LOSING! – Page 12

Neville Chamberlain Rules

Posted on October 27, 2021October 27, 2021 by Mike

So many things back-asswards and wrong in this one it would take me months to cover them all.

Compromise to Make America Great Again

WELL. There’s an inauspicious start if ever I saw one.

A devout Catholic and a pro-abortion socialist walk into a conference room. No, this isn’t a setup for a joke. It’s an example of how America can win. If that seems odd, consider this one: a slave owner and an abolitionist walk into a hall in Philadelphia. That’s no joke, either: it’s how America began.

In 1787, men who wanted slavery to end convened in Philadelphia with men who wanted slavery to grow. Their purpose was to write America’s Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris, delegates to the convention, were ardent abolitionists. George Washington, chairman of the convention, opposed slavery, too, writing a year before “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.” Pierce Butler, delegate for South Carolina, thought otherwise. “The security the southern states want is that their negroes may not be taken from them,” he declared.

The Framers bridged a nation over these deep divides. Congress today can’t even pass an infrastructure bill needed to fix bridges. A bridge too far for this Congress is—well, any bridge.

Let’s all just please ignore the fact that, if past form is any indication, the “infrastructure” bill will result in precious few bridges being fixed, if any. But there’ll be whacking great soupçons of taxpayer gelt freely ladled out to federal employees, labor unions, illegal aliens, failing green energy companies, and any other Demonrat grifter-constituency groups astute enough to put their hands out for a nice taste.

America is the one nation that has best realized freedom and equality for all. Americans are freer and more equal and yet of more colors and creeds than citizens of any other nation. America rid herself of slavery, which had been international practice. She liberated Japan from despotism and Europe from Fascists, Nazis, and communists. She enriched her people, among whom even the poorest are rich compared to billions abroad. She proved that a nation of men free to think as they will, speak as they wish, and do as they please can together achieve more than any nation forcing its citizens to think, say, and do as the government commands. What would be obvious to the Framers seems utterly lost on too many today: compromise made all this brilliant success possible.

Fair enough, but I have a question.

Q: Why was compromise possible in 1787, but in 2021 is neither possible nor at all desirable? A:

In 1787, one side could be confident that the opposition was bargaining in good faith; in 2021, this is NOT the case
In 1787, both sides pursued the same primary objectives despite differences on how it might best be accomplished—individual liberty, safeguards against tyranny, government of, by, and for the people; in 2021, there is a fundamental conflict between not just the details, but the objectives themselves
In 1787, negotiations were conducted by men for whom personal integrity and good character were of paramount importance; in 2021, the opposition considers integrity to be an exploitable weakness, and the definition of “good character” has, as with so many other words and phrases, been upended to mean the exact opposite of what had traditionally been understood
In 1787, negotiations were conducted by men who, while by no means agreeing on everything, for the most part had many of their values, ambitions, and personal backgrounds in common with the rest; most importantly, they respected dissenting opinion instead of despising it; in 2021, no trace of comity, respect, and tolerance for dissent is to be found on the Left, with whom Real Americans share almost nothing apart from rough geographic proximity
In 1787, all negotiating parties could be secure in the knowledge that, all of them being honest, respectable men for whom their word was their bond, the terms of any compromise would be fully honored and upheld; in 2021, the record shows that any compromise serves the opposition purely as a jumping-off point for demanding further concessions, on the rare occasions when the agreement isn’t just ignored and/or flung down and danced upon before the ink has had time to dry
In 1787, American citizens had elected representatives who correctly understood their role as public servants and therefore could be trusted to advocate their constituents’ interests vigorously and honorably; in 2021, Amerikan subjects have no representation in the federal government whatsoever, their interests are of no importance to anyone in the federal government, and the political parties operate in barely-veiled collusion rather than honest opposition

The pitiful denouement:

Uncompromising moralism rejects more than America’s founding. It rejects any secular government over a free people. Either the governed are free to disagree over what is right or the government decides what is right over the objections of the governed. The only way for the governed to remain free while the government inches its way toward the true good is compromise. Some compromises already occurred in the Constitution: they are set. Others remain.

In a word, NO. Our Founders—those wisest, most far-sighted of men—knew well that carrying on in search of a way to forge a reasonable compromise with the tyrant King George, particularly after years spent bootlessly imploring him for redress of grievances, would be the very height of folly. They knew what the matter was all going come down to eventually, what they were going to have to do to free themselves. And instead of bleating and whimpering endlessly about lawsuits, non-violent protest, and “compromise,” they didn’t flinch from their duty to themselves and their posterity as they perceived it. They just by-God did it.

Compromise would have doomed them; uncompromising adherence to the “moralism” of human political liberty set a sterling example for an entire civilization to emulate. As I’ve said before: any fool advocating “compromise” with the Demonrats must grapple with one simple question: Which of the Bill of Rights are you willing to trade away, then? Until they’ve provided a straightforward answer to that question, they needn’t waste their breath hectoring me about any “compromise.” They have not one thing to say that I’m at all interested in paying attention to.

“Uncompromising moralism” when it comes to tyranny is EXACTLY WHAT AMERICA’S FOUNDING WAS BASED UPON. It is in no way a “rejection” of anything whatsoever else…other than tyranny. So it was then, so it remains now.

The author of the above is under the sway of several paralyzing delusions, first among them that the central government as currently constituted is not only Constitutionally legitimate, but is in fact nobly trying to “inch its way towards the true good” of its benighted subjects as well. As if nothing we’ve seen over the last not quite two years—the Fauxvid power-grab; PantiFa/BLM riots; the wink-nudge sanction of same by governors, mayors, and other authorities; ongoing FBI corruption and thuggery; the fraudulent 2020 election, to name but a few—had ever happened at all. As if Amerika v2.0 bears even a trifling resemblance to America That Was. As if the country wasn’t already teetering on the brink of catastrophe and collapse brought on and exacerbated by its own goddamned government.

