Real Men Of Genius!

My friend Tucker

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Mike

Some candid, up-close-and-personal dish from a longtime friend of the Carlson family.

I saw articles and innuendo about a friend of about twenty years, Tucker Carlson. You may have heard of him.

Why do I care? Because I know his story, I know him, and I have known few people more loyal and, yeah, entertaining than Tucker. And I do not like seeing him get beat up. Fox’s decision to axe him is flummoxing. The most popular host on the entire network? Really? Whatever. He’ll be fine. But I don’t like the trash talk coming from Fox, and it is just that. I read some things this morning that are probably actionable, but that’s not my business.

Right now, I just want to talk about my friend.

It started with his brother, Buckley. Like Tucker, Buckley is one of a kind and hysterical. We bonded when he came to work as a consultant at a firm I was with for years in D.C. We would do stuff like go to Martin’s Tavern and get hammered and come up with show ideas. One was called “Cocktails With Buckley,” and it was to take place there at Martin’s (a Carlson family favorite) and we even wrote a jingle:

He’s Tucker’s Younger brother

Embarrassing his Mother

Two steps ahead of Johnny Law….

Camel in hand

Pocket full of contraband

It’s time for cocktails with BUUUUUUCKLEEEEEY!

So eventually, of course, Tucker—and their lovely father—moved into the scene. It was mostly at The Palm for lunch. This was around the time when Tucker and Neil Patel (another gem of a man) were launching The Daily Caller. I started writing a bit for them and we all just kind of hung out when we were able to. Then he got the Fox gig and things really blew up. It was fun to watch because I felt he deserved it.

Before I even knew him, I’d watch “Crossfire” with the bowties and such and I always found him interesting and insightful, which he is in real life. It is not an act. And like I said, he is hysterical. Look up the YouTube clip of him and Buck “inaugurating” his studio in Maine during the pandemic and you’ll get it.

Some of the stuff I read this morning that bothered me involved humor. Seems some didn’t like his style in that department. Well, that’s BS and it’s one of the reasons I am living in Mexico. You can’t laugh in America anymore. You lose your job. Like the Carlsons, my sense of humor can be a bit juvenile and politically incorrect, and I make no apologies for that. You can take the boy out of 1980s southern California, but you can’t take the 1980s southern California out of the boy.

It’s similar with the Carlsons. They have been a family of only men for a long time and they are all clever, devoted, and interesting. This makes for a generally good time. It got a little too good once when Tucker, now a longtime teetotaler, tossed a drink in the face of Grover Norquist (another gem) when he perceived a slight about his father, The Ambassador. Stuff happens!

Heh. Good stuff, I only wish there was more to it than is included in this too-brief article. Via the ever-indispensable Larwyn’s Linx, Sundance offers an equally intriguing take:

Over the past 18+/- months, viewers have watched Tucker Carlson essentially red pill himself each evening. As he enjoyed the proximity freedom far away from the Eye of Sauron (DC’s control mechanism), Carlson’s eyes opened further to the reality of the situation that blankets our national consciousness.

Disconnected from the machine, free-range in his abilities, and with the intellectual curiosity of the average person, Tucker Carlson started to see the U.S. system as it is, not as media pretend it to be. This is the increasing red pill absorption you have noted daily. Along with that came a more pragmatic and brutally honest production quality to the content he shared.

Carlson’s influence grew as the audience grew; the more truth he spoke, the larger the audience. That free-range influence became a liability to the system operators that hold power, including Rupert Murdoch who is a part of that control system. In essence, and in the big picture, that’s what led to this event today.

During Tucker’s red pill absorption phase, he changed views on a variety of subjects from the FBI to the Fourth Branch of Government, to vaccination and COVID-19, to his views on Donald Trump as a disruption to an increasingly admitted corrupt political machine.

Context in the Tucker worldview expanded and he began to frame the conflict in a big picture of Good -vs- Evil. Unfortunately for Carlson, this view was from inside a multinational corporate system spreading the darkness. He had to be removed.

This is the reality of the situation as it unfolded. Accept it or not, it matters not. This is the Carlson reality.

Carlson was connecting the dots of manipulation beyond media, beyond social battles and constructs, and into the realm of finance, economics and ultimately behind the Potemkin Village of UniParty politics. Blackrock has an increased stake in Fox Corp.

