Read and Heed – Page 18

The losing tradition

Posted on March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Mike

David Solway examines some evidence that Real Americans are mired up to the axles in one.

Why Do We Almost Always Lose?
One of the besetting vices of the conservative disposition is the tendency to regard potential or likely victories in contested situations as inevitable. The conservative mind is not happy with the reality principle. It prefers not to see that menacing and intractable elements often lie beneath the cover of apparent failure. Such tranced insensibility is always quick to snatch fantasy from reality, proof that conservative analysis is often unreliable and prone to underestimating the cleverness and determination of the Left. This seems to be one reason (there are others) that conservatives have trouble winning.

Let’s consider three current examples of this unfortunate tropism.

1) Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake’s case against Katie Hobbs on grounds of electoral impropriety and mismanagement, citing compelling evidence that had many commentators confident of courtroom success, was predictably tossed by the presiding judge, Peter A. Thompson. I say “predictably” by which I mean “utterly obvious to anyone with eyes to see.” As I wrote in a earlier article for PJM, the belief that Kari Lake’s evidence-based lawsuit against electoral fraud would bear fruit — “Kari Lake Just Ended Katie Hobbs” is the title of one conservative video — is another indication of wishful thinking rather than sober insight. The evidence of electoral malfeasance was dispositive but, given the state of the judiciary in a heavily left-oriented county, there was never any possibility of a fair judgment. Kari Lake had truth and justice on her side, which, in the ideological universe of the Left, meant she didn’t have a chance. Any astute observer would have seen that.

2) Among conservative sites like Turley Talks, The Five, and others, the general jubilating consensus in the Fani Willis travesty was that Willis would surely be cited for various forms of obvious misconduct, possibly disbarred, and certainly would not be permitted to proceed with her election interference prosecution of Donald Trump. The list of misdemeanors was so absurdly extensive as to read like a plot by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, that is, like a comedy trying hard not to be a tragedy. Watching these programs and interviews, my wife and I were struck by the debilitating naivety of the various commentators. We knew well before the fact, and for a fact, that the presiding Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee would effectively punt the case, despite the overwhelming evidence that there was an actual conflict of interest, violation of ethical rules, perjury, and unprofessional conduct on the part of Willis. Alan Dershowitz and Victoria Taft have eviscerated the judge’s ruling, but it should have been plain from the get-go that the verdict was pre-ordained. We note also that McAfee will be facing a black primary challenger in in a Democrat-run, largely black county. Just saying.

3) Most significantly, many commentators have wondered why the Democrat Party would run an obviously senile, incompetent, corrupt, and half-demented failed president as a candidate for re-election against a hale and vigorous challenger. Following his clearly medically amped-up State of the Union Address, writes Matt Margolis, “we’ve seen Biden return to his usual low-energy, gaffe-prone self,” which does not augur well for his electoral prospects. Indeed, many of the pundits and talking heads representing the Republican side of the political divide are exulting in a sure victory, a decisive sweep of the electoral college, a favorable march of battleground states, and are perhaps even more exuberant than they were in 2020 and 2022 when victory was also presumably assured. They did not allow for a massive game of three-card monte then and, while acknowledging that the Democrats are up to their old tricks now, believe that Trump is sufficiently popular to effortlessly clear the margin of fraud.

Wrong again. The Democrats can run a doddering and decrepit excuse for a functioning politician and a demonstrably nasty human being because they are convinced that they will win again. We recall that Katie Hobbs did not bother to debate her immensely popular gubernatorial opponent Kari Lake, no doubt because she knew beforehand that, as Secretary of State presiding over the official certification, and with a compliant judiciary, friendly media sumpters, and biddable tabulators, she had the election won. Similarly, the federal Democrats are supremely confident that they have the election already in their pocket via a strategy of relentless lawfare and financial extortion against Trump, weaponized justice and policing agencies, a suborned media apparatus, digital collaborators, a degenerate university system, ballot harvesting tactics, a crew of vote counters, an army of mules to carry out their instructions, and, as Ben Bartee at PJM points out, the very real possibility of unleashing a COVID 2.0 pandemic “if and when they believe it will be politically expedient, potentially even existential, for them.” The Democrats are not to be underestimated. They could run a mummified cadaver and still win handily.

As Jeffrey Tucker points out, “this president is plunging us straight into lawlessness and dictatorship,” his dimwitted and narcoleptic condition notwithstanding. But enough of the dictatorial machine is already in place to plausibly guarantee a resounding triumph, since most of the votes will be Monopoly votes, no doubt deposited under cover of darkness as in 2020.

A-yup—as we shall soon see yet again, then refuse to learn from…yet again. One of my biggest gripes about Rush Limbaugh over the years was his mulish insistence that the FUSA was “a conservative-majority nation,” when that manifestly was, and is, NOT the case.

It’s doubtful in the extreme that seriously liberty-minded individuals have ever constituted more than a tiny minority in ANY nation, throughout human history. In this one, where even among self-proclaimed “staunch conservatives” the instantaneous reaction to any problem, conundrum, or conflict is always to tub-thump for more government involvement as the “solution”? Gedouddaheah, ya makin’ me laugh wid dat shit /end Brooklyn accent.

Based America’s final stand

Posted on March 15, 2024March 16, 2024 by Mike

Knoxville attorney TJ Harker posts a truly magisterial essay.

2024: The Stand of the Based Americans
For the first time in more than twenty years, the ruling elite’s stranglehold on the nation’s power structures threatens to collapse. Simultaneously, ambitious mandarins in big tech, high finance, big law, and the administrative bureaucracy vie for supremacy in the face of a power vacuum that grows with Biden’s deteriorating mental faculties. Meanwhile, millions of ordinary Americans seek a common political principle around which to organize a coherent defense of their way of life. 2024 is shaping up to be the year in which the existing balance of power between these two groups is consolidated or upended. 2024 will be the year that the new based Americans finally join the battle against the established ruling elite and its regime mandarins.

The Ruling Elite and Its Regime
Though Ross Perot is a distant memory, his 1992 third-party presidential candidacy catalyzed the ruling elite into self-awareness. Surprised by his 19% of the vote, the ruling elite took notice of itself as an independent political force and realized it had to act to maintain its power. Quickly it consolidated control of the major party systems. Simultaneously, it developed a cadre of loyal, mandarin-like sycophants within the administrative state, most legacy media institutions, big law firms, and virtually all of high finance. Later, it welcomed big tech into its mandarin classes. Today, this organizational structure, together with a lowly class of prole-like enforcers and useful idiots, is “the regime.”

For the five consecutive presidential elections from 1996 through 2012, the ruling elite used the regime to become rich and powerful, almost entirely at the expense of ordinary Americans and the nation’s interests. But, in the absence of any serious challenge to their power, it became arrogant and increasingly incompetent.

Today, this process has culminated in a Washington D.C. clown show, in which nearly every apparatchik is incompetent in the most clinical sense of the word. Thus we see children holding senior administration positions; mediocrities with literally zero subject-matter experience appointed to cabinet level positions; caricatures of Darth Vader in positions of extreme sensitivity despite catastrophic failures; spineless shills routinely embarrassing the nation in international affairs; and milquetoasts who decide whether to enforce the nation’s laws based solely on regime-approved criteria.

