause to celebrate anew their independence from Tyrants, Despots and Usurpers. Let us hope so in order that the light of liberty may never be lost from this world. 

I’ve said for years now that the Fourth of right ought to be less a day of celebration and indulgence, and more one of national mourning for what has been lost, stolen, and/or casually squandered. With this blunt reminder of our heritage and history, Arthur rubs Real American noses in one of the uglier aspects of life in whatever you want to call the tottering, faltering nation we inhabit: in “the land of the free,” there are many truths which are not to be spoken aloud, lest the wrath of our Masters be incurred thereby. The above would be one of those.

Regrettably, the cognitive dissonance doesn’t end there. Here in NC, dominated politically by shitlibs for my entire life, fireworks are illegal and can’t be found for love nor money…except for the week or ten days leading up to July Fourth, when you’re allowed to have ’em so’s you can celebrate your notional “freedom.” Only a liberal asswipe could possibly be blind enough that he’d fail to spot the gruesome irony in that one.

Update! As grim as things sometimes seem, there are still flourishes of uniquely-American greatness to be found in this land.

Joey Chestnut Captures Crasher While Downing 63 Hot Dogs
Joey Chestnut won the hot dog eating contest again after he downed 63 hot dogs. The closest anyone came ate 40-something dogs. While downing and winning, he also got a crasher into a headlock.

The crasher was wearing a Darth Vader mask and carried a sign reading, “Expose Mitchfield  or Smithfield or something Death Star.” Uh, what?

Joey’s our hero.

Joey’s a NATIONAL hero, actually. Video at the link to prove it.

1

Democracy? NO

The senile fool Biden, in another of his characteristic rambling, incoherent speeches this week, repeatedly lauded “our democracy” as if that’s actually what this country is, the original system of government the Founders set up for their posterity. T’ain’t so, McGee; any poor sod with even the most niggardly dollop of historical literacy in his gift knows better than that. Eric Peters last year posted a collection of quotes condemning democracy in the most virulent terms from our blessed ancestors, which one of his handlers/wardens/keepers should consider reading to the stumblebum ***”president”*** sometime so as to enlighten his stupid ass. After the quotes, Eric provides some commentary of his own, interspersed with more historical context.

In light of the Founders’ view on the subject of republics and democracies, it is not surprising that the Constitution does not contain the word “democracy,” but does mandate: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.”

These principles were once widely understood. In the 19th century, many of the great leaders, both in America and abroad, stood in agreement with the Founding Fathers. John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835 echoed the sentiments of Fisher Ames. “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos,” he wrote. American poet James Russell Lowell warned that “democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” Lowell was joined in his disdain for democracy by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who remarked that “democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” Across the Atlantic, British statesman Thomas Babington Macauly agreed with the Americans. “I have long been convinced,” he said, “that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.” Britons Benjamin Disraeli and Herbert Spencer would certainly agree with their countryman, Lord Acton, who wrote: “The one prevailing evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”

By the 20th century, however, the falsehoods that democracy was the epitome of good government and that the Founding Fathers had established just such a government for the United States became increasingly widespread. This misinformation was fueled by President Woodrow Wilson’s famous 1916 appeal that our nation enter World War I “to make the world safe for democracy” — and by President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 exhortation that America “must be the great arsenal of democracy” by rushing to England’s aid during WWII.

Very few of us have probably thought it all the way through, but as it happens, this sudden drive to promote democracy over the true American ideal of government had a specific and most sinister purpose behind it.

On September 17 (Constitution Day), 1961, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch delivered an important speech, entitled “Republics and Democracies,” in which he proclaimed: “This is a Republic, not a Democracy. Let’s keep it that way!” The speech, which was later published and widely distributed in pamphlet form, amounted to a jolting wake-up call for many Americans. In his remarks, Welch not only presented the evidence to show that the Founding Fathers had established a republic and had condemned democracy, but he warned that the definitions had been distorted, and that powerful forces were at work to convert the American republic into a democracy, in order to bring about dictatorship.

Welch understood that democracy is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Eighteenth century historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, it is thought, argued that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” And as British writer G.K. Chesterton put it in the 20th century: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”

The push for democracy has only been possible because the Constitution is being ignored, violated, and circumvented. The Constitution defines and limits the powers of the federal government. Those powers, all of which are enumerated, do not include agricultural subsidy programs, housing programs, education assistance programs, food stamps, etc. Under the Constitution, Congress is not authorized to pass any law it chooses; it is only authorized to pass laws that are constitutional. Anybody who doubts the intent of the Founders to restrict federal powers, and thereby protect the rights of the individual, should review the language in the Bill of Rights, including the opening phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…”).

