Category: Pass The Popcorn!

Let it burn!

The lesson of Thanksgiving

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Very simple, very easy: eschew socialism.

Turns out, you can’t just ignore economics and human nature.

Socialism really does sound good on paper though, right? We’re all going to own everything together and take care of each other. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.“

It sounds so nice. And we all want to be nice, right? People are emotionally drawn to socialism because it sounds so good. It sounds fair. It sounds — nice.

But do you know what’s not nice?

Corpses.

That’s exactly what happened the Pilgrims got when they took a stab at socialism.

Most Americans don’t know that the Plymouth colony was originally an experiment in socialist utopianism and were it not for a complete 180 a couple of years in, we probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the bountiful feasts most of us will indulge in today. There would have been no Thanksgiving because there would have been nobody left to give thanks.

It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without including Rush Limbaugh’s classic recounting and analysis of the true meaning of the day.

“On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims,” now known as Pilgrims, “led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established” how they would live once they got there. The contract set forth “just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs,” or political beliefs. “Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible.

The Pilgrims were a “devoutly religious people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.” They believed in God. They believed they were in the hands of God. As you know, “this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey” to the New World on the tiny, by today’s standards, sailing ship. It was long, it was arduous.

There was sickness, there was seasickness, it was wet. It was the opposite of anything you think of today as a cruise today on the open ocean. When they “landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves.” There was nothing.

“[T]he sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims — including Bradford’s own wife — died of either starvation, sickness or exposure.” They endured that first winter. “When spring finally came,” they had, by that time, met the indigenous people, the Indians, and indeed the “Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers” and other animals “for coats.” But there wasn’t any prosperity. “[T]hey did not yet prosper!” They were still dependent. They were still confused. They were still in a new place, essentially alone among likeminded people.

“This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than what it really was. That happened, don’t misunderstand. That all happened, but that’s not — according to William Bradford’s journal — what they ultimately gave thanks for. “Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract” that they made on the Mayflower as they were traveling to the New World…

They actually had to enter into that contract “with their merchant-sponsors in London,” because they had no money on their own. The needed sponsor. They found merchants in London to sponsor them. The merchants in London were making an investment, and as such, the Pilgrims agreed that “everything they produced to go into a common store,” or bank, common account, “and each member of the community was entitled to one common share” in this bank. Out of this, the merchants would be repaid until they were paid off.

“All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.” Everything belonged to everybody and everybody had one share in it. They were going to distribute it equally.” That was considered to be the epitome of fairness, sharing the hardship burdens and everything like that. “Nobody owned anything. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the ’60s and ’70s out in California,” and other parts of the country, “and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.

“Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that” it wasn’t working. It “was as costly and destructive…” His own journals chronicle the reasons it didn’t work. “Bradford assigned a plot of land” to fix this “to each family to work and manage,” as their own. He got rid of the whole commune structure and “assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage,” and whatever they made, however much they made, was theirs. They could sell it, they could share it, they could keep it, whatever they wanted to do.

“For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense,’” without any payment, “‘that was thought injustice.’ Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself? What’s the point?…The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive.

“So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? ‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford, ‘for it made all hands [everybody] industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’…

“Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s. … In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you’re laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London.

“And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the ‘Great Puritan Migration.’” The word of the success of the free enterprise Plymouth Colony spread like wildfire and that began the great migration. Everybody wanted a part of it. There was no mass slaughtering of the Indians. There was no wiping out of the indigenous people, and eventually — in William Bradford’s own journal — unleashing the industriousness of all hands ended up producing more than they could ever need themselves.

So trading post began selling and exchanging things with the Indians — and the Indians, by the way, were very helpful. Puritan kids had relationships with the children of the Native Americans that they found. This killing the indigenous people stuff, they’re talking about much, much, much, much later. It has nothing to do with the first thanksgiving.

The first Thanksgiving was William Bradford and Plymouth Colony thanking God for their blessings. That’s the first Thanksgiving. Nothing wrong with being grateful to the Indians; don’t misunderstand. But the true meaning of Thanksgiving — and this is what George Washington recognized in his first Thanksgiving proclamation.

No wonder shitlibs loathe and despise this quintessentially American holiday so intensely. The Thanksgiving story revolves around gratitude; humility; pluck; human fallibility. It is a glorious confirmation of human resilience and adaptability. Above all else, it stands as a resounding condemnation, in the most practical and readily comprehensible of terms, of their preferred ideology: socialism. For your typical, garden-variety shitlib, what’s to like?

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Be it hereby resolved

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Washington’s Thanksgiving proclamation.

New York, 3 October 1789

By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go: Washington

Well said, sir. Of course, and as always.

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Kid Rock gets RESULTS

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I love the guy, I truly do.

Musician Kid Rock spoke out about the potential demolition of legendary country music singer Hank Williams’ antebellum home Tuesday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Beechwood Hall, located near Franklin, Tennessee, was built in the 1850s and survived the Civil War. It was owned by Hank Williams and country music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

Fund manager Larry Keele bought the 268-acre estate in 2021, but Williamson County residents fear for the home, alleging demolition could be in the near future.

Rock told host Tucker Carlson he is “sick of seeing history torn to the ground.”

“Whether it be in the form of monuments, statues and now something so important here in Nashville… where does it end?” he asked.

The current owner denies any plans to demolish the battered old crib, which from one of the photos does indeed look to be in rough shape. Which detracts not a whit from Da Kid’s on-point sentiment that he’s “sick of seeing history torn to the ground.” You’re by no means alone in that, KR.



Preach it, Kid.

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Liberal arts revolution?

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A revolution due, and well past due.

It took the post-war prosperity and a culture of pleasure to finally throw off the verities of Western Civilization, and in that process the throwing away of education in real things in favor of notional things that would serve a progressive agenda. The liberal arts were repurposed to a radical form of groupthink, a new anti-liberalism in education. At its best in the last fifty years, higher education serves only Mammon, getting the graduate good connections and high-paying careers. Thus the liberal arts became servile arts.

When the liberal arts seemed destined for shipwreck, three men stood up and decided to do something radical at a state university. They decided to engage in an Experiment in Tradition.

These three men were John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Frank Nelick, and their experiment was the Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas.  This writer was a student in this program in the seventies in Kansas. It started small. But I have seen it grow into an international educational movement, with many colleges, primary schools, and curricula based on the educational philosophy of John Senior and the practice of the IHP.

Their revolution was to expose students to real things, to delight in memorizing poetry, song, stargazing, observation of nature, and the great books. This brought out a dormant sense of awe and wonder in students. This was the necessary ingredient to philosophy and all true education, according to Plato and Aristotle, and to Newman.

Students were not taught to dissect the great and good books of Western culture, but instead to understand them, to be receptive to ancient wisdom – in the sense of really seeing as Joseph Pieper explains in Leisure: the Basis of Culture. The emphasis was not on mastery over the world, but on loving the works.

In the IHP students learned that truth was knowable, in nature, great books, poetry, great art, and science. This sort of education allows for experiential or connatural learning, focused on internalizing what is studied, attuned to the senses as well as the intellect. Students came to realize they had been indoctrinated in ignorance of real education, and the IHP provided a remedy. In fact, John Senior said what they were doing was remedial, since students lacked the necessary preparation for a traditional classical education.