From this original self-deception the other noxious fallacies sprout, as branches from a tree-trunk. Debate and haggling over which branch might best be swapped for another is a mug’s game. When the tree itself has become toxic, none but a fool bothers with pruning. You chop the fucker down and burn the remnants to ashes, lest the whole orchard become sickened unto death from close proximity to its poison.

Phony “compromise” with villainous, amoral totalitarians barren of integrity, suffused with ill intent, and unswervingly committed to the “fundamental transformation” of America as founded into a monstrous, despotic shitrapy, is precisely what got us into the dire straits we find ourselves in today. Heaven preserve us from the dolts who still try to persuade us that only more of the same can possibly save us. There IS a way aspiring tyrants can be effectively dealt with, but reruns of the self-same DC dumbshow we’ve already been forced to watch again and again and again wouldn’t be it.

Even so, Callaghan is by no means alone in his self-deception. Steyn adroitly eviscerates Charlie Kirk, feebly laboring under similar crippling, self-negating delusions, as evidenced by the tail-chasing nonsense he mistakes for argumentation in dispute with an interlocutor way more intelligent and perceptive than Kirk appears to be:

Covidstan has sufficiently restricted my movements these last two years that I see fewer things firsthand than I might wish and am dependent, therefore, on media coverage, which is never a good thing. The parents pushing back against the social engineers (at best) and (at worst) rape-enablers of the Virginia school boards seem, given the provocations, calm and of moderate mien by comparison with the sick ideological commissars attempting to silence them.

But elsewhere there is the increasing sense that the combination of Covid, the election and the accelerating politicization of agencies such as the Department of Justice and the FBI have pushed us closer to the Yeatsian point: “the centre cannot hold”. This exchange is making the rounds:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: When do we get to use the guns? No, and I’m not — that’s not a joke. I’m not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was not anxious to go down this road:

KIRK: I’m going to denounce that and I’m going to tell you why. Because you’re playing into all their plans and they’re trying to make you do this…They are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen. We are close to have –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: They’re already doing it.

KIRK: Hold on. We are close to have momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us…They fear us holding the line with self-control and discipline, taking over school board meetings. They are the ones that are willing to use federal force against us.

And I know that people get fired up. We are living under fascism. We are living under this tyranny. But if you think for a second that they’re not wanting you to all of a sudden get that next level where they’re going to say, OK, we need Patriot Act 2.0. If you think that, you know, Waco is bad, wait until you see what they want to do next.

Mr Kirk is trying to thread a difficult needle here: “We are living under fascism” and “tyranny”, but it is not yet time for getting out the guns.

Not a difficult needle—an IMPOSSIBLE one to thread, thanks to certain self-evident contradictions which no true American ought ever to contemplate disgracing himself seeking to reconcile. I know nothing whatever about the man, but the above quotes reveal that Charlie Kirk is either a fraud, a buffoon, or an out-and-out moron desperately cherishing a long-gone memory, dizzied into stupefaction by his own circular illogic.

Between liberty and tyranny, there can be no compromise worth the making. The two are polar opposites; by definition there is no common ground to be found between them. The idea that such might nonetheless exist is chimerical, an ever-elusive phantom any wise, self-respecting, freedom-oriented American knows better than to fritter away a moment of his time and an ounce of his strength in search of. In these times, he well knows that there are far more important things he must do.

Again: Either there is liberty, or there is tyranny.

Choose.

An outsider looks in

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

Rose-colored glasses: OFF.

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

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

Start with how you run elections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doomed

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

Taiwan on its own.

According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently announced, “Just like the overwhelming majority of other countries, Russia views Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. This is the premise we proceed from and will continue to proceed from in our policy.” At the time of this statement, Russian forces were conducting joint naval exercises with Chinese forces in the Pacific—culminating in a 10-ship joint formation sailing through Japan’s Tsugaru Strait on October 18.

This, following a series of unprecedented Chinese military aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s airspace, has rattled Taiwan and America’s other allies in the region, namely Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. During the first week of October, over 150 aircraft, including advanced SU-30 fighters and H-6 heavy bombers, flew into Taiwanese airspace. An unprecedented 56 tactical aircraft penetrated Taiwan’s airspace in a single 24-hour period on October 4, the highest single day total to date.

China has already taken control of multiple islands claimed by these allies in an effort to access vast oil and natural gas resources, as well as project its military power in the contested territorial waters of the South China Sea. China’s ongoing trade dispute with Australia has also ratcheted up tensions in the region.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment has rushed to assure Taiwan and its other allies that the United States intends to honor its regional security agreements. Of late, Joe Biden has publicly pledged to defend the Japanese Senkaku islands, which China claims as its territory.

BWAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The notion of the ever-more-enfeebled FUSA actually leaping into the fray to make war against the ChiComs in defense of our RoC allies is ludicrous, and has been for a while now. Realistically, it’s inconceivable that any president since Reagan at least would have dared to honor the explicit US treaty commitment to act militarily in defense of Taiwan against ChiCom aggression—today, the idea is even more bizarre. For numerous reasons, it’s gone from inconceivable to…well, ludicrous.

Thanks to past U.S. economic and domestic policies, we allowed our manufacturing base to be exported to China. While offshoring American jobs to cheaper labor in China was good for U.S. multinational corporations, it resulted in China effectively capturing the bulk of American industrial capacity for consumer goods. This gives China immense leverage within the U.S. economy.

Look now at the supply disruptions spreading across the United States, which result in no small part from our inability to offload Chinese consumer goods at West Coast ports. Consider how U.S. sanctions against China might create an even greater disruption in the supply of goods that the U.S. no longer has the ability to produce. This dynamic gives China considerable sway with a U.S. political donor class that derives its wealth from Chinese industrial capacity. It makes the idea that the Biden Administration would have the will to impose crippling U.S. sanctions as a check against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan unrealistic.