As Welch explained in his 1961 speech:

…man has certain unalienable rights which do not derive from government at all…And those…rights cannot be abrogated by the vote of a majority any more than they can by the decree of a conqueror. The idea that the vote of a people, no matter how nearly unanimous, makes or creates or determines what is right or just becomes as absurd and unacceptable as the idea that right and justice are simply whatever a king says they are. Just as the early Greeks learned to try to have their rulers and themselves abide by the laws they had themselves established, so man has now been painfully learning that there are more permanent and lasting laws which cannot be changed by either sovereign kings or sovereign people, but which must be observed by both. And that government is merely a convenience, superimposed on Divine Commandments and on the natural laws that flow only from the Creator of man and man’s universe.

Such is the noble purpose of the constitutional republic we inherited from our Founding Fathers.

Amen. Can anyone be surprised that, as we have wandered ever deeper into the muck and mire of an artificially generated and wholly misguided infatuation with democracy, our national plight has steadily worsened in equal proportion? As I always say: The fault, dear Horatio, lies not in the principles of our Founders, but in ourselves. The farther we stray from the ideals and prescriptions of those great men, the more wretched the misery we create for ourselves becomes.

5

And…?

Glenn posts a friend’s piteous cri de coeur suggesting the need for a lot more pointless screaming, racing around in circles, and frantically waving our arms over our heads out there.

A FRIEND COMMENTS: “There is no elected official running the White House, or the United States, right now. It’s deeply troubling that more people aren’t freaking out about this. We all know it’s true.”

So what? Sorry to have to bust your cozy little bubble for ya, buddy, but some of us have known that for a good many years now. It’s simply the way things are, and has been the way things are for most of my life on this planet—quite possibly all of my life. And I’m sixty-two years old.

What, you don’t mean to seriously suggest that any amount of mass freaking out is gonna change one damn thing, do you? Or that the unelected, unaccountable, and untouchable Shadowmen actually in charge of the White House, the US military, FederalGovCo and all its innumerable subdivisions, agencies, departments, offices, foundations, bureaucracies, and miscellaneous kakistocracies, shitrapies, fiefdoms, personal playgrounds, money laundries, and rackets give three whoops in Hell about what you might think of them?

1

You’ll freeze to death in the dark and like it

Never for one moment kid yourself that they aren’t one hundred percent serious about forcing us all back into pre-Medieval serfdom.

Imagine one of your kids freezing to death in your home. Eleven-year-old Cristian Pineda’s mother found her son dead during the Texas blackout in February 2021. Or you have a power outage for three days, losing a couple of hundred dollars worth of food because your refrigerator didn’t work, as Michelle Jones did last summer. The food she had just bought to feed herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter spoiled without electricity.

This is likely to become all too common in the future.

Why?

Because shitlibs, that’s why. No other reason than just that, no need to hunt around for one. Let’s just get right down to the nuts and bolts of the thing, shall we?

Progressives favor energy policies that will make grid failures more frequent, widespread, and prolonged. They want to close coal plants without enough full-time power ready to take their place. They seem unconcerned about reliability. They want coal plants torn down even if we have to keep paying them—like selling your car to get a newer one while you still owe lots on the first.

The people of the upper Midwest will pay the price this summer. Their multi-state grid operator, MISO, has warned that it will be 5 GWs short of electricity this summer. California also could be up to5 GWs short, enough to power 1.3 million homes. Texas warned that there might not be enough electricity for last week’s unexpected 90° weather, or for hotter days coming this summer.

What do they all have in common? Increasing their reliance on solar and wind and closing coal plants. A dirty green secret is that coal is full-time power and wind and solar are not. Electric grids must have full-time, on-demand power all the time—plus some—or blackouts are guaranteed.

Another dirty secret: wind and solar produce little or no energy 70% of the time. This means that to replace 1,000 MW of coal, it will take 3,500 MW of wind turbines’ “nameplate capacity,” or 5,000 MW of solar’s. That’s about 1,200 3 MW wind turbines or 13 million solar panels, in either case occupying nearly 40 square miles.

About 240 coal plants in the United States deliver about 22% of our electricity. About 71,000 wind towers produce about 9% of our electricity on a part-time, when-the-wind-blows, basis. We are adding about 3,000 wind turbines a year, in the whole country. If wind didn’t have the part-time problem, those 3,000 could replace 2.5 coal plants a year. At that rate, it would take 96 years to replace them all.

Progressives have been demanding that we close coal plants faster than 2.5 a year. If we want our electric grid to serve us full time, we need to reject this policy. We also need to stop everything they do to make coal and natural gas more expensive because that will raise our electric rates even faster.

We need to stop everything they do, period, and without any shilly-shallying around, before it’s too late to undo the damage they’ve already done and our laxness has irrevocably sealed our fate. Hey, as I’m fond of telling all and sundry: it’s never too early to start stacking Commie corpses.

Yes, it would be wonderful if sane, functional adults could cede the Left a remote island of their very own someplace where they could all be free to indulge their bong-fueled Utopian fantasies to the fullest and not bother those of us who actually kind of enjoy air conditioning; electric refrigerators, ranges, and lighting; clean, drinkable water on tap; indoor toilets and our modern sewer system; the unparalleled freedom and mobility afforded by privately-owned and -operated automobiles; and a lifespan longer than, say, 45 to 50 years or thereabouts.

