Real Men Of Genius!

“Experts,” bureaucrats, and ruination

Posted on July 27, 2020July 28, 2020 by Mike

He’s not just incompetent; he’s a fraud and a liar, too.

There are so many things wrong with the picture of Dr. Fauci taking in a Washington Nationals baseball game that one does not know where to start – and no it is not the fact that at that moment he is not wearing a mask. The first thing is that he is there at all, unlike the rest of America that he forbids from watching a baseball game. They’d like to take in a game too but only Fauci, secure in the knowledge that he has a regular job and a regular paycheck gets to enjoy America’s new favorite national pastime, players kneeling during the National Anthem.

Dr. Fauci took a break from his world tour long enough to take in a game and throw out the first pitch, which was predictably wild and to the left, the latest in a long series of curveballs he has thrown at us. After all, doing photo shoots ad interviews for InStyle Magazine can be exhausting. As the New York Post reported:

Dr. Anthony Fauci can add cover model to his resume.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, ditched his mask to pose for the September cover of InStyle magazine.

The top infectious disease expert invited photographer Frankie Alduino to his home last month to capture him sporting sunglasses and a button-down for the glossy, poolside shoot.

Fauci and his wife, bioethicist Dr. Christine Grady, also spoke with journalist Norah O’Donnell for an interview that will be featured in the issue.

To ask a question that would be asked of President Trump at the next press briefing had he done so, how many COVID deaths were there during the photoshoot or during the baseball game that people watched on TV because they have no jobs, they have lost their businesses or are just locked up in their homes under your order? The left-wing press would never ask such a question of the great Dr. Fauci, who once suggested millions would die if we didn’t shut up, sit down and obey his sage advice. Photo-ops are things evil conservative Presidents do.

Certainly, Fauci took umbrage at the question of where was his mask and why he was not social distancing with colleagues while he was sitting in the stands at the game. As the New York Post reported:

“I had my mask around my chin. I had taken it down. I was totally dehydrated and I was drinking water, trying to rehydrate myself,” Fauci insisted. “And by the way, I was negative COVID literally the day before. So I guess people want to make a big event. I wear a mask all the time when I’m outside. To pull it down to take some sips of water and put it back up again, I guess if people want to make something about that, they can. But to me, I think that’s just mischievous.”

You weren’t rehydrating yourself, Dr. Fauci, you were being a hypocrite, a fraud and a liar. Why can you and your companions juke elbow-to-elbow while you and your ilk ban people sitting three to a pew in a church in observing the constitutional freedom of religion you took from them?

Lord protect us from arrogant, power-drunk goobermint “experts” and their capricious whimsy. I’ll say this much: if Fauci’s brazen, staggering arrogance in enjoying a de facto private major-league baseball game—a once-mundane leisure activity you’ll never have the opportunity to enjoy again yourself—while letting the very mask he and his fellow dimestore-dictators nationwide demand that YOU wear properly until they tell you different by God dangle uselessly under his chin doesn’t leave you spluttering with rage, then you have no business calling yourself a Real American.

Believe it or not, though, this gets worse still. Over a grotesquely-extended sinecure stretching all the way back to the fucking 80s, when he flubbed the AIDS “crisis” in the exactly the same way he did this one, the despicable little creep Fauci has been wrong repeatedly, attempting to gin up baseless panic after baseless panic, over and over and over again, as if it was a cherished hobby with him or something.

Which serial futility and self-beclownment, mind, is no kind of obstacle to “success” when you work way down in the deeps of the topsy-turvy rabbit hole that is Big Government Wonderland.

Let’s get to some just plain vanilla stuff that I’m surprised the media doesn’t talk about when it comes to Tony Fauci. The first one may not be a big secret because it comes up a lot, but it merits meditation upon. And that is that this guy has had the same federal job for thirty-six years. It’ll be 37 years this year he’s had the same job in the federal bureaucracy. That is unusual. That means you’ve had to survive many different presidents, many different parties, many different regimes, many different social changes. And yet he’s always there. Now, I only know one other guy that pulled that off in American history: J. Edgar Hoover.

We’re talking deep state. Fauci survives because he does what the deep state wants him to do. He’s also a superb politician. And that’s very important. He’s got an M.D. degree. But the idea he’s a physician is a joke. The idea that he’s a scientist is a joke. And I wish Kary Mullis hadn’t passed away last summer because he could really be talking to this. Fauci is not a scientist. What he is is just a world-class bureaucrat. And that’s why he has survived for 36 years. That and the fact that he does what deep state people would like him to do.

Now, here’s a little trivia question. And you would think in our money-mad culture, this would have come out. There are two million people getting a paycheck from the federal government as employees. Who do you think the third highest-paid employee in the entire federal bureaucracy is? It’s Tony Fauci. Now, how do you bury that? That’s just a factoid you’d think somebody would come out with. Of two million people, he’s not in the top one percent of the one percent. (He’s in the .00015 percent!)

Did I mention rage before? Well, if that last article doesn’t push you well beyond rage and straight on into KILLING MAD territory…well, you’re probably either dead, or you’re reading this here post with your silly little mask on, you fucking idiot. In any event, the article paints a most repellent picture, one that serves to clear up one hell of a lot about why FUSA is in such awful shape. It’s a portrait that encompasses far more issues than our current catastrophe alone.

Fauci’s misbegotten career could easily have been the inspiration for Lawrence Peter’s work, if he was a bit older. Certainly, his picture should be emblazoned on the cover of every future edition of Dr Peter’s book. It would be a fitting tribute to the miserable, contemptible oxygen-thief.

Update! Leftymedia and preening peahen Fauci: birds of a feather, peas in a pod, on the same team, partners in crime.

He reinforces their preferred narrative about the virus and has assisted them in moving the goalposts to suit their agenda. Often he is vague, leaves out encouraging information, and even ignores alternative points of view. Despite telling Senator Rand Paul he was not “the be all, end all,” his public demeanor implies a far more inflated self-image.