Other professors and administrators were threatened by this highly successful program. It had to be suppressed. You just couldn’t allow students to run around talking about truth as if it could be known. It was the beginning of what we now know as political correctness, the liberal orthodoxy that admitted of only one direction – “progress” away from the West and the jettisoning of our Judeo-Christian patrimony.

The university held hearings, parading students to testify about Jewish conversions, attitudes about women that were too traditional, education that was too retrograde, not open to new ideas. In short, after nearly ten years of success, this program had to be done in, because it was too “controversial.” The radicalism of the sixties was not too controversial, nor was sexual experimentation, nor the embrace of every odd philosophy and cult. But a return to our roots, or at least an exploration of what was good or potentially worth knowing in Western Culture – that was revolutionary. The experiment in tradition had to be killed, as it were, death by administration.

But as with all excellent ideas, it is harder to kill them than you might think. The great revenge of IHP is that this experiment in the liberal arts bore great fruit, and it continues to bear fruit in numerous vocations to marriage and large families, in two American bishops and numerous monks and nuns, in a monastery in Oklahoma where vocations are exploding, in the founding of a college based on the great books in the great outdoors, and in the many other returns to sanity based on their pedagogical experiment.

Many have retreated in the face of cancel culture on campuses. But it is not a time for retreat. It is a time to re-engage, to start a new revolution of the liberal arts, the kind Newman had in mind, one program at a time, one school at a time, one repurposed curriculum at a time, at the primary level, and in colleges or universities that seem moribund and incapable of a return to education in real things.

We’ve discussed many times around these here parts the essential first step of reclaiming the academy from the iron clutches of the Left gargoyles who have, to our enormous cost, so effectively usurped it, if we seriously hope to reclaim our country over the longer term. It is heartening indeed to learn of a successful campaign aimed at doing precisely that. Even so, Porretto sounds something of a somber, cautionary note.

Too many are talking about rebellion as if it were exclusively a political act. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rebellion may end in arms, but it begins in the mind…

The cited column ends on a hopeful note, but be warned: hope looks not to the present but the future, and the future is not fixed in shape. The mental rebellion kindled by those three daring educators – real educators this time, in contrast to the sort that usually parade the title – might have left seeds, if not at the University of Kansas, then perhaps elsewhere, that will germinate yet.

We can but hope. Regardless, hats off to Senior, Quinn, and Nelick for their most noble effort.

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Prophecy, and the one path forward

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Frighteningly prescient words from the CSA’s Maj Gen Pat Cleburne.

Everyone must understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late.

It means our history will be written by our enemies.

It means our children will be taught by our enemies.

It means our enemies will craft an alternate view of reality which cannot be questioned.

It means we will be deprived of our Rights and Liberties.

It means the true issues will be obscured and our enemies will employ the vilest accusations to shield their true intent and motivation.

It means those to whom we owe honor and gratitude will be viewed as traitors and worse.

Eerie, no? Wes Renegade uses it as a springboard to dive into a speech he wrote to be delivered at a town council meeting that ended up being cancelled, albeit for the very best of reasons.

Today this prophecy spoken more than a century ago is being fulfilled in this very room.

There are some who will say it is too harsh to call those who seek to banish the Sons of the Confederates from the Faith parade our “enemies.” You can not compromise with evil. That we need to find some sort of compromise in an effort to achieve reconciliation and avoid conflict. But those agitators who are actually driving this movement are not acting in good faith. They do not want peace and resolution. Just as we saw with the recent battle over a local historical landmark Fame, if we give on this issue, it will only open more wounds and fuel further unrest. And we will soon find this was only the new starting point for the next conflict they already have in mind as they march toward their ultimate goal of complete subjugation. For our enemies behind this push not only seek to strip us of our Rights, they demand we fundamentally transform history, that we denounce our heritage, and that we even disavow our noble ancestors who gave their all for us. These ARE the enemies of which Major General Cleburne forewarned.

Many in our community do not understand what is ultimately at stake here. But our enemies DO. That is why they will not have an honest dialogue with those of us who stand in opposition to them. This is why they ascribe to us the vilest motives and epithets they can hurl – because they know the true motives of their own hearts. They don’t care about our history which they denigrate. They don’t care about our heritage which they slander. They just know we are obstacles in the way of achieving their true goal.

So who are these enemies? They are relatively new on the scene – which is why we did not have these conflicts just a few years ago.

They are Marxist Community Organizers who follow the instructions of their evil godfather Alinsky by coming into our communities, finding the sore spots and then rubbing them raw in order to foment discord and gain more power for themselves. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing who masquerade behind titles such as “Reverend” because, as their high priestess of baby sacrifice Margaret Sanger explained, this is how to deceptively garner good favor in the Christian South.

They are the ones who use the façade of a small local bookstore to nurture and spread contention as they divide our community and put pressure on other businesses to bow to their personal will.

So this, then, is ultimately an existential conflict between the offspring of two very different fathers. We are PROUD to be Sons of the Confederates and we will never bend the knee to these Marxist agitators and instigators. Because we understand what motivates their actions, we are not deceived by their words. Because we know and love our heritage, we honor our fathers who passed it down to us. Because, as Christ said, our enemies are of a different father who has come to lie, to cheat, and to ultimately destroy, they are going about doing his work.

Amen to all that, my friend. With big, fat, clanging bells on.

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Making sense of the scam

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Wayne Allyn Root says it’s time to admit the patently-obvious truth.

You’ve Been Gaslighted – Democrats Just Stole Another Election

Well, I mean, y’know, DUH. Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last. Say it with me one time, folks: They will NOT stop. They will have to BE stopped. Learn it. Know it. Live it.


Annnd onwards.

It’s time to admit we’re all part of a massive experiment in fraud, theft, brainwashing, and gaslighting to a degree never seen in world history.

Think of all the times in just the past few years you’ve been gaslighted. They lied to you about open borders…they lied about Hillary’s 30,000 deleted emails…they lied about spying on Trump…they lied about Russian Collusion…they lied about a perfectly fine Ukrainian phone call…they lied about massive Biden corruption in Ukraine and China… they lied about the Hunter Biden laptop…they lied about the origins of Covid…they lied about the need for lockdowns and masks…they lied about the need for Covid vaccines…they lied about the vaccines being “safe and effective”…they lied and covered up all the deaths and injuries from the vaccine…they lied about the success of miracle drugs Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin…they lied about the stolen 2020 election…

You’ve been the victims of nonstop severe gaslighting for a decade now. You’re all part of a human psychology experiment in the limits that government and media can go in propaganda and brainwashing…while you can see they’re lying right in front of your eyes.

And these are the exact same people now telling you Democrats just over-performed, and stopped a GOP red landslide, against all odds, without cheating and stealing the midterm election.

Historically, every president in history facing his first midterm experiences a tough day with automatically 20 to 30 House seats lost…and 4 or more Senate seats lost…but this terribly unpopular President Biden is brain dead with severe dementia, and can’t put 3 coherent sentences together…Yet Biden defied history?