You can’t be a shitlib and be for all those fine things; you just can’t. Liberalism and the blessings of life in a modern post-industrial society are mutually exclusive, and that’s flat. The irresolvable contradiction between the two is what makes the spectacle of gaggles of stinking, hairy-pitted Earth Mother repops stumbling into each other whilst putting some mileage on the ol’ Birkenstocks abling over to the city park for the annual Earth Day shindig—all of the vacant bints frenetically thumbtyping on their decidedly nonorganic, non-renewable iPhones, naturally (ahem)—so amusing. The nump-brained tree sloths are so impenetrably clueless they still wouldn’t get it if you mimeographed a microscopically-detailed crib sheet explaining the problem in simple, introductory-level terms for them to pore over.

Just remember, they’re smarterer than you, by lots and lots. If you don’t believe it, just ask ’em.

1

The Trap

Change is not on the menu here.

Long before Trump, Republican politicians and their apologists in the establishment conservative media labored indefatigably to convince their constituents that, come what may, the GOP would “save the country” from the ravages of the excessive Left. The “Reagan Revolution,” the “Contract with America,” the “Moral Majority,” “Compassionate Conservatism,” the “Tea Party,” and, now, MAGA—these are the media concoctions, the theatrical props, the bright and shiny things that traditional Republican voters have been manipulated into believing for decades. It’s ultimately the same concept repackaged for a new generation under a different label.

The idea that there is a rock-ribbed, true-blue conservative or patriotic contingent, separate from and opposed to “the establishment,” promising to pull America back from the precipice of destruction on which she stands has been the GOP’s bread and butter for decades. Every election is “the most important election of our lifetime.”

Republican voters should pause and ask themselves a question that never seem to get thoroughly explored: To paraphrase Reagan’s query from 1980:

Is the Left more or less powerful in 2022 than they’ve been in the past?

The Left-Right paradigm within which American politics plays out is itself a function of the collective delusion from which Republican and Democratic voters alike suffer. Still, for present purposes, we’ll speak the conventional language and say that it’s difficult to conceive of a single front on which “the Left” hasn’t made considerable advances.

In some cases, particularly over the last couple of years, during the COVID era, the Left made shockingly, historically unprecedented advances.

So, why exactly is it that those who have always voted Republican should continue doing so?

How, exactly, does voting Republican amount to “fighting the Left?”

Trump tried his best, but had too many powerful forces with which to contend and that ultimately thwarted his plans.

Republicans gain the House, but then tell their supporters that they can’t do the things that they say they were going to do because they don’t have the Senate and the presidency. They gain the Senate, but then tell their supporters that they can’t do what they promised, because they don’t yet have the presidency. They gain the presidency, but then tell their supporters that they can’t really do what they promised because of the recalcitrance of traitorous Republicans, the cynicism and opportunism of Democrats, the partisanship of the media, and/or the subversionary machinations of a massive bureaucracy (the “deep state”).

Republicans—whether Trump or anyone else—will nevercan never, “defeat the Left” and “save the country” as they promise. And all GOP politicians must, at some level, know this. At the very least, they must know that they can never affect the kinds of substantive, enduring changes that voters expect from them as long as all of the obstacles to which they invariably appeal in accounting for their failures persist!

In other words, if “RINOs,” Democrats, a hostile media, and deep state apparatchiks have always prevented Republicans in the past from enacting the platform and the agenda on which they campaign, why should voters expect that Republicans will be able to surmount those obstacles now?!

What do Republicans, elected today, plan on doing to ensure that all of the hostile forces that have undermined them since forever will finally be neutralized?

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, then voting Republican is insane.

Sometimes our biggest, most insuperable dilemmas are expressed quite handily in bumper-sticker slogans:

  • No matter who you vote for, a politician always gets in
  • There is no political solution to the problems caused by politics
  • There is no voting our way out of this
  • If voting could actually change anything, it would be illegal
  • If the Founders were around today, they’d already be shooting

And the most telling one of all, more apposite to our present circumstances than any other:

You may vote your way into socialism, but you must shoot your way out.

And so we have. And so we must, or else relinquish our sacred birthright of freedom forever.

In 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered the greatest of his many great speeches at the Republican National Convention, a truly deathless oration whose words will stir the souls and fire the blood of the liberty-minded until the end of days. The speech has come to be known variously as either the “A Time For Choosing” speech, which if I remember right was its official title, or more simply as the “Freedom Speech.” Its best-known and most beloved passage couldn’t be a more perfect closer for this post, I believe.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Alas, as grim as that final prognostication certainly is, the way things have worked out is far, far worse: we’re spending our sunset years telling ourselves that we are in fact still free, having exchanged our proud heritage for the chains we willingly accepted because it was so much easier, prodding our children and children’s children to likewise take them up themselves. What life was once like in a still-free America has long since been shorn from memory, both collective and personal.