Their self-congratulatory “the grown-ups are back in charge” mantra notwithstanding, the regime is not blind to its own widespread incompetence. But it also knows that it has no quick solution. There is no standby legion of elite technocrats to which it can turn for technical competence. The “scientific government” of John Dewey and the mid twentieth century progressives is a distant memory. This leaves the regime with no choice but to lie … about everything. Thus, in a weird way, the regime’s growing mastery of political propaganda is a consequence of its technical incompetence

The Based Americans
Standing against the ruling elite and its regime are a widening circle of based Americans. Say what you will about Donald Trump, he deserves credit for at least one thing: His 2016 presidential victory pulled the wool from the eyes of many benighted Americans. For the first time, millions came to perceive, however dimly, the growing incompetence of the regime.

Today, the nascent political awakenings of 2016 have begun to sink roots. It is slowly accreting a litany of unlikely allies into an increasingly coherent political force. From homeschoolers to homesteaders, Bitcoin enthusiasts to cattle ranchers, evangelical Christians to Hasidim, secular jews mugged by reality to second-generation Hispanics, wilderness survivalists to moms for liberty, and neo-Nietzschean GigaChads to walkaway homosexuals, plus thousands of other vital human beings, first millions then tens of millions, and perhaps more than one hundred million Americans, have now awakened to the grave threat posed by the regime. Politics make strange bedfellows, and all that.

If in 2016 Trump’s supporters knew something was up, if not quite what, today this ground swell of based Americans has also realized that the regime is a threat to their liberty and property; that its unifying purpose is to subjugate them; that it uses propaganda systematically to conceal its unbelievable incompetence from them; and that it is both incredibly dangerous and grossly incompetent.

It is that combination–the awareness of the regime’s desire to subjugate, its power to do so, and its gross incompetence–that resonates with Americans more effectively than any specific political agenda. We Americans are freedom-loving and action-oriented people, deriving our wealth and success from a combination of fierce independence, self-reliance, know-how, expertise, craftsmanship, tacit knowledge, experience, and technique. As such, we are highly attuned both to threats to our liberty and to professional incompetence. We know that plumbers who can’t fix pipes aren’t plumbers. Electricians who can’t wire a house aren’t electricians. Pilots who can’t fly aren’t pilots. And tyrants who can’t do anything else will work to subjugate us.

Based Americans stand flummoxed by the regime’s fantastically childish climate agenda that erodes our national strength by prohibiting the search for, and production of, abundant energy. This is to continue until we ordinaries are cold and hungry, weak and frail, and stranded in the duplexes we rent from Blackrock. We won’t own anything and we’ll be miserable.

Based Americans now know that the CDC and the NIH fund gain-of-function research deep in the bowels of our greatest geopolitical rival, knowing that such research will be used to synthesize bio weapons of astonishing horror. Meanwhile the CDC—the Center for Disease Control—lectures us that “gun violence” is a public-health epidemic.

In short, based Americans now understand that transgender, dog-mask wearing generals aren’t warriors and won’t be able to defend us. That boy-faced small-town mayors with traffic circle design experience aren’t logistics experts and can’t unfuck the port of Los Angeles. That noble-prize winning “economists” who think war increases wealth have no idea how to enrich us. That beneficiaries of our racial-spoils system appointed to high positions in elite universities don’t know how to educate us. That medical “experts” who deny biological sex can’t be our children’s pediatricians. That public health officials who think “gun crime” is a health crisis, are not prepared to combat pandemics. That prosecutors who excuse mass violence by regime favored races while wildly overstating the frequency of so-called “hate crimes” will not protect our communities.

A rather lengthy excerpt, yes, but at 2500 words plus, there’s still plenty of great stuff to read here. Harker covers all the bases, and covers them extremely well. Great stuff it most certainly is; in fact, I’d go so far as to say the piece is nothing short of brilliant, and I urge you to read it in its entirety.

Unfortunately, Harker appears to be a victim of the same “political solutions ONLY” syndrome all too many of our best and brightest writers are afflicted by, and I won’t try y’all’s patience further by restating my views on that. Buck Throckmorton, via whom etc, shares the Harker view:

When Harker talks of the brewing rebellion, he is talking about a political rebellion. We need to win this fight at the ballot box, but part of the battle we must fight is not to politely acquiesce again to ballot fraud.

Left undiscussed is how, exactly, this proposed “non-polite acquiescence” might be accomplished—let alone why, exactly, the mere idea of violent resistance to a tyrannical regime should be taboo in a nation which was founded, established, and secured by the selfsame methods we now preemptively forswear as utterly unthinkable, even as a desperate, last-ditch measure. The logical contradiction from which this puzzling conviction proceeds is as blindingly obvious as is the piss-poor result it must inevitably yield. I can only refer you to last night’s Heinlein quote-a-palooza for the antidote to such weak-tea sob-sister-ism.

Apart from that regrettable averting of the eyes, it’s nonetheless a fantastic piece—its central thesis enheartening, its language straightforward, its examination of the hows, whys, and wheretofores that brought us to this dismal pass impeccably reasoned—of which you should read the all.

The three L’s: liberty, law, and ‘lections

Posted on March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Mike

Francis has an excerpt from Clarence Carson’s seminal 1970 book on the subject.

[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one’s spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the “democratic process.” A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

Effective disagreement means not doing what one does not want to do as well as saying what he wants to say. What is from one angle the welfare state is from another the compulsory state. Let me submit a bill of particulars. Children are forced to go to school. Americans are forced to pay taxes to support foreign aid, forced to support the Peace Corps, forced to make loans to the United Nations, forced to contribute to the building of hospitals, forced to serve in the armed forces. Employers are forced to submit to arbitration with labor leaders. Laborers are forced to accept the majority decision. Employers are forced to pay minimum wages, or go out of business. But it is not even certain that they will be permitted by the courts to go out of business. Railroads are forced to charge established rates and to continue services which may have become uneconomical. Many Americans are forced to pay Social Security. Farmers are forced to operate according to the restrictions voted by a majority of those involved. The list could be extended, but surely the point has been made.

Porretto’s conclusion mirrors my own oft-stated one:

I could start to rant about the Deep State, whose insulation from electoral processes is a great part of the reason for the diminution of our freedom, but I’ve done it before, and I dislike to repeat myself. My actual purpose here is to remind my Gentle Readers of the essential truth about freedom:

Freedom is not granted.

It is taken:

Whether by you, or from you.

Freedom’s price is always paid in advance. It’s usually denominated in blood. How, then, should we who have paid nothing expect to retain it?

As recent FUSA history has shown, we cannot expect to—because, assuredly, we WILL not retain it. “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Well, we couldn’t, evidently. The one and only thing our tainted “elections,” at least at the national level, guarantee us is more of the same old shite.

Flattery

Posted on March 11, 2024March 12, 2024 by Mike

Personally, I rather like having them think of me as a threat. I much prefer that to being regarded by them as basically harmless; any day I don’t annoy, inconvenience, or alarm such as they is a day misspent as far as I’m concerned.

Rural America Is a Threat to the Totalitarian Left
Last week Newt Gingrich tried to remind Americans how serious the threat of nuclear conflict remains. In a sober essay, he warned that the United States is not prepared to withstand nuclear or electromagnetic pulse attacks and urged Americans to prepare for unthinkable possibilities. Then a few days later, I woke up to read that “white rural rage” is the greatest “threat to democracy” and thought, “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about nuclear Armageddon now.” Such is the sorry state of the “woke” West that the “thinking class” moronically obsesses over trivialities, while ignoring everything that is disastrous.