While also facing the worst economy in modern history…and the worst inflation in America’s history…and out of control crime…and open borders…and failing schools…and polls showing 75% of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction…Yet Biden beat all of that?

If you believe Democrats made a miracle happen, without cheating, rigging and stealing…I have a bridge to sell you, over the Atlantic Ocean, in the Vegas desert.

Ahh, but we don’t have to take Root’s word for it. He has proof.

But the real proof the midterm was rigged and stolen is…FLORIDA.

In Florida the GOP won a landslide. DeSantis and Rubio and everyone else in the Florida GOP won in a red tsunami. The same one the polls showed was happening in the entire country.

Guess what Florida has? Florida has strict Voter ID, strict laws against voter fraud, severe prison terms for anyone caught trying to commit voter fraud, no mail-in ballots sent to every voter, no ballot drop boxes, no ballot harvesting, no ballots accepted for days after Election Day, no counting for days until the desired result is achieved by the Democrat Party.

Isn’t it a funny and strange coincidence that in that state, with all of those strict rules against cheating, the GOP red tsunami happened as predicted? But everywhere else, where there are no strict laws against voter fraud, and they allow all that cheating, the red tsunami fizzled.

And that under-performance is being blamed on Trump? And on conservative MAGA candidates?

Yet in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is the most Trump-like, MAGA, America First, anti-woke, anti-trannie, in-your-face, ultra conservative politician in all of America. And with that ultra MAGA message, plus strict voting fraud laws…the GOP swept to a landslide victory.

And in most other places, they didn’t. Coincidence?

Hey, sure. And with that, Wayne, maybe we could get together soon and go take a look at the bridge you mentioned? Because I’d be all in on a good bargain like that, you betcher.

Update! In addition to all the things Florida had going for it mentioned above by Root, there’s another.

These Counties Experiencing Election Issues Have One Thing In Common
It suffices to say that Election Day didn’t go as planned for some polling places that experienced and are still experiencing ballot-counting issues. Despite the varying election-related difficulties, multiple jurisdictions share one foreseen commonality. There’s a common thread connecting five counties spread across several states that were in disarray on Election Day: federal “monitors.”

On the eve of the elections, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice announced Monday it would be dispatching such monitors to as many as 64 jurisdictions in almost half of U.S. states on Election Day to oversee federal election law “compliance.”

According to the DOJ’s watch list, Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, Texas’s Harris County, Arizona’s Maricopa County, and Pima County, and Nevada’s Washoe County all had the feds there “monitoring” polls. The nationwide deployment is a notable expansion. Nevada wasn’t on the DOJ’s roster two years ago during the presidential election cycle in 2020. Still, it was on the DOJ’s radar this time, and Pima County—Arizona’s second-most populous, which holds Tucscon—is among the new additions.

These five jurisdictions supposedly under in-person DOJ supervision throughout Tuesday suffered major muck-ups.

Hurricane-hit Florida, which was able to count all votes on Election Day even as parts of the Sunshine State were evacuated in preparation for another tropical storm about to make landfall, kicked the DOJ’s hall monitors to the curb, barring any regime operatives from entering its polling places on the basis that outside monitoring is not permitted under the state’s statutes.

In a letter addressed to DOJ elections coordinator John Russ, the state’s general counsel Brad McVay wrote: “Department of Justice personnel is not included on the list. Even if they could qualify under ‘law enforcement’…the presence of federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the elections.”

Florida’s State Department invoked its authority under section 101.58(2) of the Florida Statutes to send its monitors to the jurisdictions “targeted” by Biden’s DOJ to monitor the federal monitors and ensure there is “no interference with the voting process.” After the 2022 midterm elections, the DeSantis administration declared that the letter was “successful,” the DOJ obeyed Florida’s declaration, and no federal personnel violated state law prohibiting entry, Florida’s Voice reported Thursday morning.

Well whaddya know about that. Why, it’s almost as if the federal goobermint itself was trying to give the DemonRats a leg up on their usual fraud, hoodwinkery, and outright theft. But nah, that can’t be right. Can it…?

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The power of information control

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It’s the first crucial step along the way to establishing dictatorial control over everything else.

In light of the clown show that was the election on Tuesday I wanted to share some of my thoughts on what I see as the path forward from here. I made a post on Gab yesterday that got tens of thousands of engagements both on and off Gab. I think it’s important to analyze why this post resonated so widely and where we go from here.

That’s Andrew Torba, following up on the Gab post I mentioned here last night.

One thing I noticed in the thousands of replies of this post is the unity across the generations. If you know anything about the Gab community, or perhaps from your own experience with the people in your own life, it’s that Boomers and Zoomers rarely agree on anything especially when it comes to political strategy.

On this subject though there seems to be a mass consensus across every generation from young to old: between election fraud, citizen disenfranchisement via decades of illegal aliens invading our country, and the Regime’s total control over the flow of information and censorship of any dissent: Republicans have zero chance of winning the Presidency in 2024.

Millions of people are waking up to the reality that a small percentage of the population controls 98% of the flow of information and news to the people. This is incredibly important. No other political issue matters more. He who controls the media controls the minds of the masses. It’s that simple.

Gab community member @PaxChristus made a post that demonstrates this reality well.

In Russia, where gay propaganda is banned, 70% of people oppose gay marriage and that number has been increasing in recent years.

In America, where opposition to LGBT is heavily censored, 70% of people support gay marriage and that number has been increasing in recent years.

Democracy is purely about information control.

As the top commenter on this post pointed out, German conservative revolutionaries like Oswald Spengler realized this in the early 1900’s.

Democracy has become a weapon of moneyed interests. It uses the media to create the illusion that there is consent from the governed. The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. The notion of democracy is often no different than living under a plutocracy or government by wealthy elites. -Oswald Spengler

People like Fetterman “winning” is just another Regime humiliation ritual on the American people. They have that much control over our country that they can have Biden installed in the Presidency and Fetterman—who has literal brain damage—installed in the US Senate.

We have to remember that the people in power are rootless cosmopolitan globalist elites. They don’t see themselves as Americans. They see themselves as “global citizens.” They have no pride in our country. They hate it, they hate us, and they want to humiliate Americans while extracting as much of our resources, labor, and military power as possible.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. Bleak as the current situation is, though, Torba isn’t succumbing to despair just yet.

The Path Forward: Balkanize and Build
Voting harder isn’t going to cut it. We have to build. The existing system will collapse. It’s not a matter of if, but when. When that happens we need to have Christian infrastructure in place to fill the power vacuum. The Amish have had it right this entire time. Their communities are growing and thriving. They will continue to do well. We must become a form of neoamish, building sovereign communities and families away from Babylon. Technology is okay and a good tool. It’s something we can use to our advantage to communicate, build, and engage in commerce with one another.

We are the new pilgrims. We must move to deep red states, push them further right, build, and secure a future for our families. Forget politics at the national level. That rigged game is over. Focus on state and local elections, not what is going on in DC.