A damned good thing it has been, too; such a proud and noble past piles a burden of shame onto us lesser men who proved to be inadequate to rise to its challenge, to redeem its promise for ourselves and our posterity. Shame so profound can but be a source of genuine anguish deep down inside, amounting as it does to a blistering rebuke which no apology can ever set aright.

14

Origins of Empire

It’s a Progressivist thing.

It may prove in this momentous decade that the American Empire falls. But take heart, because the fall of the empire — aren’t all empires finally a bundle of conceits destined to collapse? — may lead to the revival of the American Republic.

The visions of empire and republic are as starkly different as George Washington and the founders were from Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Much of what constitutes the “American Empire” is a product of progressive doctrine. It was about domestic imperialism perhaps far more than American global dominance. Restoring the republic should be welcomed by citizens dedicated to our nation’s founding principles.

We’re reaching a culmination. The left’s decades-long march through America’s institutions succeeded. They control government, corporations, health care, sciences, media, arts and entertainment, education, nonprofits, sports…right down to the Boy and Girl Scouts. They seek to consolidate their control in a handful of larger institutions (government and corporations, principally). An American “reset” is a precursor to a global reset, per the lunatic vision of Klaus Schwab and his acolytes.

(As an aside, pray tell, what is it with Germany that it periodically spawns apocalyptic and/or messianic figures like Marx, Nietzsche, Hitler, and now this dangerous utopian, Klaus Schwab?)

If you’re feeling surrounded, don’t. There are many more of us than them. The unbelievable major serial failures of the Biden administration (who bats zero?) are waking up a broader slice of the public — waking them up through mounting costs (inflation and energy), uncertainties (crime and the border), and flagrant attempts in schools to sexually debauch our kids (Biden’s handlers support this effort), among other wanton offenses.

The progressive worldview, as translated through governance and cultural dictates, is collapsing. Progressivism is daily revealing itself as, yes, power-hungry, incompetent, ineffective, but also dark. The end of empire isn’t likely to finish with a whimper. It’ll be calamitous, confrontational, and just plain nasty. The elites won’t go gentle into that good night. They’ve far too much riding on outcomes.

No one should expect any different from them, either. All animals are most dangerous when they’re wounded.

6

The return of the Stone Age

Your Leftist masters would like to remind you not to get too attached to having air conditioning, lights, kitchen appliances, and all the other blessings of modern civilization, ‘kay?

Over Half The Country At Risk Of ‘Energy Emergencies’ This Summer, Electric Grid Analysis Shows
Millions of Americans across the Midwest, Southwest and West are expected to face blackouts throughout the summer months, an industry analysis concluded.

A variety of factors, including drought conditions and low wind conditions, are expected to put Americans in roughly 28 states at risk of experiencing blackouts this summer, according to a report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a U.S. regulatory authority, published Wednesday. The region managed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) across 15 Midwest states is at the highest risk of “energy emergencies” during the summer due to capacity shortfalls, the analysis showed.

“The Western Interconnection, Texas, Southwest Power Pool (SPP) … are at ‘elevated risk’ of energy emergencies during extreme conditions,” NERC added. “[MISO] is in the ‘high risk’ category, facing capacity shortfalls in its north and central areas during both normal and extreme conditions due to generator retirements and increased demand.”

Bold mine, because I found it so funny I nearly sprung a short rib chortling at it. Don’t miss the aerial photo of an ugly, useless scar on the Nevada landscape included in the article.

Everything louder than everything else

My title, of course, is one of the great Lemmy Kilmister’s most well-known lines, as well as the name of an album by Lemmy’s band. So I’m sure you can easily guess what I’m going to be embedding for this evening’s Tune Damage segment.

Mass shootings just one sign of the systemic collapse of western society… more hunger, violence, debt and destruction yet to come
We are watching the downfall of western civilization as we know it.

The rule of law is dead. Elections are rigged. Free speech is disallowed and a criminally corrupt government now runs an actual Ministry of Truth “disinformation” board. “Science” is a total fraud and the medical system is a murder system. Most of the youth refuse to work, and real-world skills are practically non-existent among those under the age of 30. The education system is run by pedophiles and groomers, Hollywood has gone all-in with satanic programming of children and the US military, under the leadership of woketard Pentagon officials, has become a pathetic shadow of its former self.

On top of all that, the dollar is collapsing in real world value, even as it rises against other currencies (temporarily). The Fed is trapped in an inescapable economic collapse scenario, and the housing bubble is in the process of bursting. Our “president” is a dementia patient who was installed in a rigged election, and our news media — if you can even call them that — are journo-terrorists who parrot CIA lies and corporate disinformation to invoke race wars and covid panic while pushing depopulation vaccines that are designed to exterminate humanity.

None of this is going to get resolved through sanity and reason. It’s all headed for collapse. And when I say “collapse,” I mean the total collapse of western civilization as we know it. This includes the collapse of Western Europe, which is also run by retarded lunatics who are wholly incapable of functioning in any sort of rational way whatsoever.

