Life in a once-great nation

Dark daze

Posted on August 3, 2023August 3, 2023 by Mike

No, nobody is coming for your guns wood stoves charcoal grills air conditioning gas stoves ICE-engine cars incandescent light bulbs. That’s just another silly-assed right-wing Conspiracy Theory, that’s all.

If you like your light bulb, you can’t keep your light bulb. The Biden administration is seeing to that. Well, to be fair you can keep whatever incandescent light bulbs you may currently own, but you won’t be able to replace them. That is because today is the day when the ban on the sale and manufacture of most incandescent light bulbs officially goes into effect. From here on out, your options will likely be limited to LEDs and fluorescents.

The funny thing is that this is not exactly news. People have known about it for years, and although it occasionally popped up in news stories or your local radio host’s “stack of stuff,” no one enforced it. I remember years ago when the word first came out that incandescents were on the hit list; my wife and I went to the local home improvement store and bought a small stockpile. Since there are only two of us and we don’t use that much power, we still have most of them. I have yet to hit the area stores to see if the shelves have been cleaned out by light bulb hoarders.

National Review notes that the Democrats passed the bill to ban the bulbs by phasing them out in 2007, and then-president George W. Bush even signed it into law. Obama tightened up the standards on incandescents to speed the process up. Trump rolled the whole affair back, and Biden resurrected the effort last year.

I recall reading years ago someplace that the ban came about due to GE pressing FederalGovCo hard for one during the Dubya reign of error, saying that incandescents had become so cheap they couldn’t make any real money off ‘em anymore. No, I ain’t gonna go hunt up a supporting link, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

So light ’em if you got ’em. Ads appearing on the back channels of the web advertising incandescent light bulbs should be arriving any day now. DOE enforcement officers may be kicking down the doors of the last mom-and-pop hardware stores to confiscate stockpiles of outlaw bulbs. You could be walking down the sidewalk and hear a whisper from the shadows, “Psst! Hey, buddy. Wanna buy a light bulb?”

Is there some sort of kickback or business deal tied to the ban on incandescent light bulbs? Possibly. I certainly wouldn’t put it past our elected and appointed officials to game the system. MRCTV has reported on Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s connections with the EV industry, and we know that the Biden administration is in bed with the solar industry. But overall, I suspect that this is being done because it can be done. This is one more rule, one more law, one way to remind you that there is nothing that the Uniparty can’t control, even if it means something as small as your light bulbs.

Can, and most assuredly will—for exactly as long as we sit still for it and let it happen, and not one micromillisecond longer. Until such time, they’re only just getting started, really.

The only way through it

Posted on August 2, 2023August 2, 2023 by Mike

Is to just do it.

We’ve been subjected to a lot of outrageous political double standards, but the one that says Democrats can deny – and even actively undermine – elections all they want, but Republicans go to jail for doing the same, might just be the one that tears the Republic apart.

It is very dangerous to teach a large number of people that elections are a joke and the political system is permanently rigged against them. The double standard on “election denial” is broadcasting that message with painful intensity. It’s almost gleeful mockery of democracy.

There’s basically nothing the Left can’t do to question, challenge, and undermine elections. Much of what Trump just got indicted for was a matter of widespread and open discussion on the Left after 2016. No threat of criminalizing such talk was made.

As if anyone really needed it, we’re getting a nice sneak peek at what hyper-politicized government crusades against “disinformation” will look like. Trump gets indicted, but dozens of “national security experts” who spread disinfo about Hunter’s laptop suffer no consequences.

At this point, a meme I hijacked from our good friends over at WRSA seems pretty apropos.

IfOnlyGOPe

Ahhh, if only. Onwards.

Democrats can do anything to win, by hook or by crook, and when they manage to lose even with ballot harvesting and “fortified” elections, they can undermine the election or actively sabotage the incoming administration. None of it will ever be treated as a crime.

Dems are even branching out from denying and undermining elections to go after other branches of government, as in their recent breathless campaign to undermine the Supreme Court, and even physically endanger justices they don’t like.

Our Republic has pulled itself off the mat after quite a few beatings, but this is the double standard we may not survive – turning elections into a “heads we win, tails you lose” joke. It fits neatly into the crisis of politicized and weaponized government agencies.

It’s an existential crisis when the permanent State uses its vast power and money to thwart elections that might threaten its interests – or to silence people who complain about its incompetence and malfeasance, very much including our Third World election process.

It’s looked for a good long while to me as if the way out of this mess has been reduced to but three options: Civil war, revolution, and/or national collapse and/or partition of some sort. Mind you, We Duh Sheeple won’t necessarily be the ones who get to decide which road to take—after the supine, even craven response to the FauxVid trial-run, we probably don’t deserve to be, can’t be trusted to be—but it seems to be narrowing rapidly to one (or perhaps some combination) of those three seriously unappetizing alternatives.

The above excerpts are from a Doc Zero thread, so of course you’ll want to read all of it.

Update! After a quick scan-through, I see that the preceding Hayward thread is well worth your time and attention as well.

The Hunter Biden saga illuminates the Biden family’s rapacious corruption, and even worse, the corruption of federal agencies to protect them. Also, it’s further evidence that we must shatter the elite bubble and force them to live in the America they made for the rest of us.

Of COURSE the corruption angle is huge, arguably the story of the century in American politics. Socialists claim they can create an all-knowing mega-government run by honest, selfless geniuses – but what they always deliver is a corrupt sewer state run by greedy mediocrities.