This somewhat regurgitated “white rural rage” thesis comes from a “journalist” and an “academic” who have written a book explaining why white, patriotic Americans who just want to live their lives free from government interference are actually responsible for everything wrong in the country. Just when I think my white-hot contempt for closed-minded toffs couldn’t burn more brightly, a couple nitwits ratchet up my “rage” to eleventy. Dang, they got me. Turns out that if you scapegoat rural Americans long enough, some will get angry. Uff da.

The real fear of the “white rural rage” Chicken Littles is not that rural Americans are a threat to “democracy” but rather that they provide an immovable bulwark against the Deep State’s “master plan” for a totalitarian super-State. All over the West, politicians and pundits continue to extol authoritarianism as “democratic” and denigrate self-government as “populist.” It’s absurdly Orwellian, of course, but since we live in the age of censorship, propaganda, and linguistic chicanery, these word games will continue. Somewhere in the pits of Hell, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao are eager to remind Klaus Schwab and all the other Western globalists how “democratic” their “rules-based international orders” are, too.

The globalist authoritarians have instructed the commoners to stop eating meat. Rural Americans have said, “Nah, we’re good. We like steak.” The “new world order” folks have insisted that a great deal of speech must be censored in order to protect fragile adults from experiencing outbreaks of unapproved “hate.” Rural Americans have responded, “Suck it up, Buttercup. Maybe try listening to an opposing point of view sometime. It might just vaccinate you from the plague of groupthink.” The globo-Marxists have demanded that consumers hand over their keys to any car with an internal combustion engine. Rural Americans have laughingly replied, “Not only are we keeping every truck and tractor from the last century in a barn out back but also we can’t wait to buy some new all-terrain vehicles to ride through the backcountry.” Officials who betray their oaths to the Constitution have told law-abiding Americans that they have no right to own a gun. Rural Americans have calmly loaded their weapons in preparation for self-defense and whispered back, “Come and take it.” In disposition and beliefs, rural Americans are the natural “Minutemen” guarding American liberty.

Ultimately, attacks against rural Americans — like the left’s attacks against Christians — are a wretched form of bigotry designed to spread the insidious idea that people who live outside city limits are subhuman. Because rural America is filled with resilient people who adamantly defend the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, it represents an antidote to the cancerous form of Marxist globalism killing cities across the country. Because rural America is filled with faithful people who are obedient to God’s will — and not D.C.’s — it remains a natural refuge for those immune from institutional brainwashing. Because rural America is blessed with an abundance of self-sufficient families, hard workers, and freethinkers, it provides a welcoming home for human liberty. For these reasons, aspiring totalitarians must destroy rural America if they are to have any chance at erecting a new system founded on censorship, surveillance, oppression, and tyranny. The problem for the Deep State is that rural Americans know what to do when the SHTF and, in fact, have been preparing all their lives.

Be afraid, shitlibs, be VERY afraid. As ferociously, as desperately as you hate us, our hatred for you still outstrips it, by orders of magnitude. Despise us for our religious devotion; our stable, loving families; our safe, pleasant, orderly communities; our self-restraint and moderation; our rugged individualism and independence; our reverence for the code of ideals, traditions, and philosophy bequeathed to us by America’s Founders, whom we also reverence; despise us for all these and much, much more—I assure you, your contempt is of no consequence whatsoever to us.

Little as we care about what your opinion of us and our way of life might be, a friendly word of advice: LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE; STAY WELL CLEAR OF US AND OUR SMALL TOWNS, RURAL AREAS, FAMILY FARMS, AND HOMESTEADS. You do NOT belong here, are NOT welcome here; we do NOT want you anywhere near us. We are entirely agreeable to leaving you alone in your crumbling, crime-ridden urban hellscapes, your gated residential enclaves, your expensive, exclusive vacation resorts, so long as you consent to leave US alone to conduct our own lives as we see fit.

That said, we do NOT want our children exposed to your sickness; your depravity; your diseased, anarchic monoculture; your total lack of rectitude; your amoral self-indulgence; your childish, pouty intemperance—in sum, your heedless, unthinking rejection of absolutely everything that, for us, makes life truly worth living.

Go your own way, then, and do us the courtesy of letting us go ours in turn.

And there you have it, that’s it: one hundred percent fair, honest, and above-board; simplicity itself, nothing onerous, oppressive, or obscure. This is what’s on offer; call it a fresh, new Social Contract between our two disparate and wholly incompatible nations, perhaps. Respect the provisions and obligations therein, and all will be copacetic between us. Fuck Around and traduce the contract, however, and you will most certainly Find Out—to your deepest dismay, boundless sorrow, and everlasting regret.

That’s the deal, like it or lump it. Get cracking on your answer straightaway, no shilly-shallying, waffling, or mucking about either necessary or tolerated. There’s a clock ticking here, and we ain’t gonna wait around forever. Not after all these years of putting up with your shit, we ain’t.

The “virtual lifestyle”

Posted on March 11, 2024March 11, 2024 by Mike

Is compromised all to Hell and gone, fraught with risks and hazards we know not of, but dismiss or ignore at our direst peril.

The planet seems to have some teleological drive to save itself, a kind of immune system. Notice: in all the ongoing debates about the wonders and dangers of A-I, and Bitcoin, and suffocating surveillance, nobody ever talks about the sketchy condition of the electric grid that all these worrisome phenomena utterly rely on. In our chatter over Peak Oil, there’s little awareness of oil production’s utter dependence on steady capital flows. In all the guff about centralized control emitted by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, there’s no mention of the centrifugal forces driving human affairs to re-localization, dis-aggregation of large states, and down-scaling of many activities. In our zeal to become Gods, we miss a lot.

Imagine: Bitcoin shoots up to a million dollars. You’re a zillionaire! Uh Oh…somewhere outside Zaneseville, Ohio, a squirrel takes a final chaw through some old insulation on a wire coming out of a transformer. His head blows up in a blue arc flash, and in a few seconds all the electricity goes out from Chicago to Boston. It turns out that seventeen substations in ten states have blown relays, transformers, and switchgear. Some of those components were forty years old and are now manufactured twelve thousand miles away in a country that doesn’t like us anymore. The replacement parts get held up in a Chinese port. The power doesn’t come back on for weeks. Nobody who lives in the eastern USA can get to his Bitcoin wallet, which is just a virtual entity made of computer code residing in a digital “cloud,” i.e., nowhere real.

Of course, in an event that bad, a lot of other things would fail — really just about everything that comprises modern life — but for sure you could kiss your Bitcoin goodbye, perhaps forever, because by the time the juice comes back on (if it even does), nobody will ever again want to invest their wealth in digital “money” they can’t access, and Bitcoin will go back to whence it came: zero.

Likewise, the financial system we depend on is a gigantic apparatus grown extremely janky from over-elaboration and hyper-complexity — to the degree that all kinds of things denoted as having “moneyness” are simply hallucinations of the markets that trade them. How many quadrillions of dollars do “derivative” financial instruments represent on the landscape of “money” these days? Most of these things amount to little more than bets that some number — an interest rate, a currency, a revenue flow — will change either up or down. That is, they are figments.