The West has lost the ability to reason. Logic no longer applies to anything, not science, medicine, journalism, elections, etc.

Oh, I assure you it still DOES apply, and always will. It’s just that most “Americans” have fully bought into the Left’s cherished delusion that logic, like reality itself, can be suspended completely at their capricious whim, then reinstated soon afterwards with no real harm done.

“Journalism” is now just parroting the lies of the corporations and deep state agenda-setters. “Elections” now simply means Democrats running vote-stuffing mules to achieve whatever number of faked votes is necessary to “win.” “Science” means rigging studies, censoring data and destroying the careers of scientific whistleblowers who dare to speak out and warn the world. “Medicine” is a process whereby hospitals and doctors gain financial wealth by murdering patients for profit. “Wall Street” is a Ponzi scheme propped up by seemingly endless money printing. The “gains” are ephemeral. Pension funds and retirement funds are ghosts, and they will collapse toward zero as the house of cards collapses.

Western countries like the USA manufacture almost nothing. We have virtually no domestic supply chain for steel, rare earth minerals, electronics or industrial chemicals and polymers. We are a nation that has abandoned industry and embraced “financialization,” which is the scam of creating make believe wealth by pretending to move numbers around on computer screens, creating derivatives and CDOs and “synthetic CDOs” and other incomprehensible financial instruments that ultimately produce nothing in the real world.

Meanwhile, as China is stockpiling grain in anticipation of a global food shortage — and India has just banned all exports of wheat in order to feed its own people — America continues to export corn, wheat, soy, millet and other agricultural products to China, helping make sure that China won’t starve even while America’s population faces mass famine this year (and next).

There is no longer anything resembling sanity or reason in America. The nation has lost its mind, and the oblivious masses are getting angry enough to start shooting each other with greater frequency. This should come as no surprise.

Believe me, it doesn’t. But odd as it may seem, it ain’t a bad thing, nevessarily. In fact, it’s abundantly clear by now that “shooting each other with greater frequency” is our only way out of this mess. To be specific: sane, sensible, normal Americans are gonna have to start shooting Leftards in job lots if they want their situation to improve. As the saying goes, you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.

(Via WRSA and Bracken)

Update! Dang it, forgot the embed.



Why yes, of COURSE I have a great story about meeting and hanging out with Lemmy once. Ill have to tell ya all about it sometime.

Updated update! A 2009 live version so racy it has to go below the fold. Continue reading “Everything louder than everything else”

Pull the other one, Joe, it has a bell on it

Dang that Putin anyhow. Horrible, horrible man; why must he torment us so?

As Gas Prices Set New Records, Biden Nukes More Oil And Gas Projects
CBS News revealed the Biden administration canceled more oil and gas leases across the country this week as soaring gas prices reached new heights Wednesday.

The Department of Interior canceled plans to drill in more than 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, arguing “lack of industry interest,” on top of canceling a pair of leases in the Gulf of Mexico over “conflicting court rulings.”

“Until now, the White House had remained silent about the massive Alaska lease,” CBS reported Wednesday night, citing political headwinds against the president responsible for record-setting pain at the pump. According to AAA travel agency’s tracker, gas prices reached new milestone Wednesday, at a nationwide average of $4.40 a gallon of regular unleaded and $5.55 for diesel. The prior record for unleaded was set in March, at an average $4.33 per gallon regular, and diesel at $5.54. The latest inflation numbers also out Wednesday revealed all prices still rising at a rapid pace of 8.3 percent annually, exceeding expectations.

“They don’t want to get hit by Republicans in light of high gas prices,” explained an “environmental advocate” to CBS granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic related to White House discretion on the leases. “They’re getting killed on attacks based on inflation. The most visible sign of inflation is high gas prices.”

While Biden has blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for the continued price hikes, the trends began long before President Vladimir Putin launched his February invasion, and analysts say it’s clear that Biden is making things worse by banning companies from exploring sources of U.S. energy independence.

Well, duh. He’s a Demonrat. That means he’s a moron, he hates America, Americans, and the internal combustion engine because GAAAAIIIIIAAAA!!! As with every Demonrat, exorbitant, endlessly-rising gas prices confirm he’s Doing His Part to save the planet. This gives him a delightful full-body frisson of pride in the knowledge of his innate superiority to lesser beings than Himself. What a guy!

“President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands,” White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy pledged on MSNBC.

SSSHHHH! You’re not supposed to say that out loud, dammit!

Really, though, it’s not as if we don’t all know it well enough anyway. I mean, of COURSE he does. For Joe, for any and every shitlib currently extant, what’s not to like about unaffordable gas?