Conservatism has failed. It has been trying to conserve a country and a culture that is never coming back and has long been gone. The future of the West depends on those of us who are going to build. Build our own infrastructure, our own families, our own communities, our own parallel economy, and our own strongholds of deep red states. We’ll build a wall around the borders of those states if that’s what it comes to. We need to accept exile from Babylon and get to work.

Americans appear to have lost all touch with the independent pioneer spirit, resolve, and flint-eyed personal grit that made this country great to begin with. Some of us had it stolen from them by main force, while some willingly abandoned it to lapse into lotus-eating, preferring instead to become indolent, pampered brats without the inner steel to defend all that is rightfully theirs: liberty, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness, in the sense of the words our Founders meant by them. That precious, golden heritage can never be restored to us unless we roll up our sleeves and restore it ourdamnedselves.

(Via Dave Renegade)

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Quick, somebody explain to me how this isn’t terrorism

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Interfering with airport operations? Knowingly intimidating airport patrons, employees, and security personnel for purely political purposes? Blocking access to travelers as they attempt to go about their perfectly lawful business?

Where’s the Department of Homeland Security when you really need ’em, anyhow?

These climate scientists feel ‘a higher calling’ — civil disobedience

Fine then; I have no real problem with civil disobedience, which has a long and for the most part honorable historical tradition here in the US. I am likewise fine with these weedy shitlibs being arrested, tried, and imprisoned for said civil disobedience, which would be the time-honored, traditional result of such disruption.

As world leaders discuss climate change at the United Nations summit in Egypt, activists elsewhere are targeting private jets and frequent flyers, which contribute to global warming. On Thursday, four people, including two climate scientists, were charged with trespassing after they chained themselves to entryways at Charlotte Douglas International Airport’s private jet terminal.

It was one in a series of protests at 17 airports around the world coordinated by a group called Scientist Rebellion.

Peter Kalmus of Chapel Hill studies biodiversity and ecological forecasting for NASA. Rose Abramoff of Knoxville, Tennessee, researches how climate change affects ecosystems. She doesn’t want to say where.

They’re also both activists, who have recently turned to civil disobedience. Abramoff says she struggles to keep her work and her activism separate:

“Like all scientists, we were trained to maintain a type of neutrality in all things, especially when speaking publicly. As scientists, none of us claim to represent our institutions. But we do speak from a place of greater credibility because of our educational background, and because of our training in the climate sciences,” Abramoff said.

“But when we’re engaging in advocacy, we’re citizens, you know, we’re mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons and members of our community. And we have a right to say what we’re thinking, and almost a responsibility,” Abramoff said.

Yes, you in fact DO have a right to say what you’re “thinking.” So stipulated. What you assuredly do NOT have either a “right” or a “responsibility” to do is any of the things I mentioned in the opening line above, all of which are HIGHLY illegal acts, particular when one does them at an airport. I know all of you are suffused with great pride in your superior intellects, your higher morality and concern, and your overweening, too-precious sense of God-granted entitlement to dictate to us lesser beings as to how we must conduct our own lives.

I repeat: fine, then. Put your fucking money where your fucking fat yaps are and do some hard time for the flagrant illegalities you’ve perpetrated due to your own smug, self-righteous sense of entitlement to harass other people who have done nothing whatever to deserve it. Let’s all see whether your well-muscled, proto-simian, menacing cellmate thinks as highly of you holy-rollers and your “higher calling” as you yourselves do.

3

Notes on the passing scene

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Diplomad weighs in.

Big waves of either color have proven rare events in our history. We have a very large, complicated, and diverse country, its politics, as a consequence, vary considerably from one region to another. What’s important in Arizona, does not necessarily register as an issue in New York, for example. Our wise founding fathers saw this, even in 1789, and created the electoral college, three co-equal branches of government, and a federal system with considerable power left to the individual states and the people; they were willing to live with a certain amount of national political deadlock or, let’s say, ambiguity for the sake of restraining the central government’s power. It’s a good system. It’s system of checks-and-balances generally has worked well for us for nearly two and a half centuries.

Today, however, we have serious trouble in America. We see that young people, ages 18-29, can be and are bought and swayed by the ludicrous promises and policies of the increasingly authoritarian Democratic Party–since its founding an odd mix of thugs and so-called intellectuals. This party, the world’s oldest, promises, and ensures, no consequences for bizarre and destructive personal behavior. Our cities are a horrific mess. Our educational institutions have become a nightmare under Democratic rule. They produce credentialed, smug, lazy, ahistorical, illiterate and silly brutes with strong self-esteem, an overwhelmingly sense of entitlement, and disconnected from the real economy. These stupid brutes basically add nothing to our material, spiritual, and intellectual wealth. They are ripe for manipulation and exploitation by the lords of the new left, and its billionaire allies in the mass media, high tech, and Pharma industries. They are the lemmings of the woke movement.

Appeals to patriotism, historical practice, and just common sense, make increasingly less headway with this mass of stupid voters. These electors now respond more to emotional appeals, often relying on fake science–e.g., men can become women, men can get pregnant, global climate “crisis,” the COVID “crisis”–promoted by cynical social media “influencers” and politicos, among others. They deny the existence of a crime wave–you are racist if you point it out–and any inflation concerns are dealt with by government subsidies, e.g., COVID payments of various types, student debt “forgiveness,” etc. They hate children and want to see them tortured or dead. They spout off a distorted version of history, which demands that America and the West atone for sins with reparations and open borders. They hate our country and the Western civilization from which it springs.

All that, of course, is quite apart from the corruption of the electoral process itself. Stealing elections is a well-honed art by the Democrats. In the last few election cycles, the Dems have become evermore cynical, and less and less worried about keeping what they do out of view.  They have no shame in using the bureaucracy and law enforcement to harass and intimidate the political opposition. They are aided in this by, as mentioned, a complaint and actively complicit media complex and the high lords of high tech. Dem officials in government have no hesitation in using the bureaucracy to torment and silence opponents.

I have to laugh/cry when I see conservatives arguing among themselves over we should run Trump or DeSantis in 2024. The Dems are quite happy to see and foster this silly debate. They run a mummy for President, a human vegetable for the Senate, and a DEAD guy for a State assembly seat, and they WIN! Their candidate for governor in Arizona just happens to be the person in charge of ensuring electoral integrity in Arizona. Yet, despite all this, we get labelled election deniers, get censored, thrown off media platforms, and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists if we express doubts about our election system. It simply doesn’t matter how good your candidates are if the system is rigged to ensure they lose.

In any nation whose “election” system is as demonstrably, flagrantly corrupt as ours has become, questioning said “elections” is much more than merely reasonable; in truth, it’s every patriotic American’s sacred duty.

1

Shine on, Sunshine State

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Adoptive Floridian Josh Hammer says it’s the new capital of Red State America. We can only hope he’s right about that.

In the Sunshine State Tuesday evening, Governor Ron DeSantis cruised to a second term with an astounding near-20-point margin of victory over former Gov. Charlie Crist, and Republican Senator Marco Rubio routed Democratic challenger Rep. Val Demings by more than 16 points. Both DeSantis and Rubio won the state’s most populous county, 70-plus percent Hispanic Miami-Dade County—DeSantis by double digits. Both Republican standard-bearers also won majority-Hispanic Osceola County, in the Orlando area, and DeSantis also flipped Palm Beach County from blue to red.