Bitcoin has gone “hockey stick” the past month, meaning on a chart the move up looks nearly vertical. Do you know why it’s going up? I’ll tell you: it’s going up…because it’s going up. People and groups of people (wealth funds, banks) see the up-trend and deduce that Bitcoin is going “to the moon.” Meanwhile, they view the tea leaves of the currency scene and see a lot of brown, crumbly debris where there used to be “capital.” The money itself is losing its “moneyness” all over the place. The most vulnerable module of the system now is the bond market.

Many sentient beings viewing the scene warn us that the bond market is liable to blow, and with it most of the other modules in the current MMT-driven system. That will be the magic moment when a big theory gets disproven rather vividly and injuriously. The price of everything will vaporize in a mushroom cloud of malinvestment and when the dust settles — which might take a long time — everything will be priced differently, including many things to zero.

This is the kind of world we’re in now, and all this is why I don’t worry quite so much about the machinations of the various blobs that have self-assembled to defend their particular special interests while doing harm to many of us: the military-industrial blob, the censorship blob, the fake news blob, the intel blob, the corporate monopoly blob, the medical blob, the central banking blob. The systems we depend on to make all things blobish function are looking pretty ill, like they’re not going be working a whole lot longer.

Unlikely though it may seem, the tale has a happy ending (of sorts), which you’ll want to click on over to read.

No, I am NOT a robot

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Mike

Not that those CAPTCHA tests they force you to click on really care. That, after all, isn’t what they’re really all about. Of course, and as usual.

This is what clicking that ‘I’m Not A Robot’ button REALLY does — and it’s probably not what you’re thinking
This security method is known as a CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The Turing Test, originally named the Imitation Game, was created by British computer scientist Alan Turing in the 1950s and is designed to put Artificial Intelligence to the test and determine whether it’s indistinguishable from a human mind.

So, is Google simply checking whether AI is smart enough to know to click on the “I’m Not A Robot” button? Not quite.

As revealed by the researchers from BBC’s QI in an episode that first aired in 2020, ticking the box allows Google to trawl your internet browsing history to determine whether you’re a real user or a bot trying to force entry.

QI host and comedian Sandi Toksvig explained: “Ticking the box is not the point. It’s how you behaved before you ticked the box that is analysed. To be honest, I can’t tell you all the details because they keep it secret because they don’t want people trying to cheat the test, but broadly speaking, you tick the box and it prompts the website to check your browsing history.

“For example, before you tick the box you watched a couple of cat videos and you liked a tweet about Greta Thunberg, you checked your Gmail account before you got down to work — all of that makes them think that you must be a human.”

Google, which is behind much of the CAPTCHA security tests you’ll come across online — usually under its reCAPTCHA brand name, can’t access your entire search history. Instead, it’s likely checking websites that it owns (Gmail, YouTube, searches on Google, Google Maps) or those where it has some visibility thanks to the “Sign-In With Google” buttons, analytics or advertising, or the CAPTCHA itself.

That’s a huge proportion of the internet.

So, there must be SOME way out of this—some way of safeguarding your personal privacy and security that doesn’t cost an arm, a leg, and a lot of hassle to protect yourself from yet another Goolag intrusion into what, in the end, is really none of their goddamned business, right? RIGHT?!?

No. No, there is not.

Unfortunately, if you think that using a private browsing mode in your web browser, like Incognito Mode in Google Chrome, keeps your data out of reach ― that’s not the case. In fact, Google was recently forced to add a new warning to its Incognito Mode feature to keep users in the loop about the risks.

The only way to keep your browsing history completely out-of-reach is to encrypt everything with a Virtual Private Network. NordVPN is an example of a VPN that keeps everything you do online locked away— so that even Google or your broadband provider is unable to see what you’re doing. Prices start from £3.19.

As well as trawling a slither of your recent internet history to work out whether you’re behaving like a real human being, there is another use for the CAPTCHA quizzes that you complete. Picking the correct image of a fire hydrant, zebra crossing, or school bus is actually helping to train Artificial Intelligence behind-the-scenes.

Not a single bit of which most if not all of us are interested in helping them out with, or so I’d bet. Bastards.

I must say, Tor looks better and better all the time.

(Via Stephen and Ed)

Just when you think they can’t possibly surprise you anymore

Posted on March 9, 2024March 9, 2024 by Mike

How is this NOT an intentional FederalGovCo-sponsored invasion? How is this NOT a brazen, in-your-face criminal operation perpetrated by a lawless, gone-rogue central government? How is this NOT raw Treason Most Foul? Somebody explain it to me, please, I got nothin’ over here.

Biden Administration Smuggled Over 320,000 Illegal Migrants Into US Through Secret Flying Program
The Biden regime has acknowledged smuggling ‘unauthorized’ migrants into the United States on covert planes.

Immigration attorneys argue that disclosing the locations of these flights may cause national security “vulnerabilities.”

“Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose information about a program last year secretly chartering flights for thousands of undocumented immigrants from foreign airports directly to U.S. cities,” the Mail reported.

“It means that while record numbers of migrants were flowing over the southern border last year, the Biden White House was also directly transporting them into the country,” the report added.

The use of a cell phone app enabled the nearly unnoticed entry by air of 320,000 foreigners with no legal permission to enter the United States.

It follows a debate over a 2022 transportation program in which the administration utilized taxpayer funds to ferry migrants around the country on nighttime flights.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Biden’s CBP approved the latest secretive flights that transported hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different American airports from January to December 2023, as revealed in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit first reported by Todd Bensman.

Incroyable. Also, sacré bleu! Lastly but not leastly, merde alors!

Hey, remember that absurd Reich Wing(nut) conspiracy-theory freakout over a looney-tooney “replacement” program being run by our benevolent, compassionate, not-at-all-insane D卐M☭CRAT Party, for purposes of importing hordes of new D卐M☭CRAT voters and consigning the hated White Devils to the trash-heap of History where the evil sumbitches belong? Nah, me neither, musta dreamed it after gorging on a case of the cheapest beer 7/11 stocks; three (3) of every item from Taco Bell’s dollar menu; and a party-size sack of Flamin’ Hot Cheetohs right before bedtime.

Aww, those kooky Reich Wing moonbats, they’re all crazy as a shithouse rat anyways, every last one of ‘em.

Oh, and while we’re gettin’ jiggy with it up in here: anybody besides me think the pro-Paleosimian “protest” which blocked the 4-5-600 car ***”pResidential”*** motorcade on its way to last night’s SOTU venue was actually a clandestine false-flag put-up job conceived, planned, and overseen start to finish by Biden junta Sekrit Squirrlz to provide the regime with semi-believable justification for arm-twisting Israel more vigorously than ever—via any and all measures including American boots on the ground in Gaza—into accepting the suicidal cease-fire the junta so desperately craves before the IDF can finish Hamas off for good?

I hope Netanyahu isn’t so foolish that he can’t see this diabolical stratagem for what it is, that he’s fully cognizant also of the gizzard-freezing fact that Amerika v2.0’s current regime is every bit as fanatical, relentless, and deadly an enemy of his own sore-beset nation as it is of Normal Americans here at home, thus will continue to respond with a hearty “Fuck YOU!” each and every time the demented old Kiddie-Diddler in Thief opens his drool-slathered yap.