With a new virus, the failure to hear competing theories has warped public perception, causing widespread panic. And Dr. Fauci himself has been inconsistent. White House advisor Peter Navarro was not wrong about many of Fauci’s missteps in his op-ed for USA Today. Even now, The Expert™ dithers on kids returning to school despite the fact that 20 other industrialized nations have done so without incident or needless restrictions.

Now, see, that right there is something I don’t quite get. Nobody on the notional Right should be demanding that the government schools reopen, soon, late, or ever. Seems to me that a golden opportunity exists here: keep the schools closed, abolish the federal Dept Of Ed, then quickly move on to disband the teachers’ unions and replace the whole dysfunctional dumpster-fire with a ground-up-new system structured very, VERY differently—one whose focus is on actually educating rather than indoctrinating. But YMMV, I guess. Onwards.

Fauci is often referred to as “the top infectious disease expert in the country.” Is he? I am sure there are other comparable minds on infectious diseases in the United States and globally. In fact, several have come out with views that are different than Fauci’s, but they rarely get airtime outside of podcasts and maybe Fox News.

Fauci is, in fact, the top government bureaucrat working in infectious disease. He joined the government during the Reagan administration. Does his government service mean we should ignore Nobel laureate and Stanford University biophysicist Michael Levitt? After he and his team studied 3,546 locations worldwide with COVID-19 outbreaks, they determined the curve is self-flattening.

Then there is Dr. Harvey Risch. He is a Yale epidemiologist who has done a review of the studies of outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine with an antibiotic and zinc. He is advocating for the use of the combination early in diagnosis to prevent hospitalization based on his findings. There are similar findings in France and India. Yet 44 states are monitoring its use, and medical associations are disciplining doctors for using it to treat patients.

Why isn’t Dr. Fauci telling the public that we may have an effective outpatient treatment? Shouldn’t he be calming fears by celebrating our improvements in therapy for hospitalized patients lowering the death rates? Maybe tell the FDA to let hydroxychloroquine to be used off-label for the foreseeable future? Dr. Risch believes this could save thousands of lives.

Of course, he should. Instead, he goes on television and wrings his hands over case numbers. It is maddening for anyone following the science of COVID-19.

Well, naturally. This isn’t about science, anymore than it’s about a virus, or public health, or anything else you’ve been told. Whatever might have been the case early on, this is now about power, and control. Nothing more, nothing less.

What the hell, why not?

Posted on July 5, 2020July 5, 2020 by Mike

Sure, he’s kind of a nut. But he’s an all-American nut just the same.

Grammy-winner rapper and fashion mogul Kanye West took to Twitter on Independence Day to announce that he is “running for president of the United States.”

“We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States!” tweeted West on Saturday. While the rapper did (not) elaborate on when he would try to run for president, he did include the hashtag #2020VISION in his tweet.

West has teased his intention to run for U.S. President for years.

In 2019, the rapper stated, “there will be a time when I will be the president of the US, and I will remember… any founder that didn’t have the capacity to understand culturally what we were doing.” The “Jesus Is King” rapper made headlines in 2018 after delivering an impassioned 10-minute speech from the Oval Office as he sat across from President Trump.

“Let’s stop worrying about the future. All we really have is today,” he said, before adding: “Trump is on his hero’s journey right now, and he might not have expected to have a crazy motherfucker like Kanye West.”

Before you dismiss this as just another slice of cray-cray and/or self-aggrandizing silliness, remember that he and Trump get along famously. Consider that for a minute, then note Glenn’s suggestion that there might indeed be a method to the apparent madness here: “HE’LL STRIP BLACK VOTES FROM BIDEN IF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS, AND HE KNOWS THAT.”

I like it. I like it a lot.

Discourse On Voluntary Servitude

Posted on June 21, 2020June 21, 2020 by Mike

That’s the best-known work of French judge and philosopher Étienne de la Boétie, a passionate and uncompromising advocate for human liberty and against tyranny. As y’all reprobates and nogoodniks may or may not have noticed, I have been stealthily expanding the “Notable quotes” section with some more good stuff lately, and ran across a memorable one from de la Boétie via a WRSA link to yet another excellent Robert Gore piece, which I will get to excerpting anon in its own post. But seeing the one I plonked into the sidebar mentioned in a comment at SLL inspired me to revisit some of de la Boétie’s work myself, which I admit to having all but forgotten about after his having been glancingly mentioned back in my college French class back in the Pleistocene or thereabouts.

So without further ado, enjoy (if that’s the right word; it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading, actually) these bits from his seminal Discourse On Voluntary Servitude, also known as “The Against-One.” It’s somewhat lengthy, but quite rewarding; you should bookmark it and read it all when you get the time. Written in around 1548 when de la Boétie was only 18 years of age (!), the central thrust is that tyrants hold power only because and for as long as the people concede it to them. Its relevance to current-day America’s self-inflicted contretemps is self-evident.

To achieve the good that they desire, the bold do not fear danger; the intelligent do not refuse to undergo suffering. It is the stupid and cowardly who are neither able to endure hardship nor to vindicate their rights; they stop at merely longing for them, and lose through timidity the valor roused by the effort to claim their rights, although the desire to enjoy them still remains as part of their nature. A longing common to both the wise and the foolish, to brave men and to cowards, is this longing for all those things which, when acquired, would make them happy and contented. Yet one element appears to be lacking. I do not know how it happens that nature fails to place within the hearts of men a burning desire for liberty, a blessing so great and so desirable that when it is lost all evils follow thereafter, and even the blessings that remain lose taste and savor because of their corruption by servitude. Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it they would receive it. Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.

Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves?

It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born…Nevertheless it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection. It is said that Mithridates trained himself to drink poison. Like him we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude.

By this time it should be evident that liberty once lost, valor also perishes.

Like I said, uncomfortable reading—not least for how thoroughly it reinforces the truth behind the hoary old saw which claims that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite how desperately the Left would like to believe otherwise, some verities really ARE eternal.