There are no big, honest governments, and every one of the many, many embarrassing tales of mega-corruption must be spotlighted to keep proving it, over and over again. The most important goal of civic reform today is shattering the pernicious illusion of Honest Big Government.

Hunter Biden is an absolutely perfect example of what socialism actually delivers: a privileged elite of boundless greed and degenerate morality, milking cash out of the trillion-dollar state by peddling influence and selling protection, insulated from all legal consequences.

Of COURSE that corruption slid easily into outright fascism over the past generation. It was only a matter of time before the mega-State began using its corporate Little Partners to skirt the Constitution and exert compulsive force against the people.

A-yup, you’ll never regret looking in on the good Doctah now and then.

Updated update! A Substack column I just recently became a free subscriber to ties both the above topics—the destruction of America That Was, and the FauxVid “dysfunction test”—neatly together, with a pretty little bow on top, and with the ongoing shit-typhoon of bogus Trump indictments thrown in for added spice.

Recent election interference from a weaponized Department of Justice intent on keeping Donald J. Trump from ever returning to the White House has horrified conservatives, independents, legal experts, and anyone with principles who cares about fairness, justice, and equality under the law.

They cannot fathom the banana republic transformation happening before their eyes, out in the open, and they weep for Lady Justice, who as I wrote after the shambolic New York indictment, “…hasn’t just been robbed of her blindfold, they’ve bent her over and invited every sick spook over for a gang bang.”

Watching conservatives’ confusion about recent election results and the political persecution of their favorite candidate is like watching the double-masked lockdowners waiting for Fauci to give them their next orders, except they’ll tune into the usual conservative commentariat who will never tell them the truth or risk losing their platforms that extract millions of dollars and billions of minutes of attention from these poor souls who just want their republic back.

You know the names: Bannon, Levin, Crowder, Hannity, Posobiec, Bongino, Beck, Shapiro, and the kid from Turning Point with down syndrome.

As they get their attention devotees to offer their labor to enrich their media empires, they further engender their rage while distancing them from reality.

What reality?

The reality that anyone with half a functioning brain could see coming since they orchestrated a domestic coup against Trump and spent four years undermining his Presidency.

The reality that conservative pundits failed for years to disclose to their loyal flock—Trump is not permitted to ever return to the White House. It doesn’t matter if he’s polling at 99% with all voters, he simply has two choices: Prison, or a plea deal that prevents his name from appearing on the ballot in 2024.

By George, I think he’s got it!

No reason it can’t be both

Posted on July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 by Mike

And every reason to think that it not only can, but IS.

Recently, in a conversation between friends, the hypothesis was floated: what if all the burning farms, derailed trains, crop failures, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad scary nauseam aren’t really enemy action, but more a competency crisis.

As in these things happen not because big-bad is plotting against us, but because no one knows how to do the things they purportedly do anymore.

Embrace the healing power of “and,” Sarah.

To give an example: Suppose you were hired to haul buckets from a well. But when you actually get the job, you find out, no. Because of inherited systems, and what your superiors expect, you’re supposed to climb down the wall, hand over hand, and bring up water by the cupfull. And there are regulations in the works to make that by the spoonfull. However, you’ll be fully held to account if you can’t provide the amount of water the company is contracted for. You. Personally.

So, you do what you can. You fudge the books. On paper, you’re getting all this water up. Where the water goes no one knows, every one down stream (pardon the pun) from you does the same.

If this sounds like the soviet system? It is. It’s just that the directives don’t come directly and traceably from the government. (Though under the infestation of Bidentia they increasingly do.) Instead, they come from “experts” “scientists” “Studies” “marketing gurus.” And sometimes they are curtailed or made worse by agencies and regulations.

Yes, the managerial or worse “expert” class is the same that furnishes government. These are not your friends, are not meant to be your friends, and are convinced they know much more than you do.

What they know in fact is “how to manage.” But it’s not how to manage anything. They know theory of management (or whatever) derived from no reality (mostly from the writings of Marx, if you dig a little) and pushed ALL THE WAY DOWN.

It’s like — exactly like — being run by “experts” who memorized the Little Red Book. It might please those in power, but it has nothing to do with accomplishing the actual job in front of you.

No coincidence, that. The mistake Sarah makes here is one all too many of us still do: assuming that “their job” is still what the traditional American understanding of that was. Nothing could be further from the truth. Under the present-day Amerika v2.0/Soviet-style system, these people are NOT “public servants.” They do NOT “work for us,” are not in any way, shape, or form answerable to We The People; they are accountable only to their OWN masters in goobermint, whose goals are not ours.

Once you’ve accepted that home truth, it all starts to make a sad, sick sort of sense—another of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen, shall we say. Bukowski recognized all those years ago what the underlying problem is.

Apologies for y’all being forced to click over to YewToob to learn the answer, but hey, whatchagonna do. New category for this sort of thing, which I fear is gonna be populated all too quickly: Culture Of Incompetence.

Update! Well, whaddya know, after getting the dreaded “Video unavailable” nag-window in the MarsEdit post preview, the vid appears on the actual CF page, at least for me. YMMV, of course and as usual.

Bang for the buck

Posted on July 25, 2023July 25, 2023 by Mike

I’ve said several times that, after the tampering/rigging/fraud debacles of ’20 and ’22, the only interest I’ll have in national “elections” going forward will be for their entertainment value, nothing more. Which, for 2024, is already looking as if it might turn out to be much higher than anticipated.