In contrast to China’s relative position of strength, the world has watched as America lost two wars in our failed Global War on Terror. Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was exceptionally humiliating, not just to America, but also to our allies. It was so bad, the UK parliament held Biden in contempt for his mishandling of the withdrawal. Americans swallowed hard when it was revealed that the U.S. general in charge of the evacuation asked the British SAS commander to stop conducting rescue missions to retrieve UK citizens because it was embarrassing the airport-bound U.S. military. We went on to leave thousands of U.S. citizens behind in Afghanistan with only a shrug of Joe Biden’s shoulders.

Today, the United States is a deeply divided nation on the brink of open internal conflict. The Biden Administration is gleefully running down a list of ill-conceived policies that historically have resulted in civil unrest and rebellion. Oblivious to its own incompetence or the concerns of working-class America, it has labeled half the population domestic extremists, including parents angry that their children are being indoctrinated into woke-Marxist ideology. Just this past week, Biden’s national approval rating hit 38 percent and is dropping rapidly. It’s no secret that he appears to be suffering from cognitive decline and who, exactly, is running the country has yet to be revealed. America is at its weakest point in at least a century, and China, as well as the rest of the world, notices.

Numerous reasons, as I said, but the boldface bit is the one that dwarves all the others. As the American populace has grown ever more complacent, indecisive, and vacuous, their will to victory—their willingness to even countenance making war at all, for any reason—has proportionately withered as well, in mirror-like reflection. It’s unlikely in the extreme that present-day American lotus eaters in any great numbers would support military action to defend this country.

Taiwan? Shhyeeeaaah, pull the other one, whydon’tcha. It has a bell on it.

Which may actually turn out to be a good thing in the long run. Fact is, Real Americans have much bigger and more pressing issues confronting us right here at home—issues that will have to be dealt with, issues that simply cannot be back-burnered, ignored, or blithely waved away. Hate it for Taiwan and all, but the rip in our national fabric is so profound that it’s no easy thing to define the FUSA as a nation at all anymore, except in the loosest terms. In a great many minds, the Great Schism has already taken place. And in a non-trivial percentage of those, there is little or no desire to knit the country back together again.

With regard to a China-Taiwan conflict, the danger to America does not necessarily come from what happens to Taiwan. The danger comes from how radically the geopolitical status quo in the Pacific might change should China retake Taiwan by force in the face of U.S. opposition—or lack of opposition.

If the United States opposes China and fails to stop its move against Taiwan, then we will have shown ourselves incapable of fulfilling our security agreements in the Pacific.

Which is, y’know, true.

If the United States demurs and abandons Taiwan to the Chinese, then we will have shown that our security agreements are not worth the paper on which they are printed.

Which is also, y’know, true.

Either way, this likely results in the restructuring of alliances in the Pacific away from an impotent or feckless United States to accommodate the new global hegemon—China. The second and third order effects of our losses in the Pacific would reverberate across Europe, particularly in areas threatened by an expansionist Russia…which has opportunistically positioned itself for just such a situation.

This, too, could be looked at as a good thing from some perspectives, or maybe a not-entirely-disastrous one. The cold reality is that Amerika v2.0 is a paper tiger, a hollowed-out shell whose only resemblance now to the once-mighty military, economic, and geopolitical juggernaut I call America That Was (swiped from the finest TV show ever conceived, natch) is entirely superficial. As Morton points out, every imaginable Taiwan scenario ends badly for this third-rate power, worse for Free Taiwan.

The post-WW2 treaties promising pipsqueak nations a US defensive shield against Commie aggression now only serve to highlight the unpleasant fact that our antecedents wrote a lot of checks that the current generation hasn’t the means to make good on. The sooner our feckless, braggadocious ProPols admit this forthrightly, sit down, and stop running their fat yaps as if it was still 1947 the better I’ll like it. Because the sad delusion of an American colossus permanently astride the globe, omnipotent and unchallengeable, is getting to be pretty embarrassing at this point.

“The training and readiness of the ship’s crew were deficient”

Posted on October 20, 2021October 20, 2021 by Mike

Gee, ya THINK?!?

A cascade of failures – from a junior enlisted sailor not recognizing a fire at the end of their duty watch to fundamental problems with how the U.S. Navy trains sailors to fight fires in shipyards – are responsible for the five-day blaze that cost the service an amphibious warship, according to an investigation into the July 2020 USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) fire reviewed by USNI News.

The investigation into the fire aboard Bonhomme Richard, overseen by former U.S. 3rd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Scott Conn, found that the two-year-long $249 million maintenance period rendered the ship’s crew unprepared to fight the fire the service says was set by a crew member.

“Although the fire was started by an act of arson, the ship was lost due to an inability to extinguish the fire,” Conn wrote in his investigation, which was completed in April and reviewed by USNI News this week.

“In the 19 months executing the ship’s maintenance availability, repeated failures allowed for the accumulation of significant risk and an inadequately prepared crew, which led to an ineffective fire response.”

Full props to ADM Conn for his desert-dry understatement. Fret not though, Squids, there’s a newly-minted admiral in town who’s SURE to unfuck the USN in a mere trice.

Assistant Secretary of Health Richard Levine, a man who identifies as a woman and goes by the name of Rachel, has been sworn in as the first “transgender” four-star admiral in America, as reported by the New York Post.

On Tuesday, the 63-year-old Levine was named as an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which is not one of the armed forces of the United States military. Following the swearing-in ceremony, Levine tweeted that he was “deeply honored and grateful to join the ranks of men and women across this great nation who have committed to defend the United States against small and large threats, known and unknown.”