The Whiskey Rebellion

Posted on June 7, 2020June 7, 2020 by Mike

The current insurrection has put me in mind of that all but forgotten yet pivotal chapter in American history, so for the last several days I’ve been digging around and edumacatin’ myself about it. It’s a complex, deep, and endlessly fascinating story—almost impossibly rich in Americana, illustrative of so much that went into making America the great nation it once was. The parallels with current events are obvious; the names scattered throughout cannot help but resonate in the heart of any true patriot; the twists and turns of the story, compelling as the whole saga is, are almost too intricate to keep up with.

Alas, it also serves to remind of us just how very far America has fallen, how depressingly unlike our forefathers the succeeding generations grew to be. If the Whiskey Rebellion and other tales from our Founding era were still properly taught in schools, our sad degeneration and decline, both as a nation and as people, would almost certainly never have happened.

The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington, ultimately under the command of American Revolutionary war veteran Major James McFarlane. The so-called “whiskey tax” was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. Beer was difficult to transport and spoiled more easily than rum and whiskey. Rum distillation in the United States had been disrupted during the American War of Independence, and, for factors described below, whiskey distribution and consumption increased after the Revolutionary War (aggregate production had not surpassed rum by 1791). The “whiskey tax” became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but consumption of American whiskey was rapidly expanding in the late 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a “whiskey tax”. Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures to make whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.

Throughout Western Pennsylvania counties, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a U.S. marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector General John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. Washington himself rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency, with 13,000 militiamen provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 20 men were arrested, but all were later acquitted or pardoned. Most distillers in nearby Kentucky were found to be all but impossible to tax—in the next six years, over 175 distillers from Kentucky were convicted of violating the tax law. Numerous examples of resistance are recorded in court documents and newspaper accounts.

The Whiskey Rebellion demonstrated that the new national government had the will and ability to suppress violent resistance to its laws, though the whiskey excise remained difficult to collect. The events contributed to the formation of political parties in the United States, a process already under way. The whiskey tax was repealed in the early 1800s during the Jefferson administration. Historian Carol Berkin argues that the episode in the long run strengthened American nationalism because the people appreciated how well Washington handled the rebels without resorting to tyranny.

I’ll limit my excerpting to the Wikipedia entry—by no means the only source out there, but a good encapsulation that’s very much worth a look.

When Washington left Philadelphia, then the US capitol, to review the mix-and-match militia force assembled to put down the rebellion once and for all, it was the one and only time a sitting US President actually led troops in the field. The overall commander of the force was one General Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee, father of another brilliant warrior who went on to play a pivotal role in American history himself.

24 of the Whiskey rebels wound up indicted for high treason, of which only ten were apprehended and tried. After a trial process lasting six months (!), just two of them were convicted. The sentence: death by hanging. A conciliatory and foresighted Washington, wishing to close the books on the matter for the good of the fledgling nation, pardoned both. He made a last-minute addition to his seventh Inaugural Address explaining his reasoning:

“The misled have abandoned their errors,” he stated. “For though I shall always think it a sacred duty to exercise with firmness and energy the constitutional powers with which I am vested, yet it appears to me no less consistent with the public good than it is with my personal feelings to mingle in the operations of Government every degree of moderation and tenderness which the national justice, dignity, and safety may permit.”

There’s much, much more to this story; as I said, it is incredibly rich and compelling, continuing to leave its mark on American history long into the future. To wit:

W. C. Fields recorded a comedy track in Les Paul’s studio in 1946, shortly before his death, entitled “The Temperance Lecture” for the album W. C. Fields … His Only Recording Plus 8 Songs by Mae West. The bit discussed Washington and his role in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion, and Fields wondered aloud whether “George put down a little of the vile stuff too.”

WC Fields, Mae West, and Les Paul—along with Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Washington, and all the rest; homebrew whiskey, hangings, riots, tar and featherings, vigilante justice, liberty poles, militias, a citizen uprising inflamed by the eternal tension between individual liberty and government power. If that ain’t enough to pique your interest and stir your soul, you ain’t anything close to what I’d call an American.

Of night, and light

Posted on May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 by Mike

A dismal tide is sweeping across America, leaving unprecedented destruction in its wake.

When the coronavirus landed on our shores, communist China came with it.

We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn’t all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our lives are being destroyed as the left solidifies and expands their oppressive powers. We’ve been herded around like cattle, threatened, isolated, confined, silenced, and arrested. You name it, it’s happening.

You tell me if what follows sounds like the United States, or China.

We’ve been told who can work and who can’t, with language that separates us according to who is and who isn’t “essential” as the almighty State supersedes individual rights and the family unit.

We’ve been physically and verbally harassed, threatened, fined, detained, arrested, jailed, and/or placed in forced quarantine. Business licenses have been revoked. Going to work without the permission of the government is now a crime. So is going to the park or a beach. Children playing together is also in defiance of the government. So is placing flags on the graves of veterans. The list of infractions goes on and on and on and on. Examples read like the manifesto of a demented madman.

Brown goes on, and on, and on from there, with a most impressive collection of supporting links, and it all makes for truly…well, dismal reading. But even as the darkness falls, a hopeful ray of light shines forth in the person of Texas Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Blackrock, who wrote the majority opinion springing hair-salon hero Shelley Luther from durance most vile:

He began with a quote, “The Constitution is not suspended when the government declares a state of disaster.”

Then he crisply explained it.

Blacklock wrote, “All government power in this country, no matter how well-intentioned, derives only from the state and federal constitutions. Government power cannot be exercised in conflict with these constitutions, even in a pandemic.

“In the weeks since American governments began taking emergency measures in response to the corona virus, the sovereign people of this country have graciously and peacefully endured a suspension of their civil liberties without precedent in our nation’s history. In some parts of the country, churches have been closed by government decree, although Texas is a welcome exception. Nearly everywhere, the First Amendment ‘right of the people to peaceably assemble’ has been suspended altogether. In many places, people are forbidden to leave their homes without a government-approved reason.Tens of millions can no longer earn a living because the government has declared their employers or their businesses ‘non-essential.’

“Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate — both to its citizens and to the courts — that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat. Whether it is strict scrutiny or some other rigorous form of review, courts must identify and apply a legal standard by which to judge the constitutional validity of the government’s anti-virus actions. When the present crisis began, perhaps not enough was known about the virus to second-guess the worst-case projections motivating the lockdowns. As more becomes known about the threat and about the less restrictive, more targeted ways to respond to it, continued burdens on constitutional liberties may not survive judicial scrutiny.

“Ideally, these debates would play out in the public square, not in courtrooms. No court should relish being asked to question the judgment of government officials who were elected to make difficult decisions in times such as these. However, when constitutional rights are at stake, courts cannot automatically defer to the judgments of other branches of government. When properly called upon, the judicial branch must not shrink from its duty to require the government’s anti-virus orders to comply with the Constitution and the law, no matter the circumstances.”

That’s the whole decision.

And a most excellent one it was, too. That right there, folks, is exactly what I mean when I talk about our duty to defend the Constitution, rather than sitting back hoping it will defend us. Bravo to Justice Blacklock. We will NEVER have as many like him as we need, no matter how many there are out there.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh

Posted on May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 by Mike

Okay Karen, time for you to Learn. To. Code.

Nah nah nah
Nah nah nah
Hey hey hey
Learn to code

— FiddlerFromTheAshes (@FiddlerPhoenix) May 15, 2020

Bethany Mandel, after having been lambasted for her “heartlessness” in arguing that the destruction of an entire national economy just might not have been the best approach here, is having herself a high old time as well over the best news to come out of the COVIDIOT panic-ninny lockdowns yet.

Bored at home? Watch the same blue check assholes who canceled me suddenly realize “oh wait lockdowns have consequences?” And then ask them why they want to kill grandma for a skinny latte.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) May 14, 2020

But it’s different because THEIR cat needs to eat. They don’t give a fuck about your kids tho.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) May 14, 2020

Enjoy the breadlines, “journalist” scum. And the frabjous good news doesn’t end there, either.

New York state’s tax revenue plummeted 68.4% in April, as the coronavirus lockdowns and the extension of tax return filings to July 15 took a toll on state coffers.

The Empire State collected $3.7 billion, or $7.9 billion less than the previous April. Personal income-tax revenue fell more than $7 billion from last April, a drop that was primarily due to the delayed tax filing deadline.

“New York is facing economic devastation not seen since the Great Depression,” New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a news release. “New York and other hard-hit states need the federal government to step up and provide assistance, or the state will have to take draconian actions to balance its budget.”

Yeah, umm, no. But really now: after slamming down all business and condemning every working individual in the state to an indefinite stay in the poorhouse, who could POSSIBLY have foreseen a sudden drying up of tax revenue? Sorry, no bailouts for you.

LOLGF, you stupid fucking dipshits.

(Via Ace and Insty)

Another two-month free trial

Posted on May 5, 2020May 5, 2020 by Mike

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.

After a two-month trial, researchers are collecting early outcomes of the Great American Social Distancing Experiment of 2020.

The results, to say the least, ain’t pretty—and the “experts” who initiated this experiment on 330 million well-meaning but unwitting test subjects are starting to admit failure.

“Wait. An experiment?” you may ask. But we have been assured by the credentialed class that keeping a distance of six feet between healthy people for weeks on end was the only tried-and-true way to prevent the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus. No way would the government shutter public schools and colleges for five months, bankrupt small businesses, send tens of millions to the unemployment line, jeopardize the nation’s food supply chain, prevent children from comforting dying parents and grandparents, and subject their fellow countrymen to soul-crushing house arrest for the first time in U.S. history if the so-called “social distancing” guidance hadn’t been carefully vetted over time, you might insist.

Certainly every variable and every side effect of social distancing has been factored into this economy-crashing “mitigation” strategy, right?

I’m sure you all already know the answer to that one.

The country, we now know, is undergoing an experiment to which we never consented: Further, it is as much a political and social experiment as a public health one. The short term results are not what the experts predicted but their lab rats—the American people—are suffering traumatic side effects that could last for years. And unfortunately, like most experts, instead of conceding they had it all wrong and walking away from the failed experiment, they insist they just need a little more time to make it work.

But this experiment needs to end, immediately. Cases continue to rise despite the lockdowns; hospitals are not overwhelmed, nor were they ever (with a few exceptions). The overall death count is inflated; it appears that COVID-19 is asymptomatic for most people and far less lethal than originally predicted. And the economy is in tatters with more bad news on the horizon.

The history of science, sadly, is littered with bad experiments gone horribly wrong. The Great Social Distancing Experiment of 2020, when it is over, will very likely be toward the top of that list.

Ah well, the story didn’t end too well for the Light Brigade, either.

A first

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Namely, the first time I’ve ever endorsed Microsoft’s view on just about anything.

Microsoft has settled the great space debate, and sided with everyone who believes one space after a period is correct, not two. The software giant has started to update Microsoft Word to highlight two spaces after a period (a full stop for you Brits) as an error, and to offer a correction to one space. Microsoft recently started testing this change with the desktop version of Word, offering suggestions through the Editor capabilities of the app.

Much of the debate around one space or two has been fueled by the halcyon days of the typewriter. Typewriters used monospaced fonts to allocate the same amount of horizontal spacing to every character. Narrow characters like “i” got the same amount of space as “m,” so the extra space after the “.” was needed to make it more apparent that sentences had ended. Word and many other similar apps make fonts proportional, so two spaces is no longer necessary.

That hasn’t stopped the battle over one space or two from raging on for decades, however. A study on the hotly contested issue supposedly handed the victory to the two-spacers back in 2018, but many questioned the research and it clearly wasn’t enough to convince Microsoft. Expect to see the new changes in Word roll out to everyone in the coming months. Congratulations, fellow one-spacers.