All other Florida Republicans running statewide also won, and Republicans also secured supermajority status in both the state senate and the state house. U.S. congressional races in Florida that were labeled before the election as toss-ups, such as the 13th and 27th congressional districts, uniformly broke for Republicans—and often not in particularly close fashion. Some other states, such as Texas and Iowa, also had good election nights for Republicans; but in no state did the GOP perform better, up and down the ballot, than in Florida.

All of this is simply astonishing from Florida, the one-time paradigmatic “swing” state that famously decided the 2000 presidential election by a paltry 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. Indeed, just four years ago, DeSantis eked out his first statewide victory over Democrat Andrew Gillum by a margin of 0.4 percent. And DeSantis’ victory over Gillum was not even the closest statewide race in Florida that cycle; Rick Scott won his U.S. Senate race over Bill Nelson that same year by a microscopic 0.12 percent margin.

Yet, just four years later, Florida is no longer a purple state. It is a red state—in fact, a dark red state. Consider, as but one more data point, that DeSantis won reelection by a larger statewide margin than did Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, who won his reelection race Tuesday night by just under 14 percent. Oklahoma is perhaps the nation’s single reddest state; in every presidential election since George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, every single Oklahoma county has voted for the Republican presidential candidate. But in 2022, DeSantis won in former “swing” state Florida by a wider margin than Stitt did in ruby red Oklahoma.

The bottom line is as straightforward as it would have been jarring to hear just a handful of years ago: Florida, the nation’s third-most populous state, has surpassed Texas, the nation’s second-most populous state, as the capital of red state America.

As Republicans lick their wounds from Tuesday’s various disappointments and engage in some deep introspection about what went wrong at the national level, one key question thus becomes: What lessons can Florida Republicans impart to Republicans elsewhere?

The TRULY “key” question is, how many of said Repugnicans would be at all interested, sincerely interested, in learning them? Or would take them to heart, or act on them?


Man, that Don Brewer sure did himself one hell of a lot of drumming on that sparse, bare-bones little kit of his, didn’t he?

Update! Some fun facts about GFR I bet y’all didn’t know. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know some of it myself, and I’ve been listening to Mark, Don, and Mel since I was still in knee-britches and high socks.

Grand Funk Railroad was formed as a trio in 1969 by Mark Farner (guitar, keyboards, harmonica, vocals) and Don Brewer (drums, vocals) from Terry Knight and the Pack, and Mel Schacher (bass) from Question Mark & the Mysterians. Knight soon became the band’s manager and also named the band as a play on words for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, a well-known rail line in Michigan. First achieving recognition at the 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival, the band was signed by Capitol Records. After a raucous, well-received set on the first day of the festival, Grand Funk was asked back to play at the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival II the following year. Patterned after hard-rock power trios such as Cream, the band, with Terry Knight’s marketing savvy, developed its own popular style. In August 1969 the band released its first album titled On Time, which sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold record in 1970.

In February 1970 a second album, Grand Funk (or The Red Album), was awarded gold status. Despite critical pans and little airplay, the group’s first six albums (five studio releases and one live album) were quite successful.

The hit single “I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home)”, from the album Closer to Home, released in June 1970, was considered stylistically representative of Terry Knight and the Pack’s recordings. In the spring of 1970, Knight launched an intensive advertising campaign to promote the album Closer to Home. That album was certified multiplatinum despite a lack of critical approval. The band spent $100,000 on a New York City Times Square billboard to advertise Closer to Home.

By 1971, Grand Funk equaled the Beatles’ Shea Stadium attendance record, but sold out the venue in just 72 hours whereas the Beatles concert took a few weeks to sell out. Following Closer to Home, The double disc Live Album was also released later in 1970, and was another gold disc recipient. Survival and E Pluribus Funk were both released in 1971. E Pluribus Funk celebrated the Shea Stadium show with an embossed depiction of the stadium on the album cover’s reverse.

By late 1971, the band was concerned with Knight’s managerial style and fiscal responsibility. This growing dissatisfaction led Grand Funk Railroad to fire Knight in early 1972. Knight sued for breach of contract, which resulted in a protracted legal battle. At one point, Knight repossessed the band’s gear before a gig at Madison Square Garden. In VH1’s Behind the Music Grand Funk Railroad episode, Knight stated that the original contract would have run out in about three months, and that the smart decision for the band would have been to just wait out the time. However, at that moment, the band members felt they had no choice but to continue and fight for the rights to their careers and name. The legal battle with Knight lasted two years and ended when the band settled out of court. Knight came out the clear winner with the copyrights and publisher’s royalties to every Grand Funk recording made from March 1969 through March 1972, not to mention a large payoff in cash and oil wells. Farner, Brewer and Schacher were given the rights to the name Grand Funk Railroad.

In 1972 Grand Funk Railroad added Craig Frost on keyboards full-time. Originally, the band had attempted to attract Peter Frampton, late of Humble Pie; however, he was not available due to signing a solo record deal with A&M Records. The addition of Frost, however, was a stylistic shift from Grand Funk’s original garage-band based rock and roll roots to a more rhythm and blues/pop rock-oriented style. With the new lineup, Grand Funk released Phoenix, its sixth album of original music, in September 1972.

To refine Grand Funk’s sound, the band then secured veteran musician Todd Rundgren as a producer. Its two most successful albums and two number-one hit singles resulted: the Don Brewer-penned “We’re an American Band” (from the number two album We’re an American Band, released in July 1973) and “The Loco-Motion” (from their 1974 number five album Shinin’ On, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin and originally recorded by Little Eva). “We’re an American Band” became Grand Funk’s first number-one hit on Farner’s 25th birthday, followed by Brewer’s number-19 hit “Walk Like a Man”. “The Loco-Motion” in 1974 was Grand Funk’s second chart-topping single, followed by Brewer’s number-11 hit “Shinin’ On”. The band continued touring the U.S., Europe and Japan.

In 1974 Grand Funk engaged Jimmy Ienner as producer and reverted to using their full name: Grand Funk Railroad. The cover of All the Girls in the World Beware!!! (December 1974) depicted the band members’ heads superimposed on the bodies of bodybuilders Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbu. This album spawned the band’s last two top-10 hits, “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Bad Time” in late 1974/early 1975.

I put the stuff that was news to me in bold, so’s nobody would miss it. Unlikely as it may seem after all that, there’s more to the Grand Funk story even yet.

Footstompin’ update! What, no mention above of what I remember being one of their hugest hits?


WHOA, that’s good squishy!

1

Does anybody really know what time it is?

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Andrew Torba does.

Nailed it
Deep down, you know he’s right

No, it ain’t pretty. No, it ain’t pleasant to contemplate, or easy to face up to. But hey, it is what it is. Reality can be like that sometimes. Feels like a perfect time to rerun what may well be the very first meme ever made (definitely one of the very first I saw, for whatever that’s worth), which is still one of the best.