Prior to his role at HHS, Levine had served as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, where he oversaw a disastrous order to force COVID-positive patients into nursing homes, exposing thousands of vulnerable senior citizens to the virus. Levine himself came under fire when it was discovered that, upon the implementation of the order, he made sure to have his own mother moved out of such a nursing home and into a private facility. During his tenure, Levine also violated lockdown orders by secretly negotiating for a major exclusive car show to take place in Pennsylvania back in August, despite orders at the time banning such large gatherings.

Levine suffers from transgenderism, a mental disorder which leads people to believe that they are the opposite gender from the one they were born.

It remained unclear at presstime exactly how Mrxskkjnnxxx Levine plans to “defend the United States,” as per her HISTORIC!!! COURAGEOUS!!! statement, from her palatial office heading up a bureaucracy with no affiliation whatsoever with the US military. But I’m sure he/she/whatever will do a fine job of it nonetheless. In other news:

Meanwhile, China is expanding its nuclear missile silo field and just launched a new hypersonic nuclear-capable missile that circled the entire globe at low-orbit.

China’s new space nukes could evade the US’s missile defense systems.

While China is flexing its nuclear muscle, the “woke” Biden Admin is focused on white rage, maternity paratrooper suits, French manicures and promoting transgenders.

Levine, who previously served as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, has a horrible track record.

The Coronavirus ravaged nursing homes across the US because of deadly Democrat policies of forcing people infected with COVID-19 back into the long-term care facilities.

Dr. Levine however made sure his 95-year-old mother was removed from the death box and transported safely to a hotel.

Okay, my apologies to ADM Conn for being overly sanguine just now. Actually, this looks like a most apposite time to begin fretting, sir, and to continue fretting away to your heart’s content. Wringing of the hands and gnashing of the teeth remain completely optional at this time, but are nevertheless heartily recommended. Carry on.

Big, meddlesome government: is there ANYTHING it can’t fuck up?

Posted on October 3, 2021October 3, 2021 by Mike

The root of all evils.

On the surface, the supply chain crisis that’s left ships off both U.S. coasts facing a month of waiting before they’re unloaded is caused by bottlenecks following a post-COVID retail flush, rising shipping costs, and a lack of truckers available to unload containers waiting offshore (Redstate covered that angle here). That’s what labor unions told the Daily Mail, anyway, no doubt with the intent to remind everyone of their importance.

But scratch the surface, and supply chain problems are revealed to be much more complicated, driven by bureaucratic intrusion, and effectively look like a mini-war between shippers and carriers, one that the Biden administration and the Democrat-led House of Representatives aren’t interested in working on until at least November, making the problems we’re seeing today extend into the Christmas season.

Oh, those problems are going to be extending a whole lot longer than that, I’m afraid. As I said from the very start of the Covid clusterfuck: you can’t just shut an entire national economy down, as if the action was no more complex or potentially destructive than flipping a light switch off—for ~~fifteen days to flatten the curve~~ a year and a half to consolidate a tyranny and train a Sheeple—then nonchalantly flip the switch back to the “On” position, emboldened by a level of confidence only the truly witless ever get to experience, that things will just pick up and carry on as before with no lasting disruption and/or damage. Their monstrously inflated egos and delusions of omnipotence notwithstanding, the idiot ProPols badly overestimated their own smarts, competence, and capabilities—exactly as they always have—and now every damned man Jack of us is going to have to pay a severe price for allowing them to do it—exactly as we always have.

Part of the problem lies with the Biden administration’s “Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains,” issued on Feb. 24, 2021, which set up a “‘sectoral supply chain assessment‘ of six industrial sectors, including transportation. It requires the secretary of transportation, consulting with the heads of the department’s modal agencies, to submit a report to the president within one year of the executive order that assesses ‘the role of transportation systems in supporting existing supply chains and risks associated with those transportation systems.’”

See what I mean? My God, the EGOS on these little tin gods, daring to imagine that diddling around in affairs that are much too big for pygmies like themselves could ever lead to anything other than disaster, widespread human misery, and societal chaos. Any genuinely intelligent, sane person would have known better. Clearly, the professional politicians…don’t. Does that suggest anything about the advisability of restricting government at all levels to no more than the merest minimum of authority and power? Why, it seems so NO DUH! obvious, so self-evident and beyond argument, that I’m shocked that nobody ever thought of such a thing before now, nor attempted to codify, explicitly and in writing, how a government strictly and sturdily fenced by such restrictions might possibly be established. A real head-scratcher, that one is. Oh well, maybe someday.

While over 150 companies and trade associations have written a letter to encourage Congress to work on the bill, there’s some concern within the industry that the legislation would only create tension between shippers and regulators and carriers.

OH yeah, by all means let’s get Congress involved too! Having them waddle their fat asses on up and thrust their snouts into the slop trough will SURELY straighten this whole mess out with a quickness. Won’t it?

In short, government involving itself and imposing new regulations while also refusing to update existing regulations have played a familiar role in the slow down of a market that is trying to bounce back after COVID stopped the machine.

Update existing regulations, my baggy white ass. The one and only treatment for what ails us that stands a ghost of a chance of curing the affliction is to take a broadaxe and start chopping as many as can be reached into little, tiny pieces.

Apropos of not a whole lot, the Red State companion-piece mentioned in the first excerpted ‘graph is worth a read in its own right.

Cargo ships anchored off California and New York, and in rail yards and on trucking routes, shipping consumer goods are incredibly backlogged due to a lack of manpower and pandemic restrictions to unload the goods. And now, there are warnings that the supply chain may be on the brink of collapse.

Shipping ports which normally only had one or two ships in dock waiting to be unloaded prior to the pandemic now have dozens lined up, waiting to be unloaded for up to four weeks, slowing the whole chain. In Los Angeles and Long Beach, as many as 73 vessels were waiting to be unloaded last month. The bottlenecks at the ports are also impacting railways and trucking. In Chicago — that has one of the largest rail yards — it was at one point backed up for 25 miles.