A Wokester military

Posted on March 5, 2024March 5, 2024 by Mike

Is a Weakster military.

SCOOP: Mandatory training for military members teaches that America was founded on racism, and parents are too ignorant and dumb to teach their children about it. They think parents need to stay out of their kids’ education and shouldn’t have a say in what they learn.

Only ‘The… pic.twitter.com/PGIfapYg13

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok)

March 5, 2024

Stephen puts the (GI) boot in.

Raichik added, “There’s so much more where this came from,” and I don’t doubt it.

There is only one reason to teach soldiers that the country they’re supposed to be willing to fight and die to protect is irredeemable.

The U.S. military has had its ups and downs, but since ending the draft half a century ago, it has been the most expertly trained and exquisitely armed force the world has ever seen. Even during the draft years immediately before World War II to the end of Vietnam, we paid for and usually got the best weapons and training the country could afford.

And unlike those militaries in all those shi*hole countries, our forces were apolitical. They didn’t serve a president or a party, but the country.

In the last several years, wokeness has come to infect our military just as it previously had our universities, news outlets, and the entertainment industry.

Our readiness now is about what you’d expect: “U.S. military is only ‘marginally’ prepared to defend America’s interests at a time when adversaries are ramping up military capabilities.”

I’ve begun thinking of our postmodern military not as a useless Woke Force but as a Third World military: a force that isn’t any good at fighting foreign wars but is perfectly suited for putting down domestic undesirables.

Do I exaggerate? In 2021, Woke Army Sgt. Cindy Bronson had a message for her fellow Americans in case martial law is declared: “Understand that if active duty military actually get deployed within the United States, that weapon is not just going to be pointed at other people, other countries, it’s pointed at you.”

“If you do not get in your house when I tell you to,” Bronson warned, “you become the enemy. Martial law. You know, when your rights get curtailed?”

Roger that, Bronson.

Yep. Duly noted, SGT Cupcake; anytime you’re feeling froggy enough, do feel free to jump. One more time, I’ll just let Canuck punk rockers DOA say it for me.

Update! Steyn gives us the lowdown on the hoedown.

The decadence and unseriousness revealed by (self-styled “transgender” Manwoman) Lieutenant-Colonel Dram ought to be deeply disturbing. The planet’s most lavishly funded fighting force took twenty years to lose to goatherds with fertiliser, and on the way out the door gifted them with enough hardware to make them the world’s eighth or ninth most powerful military. That should surely occasion a certain circumspection. Instead, the Pentagon doubled-down on the wokery and the wankery – and, after a twenty-minute tea-break, started up the usual racket all over again, this time in Ukraine.

How’s that working out for the Ukrainians? Unlike Afghanistan, it’s a demographic wasteland. In 2001, the census counted 48.5 million people in the country. A year ago, it was headed down toward half that – just 29 million. Lindsey Graham and Boris Johnson may be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian people, but even they must have noticed there are fewer and fewer Ukrainian shoulders to stand around with, at least if you go to Kiev rather than Poland or Hungary, Germany or Ireland. On the present rate of population decline, after the war there will be insufficient Ukrainians left to rebuild the economy – or, indeed, maintain basic demographic viability. Right now, thanks to Washington, Ukraine is flush with cash and weapons, but all out of fighting-age men.

Well, that’s what happens when you have the honour to be made the site of the Pentagon’s next Designated Fiasco. And yet back at home, thanks to the likes of Lieutenant-Colonel Dram and without benefit of Russian invasion, the US military is trending in the same direction:

Critical Staffing Shortage Prompts Air Force to Recruit Retirees

As goes the Air Force, so goes the Army and the Navy. Apparently, out in Flyoverland, there are few takers for a woke military that enriches generals-turned-lobbyists while you get blown up by Ahmed the “translator”. “Walk a mile in my heels” doesn’t really work when you’ve lost a leg in Helmand.

We are in the end-stage of a bad soap opera, when characters and plot have jumped the tracks, and there is no Bobby Ewing waiting in the shower. Three decades ago, it was pointed out that in the end Soviet Communism proved no more lasting than the span of one human lifetime: 1917-1991. Yet America’s blip of global dominance is looking just as fleeting: 1950-2020something – that last date being whenever the ever metastasizing brokeness causes total implosion. And, as things stand, the only thing the great republic (in Churchill’s affectionate designation) will be remembered for is that the entirety of western civilisation slid off the cliff on America’s watch. All the rest is details.

Pretty much, yeah. On the upside, though, when the fecal matter hits the rotary impeller for reals and the Great American Schism grinds ever on to the closing stages of its long, slow evolution from “Probably, someday, I think, very possibly” into “Current events, live and in color,” Amerika v2.0’s extravagantly broken Wokester military is going to find itself ensnared in yet another conflict it’s hopelessly incapable of coping with to tack onto its steadily-lengthening list of humiliating defeats.

Summing up the position

Posted on March 4, 2024March 4, 2024 by Mike

In the course of putting together tonight’s Eyrie meme post I ran across an oldie-but-goodie sitting in my voluminous “Memes” folder that I felt would be made best use of in its very own CF main-page spot.

Hopefully that’s big enough for older eyes like mine to read; not sure if the old “click to embiggen” wheeze will do the trick or not, honestly. If not, give me a shout in the comments and I’ll see if I can work out how to fix that.

16th century technology comes to West By-God Virginia

Posted on March 4, 2024March 4, 2024 by Mike

A blight, an eyesore, and an inefficient, inadequate “solution” to a problem that does not exist.

This is what happens when a wind farm comes to a coal town
Sheila Wagoner is not a fan of the wind farm overlooking Keyser, West Virginia.

“I really don’t care for those windmills,” the 71-year-old says. “I guess I wasn’t brought up with that kind of society. Like 50 of ’em together? Who likes all that?”

It’s not just the visual contrast that Wagoner finds bothersome. She is from one of many families in Keyser—and throughout West Virginia—that relied on the coal industry for generations. Her late father worked as a railway engineer for coal trains that used to run non-stop through Keyser.

Today, those trains are an increasingly rare sight.

Not to worry; once the faltering shitlib fever-dream finally fades to black and the polity regains its collective sanity—which it assuredly will, one way or another; there’ll be no other choice when the whole shambolic sham of a shitshow has finally unraveled so entirely that the fact of its existence can no longer be denied by even the most purblind, self-deluded lackwit among us—Americans will be eager, perhaps even desperate, to avail themselves of the affordable, plentiful energy provided by proven-reliable technological improvements which shouldered their antiquated, long since abandoned predecessors aside in the first goddamned place.

There’s a very good reason this rough shoving-aside occurred many, many decades ago, a reason which guarantees that such a displacement will, in fact MUST, occur again, regardless of how frantically bawling-brat shitlibs labor to keep their benighted subjects shivering in the dark in perpetuity—cold, hungry, utterly miserable, and above all, obedient.

In 2022, the country’s first major climate policy, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, passed with the promise to speed up that transition, offering at least $4 billion to boost development of renewable projects like the Pinnacle Wind Farm in Keyser.

Huh. So let me get this straight: here we have the nation’s “first major climate policy”—smuggled in all stealthy-like under the cloak of a bit of legislative jiggery-pokery whose title makes no mention of climate policy whatsoever. Sounds kinda suspicious, no? Or maybe that’s just me, I can be overly cynical like that now and then.