Good one
Forever relevant, forever funny

Yeah, that one ain’t ever getting old. Another old classic that will be forever relevant: There are NO political solutions to the problems created by politics.

6

Look back in anger

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American “elections” have always been every bit as “free, fair, and honest” as they remain today. Which is to say, not at all.

The Electoral College solidified former Vice President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 general election this week. Despite President Trump’s frequent claims, no evidence of widespread voter fraud has been found in swing states such as Georgia or Pennsylvania or any other state, including Illinois.

And blah blah blah woof woof. Ignore that standard-issue, Mark 1-Mod-0 MSM horseshit, it’s not worth bothering about.

But in 1960, some irregularities in Illinois votes, specifically the ones in Chicago, prompted calls for an investigation from Republicans over then-Sen. John F. Kennedy’s victory. The saga played out in the pages of the Chicago Daily News.

Voter fraud in Cook County certainly wasn’t unheard of at the time, but did Republicans have a case? According to scholar Edmund F. Kallina’s article in “Presidential Studies Quarterly,” the answer is yes, but also, no. His research found that Nixon was not “cheated out of Illinois’ electoral votes.”

For a deeper dive into the plan of a few Republicans to hijack the Electoral College, check out this report from the Washington Post.

Yeah, no. Thanks but no thanks for your surely non-partisan recommendation there, pal. As you might expect, the above short Enemedia recap leaves the juiciest, most sordid bits out. Not so with this next account.

A lot has been accused but there hasn’t been any hard-hitting proof that Kennedy actually used the Chicago outfit to obtain the electoral college in Illinois, right? Well according to “The Dark Side of Camelot” by Seymour Hersh, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (JFK’s father) set up a meeting with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana to obtain Giancana’s support for Jack Kennedy’s run for the White House. But one boss? That is just one guy, what is Kennedy going to do with one vote? Well, unlike most people, the Mafia played dirty and they did it by buying votes, Hersh tells us.

You can’t exactly pay voter by voter to cast a ballot for the liberal politician, because the money would run out in a heartbeat with no guaranteed results. Instead, Giancana funneled money to lower-level street thugs as “walking around money.” Nothing illegal there, in fact, Sam just looks like a nice guy, which cannot be further from the truth. But that payday came with an implied promise, “Mafia” reports. The people performing their civic duty would be “persuaded” to vote blue. What made this possible was not only harassment of poll goers but each gangster had a “territory” they ruled. A territory could be as little as a hundred people or as large as thousands, all of which listened to their criminal neighborhood boss. Not exactly from respect or friendliness but out of fear.

Funneling cash to buy votes and harassing conservative voters was among their many tactics to steal the election in Illinois. Combine that with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s alleged ballot stuffing political machine and the state was Kennedy’s. Illinois was won by nearly 10,000 votes and John F. Kennedy was the new President of the United States. But wait, there’s more.

The Mafia Podcast lists testimonies of various anonymous (out of safety) gangsters claiming to have helped also buy the Virginia primary for Kennedy. Giancana even loudly bragged about buying local politicians new office furniture and paid bar owners to keep Frank Sinatra’s campaign song, “High Hopes,” playing frequently throughout pubs.

But one doesn’t contact an unknown gangster for help, which is correct. However, Giancana and the Kennedys had more ties than you’d think. The first being previously mentioned Frank Sinatra, a man who was very familiar with the mafia and a close friend of the Kennedy’s. He was said to be the go-between man for the two during the West Virginia primary rigging according to Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia professor and author of The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy. Sabato also highlights the connection by citing the story that Joseph Kennedy asked for Giancana’s help over a dispute with another mobster, Frank Costello, and offered “the president’s ear” in return. This is all backed by Sinatra’s daughter, Tina Sinatra, in a “60 Minutes” story, summarized by CBS News.

Tina adds that Joe Kennedy arranged the West Virginia primary rigging through Giancana. Who boasted the request was “a couple of phone calls away.” But the gangster, after all his hard work and dedication was not rewarded with the president’s ear and was turned on through the hiring of Robert Kennedy. While the Kennedy’s didn’t seem to care about the cut ties between the mobster, Sinatra was hung out to dry and was not in Giancana’s good graces, somewhere you never want to be. But Tina Sinatra confirms the beef was squashed by Frank who played in Sam’s night club, Villa Venice, twice a day for an absurd eight straight nights, bringing “Rat Packers” Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin along.

But Sinatra isn’t where the connection stops. All That’s Interesting tells us Kennedy, Sinatra, and Giancana all shared a common mistress, making a go-between connection much more likely. The black-haired beauty, Judith Exner, first enjoyed the presence of Sinatra after a vacation in Hawaii for two. But her life changed dramatically after February 7th, 1960 when she caught the eye of then-Senator John F. Kennedy. Exner spent the next day with Kennedy at Sinatra’s place. Exner claimed that Kennedy called her every day for a month following that encounter in Las Vegas. On March 7, 1960, the night before the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy and Exner made love for the first time in New York City, according to her account. She also testified to be a go-between for the mob for an unprecedented 10 times, where it’s theorized she began another romantic relationship with, this time, Giancana.

As you might be able to see, there are way too many connections between the Kennedy’s and the mob on multiple occasions for something not to be fishy.

Of course, and as usual. Proving yet again, as if further proof were needed, that in big-time American power-politics, it’s filth, sleaze, fraud, and corruption all the way down.

The devastatingly talented crime noir novelist James Ellroy’s great American Tabloid presents an intriguing alt-history theory regarding the skullduggery behind both JFK’s 1960 “election” and his assassination three years later: Kennedy had run afoul of so many rough, violent men and entities like Giancana, the CIA, J Edgar Hoover, the Castro government, and others that the real wonder would have been if he HADN’T been assassinated for his perceived betrayals and broken promises.

Ellroy, in the way of the very best writers, takes a close look at the motivations of all these potential hit-men without ever specifying who the likeliest culprit might actually have been, leaving that to the reader’s imagination. American Tabloid, like nearly all of Ellroy’s work, is an excellent, gripping read, one I can’t recommend highly enough.

3

Giving the hornets’ nest a good, hard shake

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Hoo BOY, but Peters has really put his foot in it with this one.

Things have probably never been more dangerous than they are today. At least, not since  election day, 1860. Whatever the outcome of this election, it could result in something like what happened after that election.

Lincoln’s election was intolerable to the people of the South, which shortly after his election in 1860 began to form what became the Southern Confederacy and shortly after that, attempted to withdraw from what it, with cause, saw as a political system that not only did not represent its interests but which it saw, also rightly, as a system that could not represent its interests. That last being an important point rarely, if ever, discussed in the schools established by the government that forced the Southern states back into the “union.”

The North controlled the “union” politically and so actually because the North had the population and the money to dominate federal elections. And so the South had no way to redress its grievances within the construct of the “union.”

It was not the election of 1860, per se, that triggered the South’s attempt to withdraw but rather the realization that future elections would go similarly. What option does a minority have in a political system that is based upon majority rule? The choice is either acceptance of subordinate status and hope the master will be kind – or get away from the master.