Good news, everyone! Mitt Romney (D, but R when necessary-Utah) has a plan for victory in the 2024 presidential race. That plan involves forcing Trump out of the field of candidates. Romney outlined his pathway to victory in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. While bemoaning the fact that Trump will likely be the nominee, Romney holds out hope that The Donald can be defeated, provided the race is narrowed down to two contenders before Trump “sews up” the nomination. For that to happen, the mega-donors and influencers in the GOP must convince those candidates who do not have a realistic chance of winning to drop out of the race.

HA! To rejigger that great Morpheus line just a wee mite: Mitt, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

He concedes that this may be easier said than done, but the risk of having expendable candidates in the race is just too high:

There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu has observed, “It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.”

Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.

Romney suggests a drop-dead date of Monday, Feb. 26. That is the first business day after the contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. He goes so far as to suggest that donors to lower-tier candidates extract a pledge from them that they will drop out if their prospects are dim after the fateful Monday.

Keep in mind that this is the same guy who was singing the praises of hot dogs just last week. And a man who has not shown his face at a single state or county GOP convention since he ran for Senate. I should know. I’ve been to more of them than he has.

Man, talk about your no-hopers—if ever there was one, it would have to be Mittens Romneycare, whose only real rival in terms of manifestly-doomed pResidential runs was recently-anointed grifter and pedophile Faux Jaux Bribem. As for Too Old Jaux, just a wweek or so ago his handlers announced his intention to conduct his “campaign” for re-“election” from his sarcophagus in the palatial basement of his Delaware home mansion palace, being far too frail and decrepit to actually come outside and attempt to move around any without the risk of falling and breaking his hip yet again.

Which jacks the entertainment value straight up to Everest-level heights.

The problem with cities

Posted on July 16, 2023July 16, 2023 by Mike

Is that eventually, one way or another, their problems become our problems.

Imploding Cities Will Drag All of Us Down — Even if You Don’t Live Anywhere Near One
There is so much wrong with America’s cities, it’s hard to see why any contributing member of society would live and/or work in one of them. Some of the issues arise from far-Left local governance while others are generated by more widespread Leftist policy. These are coupled with an organic workforce evolution, as the United States transitions from an industry-based to an information-based economy. The result is urban areas caught in a downward spiral — and, as with any sinking vessel, threatening to suck everyone nearby down with them.

First, a quick refresher on the compounding problems of urban areas. Chief among them is that big cities are dark blue, and thus they’ve become crucibles of Left-wing policy failure. Uncontrolled crime, roving drug and mental-illness zombies, and swarms of sanctuary-recipient asylum scammers are crowding out reasonable people and businesses. The normals who remain to take advantage of access to cultural events (such as they are) and restaurant variety are also subject to totalitarian social controls and two-tiered justice systems that punish them when they fight back against criminals. But no matter how desperate the situation becomes, city councils can be counted on to double down on woke policies, then double down again.

Businesses are fleeing. In the ones that remain, shopping for basic goods has become a frustrating exercise in waiting for an associate to unlock the case so you can grab a razor and some toothpaste. Add in today’s high interest rates, which make owning and running a business prohibitively expensive, and the writing is on the wall. PJ Media colleague Rick Moran reported last month that large San Francisco commercial businesses, like hotels and malls, are simply walking away from their obligations, handing the keys to the banks with which their real estate is financed. Concurrently, major retailers are declining to renew leases and are simply closing their doors, unable to break even in an atmosphere where retail theft is encouraged. This process is occurring to some degree in major cities across the country.

While we conservatives point and laugh at the plight of woke cities from the comfort and safety of our suburban and rural homes, we may want to take a moment to consider a sobering issue. The effects of the imminent collapse of the commercial urban real estate market will ripple out across the financial sector and affect just about everyone in one way or another.

Remember the mortgage-backed securities crisis in 2008? And how, even if you didn’t default on your mortgage or didn’t even own a house, the entire economy tipped into what the hyperbolic media tagged “The Great Recession” and we all suffered? So, this would be kind of like that, except the problem will start with a commercial real estate collapse.

Which collapse is happening even as we speak (so to, umm, speak). Real Americans who aren’t shitty-city dwellers have no place they can reasonably expect to find succor, either:

Don’t start daydreaming that we’ll have a Republican president by then who will refuse to bail out imploding cities, either. When you realize that everyone’s pensions are involved, you understand that not bailing out these banks and cities was never going to be an option. They have us over a barrel. So we can expect a cool trillion or two to flow from Big G’s coffers. This, while we are still reeling from the inflation and high interest rates from the last crisis, the Great COVID Overreaction Rescue Plan.

There is much to recommend city life: museums, entertainment, fine dining, varied shopping and cultural experiences, travel hubs, and excellent medical care are all steps away. A large segment of the population prefers such a stimulating and convenient lifestyle, and they would happily live in cities regardless of whether they worked at home. Enterprising landlords could convert less-used office space to living space and continue to run a profitable business. But so long as Soros DAs, activists, and city councilors keep making urban life unlivable, America’s cities will continue to circle the drain. And we’re all going to get sucked down with them.

Too bad, that, and no, it ain’t really fair. It’d be all too easy to assume that, what with the industry and manufacturing that for many years was centered in our large cities now gone the way of the dodo, the cities’ influence over and ability to affect the outlying areas might have diminished a great deal, but it just isn’t the case. As ever-larger numbers of those in a position to do so flee the urban shithole-zones, the rest of us Flyover-Country types will almost certainly be feeling the pain too—and the lamentable tendency of those big-city refugees to vote for the exact same things that ruined their own befouled nests* is only the beginning of it.

* Which tendency may or may not be apocryphal, interestingly enough, according to what you’re reading and who wrote it

Is it tyranny yet?