This is a disaster about to blow up.

If you were trying to do-in the country, I’m not sure what you would do that the Biden team hasn’t been doing.

Hey, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

It makes for some pretty grim reading, all the moreso since there really is no way the Great Chaos Engine our damned fool politicians cranked up and set in motion can be stopped at this late stage. All any of us can do now is brace for the impact of the imminent crash. Hopefully, the survivors can come up with some way to repay them for all the wonderful things they’ve done for us.

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

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

Any questions?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The most terrifying map in the world”

Posted on September 21, 2021September 21, 2021 by Mike

That’s what Chris MacIntosh over at the International Man blog calls it, and I won’t even try to argue.

That’s quite a dramatic reversal, wouldn’t ya say? Gee, looks like maybe shutting down an entire national economy indefinitely under a false pretext might not have been such a bright idea after all. The same might be said of offering tax breaks to effectively incentivize US corporations to export all American manufacturing capacity to a hostile foreign dictatorship, too. Well, unless your real aim all along wasn’t maintaining US prosperity, security, and international influence like you claimed during election-year stump speeches, that is.

But hey, that’s all just crazy talk. Please ignore my momentary lapse into batshit-nuts conspiracy theorizing, ‘kay?

BRM Peter nutshells it for us.

If ever there was proof of the old saying that “what goes around, comes around”, it’s there. China is basically out to dominate – and, if possible, humiliate – any nation that won’t dance to its tune. That includes the United States. The map above shows that, on balance, China is doing just that. Its commercial and industrial influence now exceeds that of the USA on the world scene.

The worst thing of all, from an American perspective, is that our business leaders – our oligarchs, for want of a better word – deliberately worked towards this. They’re the ones who moved manufacturing offshore, seeking greater profits by making goods in markets with lower wage and transport costs. They built the factories that China is using today to extend its influence, basically handing to the Chinese the commercial hegemony they now exploit. America is now left holding the short stick, because we no longer have the industrial and commercial might that was the foundation for our influence abroad. We handed that to China on a plate, and the Chinese have taken full advantage. Don’t blame them for that, either – we would have done exactly the same thing if our positions were reversed.

So, when you look at the problems we’re currently encountering with a very screwed-up supply chain, consider them in the light of that map. That’s why we’re experiencing them – because three-quarters of our supply chain is out of our control, and very much in China’s control. To paraphrase President Obama, “we built that”. It’s our fault, on a national scale, for allowing our barons of commerce and industry to sell our economic prosperity out from under us for a mess of pottage. However, you’ll never get our politicians to admit that, or accept any responsibility for it. Being the finest politicians money can buy, many of them were long since bought by Chinese “contributions”. There’s plenty of evidence of that; I’ll leave you to look it up for yourselves.

There oughta be some way to see that the ProPols and their hand-in-glove corporate partners in crime pay a price for what they’ve done to us, if only we could think of what it might be.

Get wise, Chuck

Posted on September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 by Mike

Some people seem to feel that every football Lucy holds up for them is worth trying to kick. CLUE: it ain’t.

Stop being a chump, Charlie Brown. Deny Lucy your consent. Because there’ll always be another football, but Lucy can trick you into making a fool of yourself only for as long as you allow her to, and no longer.

How did we get here?

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

Kill. Them. ALL.

Good morning, Gentle Readers. A number of you have written to ask why I haven’t posted anything about the twentieth anniversary of the greatest atrocity ever visited upon this nation. The short answer is that the date has left me both heartsick and furious: too heartsick to say anything encouraging, and too furious to say anything meaningful about “where we go from here.” As for the long answer…well, suffice it to say that neither of us has the time or patience for that. So I’ll spare you.

War is not justice. War is not the imposition of a judicial procedure upon an accused wrongdoer. War does not send forth detectives to investigate nor policemen to arrest nor judges and juries to try. War is prosecuted with armies. Its aim is to break the will of the enemy: at first, by closing with and destroying its active forces; thereafter, by doing whatever is necessary to eliminate the will of the enemy nation to resist our will.

We were at war after 9/11…but we did not go to war. Our “leaders” refused to allow that we were at war. They prattled instead about “justice” and “democracy.” In particular, they told us that Islam is “a religion of peace.”

Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is an ideology of world conquest. It aims at the subjugation of all of Mankind. Stripped of its theological trimmings, it is indistinguishable from Nazism…but wait: didn’t Adolf Hitler want to be seen as a god?

Islam has always been the open enemy of the West, the United States in particular. It will be our enemy for as long as it persists.

We cannot impose “justice” on Islam. We cannot “democratize” or “modernize” it. We certainly can’t improve its attitude toward us through immigration or trade. We can only fight it with wholesale slaughter and destruction, just as we did with Nazism and Japanese imperialism.

Only two commentators took that view, unabashedly and unapologetically, after September 11, 2001. One was Ann Coulter:

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

The other was this clown. If you don’t recall what he said on that occasion, here’s the meat of it:

I saw and spoke to many people that day. Gripped with shock from the events, many had nothing to offer but tears. Those who could articulate their feelings were nearly unanimous about them:

“Kill them all.”

It was a sentiment I shared with a degree of passion and a wholeness of heart that I’d once reserved for the people and things I loved.

He meant every word of it. He still means it all today. But do have a nice day.

That “other clown” Francis references, with his characteristic sly, self-deprecating humor, is of course himself. I uncharacteristically transcribed the link therein, just as encouragement to go read that long-ago post of his as well.

Earlier in the above-excerpted piece Francis mentions GVDL’s latest 9/11 memoir, a deeply personal account of the day’s events as viewed from across the East River, in Brooklyn Heights. It’s quite good, as you might expect; for a long time now the consensus has been that, among all of us OG types for whom the Black Tuesday atrocities were the primary impetus that drove us into the arms of the blogosphere, nobody has done better work with the annual 9/11 memorial posts than Gerard has.