It is exactly what the American colonies had done – and for same reasons and realizations – those “four score and seven” years before the election of 1860. Their successful attempt to withdraw from the union – with Great Britain – is celebrated by modern Americans, many of whom also think (if that is the right word) that the failed attempt by the people of the Southern Confederacy to do the same, for similar reasons and on exactly the same basis, in terms of the principle at issue – i.e., that of being governed by themselves rather than a distant people with whom they had increasingly little in common and who wielded political control over them that could not be redressed within the context of the “union” – was, somehow, a kind of crime.

And so, the Southern states – like the American colonies, which were also states – declared their political independence from the “union” and fought for it.

If today’s elections ensconce the power of the political Left, whether legitimately – in terms of the actual votes – or because the votes were jiggered with – the people who are not of the Left will have to face the awful realization that the Left is in perpetual control and that they no longer have any means, within the system, to combat it. That the oppression of the Left cannot be voted away.

It must be gotten away from – or submitted to. The latter being a condition as intolerable to those not of the Left as the subordination of the not-Left is to the Left. This is a matter of irreconcilable differences – and both sides know it, just as they knew it in 1860. Like a failed marriage, it is not what either party wanted at the beginning. But it is what it has become and there is no fixing it except by separating the estranged or forcing the estranged to endure one another in a state of mutual, endless hatred.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. His analysis is perfectly correct, from premise to conclusion, right down the line—and for that heinous atrocity, certain of us will never forgive him. Eric, bless his workaholic heart, has posted a sort of companion piece/post-mort today, which is also well worth a read.

The Bolsonaro’ing of Arizona – and America?
The reference being to the loss at the ballot box of someone who appeared to be far more popular than his opponent and certain to win. Just like the Orange Man.

Until the votes were counted.

The Bolsonaro’ing of Lake being especially similar and even more suspicious in that her opponent was more than just her opponent. Katie Hobbs is also, conveniently, Arizona’s secretary of state, which means she is the state official who has legal oversight and so power over…Arizona’s elections. Including her own. This being kind of like having your estranged spouse’s attorney handle your divorce settlement. For this reason, Hobbs will never be acknowledged as the legitimately elected governor of the state, by millions of people in the state – even if a majority of people did vote for her rather than Lake.

This being catastrophic for “our democracy,” if those who say that cared about that.

What was on the ballot yesterday – and not just in Arizona – was the legitimacy of the system itself rather than who was running for office. The Left may have succeeded in diverting the “red wave” that had been predicted – and which in some cases, as in AZ, seemed certain. But it did so in such a way that the results will only further heighten suspicions that the fix was in, again.

Kari Lake wasn’t just ahead of Katie Hobbs in every poll. She was well-ahead of Hobbs in every poll taken since early October. How does a 3-4 percent lead (in the polls) become a 2 percent loss? Maybe because the polls were wrong. Or maybe because the votes weren’t right. Even if they were, many of those who didn’t vote for Hobbs will never believe the votes were right because of the fact that Hobbs was in a position to assure they were “right.”

Similar uneasiness percolates generally. With reason.

With GOOD reason, INDISPUTABLE reason, more like. Read both the linked pieces, they’re par for Eric Peters’ usual high standard of excellence.

It’s quite painful to have to admit it, but since Our Side always rakes the DemonRats for their extreme resistance to undertaking any honest self-examination after losing an election—a circumstance that’s become more and more rare with every passing biennial—seems to me that after yesterday’s Red Flop squib some soul-searching might well be in order for Our Side this time.

Atop the list of necessary adjustments is a rose-tinted misperception I used to complain about all the time back when Rush Limbaugh repeatedly touted it on-air: the idea that, as he always put it, America is a “conservative-majority nation.” Claptrap, pure and uncut, and the sooner we all wrap our heads around that fact the better off we’ll be. Really, how could any serious person imagine otherwise, after six-seven decades of a dismayingly successful Long March Through The Institutions, wherein several generations of American youth have been brainwashed into unquestioning acceptance of every tenet of hardcore Leftist dogma? If we ever truly were a “conservative-majority nation,” we damned sure are no such thing now.

Which, after yesterday’s debacle, leaves us right back where we’ve long been: standing before the fabled Cartridge Box, all agape and aghast at just how we might ever have come to find ourselves in this sorriest of passes. Attribute it to whatever you like—chicanery, apathy, outright fraud—but yesterday’s sad repeat of what by now has come to seem an eternal cycle amounts to inescapable confirmation of something we don’t wish to admit but have long known just the same.

Yes, Virginia, there really IS no voting our way out of this.

Update! Steyn agrees with me, and has for quite a while now.

At SteynOnline we have been marking our twentieth birthday by strolling back through the archives. (For earlier entries, see below.) This morning we have reached 2008, when there really was a wave – blue, as waves generally are, but augmented by many, many conservative commentators eager to repudiate the Bush years. Here is how I began that year’s morning-after column:

‘Give me liberty or give me death!’

‘Live free or die!’

What’s that? Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs.

My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a ‘center-right’ country. Americans didn’t vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a ‘Dancing With The Stars’ election: Obama’s a star, and everyone wants to dance with him. It doesn’t mean they’re suddenly gung-ho for left-wingery.

Yeah, whatever gets you through the night. Nothing cool about the “President”; no star quality about Senator Fetterman, as we must learn to call him. The Biden-Pelosi decrepit gerontocracy has dissolved your citizenship at the southern border and shriveled your horizons on all fronts from unaffordable gas to unavailable baby formula. And the fathead right will still be bleating their bromides about “a center-right country”. Whatever the country is, the voting machines are “center-left”. Back in the real world, one consequence of last night is that Trump is likely not to run again, and ol’ Joe is – mainly because he could have a Fetterman-sized stroke tomorrow and a state funeral at the weekend, and the Dems would still bet they could get him across the finish line.

“Senator Fetterman.” Hard to believe, ain’t it? But if there were any further evidence needed to show just how badly broken and corrupt America’s “election” system truly is, that alone ought to be plenty enough to convince even the most dewey-eyed Pollyanna currently extant.

3

Hearty congratulations to all involved

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A dark, disappointing day for those folks eagerly anticipating a Red Wave that never quite materialized, certainly, but not without its sunnier side all the same. First on the list of reasons for every American to stand up and cheer themselves hoarse: the honest, wise, and true voters in the Peach State have overwhelmingly reelected Stacy “MBT” Abrams to her second glorious term as Georgia’s governor!

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp Declared Winner Over Stacey Abrams

Waitwaitwait, WHAT? WHAAAT?!? How did THAT preposterous, counterfactual nonsense get up there? Stop LYING, you LYING LIAR BASTARDS!


NOOOO!!! What the fucking FUCK are you Fake News Election Denialist Tarrrumpapumpumkins trying to do to us here with these transparent fabrications, anyhow?!?


Sweet bleeding Christ on a pogo stick, it’s like one of those horrible bad dreams you just can’t wake up from, no matter what you do!

“No one in Georgia’s history has done more to create jobs, cut taxes, restore sanity to your schools, put criminals behind bars, protect the unborn, and secure all the God-given liberties enshrined in the Constitution of the United States than Gov. Brian Kemp,” former Vice President Mike Pence told a crowd in Georgia.