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Mike

Yes, it most certainly is. The Advanced stage of it, actually; we blew right by the “Intermediate” and “Beginner” levels and left them spinning Wile E Coyote-like in our dust long, long ago.

By operations underway I mean things like mRNA vaccines stealthily deleting kin, friends, and public figures from the scene…decriminalizing crime…undermining the oil industry by a thousand cuts…liquidating small business…making little children insane over sex…flooding the land with illegal immigrants…devaluing the currency…queering elections — all of these things done on purpose, by the way. And if you complain about any of it, here comes the FBI or the IRS knocking on your door.

So, to make sure that a collapse of the USA comes on-schedule, there is the useful fracas created by our government geniuses over in Ukraine that creeps day-by-day toward a quick American assisted suicide. Just to remind you, here’s how that started: In 2014, the US fomented a coup against Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In short order, the Russian language was banned (despite the fact that Most Ukrainians speak Russian). A piqued Russia re-po’d the Crimean Peninsula. When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (the Donbas provinces) tried to go their own way, Ukraine shelled and rocketed them for eight years. That was the setup.

All of the above was absolutely unnecessary, you understand. Ukraine had been going about its business the best it could since 1991 as a shlub nation with an aged-out Soviet infrastructure, some US-sponsored bioweapons labs, and no energy resources. It had been collecting royalties for allowing Russia to run oil pipelines across its fruited plain — of which, a lot of gas was siphoned off in transit by bandits. Ukraine attempted to compensate for its disadvantages by being an international money laundromat, though that only benefited its oligarch class (and the extended “Joe Biden” family).

After “Joe Biden” got “elected” in 2020, and news of his family’s sketchy business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere finally dribbled out, Ukraine was turned into a giant grenade and “JB” (or persons acting on his behalf) pulled the pin. NATO was dragooned into the quarrel as backup against its better judgment. If the objective was to weaken Russia, as stated by one of our strategic geniuses, SecDef Loyd Austin, it didn’t work out. Rather, it exposed the USA as a reckless global psychopath bent on wrecking every country it pretends to help — including the major countries in NATO.

Another good outing from Kunstler which, alas, falls apart in the closing ‘graph.

Anyway, “Joe Biden’s” entire act is unspooling. He is a prank that the Democratic Party played on the American people. Sometime before Halloween he will have to exit the scene in disgrace, gruesome as the prospect might seem, with Kamala Harris anxiously draining vodka bottles as she awaits history’s call at the old Naval Observatory. That will be a fun day in the USA, all righty.

Sorry Jim, ain’t gonna happen; barring Too Old Jaux succumbing to age and general decrepitude, he ain’t going anywhere, and will assuredly be running for re-“election” next year should he live long enough to. The Repugnicants aren’t going to be impeaching his corrupt ass, in spite of an over-abundance of grounds for doing so—and, having grubbed so very desperately for several decades to worm his way into the White House, the notion that he would ever step down of his own volition is self-evidently absurd.

Saw it coming from fourteen years away

Posted on July 13, 2023July 13, 2023 by Mike

Derb looks back in bitter schadenfreude.

Back in 2009, I published a book, We Are Doomed.

The subtitle was Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. And I was pointing out to American Conservatives that they weren’t succeeding in anything because they had been too optimistic; and that the proper stance for a philosophical conservative is a careful pessimism.

So now, 14 years on, I want to discuss the question: in what direction have we gone since I published that book?

As we all know only too well, the answer to that question is grim indeed: straight down the crapper.

Follows, John takes what he calls “a quick canter through the last 14 years of our Cultural Revolution” which demonstrates that the man isn’t just a visionary, he’s a full-on fucking prophet. The issues are addressed according to the book’s chapter titles: Culture, Sex, Education, War, Immigration, and so on, well-aimed salvos on not a single one of which he missed his mark.

From the Diversity section, which holds that the real problem isn’t necessarily with “diversity” itself, rather with the preposterous surfeit of it the maniacal Left has studiously rammed down Real American throats in recent years.

I’m personally, a “salt in the stew” diversitiphile. I like a little diversity.

I grew up in mid-20th century England. The guy who sold us ice cream was an Italian!

And one of the girls in our class was Scottish, which we thought was very exotic. She had a Scottish accent.

And then, when I was in my teens, we got our first Chinese restaurant! And that was good too.

But it was salt in the stew. A little bit of salt spices up the stew. But you really don’t want to dump a whole bag of salt into your stew.

Which is what we seem to want to do.

Well, actually, it’s what some of us want to force the rest of us to do, more like.

(Via WRSA)

Got our number

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Mike

Don’t look now—OVER THERE, A SQUIRREL!—but the Rooskies just confirmed that they take the old Biblical admonishment to “know thine enemy” very seriously indeed.

Needless to say, It’s not a ‘smiley face’ sort of situation.

His final words?

“So far, the finally degenerate Western political class is trying to raise the stakes in bloody clown horror. In a state of persistent dementia pushes our little world to the third world. The stoned Kiev regime is inciting the war to the last Ukrainian.”

A degenerate Western political class, foisting “bloody clown horror” on the rest of the world? A state of persistent dementia? Yep, I’d say this guy (Dmitry Medvedev, that would be, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council) knows us extremely well; better than we know ourselves, from the looks of it. Meanwhile, back in “Keeeev” (just around the bend from “Pock-e-stahn,” in the preferred argot of obnoxiously smug former presidents, Western Enemedia “news” anchors, and other pretentious “citizen of the world” twits across the multiverse)…

Does that sound like a country that’s on ‘the back foot’ or ‘losing’? Not to me…Have the Russians had setbacks? Sure… part and parcel of war. HOWEVER The fucking moronic Krainians? They’re running out of people. The latest vidyas I’ve seen, from the Krainians themselves? The fucking ages of the ‘cruits and boots they got?