  • It feeds their boundless arrogance and conceit as the Supreme Beings they can’t ever stop telling everybody else they are
  • It inflicts grievous injury on ordinary American families who must drive to work, school, the grocery store, &c
  • It strangulates the American economy
  • It damages American oil companies, whom they hate with the intensity of a thousand suns
  • It increases the price of just about everything else, including those godawful McDonalds corporate earthworm-and-pink-slime doo-doo burgers which really ought to be banned, the revolting things
  • It reduces the hated US to beggar-nation status, forcing it to crawl on hands and knees to the Saudi oil ticks importuning them to please, please, PLEASE increase production, a sight they enjoy more than a good, hot lezbo/interracial/chubby-chaser/transgender-gangbang flick
  • It puts additional pressure on Americans to switch to one of their precious little electric go-karts, or so they tell themselves

So I repeat: what’s not to like here for these smarmy libtard cock-knockers? Unaffordable gas does so many things they want to see done, hurts people they love to see suffer, and makes them feel good about themselves all at once. They dwell in blissful ignorance about the godawful knock-on effects their presumptuous nitwittery will bring about; they really do seem to believe that you can run a First World industrial-age economy on nothing but batteries, wind, sunshine, and dorm-room fantasies. They’re totally unaware of what will happen when the trucks are no longer able to get to the grocery store down the street; for them, the equation of bare shelves suddenly not being restocked within a couple of days anymore simply does not compute. Hey, there’s always the Magical Froot, their personal-fave vegan restaurant, right? They’re BOUND to have something good to eat there, right?

S’cuse me, did I just hear somebody say something about trucks not being able to get to the grocery stores?

It has often been said that if you chase the global climate change ideology to its natural conclusion, we end up in communal groups sitting around a tepid campfire eating some form of sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other…Prior to Joe Biden that prediction might have seemed like hyperbole. Now, not so much.

Indeed, the Green New Deal energy policy of Joe Biden creates massive downstream consequences. Unfortunately, the White House doesn’t seem to care. The high prices and scarcity of critical goods are a feature, not a flaw, as they chase their climate friendly Build Back Better agenda.

Following the continuum of intended consequence, now we have diesel fuel shortages beginning to hit the U.S. economy; and with scarcity comes higher prices of an almost astronomical scale. “The national average price of diesel is now $5.54 per gallon, which is an increase of 22 cents from last week, which was when the most recent record was set. Data shows there’s no state that’s currently seeing diesel prices below $5.12 per gallon.”

Making matters even worse is a drop in available inventory of diesel fuel which is about to become a crisis for the east coast of the U.S. Some Truck Stop operators like Love’s and Pilot are already warning their big rig customers they may not have fuel for truckers.

Never forget: the criminal cartel masquerading as a political party known as the Democrat Party WANTS THIS. They are FOR THIS, they think this is a GOOD THING. If We The People hope to save ourselves, our children, and whatever is left of our nation, then EVERY FUCKING DEMOCRAT must be forcibly removed from office without delay, by any means necessary. Going forward from there, NO DEMOCRAT can be allowed anywhere near the levers of power EVER AGAIN.

And that, friends, is IT. Full stop, end of story.

The calamity we now see unfolding all around us is EXACTLY the sort of thing the muttonheaded, unworkable policies favored by Democrats result in EVERY TIME THEY ARE TRIED. The historical record is rife with past examples. Reportage of current events from socialist shitholes still hanging on in every corner of the globe—Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe—reaffirm the dismal truth about life under THE VERY SAME IDEOLOGY ESPOUSED TODAY BY THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.

It’s only early innings yet, but already things are happening which are without precedent in this once-prosperous nation—circumstances and conditions all too common in a tragically large portion of the world, but quite literally unheard of here. Alas, Americans are soon to learn all about unpleasantries such as hunger, want, poverty, cold, homelessness, and the multifarious hazards associated with them—from savage, predatory street thugs, to sadistic cops, to disease, to feral animal packs, to other poverty-stricken skels—in more intimate detail than they would probaby wish.

Remember when I told you a few weeks back about the ongoing discussion between my brother and a few of his trucker buddies about what, if any, future they might have in the biz if diesel went over five bucks per gallon? Well, guess what: he said that earlier this week three of his co-workers have parked their rigs, locked ’em up, and hung a For Sale sign on ’em, intent on leaving the industry for good. The trucks are all what’s known in the biz as “glider” trucks—older models not subject to the crippling restrictions newer trucks have to run under. Gliders are the most desirable used trucks out there, and go for top buck if you can find one. My brother was lucky enough to score a nice Freightliner Classic XL—freshly-rebuilt Detroit 60 Series under the hood, ultra-clean, not a mark on it inside or out—for a relative pittance, thanks to another of his road-dog friends. Now Jeff spends a fair percentage of his time whenever he’s fueling up at the Flying J fielding endless offers to buy his glider from him on the spot. He just smirks at ’em, waves his old-school paper logbook in their faces (legal for gliders, none of the snooper-tech you have to put up with with the computer logs), and drawls “Nawwwww, I think I’m good here.”