Hell, forget alleviating any purely-notional climate issues, it won’t no way no how reduce inflation, even. That’s not the actual intention here, never has been—as is the case with nearly all the other bonehead boondoggles rammed down American throats via remote diktat puked forth by the Most Exalted Lord High Mucky-Mucks of far-off Mordor On The Potomac, in Congress assembled.

That law passed with the key vote of West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, but Tillman is skeptical that those benefits will reach Keyser.

“I like Joe. I talk to him a good bit. But the thing is a city like Keyser [doesn’t] ever see any of that money,” says (Keyser’s Mayor Damon) Tillman. “That money all goes to bigger cities – Morgantown, Jefferson County, Charleston. So it doesn’t do us any good.”

With all due respect, Mr Mayor, it doesn’t do any Normal American any good. Nor anybody else neither, by no means exclusive to your city and state but across the nation—with the notable exception of wily, double-dealing Congresscreatures à la le Manchin and the well-heeled schemers and bunco artists who own their ilk lock, stock and barrel. Make no mistake, s’il vous plaît: those miserable tapeworms are Manchin’s actual constituents, the people he really works for, not you ridge-running Sad Sacks stuck out there in your disgusting hinterlands hovels. Forget this at your dire peril.

No, we don’t have to like it. We DO have to face up to it, honestly, resolutely, and unflinchingly. And that right soon, lest continued foot-shuffling, mumblemouthed rationalization, and weak-kneed dithering prove to be our undoing.

Absent a Real American renaissance and concomitant renewal of a staunch, unyielding commitment to see the ideals of Her Founding restored in full and vigorously safeguarded—no negotiation, no compromise, no tit-for-tat spit-swapping with the selfsame scurvy, lying motherfuckers who, after all, stole our country from us in the first place—there can be but one denouement, a most unhappy ending to the long American story: with our integrity besmirched, our honor forsaken, our rights revoked, our liberty lost, and our children enslaved.

The final nail

Posted on February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 by Mike

If nominated, he will not be permitted to run. If “elected,” he will not be permitted to serve.

Democrats Signal They Might Not Certify A Trump Win In 2024
Numerous House Democrats have signaled that they would not certify a 2024 presidential election win from Donald Trump, relying on the 14th Amendment to claim Trump is an insurrectionist and thus ineligible from holding office.

Democrats including Reps. James Clyburn (SC), Jamie Raskin (MD), Adam Schiff (CA), Eric Swalwell (CA), and even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies refused to say that they would confirm Trump to office if he won the 2024 election.

As Dan McLaughlin explained at National Review, Democrats could have the votes to sustain an objection to a Trump win if they take control of the House. “Only a simple majority is required, and unlike when the House chooses a president under the Twelfth Amendment, they don’t vote by states,” he wrote. “Unlike in 2016 or 2004, when they were in the minority, House Democrats could be playing with live ammunition.”

Still, a majority of senators would have to object to a Trump win, too. This would likely take 51 senators, and as McLaughlin pointed out, this would be a tough task for Democrats: They “either have to hold every seat they currently occupy (good luck in West Virginia), or take a Republican-held seat (the bluest of which is either Ted Cruz’s in Texas or Rick Scott’s in Florida),” he said.

Or, y’know, peel off a couple of numerous phonus-balonus Vichy GOPe RINOs in the ranks to go along with it. And if you think for one micro-millisecond that the Uniparty combine would hesitate to go to such extreme lengths to maintain their iron grip on power, then you’re as obstinately, willfully blind to the current realities of political life in Amerika v2.0 as Trump himself appears to be. Statements/promises/threats like these make it painfully clear that our leaders Masters no longer deem it necessary to bother themselves with even paying lip service to “the consent of the governed” anymore.

Update! Still think they’re not serious, just joking around here? Better think again.

Poll: If Donald John Trump is granted immunity by the Supreme Court of the United States, should Joe Biden remain seated and become Americas first dictator to prevent Trump from doing the same?

YES / NO / Comment:

— Lara reads banned books in Florida (@MadeInTheUSANJ)

February 28, 2024

As Divemedic suggests, scan a few of the unanimously-enthusiastic responses before you dismiss it all with a wave of the hand as just more unhinged online ranting from the extremist fringe. These people are real-life True Believers, as real as real gets; there are one hell of a lot of them who would dearly love to see it happen, and they are way, way more numerous than most on Our Side begins to imagine. At the risk of sounding like a broken record: They will not stop. They will never stop. They will have to BE stopped.

The leopard polecat never changes his spots

Posted on February 24, 2024February 24, 2024 by Mike

Be it federal, state, or local, Government is a right bastard. You should never, ever trust it, it’s always a mistake.

Liquor Regulators Are Seeking Revenge on Bars That Broke Pandemic Rules
“The people who violated the governor’s mandates and orders should face some consequences,” a Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board member said in 2022.

During the height of the pandemic summer of 2020, the proprietors of the Burning Bridge Tavern worked with local officials in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, to host a series of outdoor gatherings for the community.

For their trouble, the bar’s owners got slapped with a series of citations by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB), the government agency that oversees and manages the sale of alcohol in the state. The citations were ticky-tack offenses, according to Burning Bridge’s chief financial officer, Mike Butler. Twice, the bar was cited for noise violations because they’d allowed a band playing at the gathering to plug into the tavern’s electricity supply. Another offense occurred when the owners and some family members were drinking inside the tavern, which was closed to the public, during a period when indoor dining was prohibited.

A frustrating situation, but not the end of the world. Burning Bridge’s owners paid the fines associated with the citations and assumed that was that. But then the bar had to renew its liquor license.

Fines, be assured, that amounted to thousands of dollars— dollars already hard to come by in the best of times given the extremely thin profit margins all bars and restaurants struggle with in normal times, orders of magnitude moreso under the draconian and entirely contra-Constitutional FauxVid rules of play.

Not the end of the world, perhaps, but having worked in a good few of them over the years I can tell you with absolute certainty that in the bar/restaurant business there simply ain’t no such thing as “extra money.” But as if all that weren’t enough:

“They denied it. They said, ‘Oh, you’re the guys that got all those citations,'” Butler says. “It was a real gut punch.”

Turns out, over the past two years the PLCB has pushed dozens of Pennsylvania establishments that racked up pandemic-related citations to sign “conditional licensing agreements” to renew their liquor permits. In some cases, those agreements have forced the sale of licenses—but in most cases, as with Burning Bridge, they’ve added additional conditions to the license that could prevent a future renewal from being approved.

While the PLCB cannot revoke existing licenses, the board is empowered to object to the renewal of a license or to demand the license can only be renewed conditionally. “In extreme cases,” PLCB Press Secretary Shawn Kelly says, the PLCB can force the sale of a liquor license, though the board only pursues that option when “there is an operational and citation history that calls for such an agreement.”

Even though Burning Bridge’s owners weren’t forced to sell their license, Butler says signing the conditional licensing agreement has come with real costs: The bar’s insurance premium tripled as a result of being viewed as a greater risk.

Assuming BBT isn’t part of a bar/restaurant chain, the owners don’t by any stretch have what you might call deep pockets. So taken altogether, the bruising punishment inflicted by the state of Pennsylvania might NOT be “the end of the world” for them, no. But it could very well be the end of their sojourn in the bar biz.