Jesus.

I’m younger than the majority of these guys.

I’m pretty sure if Grandpa is on the front line, yer in “Germany circa 1945” territory. I mean for real. 65 year old guys, in uniform, looking miserable? They should be at home but apparently Krainfeld is bound and determined to kill off every single male Krainian between the ages of 16 to 65.

Not that fucking faggot and his Kocaine Klown Krew are actually on the front lines…nope…he’s faaaar too much of a rock star. In fact I’m pretty sure he’s actually holed up where the green screens keep him looking like he’s still in the Kraine, as I have my doubts…hjuyhjfucking if anything, I highly encourage someone in the Kraine, or Putin himself, to put both the Kraine and us (the rest of the world population) first and put Krainfeld out of OUR collective misery.

I.E. drop a Kaliber on his fucking ass.

Fuck him.

Sideways

Preferably where even dental records wouldn’t help with ID.

Jes’ Sayin;’

We could use a little dose of that particular prescription right here at home, I’m thinking. Maybe Putin might be, umm, persuadable on my nuke-DC proposal.

PENNSY AVE KOKAINE KASE KRACKED!!!

Posted on July 7, 2023July 7, 2023 by Mike

As James Ellroy always says: Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush.

Always has right @JoeBiden #HuntersCocaine https://t.co/11uOcDYPcZ pic.twitter.com/rYKMNK8WZ8

— Stephen Richardson (@richirich1968)

July 7, 2023

That’s some truly hellacious sleuthing right there, Stephen. Great job! “Unlikely to be found,” according to the “authorities”? That’s because they’re unlikely to be looking, or not very hard at least.

The cold, hard truth

Posted on June 15, 2023June 15, 2023 by Mike

Remember that 800 pound gorilla in the room I mentioned the other day in the Eyrie post? Well, in the way of all 800 pound gorillas, he’s still there, and isn’t going anywhere until he’s captured the undivided attention those pesky, implacable 800 pound gorillas always tend to seek…and, sooner or later, one way or another, get.

California Can Either Charge Its EV Fleet Or Keep The Lights On
Can California transition to a portfolio of 100% renewable energy sources and still generate enough electricity to meet the state’s future needs, including the addition of millions of electric cars on the road?

A: No. Next question. For that matter, neither can any other state. Turns out, there’s a reason why the human race abandoned “renewable” (read: inadequate to meet the demands of a modern industrial civilization) energy for more reliable, productive sources several centuries ago, see. UNEXPECTED!™

California is already incapable of generating enough electricity, importing 30% of its current electricity needs from other states. With respect to current generation sources, nearly 60% of California’s in-state electricity generation is produced by natural gas and nuclear power plants. Including conventional hydroelectric generation, which does not count as a renewable source for purposes of California’s policies, nearly two-thirds of the state’s current electricity comes from disfavored generation sources.

It is doubtful that California will be able to generate sufficient electricity to meet future energy needs using only the favored generation sources; and it is not even close.

Overall, total electricity generated will be 21.1% below the amount of electricity demanded — and this does not even account for the impacts from all the likely future mandates. Beyond the electric vehicle mandates evaluated above, officials are rapidly prohibiting connections for stoves, furnaces, hot water heaters, and dryers in new construction projects.

There are reasons to be exceptionally skeptical that California’s current energy policy environment is achievable. Either the policies will cause extreme energy shortages and jeopardize quality of life or the state’s political leaders will need to repeal the current suite of mandates.

“Reasons to be skeptical”? Oh, you just bet there are at that. But since, as every good “liberal” knows, electricity is something that happens when you flip a light switch—just as food is something that comes from the grocery store—there really isn’t a problem here at all. It’s just a damnable lie made up by those godawful MAGA H8RRRZZZ to oppress them, that’s all.

Undergroundwater railroad

Posted on June 15, 2023June 15, 2023 by Mike

Delusional, or visionary? I report, Stephen Green derides.

Biden Wants to Build an 8,000-Mile Ocean Train, and I Say Let’s Do This!

Me too, whatever “this” may turn out to be.

On today’s installment of “What the Hell Did Biden Actually Just Say?” we have the alleged president of the most powerful country in the world announcing his plan to build, and I quote, “a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”

Seriously.

Those are his own words. This isn’t some Deep Fake video; it’s Presidentish Joe Biden speaking Wednesday night at the League of Conservation Voters’ annual Capital Dinner, whatever that is.

The icing on the Ocean Train cake is that massive solar farm in Angola that Biden is going to build just because those jerks next door in Namibia said it couldn’t be done.

Imagine the convenience and savings of boarding a train in Los Angeles bound for Honolulu, where you could spend the first night of your rail voyage stuffing your face with poi before heading off to your final destination: beautiful downtown Kochi, India.

Not that there isn’t a kink or two in Biden’s Ocean Train.

Aww. Party pooper. Spoilsport. Wet blanket. Naysayer. Dream-killer. I say we’ll never get anywhere as a nation if we don’t indulge every demented fantasy our beloved, got-it-together pRetend ***”pResident”*** can weave out of whole cloth, no matter how self-evidently preposterous it might be. DID YOUR HARD-NOSED PRAGMATIC REALISM PUT A MAN ON MARS YET, SMART GUY?!? Yeh, I didn’t THINK so. So, y’know, there.

Update! Ace speculates on what might really be going on with this arrant horseshit.