We’re squarely in the Real, the Bad, and the Scary now, folks. Ain’t no way out of it, ain’t no way to reverse course, ain’t no way to fix it; all’s we can do now is just ride it out best we can, and hope to survive. Karl brings the double-plus-ungood tidings:

The other Gorilla in the room, fuel oil aka diesel fuel, is up 80% from last year. Until and unless that is stopped and the price comes back downwhich will only happen if and when the government ceases its war on fossil fuels, there is no way for the general upward pressure on prices to be reversed. Every piece of farm equipment forward to the delivery of the food to your store runs on diesel. Every single item you buy travels at least the last part of its journey moved by diesel. I do not care how you “feel” about the issues related to the use of fossil fuels, the simple reality is that without them you have no fertilizer, no food and nothing in the store so all of the claims of virtue you issue will make you broke or even cause you to starve.

The part in Denninger’s italics and my boldface is the bell sounding our doom, because as long as the US government remains in place, unimpeded, unaltered, and in the control of Democrats, there is absolutely no hope that their lunatic, suicidal War On Fossil Fuels will end. And that, as Karl flatly states, means that there is no significant price relief in store for us, not in the foreseeable future. Whatever the reason for it—incompetence, stupidity, ideological rigidity, or as a component of the Great Reset plan—the Democrats refuse to relax their all-consuming loathing for fossil fuels even slightly. Not even to save their own lives, they won’t. They’re either too damned unimaginative and knotheaded to conceptualize the predictable end-result of their own noble cause, or they arrogantly assume themselves to be way too lofty and important to be brought down by it in the same bloody, broken pile of tribulation as all those other luckless peasants—the eggs for the collective omelet.

And so here we all are. The American people haven’t faced a situation this grim since the Great Depression, and I expect we’ll surpass the darkest days of those times before too much longer. More macabre than anything is that we’ve been brought to this desperate pass not as the result of some natural disaster, or by some ghastly accident. No, the firestorm of immiseration soon to engulf us all is intentional, the product of human creativity, planning, and coordination.

Never forget that this hellish project’s intellectual ancestry can be traced directly back to the Democrat side of the American family tree, particularly so with the specific issue discussed in this post. The berserker fanaticism driving their years-long campaign to do away prematurely with the very fossil-fuel industry which made this the wealthiest nation in human history has been such a rousing success that sane, normal Americans are left with no choice but to deal with them firmly—harshly, even. Stopping them is now a matter of self-preservation, of life and death, literally and imminently—no longer an unattractive, questionable, or melodramatic overreaction to a more or less trifling provocation. If Real Americans stay our hands for much longer, we will condemn ourselves and all that we hold dear to a most ignoble fate—a coward’s death—thereby staining ourselves with a soul-deep shame which can never be scrubbed clean or erased.

Bayou Pete has plenty more on this dark subject, none of it in the least reassuring.

3

Stupidity ain’t cheap

The current supply-chain problem is only one installment of a REALLY big bill.

These “supply chain disruptions,” as everyone is painfully aware, are doing everything from starving babies to shooting up the price of everything, as Wednesday’s 8.3 percent annual inflation number affirmed again. They are also not random, and they’re not a virus’s fault. They’re the direct and foreseeable consequence of ill-advised global lockdowns that nearly all of our nation’s political leaders refused to take into account when they and corporate media colluded to gaslight the world into accepting them.

Our historic “supply chain problems” are not the result of happenstance. They are the result of cowardly, ignorant, and just plain malevolent leadership throughout the entire Covid era.

Lockdowns never needed to happen. Global lockdowns were never before advised or attempted for much worse pandemics, they were based on faulty models, and the Information Age doesn’t change their imprudence. The “supply chain” consequences alone, as well as many of the other horrific medical and social consequences, should be enough evidence for all rational people to conclude that we must never, ever lock down again.

It’s a good article, but CF Lifers won’t be hearing anything in it that they haven’t heard at this here hogwallow from the earliest days of the whole Vaudeville act. For example:

The reality is, it is impossible to just hit “pause” on an economy. An action like this must have millions of unforeseeable effects, and the phrase people are using to summarize some of these butterfly effects now is “supply chain issues.”

Anyone who had any familiarity with the insane complexity of making anything or any cooperative activity such as education should have logically deduced that “pausing” an entire society is entirely impossible and idiotic to even suggest. The pause will always have its own effects that make a restart at best really complicated and possibly never able to occur.

Sound familiar? It should; I was saying as much in Spring 2020, in almost the exact same words. Not to toot my own horn or anything, mind. After all, a catastrophe of this magnitude is hardly a bragging matter. Just sayin’, that’s all.

This foolish Covid “cure” of lockdowns will end up being much, much worse than the disease. And it never needed to have been foisted on Americans and the entire West in the first place.

Needed? Well, no, of course not; tyranny is never “needed.” But unless stamped out upon its initial presentation without delay, it is inevitable. And be ye not deceived: when we speak of lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine blackmail, it’s ultimately tyranny that’s under discussion, all those other things being just specific sub-categories of the larger affliction.

All it would have taken was a few more courageous leaders or a less demonic press to protect the American people from responding to a natural disaster with even bigger man-made disasters. But we don’t have either, so Americans punished themselves by suffering 10 times what was in store had we just followed common sense and ridden out the storm with more courage and honesty.