Now the one Fran mentions is good, certainly, but I found it a bit too dry and uninflected to suit my taste. It’s a prime example of real, honest-to-God journalism, of a breed that is all but extinct. Just the same, though, it lacks the passion, the emotional force, that I believe the topic absolutely demands. Meaning no insult or derogation whatsoever by saying so, in my opinion this is the one you most need to read. Of all the commendable 9/11 articles, from that day to this, by Gerard or anybody else, this has to be the most compelling, most riveting, most stirring of them all.

This is monstrous.

Deaths in the thousands in New York.

My body is trembling with sorrow and rage. I saw the first tower fall. Everyone in it would have been killed. This, all this, must be stopped. Those who have done this must be wiped out to the last.

War with whom?

Any and all terrorist organizations, foreign or domestic, must now be brought to a swift and complete halt no matter where they are located.

I watched this happen. The enormity of it cannot be communicated. Vile and bestial.

We need to destroy any and all capacity of anyone living anywhere to do anything like this ever again. There were thousands in those buildings. Thousands.
There is no justice swift enough or sure enough.

All that we have must be brought forward and used without restraint. This is an act of war beyond Pearl Harbor.

Military jets overhead again.

More ash on the street. I am cooled down. Way down.

This is pure evil.

What do I feel? I don’ t know what I feel — except that I want vengeance. I want everything this country possesses put onto the people who did this, and the people who supported this act, and the people who believe this is the way in which political ends are achieved.

I want there to be war until these people are eradicated whoever they are, and where ever they are. I want it made clear that anything even approaching this evil act will be met with utter destruction — people, families, villages, cities, nations. This is an act of war and war must be the response.

We will be having a long series of mass funerals for many weeks. I only hope that this country finds the stomach and the resolve to carry retribution forward until it is complete.

That is what I feel, now, today. And I‘m not alone. I’m not alone at all.

There’s much, much more, all of it brilliantly well-written and insightful.

And all of it sickening, in light of our abject, unforgivable, and total failure to rise to the challenge and do all that was required of us so as to avenge our dead, smite our enemies, and, in so doing, redeem ourselves.

Against all odds, though, it’s not too late for us. There remains a way forward, even now and despite everything, which will be the subject of Part 2.

On principles and motivations

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

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

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

The Push for the Jab?

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

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

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

And, well, here we all are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons learned

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

All of them harsh, ugly, unsettling ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not a partisan issue.

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

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

Oh? Name three. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The return of the King

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

This. This, right here.

For The Record: We should have built them back, on the exact spot, just like it had never happened. Not left a gurgling pit of remembrance, up the street from a mosque. Their precise restoration would have been a far more fitting memorial than would a hole in the ground. The twin holes should have been radioactive craters in Mecca and Medina. With a list of the next 20 locations to be forever expunged published and promulgated worldwide, pour encourager les autres. Ask Carthage how that worked.

Today, I remember and mourn the departed from that horrible day, as the last Americans to live their entire lives, until the last desperate hour or so, in something akin to freedom, never knowing or imagining the nannyist police state our homegrown terrorists in our own government would emplace in the aftermath of actual terrorism. And because many of the victims did what real Americans do: they ran into burning buildings, to help their fellow citizens. They took on serial killers with rolled up magazines and butter knives. They died as a sacrifice to a bloated bureaucracy that had grown stupid, fat, and complacent, and wholly abrogated its mission to preserve liberty, and then turned around and made it ten times worse in the aftermath for the free people, rather than the perpetrators.

And that’s it.

The endless wars in service of the military industrialist complex, the serial rapes of the Bill of Rights, the demagoguery by an endless conga line of liars, cheats, and thieves, I give no thought of whatsoever.

It’s another anniversary for me. That day, that very morning, twenty years ago today, was the first day I was employed to work in the Emergency Department. I’d been a nurse for six years, but spent most of that as the medic on motion pictures and television shows, but having decided that wasn’t why I became a nurse, decided some weeks earlier to return to the hospital, and get into the game, get paid for what I was worth, and make an actual difference, instead of merely doing my best to make sure my services were never needed by watching over the pampered playthings of the studio industry.

I had finished all the b.s. HR classes the previous week, and was driving in to work from 5:30AM PDT that fateful Tuesday morning to begin my first shift in the world’s busiest E.R. About halfway to my first day at work, the first plane crashed into the Towers. Bound to the limitations of radio, I assumed it might have been another overcast day, and some wandering pilot had clobbered the skyscraper, much like the lost pilot who had done the same thing to the Empire State Building decades before.

Shortly before arriving at work, the second plane hit.

I needed no one in officialdom to confirm for me that we were, at that point, being hit. Two collisions isn’t a coincidence.

…So I’ve spent most of my professional career with the entire nation at war. I helped train nurses and medics who later deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, again and again, because U.S. big-city trauma centers, at that time, were seeing more gunshot wounds in a month than the Marines saw in the first six months in Afghanistan, so such centers were the keepers of the keys to how to do trauma medicine right. Until endless tar-baby retarded slogfests over there turned into an orgy of maimed and shattered people, from IEDs from here to Hell.

I watched as liberty turned into a police state, rather than common sense precautions. We should have known how wrong and how badly this was going to go, when instead of depriving the terrorists over there of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we did it instead, Japanese Internment Camp levels of wrong, to our own free citizens here. And then doubled down, every single time. Our leaders never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

I watched another generation of vets become the new Vietnam vets, used and abused, for nothing, and discarded both en masse and one by one, in return for giving arms, legs, and souls to a pointless effort, because some jackass thought we could impart democracy to people who can’t even read, and then twenty more thought that gender and perversion and whiteness were more important enemies to fight than people willing to fly airplanes into buildings in service of their 6th-century way of thinking.