So what is Biden talking about?

A friend tells me we’re missing the real story. He says Biden is there vowing…to help China complete its “Belt and Road Initiative,” its bid to secure a big chunk of the world’s resources by building highways and railroads through Asia and Africa.

Here are his fuller remarks:

“China has their Belt and Road Initiative. It turned out to be their debt and destruction initiative. No, I’m serious. Not a joke. Well, we’re going to win, and we’re going to help.

We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean. We have plans to build in — in Angola one of the largest solar plants in the world. I can go on, but I’m not. I’m going off-script. I’m going to get in trouble. (Laughter.)”

“We’re going to help” — we’re going to build the road network to feed China with mineral resources, because they’ve bankrupted themselves doing so. So we’re going to help and build that for them.

Makes perfect sense to me—insofar as anything Blibberin’ Biden ever says or does can be said to make sense, that is.

Why we can’t have nice things anymore

Posted on June 4, 2023June 4, 2023 by Mike

Enviro-nuts, that’s why.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE WHY WE CAN’T HAVE INFRASTRUCTURE
California’s high-speed electric train has burned through nearly $10 billion, far more than its original $9 billion bond, without building a single mile of track.

Where did that money go?

$1.3 billion was spent on environmental impact clearances.

After over a decade, Brian Kelly, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, cheerfully announced that, “we’re making true progress on nearing full environmental clearance for the entire Phase 1 high-speed rail project.” By the summer, the high-speed rail which hasn’t even begun construction might finally get its full environmental impact clearance. Perhaps.

California’s infamous high-speed train to nowhere, which began in 2009 and whose budget already tops $100 billion, financed by corrupt environmental cap-and-trade robbery that makes cryptocurrency seem legitimate by comparison, may seem like an outlier, but it’s not.

Every time presidents make a pitch for an infrastructure bill, they visit the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River for a photo op.

“Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama declared with his back to the bridge. “Help us rebuild America.

After Obama, Trump came to the bridge, and more recently Biden claimed that his infrastructure bill, which spent nearly three quarters of a billion on electric cars, and little on infrastructure, would finally fix the bridge. Over $10 million has been spent on environmental impact studies going back 18 years to explain why nothing much was being done about the bridge.

But why spend money on bridges when you can instead spend it on environmental reviews of hypothetical bridges? People can cross the former, but the politically connected get rich off the latter.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $5 million was needed to fund an environmental impact study to build a new bridge, another $5 million to consider building a bridge in Mission, Texas. The current status of that bridge is unclear. After wasting millions and years on environmental impact studies, projects often never move forward due to changing finances or circumstances.

The endless environmental studies drain massive amounts of taxpayer money. For example, the Yeager Airport in Central West Virginia needed a $5.6 million grant for its environmental impact study. And the sheer scale of taxpayer money stolen by the green industry is not being tracked.

Why, it’s almost as if the whole Green Weenie, EnviroTard, Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ thing was nothing but a scam right from the start or something. But no, that can’t be right, the very idea is just completely absurd.

Isn’t it?

(Via Brother Bob)

In praise of Tommy Robinson

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Mike

Life in a time of monsters ascendant.

Three Cheers for Tommy Robinson
The backbone of Britain.

The last time we heard from Tommy Robinson was early last year. In a revealing documentary called The Rape of Britain, he took us to the town of Telford, England (population 142,000), where Muslim gang members had raped innumerable white girls while local police had refused not only to arrest the perpetrators but also to protect the victims. Now he’s back with an equally illuminating documentary entitled Silenced.

It begins with a minor incident that took place in 2018 on the playground of the Almondbury School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. According to the mainstream media version, Bailey McLaren, a racist white boy in his early teens, had “waterboarded” Jamal Hijazi, an innocent refugee from Syria of about the same age, and had acted utterly without provocation.

The story spread quickly around the globe. There was just one problem: it wasn’t remotely true. Bailey hadn’t waterboarded Jamal. He’d thrown a cup of water at him. It was on video. It wasn’t about race, and it certainly wasn’t unprovoked. In fact, Jamal had threatened to rape Bailey’s sisters. And, as Tommy discovered by doing the kind of footwork on the case that no other reporter bothered to do, Jamal had done much else besides. He’d knocked one classmate unconscious. He’d caused a boy to bleed by sticking him in the leg with a compass (presumably the kind used in math classes, not in navigation).

He’d threatened to stab a boy. He’d beaten up girls. He hit one girl with a hockey stick and bit another one so viciously that it caused a horrible wound. He routinely called female teachers “bitches.” He’d been caught carrying a knife and screwdriver at school. Adults who’d worked there described him as rude, nasty, a “little bastard,” a “horrible boy” with “no respect for women at all.” “He started on everyone,” recalled one school worker.

And they denied that Jamal was the victim of racism on anybody’s part. There’d been several other Syrian kids in the school at the same time, and none of them had experienced – or caused – any problems. Much was made by the media of a photo of Jamal with his arm in a cast; though the injury was blamed on Bailey, it turned out to be the result of another incident in which Jamal attacked a much younger boy only to be pulled forcefully off the child by a kid his own age.

As for Bailey, school staff agreed he was no bully. And no racist, either. “He had two half-caste sisters,” one of them pointed out. The man who’d been head teacher at the time of the incident said that Bailey was a “very articulate lad” who, if he hadn’t ended up at the center of this international firestorm, would likely have been looking forward to a “great future…I could see him being a lawyer or something.” He was also a decent kid who “would stand up for his peers.” Another school staffer agreed: “The way they treated poor Bailey was disgusting.” The audio of the playground incident makes it clear that when Bailey threw water at Jamal, he didn’t say anything racist; he said something like: “What are you going to say now?” In short, he was responding to something Jamal had said – namely, Jamal’s threat to rape Bailey’s sisters.