The biggest problem I have with double-spacing is that the people who actually use it are wildly inconsistent. There are a handful of sites I regularly troll for blog-fodder (American Thinker comes to mind) whose articles are double-spaced…mostly. But in just about every double-spaced article you find out there, it’s a stylistic guideline honored more in the breach. Which means I either have to leave the thing as it stands—inconsistent and sloppy-looking, which irks the living hell out of me—or eyeball the excerpt closely and correct all that irritating laxity myself.

Which of course I do. Of course, I also occasionally (okay, frequently) miss something myself, sometimes spotting it later when I go back to check the post again. In such cases, I usually have no qualm whatsoever about making the correction, which is a felony-level infraction of the long-standing blogger protocol which dictates that publishing a post is analagous to engraving it into a stone tablet. Of course, I give not a single damn about that; spelling or grammatical errors, typos, even muddled phrasing are all subject to adjustment if and when I catch ’em. I make no apologies for that. My blog, my rules, dammit.

The third-party posting software I use has a setting that auto-saves and auto-publishes periodically, which I didn’t even know about until relatively recently. This meant that posts would be uploaded and published on the site prematurely, before I had even finished writing them. Throw in my habit of starting a post, getting partway through it and leaving the window open as a reminder to finish the thing eventually—you would not even BELIEVE the number of incomplete and now-abandoned posts I have still sitting in my posting app—and then coming back to it hours or even days later, and it adds up to a serious potential for confusion and disaster.

Trivial matters all, to be sure. But maybe Microsoft’s decision to walk away from the archaic double-space standard will lighten my burden at least somewhat.

Bloated numbers

Posted on April 21, 2020April 21, 2020 by Mike

A New York affliction.

According to The New York Times coronavirus report, as of Sunday, April 19, 2:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there were 35,676 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Of those deaths, 18,690 were in the New York metropolitan area.

That means that more than half (52 percent) of all deaths in America have occurred in the New York metropolitan area.

What makes this statistic particularly noteworthy is that the entire death toll for 41 of the other 47 states is 7,661. In other words, while New York has 52 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in America, 41 states put together have only 21 percent of the COVID-19 deaths. And all the 47 states other than New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have less than half (48 percent).

Now let us imagine that the reverse were true. Imagine that Georgia and North Carolina—two contiguous states that, like the New York metro area, have a combined total of 21 million people—had 18,690 COVID-19 deaths, while metro New York had 858 deaths (the number of deaths in North Carolina and Georgia combined).

Do you think the New York metro area would close its schools, stores, restaurants and small businesses? Would every citizen of the New York area, with the few exceptions of those engaged in absolutely necessary work, be locked in their homes for months? Would New Yorkers accept the decimation of their economic and social lives because North Carolina and Georgia (or, even more absurdly, Colorado, Montana or the rest of what most New Yorkers regard as “flyover” country) had 18,960 deaths, while they had a mere 858?

It is, of course, possible. But I suspect that anyone with an open mind assumes that New Yorkers would not put up with ruining their economic and social lives and putting tens of millions of people out of work because of coronavirus deaths in North Carolina and Georgia, let alone Montana and Idaho (and, for the record, I would have agreed with them).

Lest we forget, even the underwhelming non-NYC numbers are themselves grossly inflated:

The IHME model is considered the gold standard. In mid-March, without social distancing, they predicted 2.2 million American deaths. By early April they reduced their death projection to 100,000 to 240,000 assuming social distancing measures in place. Their April 17 update now projects 60,308 deaths, 3% of their original prediction.

What changed? Social distancing was in already in place when the death predictions dropped by a factor of four. For perspective, 61,000 Americans died in the 2017-18 flu season.

The CDC had its own models predicting gloom and doom. In mid-March they projected 160 million to 214 million infected and 200,000 to 1.7 million deaths. Did that leave President Trump any choice but to hit the off switch on the U.S. economy? What if the models were wrong?

Another factor influencing models is the death count from this coronavirus. Projected deaths determine projected need, as in the ventilators mentioned above. How accurate are the death counts?

Task force member Dr. Deborah Brix, on April 7, said the U.S. government is classifying the death of any patient who tested positive for coronavirus as a coronavirus death, regardless of any underlying health conditions that genuinely killed them. If one has a heart attack, and happens to test positive for the virus, he or she will be classed as a coronavirus death. Garbage in, garbage out.

Going further, New York City is including in their death counts, “people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it.” Data by presumption? Models based on presumption?

What the hell, why not? Julie Kelly brings it on home for us.

Tests show about 434,000 Americans have contracted the disease so far. Only a few states indicate COVID-19 symptomatic activity; most of the country now is quiet.

Would those facts frighten you into government-ordered submission? If the United States had a population of 300 million and 48 states, would the fact that 18,000 people—sadly, mostly elderly and already sick patients—succumbed to the virus over a period of nearly two months warrant an ongoing lockdown that is destroying the economy, overwhelming unemployment rolls and food bank lines, shutting down schools and colleges for five months, and bankrupting small businesses?

Would it justify increasingly despotic orders from power-grabbing politicians to stop Americans from going to the beach or hosting dinner parties in their own homes let alone canceling graduation ceremonies and weddings and funerals?

Of course, it would pose a public health concern; strategies to mitigate the spread of the virus, particularly among the most susceptible, would be necessary. Plans to prevent a bigger outbreak later in the year would be appropriate.

The coronavirus crisis in the United States is largely a New York City crisis. One reason why many governors are afraid to fully reopen is over the fear that virus-carrying New Yorkers will flee to their largely unimpacted states.

Happy beachgoers in northern Florida are not a threat; subway commuters in New York City are. The fact that there is outrage over the former and not the latter speaks volumes about the politicization of this travesty while we remain under house arrest for the foreseeable future.

Wall it off. Should Air Force One ever go down inside…well, hey, we can always call in Snake Plissken.