As I always say, seems like there ought to be some way we could thank the “people” responsible adequately for it. I just can’t for the life of me imagine what it might be.

Update! Can’t leave out the closing ‘graph, which sums up the whole contretemps perfectly.

“The feeling was that our government really isn’t working to try and help us,” says Butler. “At this point, it feels like they’re coming after us.”

A-yup. That’s because they, y’know, ARE. You now, and eventually all the rest of us right along with you. Unpleasant as that is to get our heads around, as difficult as it can be for Real Americans naturally inclined to patriotism and faith in their institutions to choke down and accept, that’s the ugly reality nonetheless. The harder we resist admitting it to ourselves, the rougher it’s going to be when we do come around at last.

Which, sooner or later, one way or another, we’re all gonna have to, like it or not. Think of oversized, intrusive, all-powerful government as a sickness with only one effective treatment. It’s some bad, bad medicine—sure to leave a bitter taste that will linger for a long, long time—but before we can hope to be cured, the body politic fully restored to health, a full dose is going to have to be swallowed.

Clobberin’ time

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Mike

Evil, pure evil through and through, and nothing but.

Medical Staff Ordered to Euthanize ‘Covid’ Patients: Leaked Docs
Explosive leaked documents have emerged that show medical staff were ordered to euthanize patients who had been admitted to hospital and tested positive for COVID-19.

The official documents were leaked from the UK’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS).

The docs further confirm the previous reporting from Slay News that revealed patients were euthanized in order to boost the numbers for “Covid deaths.”

As Slay News reported, smoking gun evidence revealed that tens of thousands of elderly people were murdered to boost the mortality rates.

The data produced for the report indicated that people were being euthanized using a fatal injection of Midazolam.

The cause of their deaths was then listed as “Covid,” indicating that the virus was killing far more elderly people than it was.

The explosive data from the report was made public by Australian politician Craig Kelly, the national director of the United Australia Party.

The report obtained official UK government data on death rates and causes.

While alerting the public about the data, Kelly declared that it exposes “the crime of the century.”

I keep having to repeat this, which gives me no pleasure at all, but: Just when you think we’ve hit Peak Evil©, the filthy barstids go and raise the bar again. Or, y’know, lower it, more like.

Granted, this revelation, sensational as it is, may or may not hold up when all’s said and done. I know nothing about Slay News, Craig Kelly, or his United Australia Party, and therefore can’t speak to their credibility, if any. Documents can be fraudulent; data can be manufactured and/or manipulated; some “smoking guns” can turn out to be firing blanks. As such, could very well be this is all horseshit of the purest ray serene; it is to be hoped so, certainly.

But if I were a betting man, which I am not, I wouldn’t put one thin dime on it. After all we’ve seen these past few years, would you? Famed FauxVid hoax/Vaxx skeptic Dr Robert Malone addresses the larger issue here.

A shadow now haunts my mind. I am deeply troubled in confronting the reality that the world and version of political truths that I have been propagandized to believe over my entire life is merely smoke and mirrors. A vague uneasiness has been lurking around me over these last four years; a sense that I have not only been censored, defamed, and lied to during the time of COVID, but over my entire life. A deeply disturbing specter that the United States government is not the knighted champion of Camelot so frequently and pervasively portrayed in media and literature. Rather its actions since WW II have been those of an immature, petulant and narcissistic adolescent that feels entitled to exploit geopolitics and war to advance short term power and economic objectives that benefit a small elite, rather than more broadly advancing “democracy”, global economic development, and those ephemeral aspirations of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not only have I been propagandized and lied to, but I also sense that the window of time where this behavior by a monolithic Imperial state has been tolerated is coming to an end, winding and grinding down into mundane corruption, bickering self-interest and bureaucratic dysfunctionalism. And that there is no way to stop this accelerating funhouse carousel of painted ponies and mirrors before an abrupt catastrophic failure of the hidden gears throws all into revolutionary chaos.

Maybe something like this has been bothering you also?

Whether fortunate or not, we live in a time of both disruption and deception. A period when change has become an inevitable norm, and yet objective reality is considered an obsolete anachronism. An anachronism that cannot be tolerated, and must be twisted or expunged to serve the interests of those most powerful who will always act to maintain their privilege. Poised in transition between the relatively stable legacy “Pax Americana” bequeathed to us by American military and political victories over twentieth century totalitarian regimes, and fragmentation into an increasingly multilateral rough and tumble world characterized by shifting transitory alliances based on short term interests and opportunity. We all now confront a surrealist intellectual and psychological landscape where truthiness becomes just another product to be marketed. Or propagandized. Or censored. Marketing, propaganda and censorship each being subtle linguistic variations on a single theme of methods to exert external control over the thought and behavior of what otherwise would be autonomous, independent and sovereign individuals.

For many, including myself, the fabric of the widely shared belief in the benevolence of the American Imperial state has been irreparably rendered by the grossly dysfunctional national and transnational mismanagement of the COVIDcrisis. Others were better able than I to see through the cloud of propaganda and lies long before SARS-CoV-2 was constructed. A virus developed and assembled by a bizarre and improbable collusion between US-dominated “biodefense” intelligence interests, the Chinese CCP/PLA (and its dual function Wuhan Institute of Virology), and an international network of entitled biomedical researchers.

But now the gloves are off, and as the underlying truths of this global tragedy are gradually being revealed, the American Imperial state and its allies (governments and corporations) are increasingly resorting to raw power to avoid the consequences of their actions. And with this, it is becoming easier to see the fist. A fist that takes the form of the most aggressive and pervasive global suppression of thought and speech ever witnessed in recorded history. One that is rapidly becoming normalized as an industrial/academic censorship and propaganda complex.

Questions, questions: Just how deep does this rot go, anyhow? Would a global cabal of developed-world governments actually resort to out-and-out murder most foul in the course of pimping their Absolute Power & Control agenda? Have we really tumbled so far as that down the slippery slope to bare-knuckled tyranny?

Most dismaying of all: At this point, dare we assume that they wouldn’t?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Posted on February 20, 2024February 20, 2024 by Mike

Aging “rocker” John Cougar Melonhead keeps on hacking away.

John Mellencamp: Show Dead Bodies to Change Hearts and Minds on Gun Control
There’s a particularly twisted subset of gun control fans who firmly believe that if Americans are only exposed to the sight of murder victims after they’ve been shot and killed, they’ll support every one of the anti-2A infringements the gun control lobby wants to shove down our throats. I’ve always liked John Mellencamp’s music, whether he was going by Johnny Cougar, John Cougar Mellencamp, or just plain old John Mellencamp, so it’s disappointing to see that he’s among those who are convinced that exploiting dead children is a price worth paying, so long as it leads to gun bans that will be ignored by the very people who’ve robbed those children of their future.

If we as a country want to find the collective will within ourselves to change our gun laws, let’s stop playing silly political games. Show the carnage on the news. Show the American people the dead children and others who have been struck down. Show us what guns and bullets can do to the human body. The news media need to be brave enough to let Americans see what slaughtered children look like. Otherwise, I fear that too many perceive gun violence as an abstract; a story that’s repeated nearly every day to numbing effect. When I was a teenager, there was a war in Vietnam. In the beginning, no one paid much attention to this problem in a foreign land until the media shouldered the responsibility and showed America how our sons were being slaughtered. Once those images were shown on TV, there was overwhelming demand for that war to be ended immediately. I say this as a father and a human being, with deep empathy for the parents whose children have had their lives ended so suddenly and so senselessly: Show America the carnage. I am not being callous, and I know it will be painful to see. But, sad to say, I think it’s the only way to shock America out of its stupor.