I’m still flabbergasted at the number of us who were taken in by the whole grift, lots of them people I know personally, respect, and consider friends—intelligent, aware people who I expected to react much differently, especially as the reality of what was going on became more and more apparent. Yes, the first reports from China on this mysterious new virus were indeed alarming. But when governments pounced with such fierce alacrity on this perceived opportunity to restrict their populations to a far greater extent than they’d ever in their wildest dreams imagined they might get away with before, the jig was up. At that point it seemed to me undeniable that, whatever the facts about the virus and the seriousness of the threat it represented in those first days may have been, The Virus!!!™ had been fully co-opted by government, becoming in effect a cloak to obscure its nastiest manipulations and skullduggery beneath while they got on with the real work of all governments: erecting permanent structures to celebrate, indulge, and expand their own power, greed, and self-regard.

The least we can do to help rectify and correct our shameful behavior is be honest about what we’ve done. Acknowledging that one did wrong is the first essential step towards repentance, which is the first essential step towards restoration and wholeness.

One way would be to stop blaming Covid-19 for our irrational response to it. Instead of saying Covid or “the pandemic” caused the supply chain issues, like Biden does, we can start saying that lockdowns did so. To go a step farther, we can stop calling them “supply chain” issues at all, and call them “lockdown consequences.” That is the truth.

We can all also etch in our memories who exactly was complicit in leading us into panic and devastation, and hold them accountable. That is going to require some electoral changes, starting with the man at the top and going right down through state and federal “health” agencies. No funds for them until they clean house.

Not gonna happen, sorry. What you’re proposing is the most foolish of fool’s errands, for all sorts of reasons. Why focus on personnel when the problem is actually systemic? Allowing the system to accrue power enough that it could then be used to lock down society en bloc was our mistake. Once such a system is in place, it’s only a matter of time before people temperamentally inclined to such will come along to wield that power, a universe of possible atrocity and bad behavior suddenly unfolding before them.

Remembering the “who” is pointless; there will never be a shortage of their kind in this poor world. No, the important thing is to avoid putting temptation before such people in the first place. “Electoral changes” will never suffice to turn the trick—not when the “elections” are for offices in charge of a government whose power is effectively without limit, they won’t. You can’t resolve a cockroach infestation by bringing in new cockroaches to replace the old ones. You gotta get rid of the things that attract cockroaches, no more nor less.

2

MOAR POWER PLEEZE!

They never miss even the smallest opportunity, do they?

Pelosi Pushes Democratic Bill That Would Give Biden Power To Control Gas Prices

Gee, wouldn’t you say he pretty much has it already, as evidenced by the way he caused prices to double via shutting down pipelines, yanking oil leases, forbidding drilling and exploration, etc? But then that’s Demonrats for ya—always looking for any excuse at all to expand federal power and control. The rest of the article is so badly bloated with shitlib megalomania it’s too fat to get up off the sofa and walk to the kitchen to grab Fauxcahontas Warren “one o’ them thar beers.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blamed the continued record surge in gas prices on “exploitation” by oil companies, and touted a bill that would essentially allow the president to control prices.

During her weekly press briefing, Pelosi touted a Democrat-backed bill called the “Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act,” which would allow the president to declare an “energy emergency” giving him the ability to regulate prices by preventing fuel companies from selling their products at prices deemed to be “unconscionably excessive” and “exploiting” such an emergency.

“Next week on the floor of the House, we will have another piece of our lowering-costs-for-the-American-people legislation,” Pelosi said. “House Democrats, led by [Washington] Congresswoman [Kim] Schrier and [California] Congresswoman [Katie] Porter introduced the ‘Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act.’ While families are struggling to pay higher prices at the pump, oil and gas companies are recording record profits, with [the] seven largest oil companies announcing buybacks that could total $41 billion this year alone. Again and again, we see gas prices rise, sometimes when the cost of oil drops, oil prices drop, and price gouging needs to be stopped. This is a major exploitation of the consumer because this is a product that the consumer must have.”

“Again, the Putin [Price] Hike at the pump is a part of this,” Pelosi continued. “You would think that the oil companies would compensate for that rather than exploit the opportunity that it — so in this bill, what this bill does [is] — price gouging needs to be addressed, including new tools at the [Federal Trade Commission] to address those abuses. Our bill enables the president to issue an energy emergency declaration making it unlawful to increase gas and home energy prices in an exploitative and excessive way, which is part of the business plan of these companies.”

The bill authorizes the president to declare an “energy emergency” anywhere within the United States, and use federal powers to regulate prices to combat it. “The President may issue an energy emergency proclamation for any area within the jurisdiction of the United States” within one week of a “reasonably foreseeable emergency” for a period of up to 30 days, the bill states. These proclamations can be renewed for consecutive periods.

Hey, we can always rely on the Demonrats to solve the problems created for us by…um, the Demonrats. Wherever would we be without ’em?

1

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CF Glossary

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Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

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