“De Blasio Wants New Yorkers To Rat On Neighbors. Don’t Do It”

Posted on April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Mike

Disagree. Strongly.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took to Twitter Saturday to urge his constituents to monitor, photograph and report each other if they aren’t strictly obeying his social distancing guidelines. Just fire off a photo to 3-1-1 of a few guys having a chat in a bodega and Hizzoner will send police officers, with guns and everything, to break it up. What could go wrong?

That rhetorical question is exactly why I disagree with discouraging meddlesome NYC panic-ninnies from snitching out their neighbors. No, no, let a million busybodies bloom, sez I. What more fitting opportunity to not only take a page from Alinsky (make the enemy live up to its own book of rules“) but also enact something of a Cloward-Piven Inversion at the same time? Remember:

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”.

So, yeah: if DeBalledZero wants to turn New Yorkers into a passel of skulking stoolies, then by all means let them oblige the Commie asstard…by lighting up those 311 switchboards morning, noon, and night with reports of real, imagined, or made-up infractions. That ought to be plenty enough to quickly exhaust police resources and manpower on a never-ending parade of bootless snipe-hunts for trifling infractions against The Rules laid down by the Kommissar of Public Cleanliness, until the whole goddamned system collapses into smoking, stinking rubble.

Should DeBalledZero himself be driven to nervous collapse and involuntary institutionalization by the anarchy and chaos resulting from meticulously strict obedience to the letter of his own dictates, well, so much the better.

Update! WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THE HORROR.

It is “unconscionable” that Rikers Island inmates who were released due to coronavirus concerns are committing new crimes, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.

“I think it’s unconscionable just on a human level that folks were shown mercy and this is what some of them have done,” the mayor said during his morning briefing Monday, which came on the heels of a Post report outlining the issue.

You stupid fucking moron. If you’re uncertain about how “unconscionable” it might be, Comrade Mayor, try asking someone who gets robbed, mugged, assaulted, or worse by one of the thugs you just cut loose how they feel about it.

On the other hand, though, they’re the ones who voted you into office, so I guess they’re just getting the government they deserve—good and hard.

De Blasio said the number of re-offenders remains relatively small and that the city was “buckling down” on monitoring and supervising released prisoners.

“We do see some recidivism. I have not seen a huge amount, but any amount is obviously troubling,” he said.

Oh, OBVIOUSLY so, Perfessor. Because there should never have been so much as one act of “recidivism” in the first fucking place. And there wouldn’t have been either, if your dumb ass had sense enough to pour piss out of a boot.

Sheesh.

(Via Bill)

One of these things is not a LOT like the other

Posted on April 18, 2020April 18, 2020 by Mike

The ever-helpful and considerate SteveF created a handy Chink-N-Pox/Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) compare-contrast chart for us which, unfortunately, I fear we’ll soon be seeing quite a bit of now that the trial run has worked out so swimmingly for TPTB.

AGW WuFlu

Used to increase government power ✓ ✓

The public isn’t sure what’s going on but we know we’re being lied to ✓ ✓

Attacks on doubters ✓ ✓

Economic ruin in fighting it ✓ ✓

Fear tactics, embellished stories, and doom and gloom scenarios ✓ ✓

Actual deaths ✓

Dramatically over-counted deaths ✓ ✓

Disaster doesn’t live up to the hype – deaths fail to materialize ✓ ✓

Money grab ✓ ✓

Constantly redefined criteria for disaster ✓ ✓

Blamed for problems that would have happened anyway ✓ ✓

Gaslighting ✓ ✓

The possible catastrophe is so dire that any amount of money spent to avert it is well spent ✓ ✓

	AGW	WuFlu
Used to increase government power	✓	✓
The public isn’t sure what’s going on but we know we’re being lied to	✓	✓
Attacks on doubters	✓	✓
Economic ruin in fighting it	✓	✓
Fear tactics, embellished stories, and doom and gloom scenarios	✓	✓
Actual deaths		✓
Dramatically over-counted deaths	✓	✓
Disaster doesn’t live up to the hype – deaths fail to materialize	✓	✓
Money grab	✓	✓
Constantly redefined criteria for disaster	✓	✓
Blamed for problems that would have happened anyway	✓	✓
Gaslighting	✓	✓
The possible catastrophe is so dire that any amount of money spent to avert it is well spent	✓	✓

Hope nobody out there was kidding themselves that the Green Raw Deal was dead and buried.

Another good ‘un gone

Posted on April 16, 2020April 16, 2020 by Mike

Aww, man.

Brian Dennehy, the winner of two Tonys in a career that also spanned films including “Tommy Boy,” “First Blood” and “Cocoon,” and television roles including “Dynasty” and “Death of a Salesman,” died on Wednesday night in New Haven, Conn. He was 81.
“It is with heavy hearts we announce that our father, Brian, passed away last night from natural causes, not Covid-related. Larger than life, generous to a fault, a proud and devoted father and grandfather, he will be missed by his wife, Jennifer, family and many friends,” his daughter, actress Elizabeth Dennehy, tweeted on Thursday.

Dennehy was one of those truly great actors—like Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, or any of the others from this list—who is easily recognizable by pretty much everybody…most of whom couldn’t tell you his name. The gifted character actor submerges himself so completely into his role that the viewer submerges himself right along with them, without the slightest conscious awareness of having done so. Good character actors usually drive most any film they’re in; they’re the guys who can make an otherwise crappy movie at least watchable. You’ll see such an actor play a huge gamut of disparate characters over his (usually long and distinguished) career, and he’ll inhabit every one of those characters to perfection without ever seeming to break a sweat. To wit:

The imposingly tall, barrel-chested Dennehy won his first Tony for his performance as Willy Loman in a revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” in 1999 and his second Tony for his turn as James Tyrone in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 2003.

The actor made his TV and feature debut in 1977 — a year in which he made appearances in at least 10 series or telepics, including “Kojak,” “MASH” and “”Lou Grant,” and the films “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” and “Semi-Tough.” From that point he maintained a heavy work load for decades.

In 1982 his profile increased significantly thanks to his effective performance in the role of Teasle, the sadistic small-town police chief who is Sylvester Stallone’s lead adversary in “First Blood.”