But nobody in the mainstream media reported any of this. Commentators around the world spoke about Bailey as if he was a monster and about Jamal – well, they spoke about Jamal in pretty much the same way that millions of ideologues spoke about George Floyd in the summer of 2020, or, if you prefer, in the way they’re now speaking about New York subway criminal-turned-martyr Jordan Neely. The execrable Piers Morgan, who likes to posture from time to time as a brave opponent of political correctness but who’s always prepared to virtue-signal about Islam, was quick to refer to Bailey as a “thug,” as a “lowlife,” and as “vermin,” and even to call for “severe retribution” against the child. (“Never,” notes Tommy in Silencing, “have I labeled Muslim children as vermin or called for violence against them.”)

Piers must’ve been pleased by what happened next. Bailey received thousands of online messages – threats to kill him, to firebomb his family’s home, to shoot his mother, to rape his sisters. Gangs prowled the streets of Huddersfield looking for him. Savages wandered the corridors of his school with machetes, ready to slice him up. Police drove Bailey and his family to what was supposedly meant as a safe place – a shabby little pay-by-the-hour fleabag hotel owned by Muslims and within spitting distance of three mosques. Rejecting this insulting offer, Bailey’s mother took matters into her own hands and quickly found a better hiding place for herself and her kids.

Utterly disgusting. I think it safe to say that the Second Battle of Britain hasn’t worked out nearly as salutarily as the first, probably owing at least in part to the absence of anything like a contemporary Winston Churchill on the current scene. Mucho kudos to Robinson for giving it the old college try anyhow, though. Read on for the ugly, ugly denouement, which is…well, ugly. This isn’t going to end well, not for Muzzrat “Great” Britain, not for Bailey or Robinson (who, disappointingly, even Elon Musk fucked over for no good reason), not for anybody.

Thou shalt not suffer a Leftist to live

Posted on May 15, 2023May 15, 2023 by Mike

Okay, so I finally finished reading the Frontpage mag article referenced earlier in my “Eyrie up” post, which was the subject of today’s Substack thangamabobber. It really does merit another mention and a further excerpt here on the CF main page, I think, which is a totally unprecedented occurrence around these h’yar parts.

Some amorphous “system” did not fail and could never rescue Neely. Neely’s family failed Neely, and then Neely failed himself. So many of his relatives have reported to the press that his mother’s murder, when he was only fourteen years old, devastated him. Where were they? Did they feed him, house him, teach him a narrative that enabled him to survive and thrive? If so, Neely listened to other narratives. Narratives that approved of dropping out of society and using an illegal drug that may have contributed to his violent behavior.

The “system,” and rotten old capitalist white supremacist Amerikkka, tried, again and again, to help Neely. Neely resisted help. “Mr. Neely was on what outreach workers refer to as the ‘Top 50’ list — a roster maintained by the city of the homeless people living on the street whom officials consider most urgently in need of assistance and treatment. He was taken to hospitals numerous times, both voluntarily and involuntarily.”

After one arrest for beating an elderly woman, Neely was treated with kid gloves. The Times reports, “He was to go from court to live at a treatment facility in the Bronx, and stay clean for 15 months. In return, his felony conviction would be reduced. He promised to take his medication and to avoid drugs, and not to leave the facility without permission. ‘This is a wonderful opportunity to turn things around, and we’re glad to give it to you,’ Mary Weisgerber, a prosecutor, said. ‘Thank you so much,’ Mr. Neely replied. But just 13 days later, he abandoned the facility. Judge Biben issued a warrant for his arrest.”

Jordan Neely was living his life by a narrative that facilitated violence and human decay. Living on the street, begging and threatening those who didn’t give, taking drugs, hurting, rather than contributing to society, were all acceptable plot points in that narrative. Those who give money to homeless panhandlers subsidize this narrative. Leftists who denigrate America and despise those of us who “work hard and play by the rules” advance this narrative.

Neely was not the only New Yorker living with trauma. On January 15, 2022, Michelle Go, an Asian-American woman “who did everything right,” was pushed in front of a subway train by an assailant sharing significant demographic details with Neely. Martial Simon was a homeless black man and said to be mentally ill. The subway murder of a good woman, Michelle Go, received a fraction of the attention allotted to Neely.

In April, 2022, Frank James mounted a terror attack in a subway car. He shot ten people. James was also black. On April 11, 2023, a teenager was shot dead on the subway; authorities say his death is most likely related to gang violence in a largely black housing project. On or before December 10, 2022, a man was stabbed to death on the subway. On October 23, 2022, video was released showing a black man shoving a man onto a subway track.

The New York City subway system is a deadly place. Crimes are disproportionately committed by black men. Passengers take that information with them when they enter the subway. When Neely, as reports indicate, began shouting in an irrational and threatening manner, passengers went into “fight or flight” mode. The three men who restrained Neely worked to keep him immobilized until police arrived.

Yeah, well, the dead giveaway as to what’s really going on here is that, when I lived in NYC back in the 90s—during Rudy Giuliani’s miraculous, unlooked-for, and continually-maligned-by-shitlibs resuscitation of the beleagured city, thank goodness—the subway was no such thing at all. It has been made that way, so as to reinforce a narrative and bolster The Plan even now being implemented by the Evil Left.