As one bitterly accurate brilliant wiseass put it this week, we spent two decades, trillions of dollars, and thousands of wasted lives, to replace the Taliban with…the Taliban.

Only government can fuck up something so simple in so colossal a way. It wasn’t hubris, or anything so complex. It was purely and simply what happens when the stupidest, most evil, and most power-hungry incompetent and corrupt people in the room have been given the keys to the machines for 40 years, non-stop.

Okay, that’s excerpt aplenty, and the truth is it still ain’t even half of the masterful work Aesop has laid down for us today. In my estimation, this one is nothing short of his best ever—which is saying something. You absolutely MUST read the entirety of it. If you don’t, you’ll cheat yourself out of something truly, truly marvelous.

Aesop, buddy, with this post and the one preceding it, you have now officially usurped the Angry Guy Of The Blogosphere™ throne I occupied for lo, these twenty years. In retrospect, I now realize that I was in reality not a monarch but a mere regent. Now that the rightful King has arrived at last, I hereby cheerfully yield my position with no rancor or hard feelings on my part, pledge my undying fealty to His Majesty, and wish Him nothing but the best on His ascencion to the throne. May His reign be a long, happy, and blessed one, both for His loyal subjects and Himself.

Reality 101

Posted on September 8, 2021September 8, 2021 by Mike

Lesson One: when a nation loses a war, it does NOT get to make demands of the winners. Period. Most especially when, after having spent two decades getting its collective ass kicked up between its collective shoulder blades, Loser Nation skedaddles ingloriously away from Victor Nation’s territory in panicked chaos, leaving untold thousands of its own citizens stranded—abandoning men, women, and children alike to certain torture, enslavement, and agonizing death.

State Department voices concerns over all-male Taliban government
The State Department on Tuesday expressed concerns over the makeup of the new interim Afghan government announced by the Taliban, including the lack of female leaders and the past actions of some of those appointed to top posts.

A State Department spokesperson said in a statement shared with The Hill that although the Taliban “has presented this as a caretaker cabinet,” the U.S. “will judge the Taliban by its actions, not words.”

“We have made clear our expectation that the Afghan people deserve an inclusive government,” the spokesperson added.

“Expect” all you want, dumbshits. Then go ahead and “demand” a pony for Christmas too, whydon’tcha. Let’s see how THAT works out for ya.

The State Department didn’t have long to wait for an answer to its ludicrous and pathetic request, as it turns out.

#Taliban gets asked by journalist if they would accept a democratic system that voted in female politicians.

The response? Hysterical laughing – then “stop filming, it made me laugh”

pic.twitter.com/4qj3sl2zHu

— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) August 17, 2021

Laughing in their smarmy mugs is the note-perfectly appropriate response, if you ask me. FederalGovCo seems absolutely committed to keeping the national humiliation coming, don’t they? Why, I’m sure I don’t know. All I can think to do now—all any of us who shouted ourselves hoarse sounding the alarm about what a Biden or any other Democrat-Socialist junta was liable to get up to—is just sit back and enjoy the show.

Give the State shitweasels credit for one thing, at least: they got some ginormous balls on ’em, to go around braying and snorting about what they “expect” the Taliban to do or not do like this—as if they had any right to say one fucking word to them, about anything at all—not to even mention any kind of leverage whatsoever to back their gasbaggery up.

(Via Bill)

Update! The US Department of State: putting America and her national interests last since 1944.

Whelp, ‘proof is in the email’ so to speak. The ‘stoppage’ in the finely-tuned privately run evacc’s from Affy has been identified. Namely the State Department apparatchiks. I believe it was Richard Marcinko of SEAL Team 6 fame called them the “Pin-striped pus-nutted change jingling can’t-cunts of State”.

Seems that they’re ‘worried’ about “proper screening and vetting” of those people, because THEY aren’t approving the manifests and the people getting evacc’d. Human Refuse and Soon-to-be-Walking Garbage State Department Spokesasshole Ned Price had this to say: “If these charters are seeking to go to a U.S. military installation, for example, we have to weigh not only the threat to those who may be on board – especially if they’re American citizens, LPRs, other Afghans to whom we have a special commitment – but also to the safety and security of State Department personnel, U.S. military personnel, Department of Homeland Security personnel, other U.S. personnel on U.S. military installations,” Price said.”

Yannow…good on them cobbers for tryna keep ‘our people safe’ Aye?

Uh….aboot that:

Afghan Refugee Stopped on U.S.-Bound Flight with Explosive Materials, but Terrorism Not Suspected

Uh…oooo-k.

Lots more from BCE, which you can go on over and read the rest of if you have a strong enough stomach for it. Me, I think I’ll just sit here and quietly contemplate the staggering fact that A) Real Americans who flatly and forever reject being forcibly injected with a mysterious and dangerous DNA-altering cocktail are now under serious, credible threat of internment in federal concentration camps, by the self-same government that B) is concurrently waving innumerable hordes of unvaxxed, unvetted, and untested illegal aliens across our now-nonexistent southern border, AS WELL AS importing likewise-innumerable Muzzrat hordes (a/k/a enemy combatants) who are likewise unvaxxed &c, NOT TO EVEN MENTION simultaneously denying rescue and repatriation to privately-chartered planeloads of BONA FIDE AMERICAN CITIZENS because…aww, who the fuck even knows anymore.