In addition to “Cocoon,” he had significant roles in the 1983 thriller “Gorky Park” and in “Silverado.” He was second-billed, after Bryan Brown, in the well-constructed 1986 thriller “F/X,” in which he played a cop not part of the conspiracy, and in the 1991 sequel. He was fourth-billed in “Legal Eagles,” after the star trio of Robert Redford, Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah.

That’s but a brief summation of Dennehy’s amazing career, but my all-time favorite is probably his turn as Cobb in the greatest Western ever filmed: Lawrence Kasdan’s brilliantly conceived and executed Silverado. His death scene after the classic showdown with onetime friend and partner Kevin Kline at the end is archetypical Dennehy, made all the more powerful and dramatic for its stark, understated simplicity. Compared to the kind of cliched thrashing, gargling, screaming, and writhing about we’re all used to, it’s a pluperfect example of the character actor’s art at its very highest pinnacle:

If you’ve never seen Silverado, I really can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s beautifully staged and shot, brimming over with well-crafted dialogue and star-turn performances from pretty much the entire cast. From what I recall reading when it came out, it was basically Kasdan’s intention to do an updated but respectful version of the classic Hollywood Westerns of yore, including all the hoary old plot elements and cinematique stylistic licks he could fit in. His own affection for the genre is in evidence from start to finish. I think he succeeded brilliantly, although some critics of the time disagreed. In the end, though, it’s a fun movie to watch, a well-made bit of old-school Saturday-matinee escapism of a kind we don’t see near enough of anymore. I’ve seen it a thousand times, have pretty much every line memorized, and will still watch it through to the very end any time I run across it flipping through the channels.

Fare thee well, Mr Dennehy. You were one of the greats of your art, and your place in Valhalla is assured.

Right all along

Posted on April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 by Mike

Bloody well right.

During the Republican primaries of 2015, I played a funny supercut of Donald Trump on my podcast. I had misjudged Trump then, fearing his flaws too much and appreciating his talents too little. The supercut put together all the times and tones in which he had said the word “China,” and backed it up with a jazzy bass. I found it hilarious.

Well, it was hilarious. But Trump was right about China. Right that its behavior was unprincipled and dangerous. Right that our trade imbalance with them represented a power imbalance that they could abuse. He was right about China when the Democrats and their press were distracting the country’s attention with trivial Russian trolling. And he was right to engage them even though the Wall Street Journal types screamed like a girl in a horror movie over how his “trade war” might affect their portfolios.

Do you remember Trump’s inaugural address when he spoke about the “American carnage” of closed factories and unemployment that was already causing an epidemic of deaths by despair? He was right about that, too. Right that it required attention when every Democrat and his pet journalist said it was “dark” to mention it. Right that it could be fixed when Barack Obama said it couldn’t. And right that it was a matter of policy when conservatives said he was interfering with the magic of global capitalism and, anyway, those lazy, oxycontin-chugging crackers kind of deserved it.

He was right that globalism could not thrive without a strong self-defending nation state, because nations are not just economic structures, they are also moral entities and some (like China) are wicked and some (like us) are good and deserve favor.

He was right that borders must be secured when blithering leftists were ready to virtue signal the west to death and high-minded right wingers like myself were shrugging off a slow-motion invasion, trusting to some imagined protective magic in our creed.

He was also right that the American news media has become corrupt and fake and needs to be regularly savaged until they are shamed into reforming and playing fair with the public. The Left, of course, loves it this way, though it destroys any chance of American dialogue. The Right underplayed the problem and was resigned to long-term death-by-culture.

The current pandemic has only underscored how very right Trump was: it was unleashed by China, exacerbated by globalism and weak borders, and has been endlessly darkened by the lies of a Republican-hating press.

The fact that he’s right on so many things is precisely why he’s hated so desperately by certain people.

Celebrate responsibly

Posted on April 3, 2020April 3, 2020 by Mike

Congrats to the gang at The People’s Cube, on…good Lord, has it really been fifteen years already?

Cough-cough, comrades!

As all progressive humanity celebrates the Glorious 15th Anniversary of The People’s Cube, we officially advise you to conduct spontaneous celebratory marches within at least six feet from one another in square formations. The Great Pandemic of International Coronavirus dictates that workers of the world must unite cautiously and without touching. Once having been united, don’t forget to sanitize your equipment, marching signs, and/or shovels. Beet vodka-based hand sanitizer will be provided behind Tractor Barn #2.

We can neither confirm nor deny that the ongoing global lockdown and universal self-isolation is the result of a conspiracy to usher the unwashed masses into the Glorious Progressive World of Next Tuesday. We can confirm, however, that the conspirators, who may or may not exist, have badly miscalculated and may have to face a very different outcome.

The unwashed masses will come out of this quarantine thoroughly washed, smelling of hand sanitizer, and with the realization that governments cannot be relied upon to protect and provide in a time of need, and that to be self-reliant is a better and safer way to go. With each passing moment, millions of idle minds around the world are getting infected with these and similar thoughtcrimes, which is worse than the very virus that had caused them to stay indoors and have idle thoughts.

The Cube—which I shamefacedly confess to not checking in on of late as regularly as I used to, and should be—is a fantastic site brimming over with hilarious articles, imagery, and sundry other madness. The joint is beautifully designed, the content a very deep well indeed. It was/is the brainchild of one Oleg Atbashian, an immigrant from Ukraine who is now an American citizen and in his younger days worked as a propaganda artist for the USSR. He explains:

Atbashian has an interesting story about how he came to be part of the Soviet propaganda machine – and eventually landed in the U.S. as a conservative activist.

“It sounds a little grander than it was. I was 23 years old. I wanted to be an artist and if I wasn’t an artist, then a member of the artist union,” Atbashian said “It was hard to get anywhere in that profession so the only outlet for people like me was to become a maker of visual motivational and agit-propaganda art that was in the street and in the interiors of companies.”