In truth, America’s major cities don’t have to be dangerous, anarchic, eternally-blighted nightmares unfit for human habitation. NYC, Detroit, Chicago, SF: once garden spots, eminently desirable places to live and/or work which were the envy of the Western world, all of them have been made the way they now are—on purpose, by nefarious villeins who assuredly do NOT have anyone’s best interests in mind other than their own.

Ought to be some way of thanking the Left properly for that, I just can’t think of what it might be. Well, other than the one hinted at in my post title, I mean.

Counteroffensives

Posted on May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 by Mike

Molly and Mark Hemingway offer a counter-revolutionary counterproposal.

Unrigging Our Elections
Republicans need a serious counter-offensive if they want to stand a chance.

It might not matter whom Republicans run for president in 2024.

MIGHT not? You funny, girl. Git on witcha bad self.

America’s propaganda press traffics in disinformation. Its Big Tech oligarchs censor news and information helpful to conservatives, while elevating biased news and information that helps the Left. And its election systems have been overrun by privately funded groups that run Democratic “get out the vote” campaigns to traffic ballots into ballot boxes. We catalogued this particularly complex problem in Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

Instead of election day, we now have an “election season”—during which, over a period of months, we flood homes across the country with tens of millions of mail-in ballots, regardless of whether secretaries of state or local registrars have any idea if those ballots are being sent to the correct addresses. This in a country where 11% of residents move every year. We then wait for sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires and run by ideological statisticians to round up those ballots in entirely selective ways.

In this world, concerns about candidate quality are irrelevant. If we don’t fix this complete capture of election infrastructure, it might be impossible for anyone with a sincere desire to prioritize the interests of voters over the ruling class to win a national election.

AGAIN, with that “might” bushwa. Mark and Molly go on to offer serious proposals for unfucking this seriously fucked-up mess, at least some of which might actually have merit. But honestly, I couldn’t get interested enough to finish reading ‘em. For my money, even Buck Throckmorton’s not-quite-despairing cynicism only barely begins to express it.

There is a vicious smear campaign going on by Democrats and their media allies against conservative Supreme Court justices, especially Clarence Thomas. The purpose of these attacks, of course, is to neutralize the authority of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and perhaps to even remove a member or two by impeachment. Others in conservative media have done a great job covering this coordinated media attack, so that is not what I am writing about today.

Beyond removing justices, the left has made it clear that if it has lost its iron-fisted control of the judiciary, then the judiciary’s role in governing the country is henceforth illegitimate.

Good. I agree. The judiciary’s role in governing our lives is illegitimate, and has been for a very long time.

A country that considers itself a “democracy” (or a “representative republic,” or whatever term indicates that the people elect their government) cannot have an unelected, unaccountable, and unreplaceable judiciary that has arrogated unto itself the power to govern, irrespective of laws and lawmakers.

Don’t misunderstand, wherever the right has gained control of the courts, we should use the courts to advance our agenda, just like the left did. There is nothing principled about judicial restraint if only one side employs it. But any control we currently have over a subset of the nation’s courts is itself fleeting, since the left conquers all unelected institutions.

Bottom line, for me at least: despite whatever fleeting and temporary inroads we might have made during Trump’s one and only term as PoTUS, the simple fact remains: Amerika v2.0 is clearly not a country that is capable of self-government. Not in any meaningful sense, it ain’t. As such, it is also no longer deserving of the opportunity.

There are many, many other issues more immediately in need of addressing before whatever emerges from the existential conflict against the Evil Left can renew any claim to be capable of self-government. Which doesn’t mean that any and all avenues such as those suggested by the esteemed Hemingways aren’t worth attempting, at least; they probably are. That said, though, I can’t say I expect much from ’em.

As I’ve so often said, I’d be happy indeed to be proven wrong about this. Alas for us all, I won’t be. In my view, any “counterrevolutionary” movement that preemptively rules out the very means by which America That Was itself was founded—ie, revolt by force of arms, violence, and bloodshed—is preemptively doomed to failure. Until sufficient numbers of us have confronted that fundamental truth and made their peace with it, all else is no more than futile head-shedding. The Left is now too firmly entrenched, the institutions it has co-opted too massive and powerful, for it to be otherwise. No amount of optimism and misplaced “hope” can overcome that.

Update! My longtime chum and compatriot Aesop spells it out frankly and explicitly, with nary a punch pulled, as is his usual wont.

You believe in individual responsibility? Great. Stop looking for Fearless Leader to hold your hand, wipe your butt, and tell you what to do, when, where, or to whom.

I’m not telling you to do or not do anything.

I’m telling you to figure it out for yourself. And do what seems best in your own mind. Nobody can hack that, nobody can read that, and nobody else can ever predict that. If in any one month 1000 Leftards randomly selected had themselves an accident, by the month after that, the species would be on the Endangered List.

And that could no more be stopped – by anyone – than you could command the waves to cease crashing ashore.

And the minute any thousand people on one side decide it’s time to dish out their own version of a cut apiece, the Death Of A Thousand Cuts stops from the other side. With all the suddenness of Moldylocks getting punched in the face, or Trayvon becoming a good little criminal, or a BLM rioter or two getting Rittenhoused.

Without any plan per se, no video, no trials, just a sudden surplus number of casualties of what has been, thus far, a largely casualty-free operation: the destruction of civil society.

When egregious civilizational destruction needs skin in the game, the lemon will rapidly become not worth the squeeze.

As an added bonus, the other side is suddenly 1000 Useful Idiots lighter on the scales.

Excellent advice, seems to me. His closing line is nothing short of priceless, IMNSHO. Bravo, my friend.

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