Believe it or not, though, there IS a bright side of sorts to this dumpster fire of a goatfuck of a shitshow, if only of the left-handed, two-edged-sword, kinda-sorta variety. BCE knows what it is:

My understanding is that the people getting out? They’re known to the people running the show. At this point, it’s a LOT of Afghan Special Forces…who’re going to be highly pissed at being cock-blocked by State. ESPECIALLY if their beloved family members got left to the ‘tender mercies’ of the Tallybananas Kids. Not that –reality– has any place in the DotGov…

I suppose when and IF, well…lets be realistic…we ARE talking about Afghani Military Men trained by the best of the US DotMil. Literally hard men who’re going to swear Mighty and Hard Oaths of Vengeance and Blood on those MOST responsible for this fiasco. “You got me in a vendetta kind of mood” thing is like going to happen. And let me tell you all, they -won’t- be blaming the Tally bananas kids…to them, ‘they’re doing what they do’…sort of like a bear is going to shit in the woods, they understand and well, they’ll swear some of that vendetta against the Taliban, but this time, they have a quantifiable and easily identifiable pile of Human Garbage in D.C. that they’ll lay the majority of the blame on.

If’n I were part of State and had anything to do with this fuckup, I’d be looking to cash out the 401K, retire early, change the name and IDs and head to deep cover, ‘cos these guys? They make the Sicilian Mob, the real Mafia look like cuddly dago-kittens. And we’re bringing them here, dispossessed and pissed off.

Grab the Popcorn, this’s gonna be great

All this, remember, from a guy who has ample firsthand, in-theater knowledge, and therefore knows whereof he speaks. Go ahead and accuse me of a severe Patriotic Sentiment deficiency. Go ahead and say my perspective and priorities have been short-circuited by blind partisanship. Go ahead and say whatever the hell you like, I don’t care. All I know is that, if ANYONE AT ALL in the employ of the illegitimate Biden junta—be they great or small, high or low, powerful or humble—has a heapin’ helpin’ of Just Deserts in their immediate future…well, I admit I’m a-okay with it. No matter who will be serving it up, or where he might have come here from.

To Sefton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First step to tyranny

Posted on September 5, 2021September 5, 2021 by Mike

A look back at the origins of the ever-metastasizing societal plague that is Safetyism.

Americans’ love affair with the car has cooled off but not because Americans don’t love cars. Rather, it is because of what cars have become.

Once, they were like the pretty girl who smiled at you in class, back in high school. They made your pulse uptick, filled your mind with happy possibilities. You wanted one. And – once upon a time – the one often led to the other.

Or at least, helped.

Now, cars are like a sourpuss pants-suit-wearing wife who long ago stopped smiling at you – and bats away your hand when you try to hold hers. You don’t want to see – much less hear her anymore – and wish you could get away from her, but you need to stay married for the sake of the kids or so as to avoid losing your shirt.

This transition occurred because of the sourpuss, pant-suit-wearing types, not necessarily your wife – which makes it even worse.

Pants-suiters such as Joan Claybrook – the old sourpuss who headed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (italics added for the should-be-obvious reason) back in the ‘70s, when saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety – as defined by some old sourpuss – somehow became a function of government, formerly concerned with ensuring that people’s rights were respected and dealing with people who caused harm to others.

Claybrook was a disciple and acolyte of another pants-suiter who happened to be male, nominally – Ralph Nader. He was the John the Baptist figure of Safetysim, the cult which first ruined cars and is now ruining everything else.

Nader anointed himself a “public citizen” and began to “represent” the “public,” despite not one member of the actual public ever having voted to give this man proxy power to “represent” them or anyone else. He and his termagant protege began to agitate for the government to impose (via regulations) “safety” standards upon new cars; which is to say, to impose them upon new car buyers – most of whom had previously expressed no interest in them, as via a willingness to pay for them. And who may have had a very different view of what “safety” constitutes.

For some, “safety” meant a car that was road-worthy, free of defects in design or manufacture that rendered it dangerous to drive – controlled by a driver competent to sit behind the wheel.

For Nader and his heirs – including Claybrook – it meant a car that idiot-proofed against a driver who probably should be a passenger.

Nader became famous by smearing the Chevrolet Corvair, which was an unusual car for an American car of the early ‘60s. It was rear-engined, like a Porsche – which made the front end light and also made for easy steering without need of power steering. It was a very nimble-handling car, which was also very unusual for an American car of the early 1960s.

But it was important to read – and follow – the tire inflation pressure recommendations, which were not the same, front-to-rear. And that was also unusual, for an American car. The sticker was right there, but some people didn’t read it – and inflated all four tires to the same PSI. This worsened the lift-throttle (in a curve) oversteer tendency that all rear-engined cars – including the same era Porsches and VW Beetles – were prone to. Just as front-drive cars today tend to understeer when put into a curve at high speed.

Ralph who-didn’t-drive and who dislikes cars blamed the car – describing it (though not the fundamentally similar Porsche or VW Beetle) as Unsafe at Any Speed. His fame – and influence – spread. Abetted by an if-it-bleeds-it-leads media, corporations were browbeaten and government was empowered.

Cars were festooned with ugly “5 MPH” bumpers, ruining their looks like braces mar the face of an otherwise pretty girl. Seatbelt interlocks were ordered. You had to “buckle up” before you could drive.

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety became policy. Not roadworthiness. Not competence. Beauty – and fun – took a back seat to how fast you could drive a car into a tree and live. Every time someone did something idiotic, everyone else got idiot-proofed.

Well, naturally. I mean, surely you’ve heard the eternal Safetyist war-cry: IF EVEN ONE LIFE IS SAVED…!!!

Had a conversation with my brother a few days back, wherein we were running down all the truly wonderful things that have been taken from us, as well as the many more things that will be gone for good as the result of the Coming Unpleasantness and its aftermath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sentiment of sadness, puzzlement, and regret for these collective losses (or thefts) expressed better than the way Jack Nicholson does here:

Really says it all, don’t it? I’ve run this clip here numerous times over the years; perhaps the most frightening thing of all is how, as time goes by and our losses keep mounting, the sting of truth in the words of George’s brilliant soliloquy only becomes more haunting, more painful.

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