“We’ve been doing good in this day because we have been saying no to Stacey Abrams,” Kemp said. “We were listening to you, and because we’ve done that, we’ve got an incredible economy. We’ve got the most people ever working in the history of the state, the lowest unemployment rate in the history of the state.”

Stop it! For the love of God, will you people please just STOP IT ALREADY!!! I can’t even…good Lord, it’s as if…why, it’s…it’s…

AT LONG LAST, HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?!?

2

Parade lap

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Now THAT’s a victory speech.

On Election Day, at his victory party at the Tampa Convention Center, Governor Ron DeSantis celebrated with around 4,000 of his supporters as he cruised to a 19+ point victory for reelection over Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist.

He gave several memorable lines, with Churchillian overtones, and a clear and repeated message to keep fighting, never give up, and never back down. Indeed, it was a wartime speech, as America fights to preserve its liberty and its sovereignty. “Florida was a refuge of sanity when the world locked down,” he roared to a frenzied crowd. “We stood as a citadel of freedom for people across this country and indeed across the world. We faced attacks, we took the hits, we weathered the storms, but we stood our ground. We did not back down. We had the conviction to guide us, and we had the courage to lead. We made promises to the people of Florida, and we have delivered on those promises. And so today, after four years, the people have delivered their verdict. Freedom is here to stay.”

He pointed out how Florida has gone deep red in very unexpected areas, to the delight of those in attendance. Every time Fox News showed Miami-Dade County with huge vote advantages for DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio, they exploded with applause.

“Thank you to Miami Dade County!” DeSantis bellowed. “Thank you to Palm Beach County! Now we’re still tallying the votes, but it’s clearly apparent that in this election we will have garnered a significant number of votes from people who may not have voted for me four years ago and just want to let you know I am honored to have earned your trust and your support over these years.”

The most touching moment was when he thanked his wife Casey, who, earlier in 2022, fought and beat breast cancer.

“And most important of all, thank you to the greatest first lady in all 50 states,” he said, “for being a great wife, giving unwavering support, being a tremendous mother to our three young children, and serving as an example for women throughout this state especially going through the battle of cancer. She is remarkable.”

Indeed she is. An excerpt from the speech:

Now this great exodus of Americans, for those folks, Florida, for so many of them, has served as the promised land. We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law in order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers and we reject woke ideology.

We fight woke in the legislature. We fight woke in the schools. We fight woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. People have come here because our policies work.

Leadership matters. We refuse to use polls and put our finger in the wind. Leaders don’t follow, they lead.

We set out a vision. We executed on that vision and we produced historic results and the people of this state have responded in record fashion.

Now, while our country flounders due to failed leadership in Washington, Florida is on the right track. I believe the survival of the American experiment requires a revival of true American principles. Florida has proved that it can be done.

We offer a ray of hope that better days still lie ahead. I am proud of our achievements in this state. I am honored by your support and I look forward to the road ahead. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race and [unintelligible due to crowd noise].

We’ve accomplished more than anybody thought possible four years ago, but we’ve got so much more to do and I have only begun to fight. God bless you all. Thank you very much. Thank you for a historic landslide victory.

I find this quite heartening, seeing as how I don’t see a whole heck of a lot of presidential-run groundwork being laid in any of the above.

Update! A look at How Ron Won.

Yes, DeSantis has the incumbent advantage. And yes, he was lucky enough to ride the Trump wave after 2016 (and smart enough to adopt what worked). But his decisive victory should also signal to Republican state leaders across the country: In today’s political climate, voters are rewarding competent governance and tactical culture war offensives.

Too many Republican governors have taken office only to reject the concerns of the people who voted them in. Republicans, from Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson to South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, have opposed bills by their state legislatures to keep sexually confused males out of girls’ sports. (DeSantis signed the Florida legislature’s bill to do just that, signaling that Florida is “going to go off of biology, not ideology.”)

Holcomb shuttered church buildings and limited services to 10 people or fewer during the Covid panic. Cox defended excluding white kids from a basketball scholarship program based on their skin color. Noem refused to call a special session to allow her legislature to pass a bill banning Covid vaccine passports. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland compared people (including many of his constituents) who chose not to wear a mask during Covid to drunk drivers. The office of Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee refused to condemn the politicized Justice Department’s prosecution of peaceful pro-life demonstrators in his state and the FBI’s raid on the home of one pro-lifer, 73-year-old Tennessean Chester Gallagher.

It shouldn’t be hard for red-state governors to stand against boys in girls’ sports, the sterilization of sexually confused kids, the killing of babies in the womb, porn in school libraries, or racist school curricula. By latching onto the fringe depravity in their own party, Democrats have made Republicans’ jobs of opposing them easy! Republican politicians watching DeSantis turn Florida from a purple state that voted for Obama twice into, this year, a reliably red state that elected its GOP incumbent by certain double digits, should take note.

Follows, a brief list of three reasons why DeSantis trounced the grisly Crist so thoroughly. A representative sample, culled from Item #1.

1. Pick Culture War Fights
Instead of rolling over for corporate interests or worrying about criticism from The New York Times, Republican governors should be seeking out opportunities to tactically punch back. There are plenty.

Other GOP governors and legislatures should pass laws prohibiting teachers from lecturing kindergarteners about “sexual orientation or gender identity.” When those commonsense protections of parental rights are incessantly attacked by corporations like Disney that enjoy special privileges from the state, governors should reconsider those special privileges, not give in to corporate pressure.

They should insist on protecting students from being inundated with critical race theory and sign legislation doing so. States affected by President Joe Biden’s border crisis (which increasingly means all of them) should take action to show they won’t put up with the Biden administration secretly shipping illegal aliens into their states. They should all pass vigorous protections of unborn life (and many have). They should make it clear that lawless rioting threatening their communities will not be tolerated. They should pass laws to help protect their citizens from Big Tech censorship and prohibit Silicon Valley giants from meddling in their elections.

Notably, DeSantis’ culture war fights also appear to have earned him historic support among Hispanic voters, in a sea change every Republican should be taking notes from. After losing the Florida Hispanic vote by 10 points just four years ago, Axios reported the day before Election Day 2022 that DeSantis was leading his Democrat opponent 51 to 44 percent among likely Hispanic voters. In Miami-Dade County, which is 69 percent Hispanic or Latino, DeSantis went from losing the county by 20 percentage points in 2018 to winning it by an 11-point margin this year (as of election night, with 93 percent of votes in). For context, in 2016 Hillary Clinton carried the county by 30 points, Joe Biden won it by 7 points in 2020.

In sum, then: do your fucking job; keep your fucking promises; and never flinch from engaging The Enemy not as if he was an “esteemed colleague” but as exactly what he truly is: a fucking enemy. You’ll definitely want to read all of this bracing piece, folks.

Updated update! Another terrific quote from DeSantis’ speech: “We will never ever surrender to the Woke mob. Florida is where the Woke goes to die!” You GO, Gov! No idea why the excerpt I ran earlier cut the last line out of that bit, it was the best part if you ask me.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

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

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