Atbashian compares the work he did to many billboards seen in the U.S. “They kind of brighten up the landscape especially around the cities and along the highways. In the Soviet Union we didn’t have any of that. We had motivational propaganda, so you would’ve seen a poster of a worker calling comrades to work in order to fulfill the five-year plan ahead of schedule to build Communism. Those were the only bright spots in the otherwise drab landscape. Everything else was dark and dated,” he said noting that most people would look at it as decorative art.

“Towards the end during the collapse of the USSR, most people didn’t believe in the propaganda. It was pretty cynical and everybody was making jokes about Communism,” he said.

Atbashian left Ukraine in 1994 explaining that while it was easier to leave the country after the collapse of the USSR, Western countries like the United States were not accepting many Ukranians.

“Getting a visa at the American embassy was more complicated than getting an exit passport and so I was luckier than others, but a large portion of people who applied for entry visas to the U.S. were not approved,” he said.

Well, see, US demand for Somali bigamists and other Islamonut ingrates was much higher, leaving little space to put intelligent, worthwhile human beings with something to contribute to society like yourself, Oleg. A couple of more-serious pearls of plainspoken wisdom from another interview with Atbashian:

The Leftists claim the moral high ground, but the morality is the only ground on which they can be defeated. We can attack the political figures all we want, but they will be replaced by different ones of exactly the same kind.

The reason why this socialist system is immoral is because equality can only be enforced one way (points down). You cannot elevate people to make them equal because people are all born different, but you can always bring them down to the lowest common denominator. That’s what they eventually wind up doing, regardless of their claims to the contrary.

Elsewhere, he deftly skewers liberal contradictions.

Years ago, living in America made me feel as though I had traveled in a time machine from the past. But after the recent “revolutionary” changes have turned reality on its head — which is what “revolution” literally means — I’m getting an uneasy feeling I had come from your future.

As your comrade from the future, I also feel a social obligation to help my less advanced comrades in the American community, and prepare them for the transition to the glorious world of underground literature, half-whispered jokes, and the useful habit of looking over your shoulder. Don’t become a nation of cowards — but watch who might be listening.

Let’s start with these few.

People’s power:

Liberals believe they’re advancing people’s power — yet they don’t believe people can do anything right without their guidance.

People can’t do anything right — yet the government bureaucracy can do everything.

The government bureaucracy can do everything — yet liberals don’t like it when the government takes control of their lives.

Liberals don’t like it when the government takes control of their lives — yet they vote for programs that increase people’s dependency on the government.

They vote for programs that increase people’s dependency on the government — yet they believe they’re advancing people’s power.

Public education:

Liberals have been in charge of education for 50 years — yet education is out of control.

Education is out of control — yet liberal teaching methods prevail.

Liberal teaching methods prevail — yet public schools are failing.

Public schools are failing — yet their funding keeps growing.

Their funding keeps growing — yet public schools are always underfunded.

Public schools are always underfunded — yet private schools yield better results for less.

Private schools yield better results for less — yet public education is the only way out of the crisis.

Lots, lots more like that at the link, every bit of it deserving of your attention. The above PJM piece hails from the earliest days of the Ogabe junta, as storm clouds gathered and the Shadow issued forth from Mordor On The Potomac. Somehow, though, Oleg’s perceptive observations still seem as current and fresh as a cold glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice—only with a way more sour taste, as FUSA’s long, dismal slide into the muck of Progressivist totalitarianism continues.

Oleg is one very smart cookie, a gifted writer of biting satire and more serious, sober-minded stuff both. Having witnessed the socialist nightmare up close and personal himself, can it come as much of a surprise that his lampooning of socialism’s eternal failure and inhumanity would be so sharp and tight? His adopted country is fortunate to have him, and should be listening a lot more closely to his words of warning. They come from one who knows all too well whereof he speaks.

A happy birthday to you, Oleg and The People’s Cube, and many happy returns.

New read!

Posted on March 11, 2020March 11, 2020 by Mike

Our highly esteemed boozum chum Francis, a truly gifted writer as you’re all surely aware by now, would like everyone to know that he has a new one out:

More a fantasy tome than straight-up sci-fi, I’m thinking, if the cover and blurb are at all indicative:

Gregor of Serebal, a journeyman sorcerer educated at the Scholium Arcanum in the East, is on a cross-continent trek through the Great Waste: the lifeless desert left by the Dieback that all but eliminated life from Aeol. He has been tasked to chart the courses of the major mana conduits of the continent. In the process he discovers that they have been diverted from their normal paths: Whereas they once flowed from north to south, they now flow from east to west. While there is no obvious explanation for their diversion, they appear to flow directly toward Pontreval, where the Scholium Arcanum in the West is situated.

Laella of Anam is a gifted one: a potential sorcerer not yet trained to the disciplines that would make it safe to practice. Yet the mana has already touched her to ill effect. It has made her a virgin mother, to the horror of her family and neighbors. The ruler of her village has executed her infant son, and the infant children of three other women similarly afflicted, when Gregor arrives in Anam.

Mutual admiration brings them together. Once mated, they travel further west through the Great Waste in pursuit of Gregor’s errand. But though his intent was to walk all the way across the continent, charting the mana streams as he traveled, events will force them to return to Urel, the site of the Scholium Arcanum in the East where Gregor was made an initiate of the Arcana. There he and Laella will confront mysteries the sorcerers of the Scholium cannot unravel. Beneath those mysteries lies a threat to the life of Aeol that will demand all that Gregor, Laella, and their colleagues have to give.

Fantasy or sci-fi, doesn’t matter; with Porretto, any and all genres are in most capable hands. The tariff is but a paltry 2.99 at Amazon, peoples, so hie thee thither. He also has a mention up over at his joint, which opens thusly:

Here it is at last: the long awaited fantasy novel by the foremost storyteller of our time…

(What’s that you say? I’m not the foremost storyteller of our time? Geez, what a letdown! Could you keep it to yourself until I sell a few books? Thanks.)

Heh. Pas de sweat, Fran, we’ll keep it strictly on the down-low over here.

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.