Clue to the clueless: We already know what guns and bullets can do to the human body—the saner sorts among us do, at any rate. It’s why we have the damned things, what we insist on our right to keep and bear them for in the first damned place, you blithering idiot. Only ign’ant, hoplophobic douchenozzles like your precious self seem not to be cognizant of this, as well as the accompanying fact that not a single gun has ever, throughout the entire course of human history, hopped out of the safe or off the nightstand, walked down the street, and shot anybody without human intervention or intent—not even once.

Only a sick, deeply depraved shitwit like Melonhead could be so cruel, so inveterately craven and soulless, as to go as far as this in clambering up onto the caskets of murdered children to use the loved and lost as mere tools to advance the Leftard political agenda in such an obscene fashion. Put in terms much more courteous than this repellent runt in any way merits:

I’m so sick and tired of this pathetic argument from the anti-gunners, which is based on the premise that the only reason people oppose gun control laws is that they just don’t care about the victims of violent crime; that they need to have some shock to their senses to bring them in line with the already enlightened likes of Mellencamp. It’s such a toxic mix of condescension and yes, callous disregard for others. Oh, he knows how painful it will be, but trust him: it’s worth other people’s pain so long as it convinces those he views as the ignorant masses to start demanding… well, Mellencamp never did get around to saying what kind of gun laws he wants to see on the books, did he?

We’ve seen this argument used to demand bans on “assault weapons” specifically (as if it’s somehow less awful to be killed by someone using a 9mm pistol, an ice pick, or fists and feet) to outright repeal of the Second Amendment, but Mellencamp can’t even be bothered to lay out what laws he wants to see once we’ve been shocked out of our supposed stupor.

What Mellencamp (and the other poor souls who believe this is a great idea) don’t seem to understand is that there are plenty of folks out there who have seen the brutal results of a child murdered in cold blood but who don’t believe that gun control laws are the answer; including front-line law enforcement, trauma surgeons, coroners, and moms and dads who’ll never get over the pain of losing their child. They don’t see “gun violence” in the abstract, but they don’t believe that gun control is the answer either.

Nor should they. Because, y’know, it isn’t. Never was, never will be. Not that the abhorrent likes of John Cougar Melonhead really give a shit, of course.

As I always say: stop flapping your yap and just come and take them already, dickwart. Anytime you feel froggy enough, we’re all ready and waiting for ya. Let’s see how that works out for you and yours, once and for all.

Amen, Chuck.

The shakiest guns in the, umm, East

Posted on February 16, 2024February 16, 2024 by Mike

Q: Are cops in FLA the worst in the known universe?

A: Apparently, yes. Yes, they are.

Cop resigns after mistaking falling acorn for gunshot, firing at unarmed suspect cuffed in patrol car
A Florida cop resigned after opening fire on an unarmed black man who was handcuffed in his patrol car — because he confused the sound of an acorn hitting the vehicle with a muffled gunshot.

Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Jesse Hernandez handed in his badge in December following the Nov. 12 Fort Walton Beach incident, officials said Friday.

Sgt. Beth Roberts, who also opened fire, was exonerated in an internal investigation and remained on the job, according to police.

The suspect, Marquis Jackson, was luckily uninjured, but the “situation was traumatic” for him, police acknowledged.

The video of the incident is…well, quite frankly, it’s pathetic.

New bodycam footage shows Okaloosa County, FL Deputy Jesse Hernandez declaring “shots fired!” and “I’m hit!” and shooting at the handcuffed, unarmed suspect inside of his police car.

He had not been shot, rather, it was determined that he heard an acorn drop onto the car. pic.twitter.com/D71fddl5V7

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer)

February 13, 2024

If you look closely, you can see the falling acorn highlighted against one of the light-grey rowhouses in the background, just before it hits the roof and scares Officer Pissypants out of his meager wits. Next up, vid of the other trigger-happy Deppity Dawg blasting away in “support” of her panicky fellow Offissa Pupp and likewise hitting nothing much.

Sgt Beth Roberts responded quickly to Deputy Hernandez erroneously calling "shots fired" in response to an acorn dropping from a tree.

"Where? Right there?" Roberts asked before also firing at the handcuffed, unarmed man in their car.

Luckily, both cops missed every shot. pic.twitter.com/S0WyadTakX

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) February 13, 2024

Uh huh, luckily. A pair of regular Deadeye Dicks, these two. And just never anybody mind that these shooty-shooty knuckleheads popped off thirty rounds most ricky-tick (depending on issue mag capacity, natch; it coulda been sixty)—smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood, mind—at a handcuffed “shooter” who, presumably, had been patted down by Sooperdoopercop before he was ever put into the patrol car, thus already verified to be unarmed.

Presumably.

So guess what the PD review board “investigation” concluded regarding this disgraceful fiasco? Go on, guess. I dares ya.

Investigators concluded that Hernandez was culpable for a “policy violation regarding excessive use of control to resistance,” but that Roberts’ “use of deadly force was objectively reasonable.”

No criminal charges were filed against either officer.

Yeah, I thought not. But…“control to resistance”? SRSLY?!? There WAS NO resistance, of any kind. How the hell could there have been? The “shooter” was securely cuffed and locked in the squad car’s perp seat, behind the standard doors without handles, therefore posed no conceivable threat to anybody, badged/heeled or no.

Meanwhile, according to another Tweet I saw, Marquis Jackson (who will doubtless be known as “Lucky” to the other hoodrats forevermore), was cleared of his vengeful ex-ho’s firearms-possession accusations against him.

So at the end of the day it’s a happy ending, I suppose: Hernandez is off the force and out of a job he was manifestly unsuited for, and Jackson is none the worse for wear. Well, apart from the heart-attack-inducing levels of stress brought on by being the helpless, immobilized schnook used for target practice during a hot-range double mag-dump by two (2) cops, neither of whom had any business ever being handed a badge and a gun in the first place, that is.

For 2A folks as well, there’s a cherry on top of this shit sundae: we can take some small comfort that if it’s timorous, overwrought, weak-sister incompetents such as Hernandez and Roberts who’ll be tasked with tippy-toeing door to door to confiscate the guns, then we probably don’t have a whole hell of a lot to worry about. They simply ain’t gonna be up to it, and if any hot-lead-exchange should break out, the Keystone Kops demonstrably couldn’t hit the broad side of a bull’s ass with a baseball bat if you gave ‘em three tries at it. The most serious hazard to firearms enthusiasts in such an eventuality will be parting a floating rib from its moorings, from laughing so damned hard at them.

I dunno, though; kinda makes me wonder if there might not be something to all that angst, dread, and fear the boogs have for years claimed to suffer from merely being in the general vicinity of uniformed 5-0 after all, though I’ve always dismissed that shit out of hand until now. Either way, somewhere out there the infamous “Broward Coward” must be breathing a deep sigh of relief at seeing this mind-bending clusterfuck, secure in the knowledge that he’s at last been outdone by the Excessively Dynamic Duo© and their assclownish antics.

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