One has to wonder: how much sway might diehard-liberal-owned Blackrock have had in their pet media corp’s precipitate decision to dump their increasingly-discomfiting ratings juggernaut? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Making them live their “truth”

Posted on April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 by Mike

Anything goes.

Day of the Deadlifts only comp. Dale holds numerous NZ male records & has also broken world records. Dale knows he’ll easily break the female record & is doing this to highlight the absurdity of allowing self ID in sport & to help force a rule change.
We hope he is successful.💪

— Save Women’s Sports Australasia (@SWS_australasia)

April 14, 2023

As do I. I mean, really, what could possibly be more fair? T’was toxic feminism created this voracious, all-consuming beast; now, let them live with it—cheek by jowl, in the house they themselves built for the rest of us, until they’re sick unto death of being forced to keep close-quarters company with the stinking, grotesque thing.

GP also has a copy of Shepherd’s application to compete as a wyrmynnzzz, wherein zhirm hilariously declares “I identify as a woman for this contest.” Naturally, the weightlifting Powers That Be are pissing all over themselves trying to find a way to short-circuit the jolt of high-voltage reality being hurled their way by the Zeus-like Ms Shepherd.

According to the Reduxx report, the Global Powerlifting Committee of New Zealand (GPCNZ) appears to be scrambling to keep Shepherd out of the competition — even going so far as to change their rule book to say that he is ineligible.

The report points out that in their 2023 Rulebook, the Global Powerlifting Committee of New Zealand (GPCNZ) recognizes self-declared gender identity. In a section of the guidelines titled “Transgender Athletes,” GPCNZ states that “gender is presented on a spectrum” and that the organization “respects the autonomy of the individual and how they identify.”

“An archived version of the official website dated March 30 does not display the GPCNZ rules for trans-identifying competitors, instead leaning heavily on self-identification,” the report explains. “But, after submitting his application and declaring himself a ‘woman’ for the purposes of the competition, Shepherd was hastily sent an email and told he was not allowed to self-identify as transgender and must have been on estrogen for at least one year to compete.”

Shepherd is challenging their decision to exclude him.

You go, girl ummm, boy ummm, Manwoman ummm, whatever.

Clash of the dystopian sci-fi titans

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 by Mike

If it was a battle between 1984 and Brave New World, it’s all too apparent that Huxley’s magnum opus won out in the end.

Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949)
In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.

Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.

Huxley starts off the letter praising the book, describing it as “profoundly important.” He continues, “The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it.”

Then Huxley switches gears and criticizes the book, writing, “Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.”

Actually, contra my own intro above, there’s no reason to think it can’t be both—and in fact, hasn’t been. The text of Huxley’s letter to Orwell makes it clear that Huxley himself in the main agreed that, instead of being directly in conflict with one another or contradictory, the two theses should be thought of as being more akin to waystations along tyranny’s greater continuum:

Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution? The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud’s inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

So in sum, then, it’s as I’ve always maintained, in this and other related contexts: what we have here is not an event, but a process.

Update! Forgot to include this with a “Via…” link, so I’ll just tuck it down here instead, with a little further exposition which a mere “Via” link doesn’t allow for anyhoo.

We’re all living in Brave New World, the technocratic nightmare envisioned in the dystopian 1932 science fiction novel written by UNESCO founder Julian Huxley’s brother, Aldous Huxley.

In some ways, Brave New World is the neglected redheaded stepchild of the futuristic dystopia literary genre. 1984, George Orwell’s magnum opus, gets the most play in the popular discourse in terms of comparing current events to the prescient warnings contained in the historic novel.

However, the horrific future imagined in Brave New World describes more accurately the nature of totalitarianism we are headed for under the stewardship of the World Economic Forum.

“You will own nothing and be happy,” is truly the ruling elites’ ethos.

The key differences between the Brave New World and 1984 dystopias are the mechanisms of control that the state uses to maintain its power. In the latter, the Inner Party relies on pure brute force, as explained by O’Brien in 1984: “If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”

In the former, Brave New World, the mechanism of social control is subtler, yet arguably more effective than the kind of simple violence used by despots throughout history up until the modern era.

In Brave New World, in contrast to 1984, social conditioning and psychological manipulation are the tools of social control. The nuclear family has been obliterated as humans are birthed in laboratories using curated genetic material. Existential angst is treated with consequence-free sex (minus any meaningful emotional bonds) and a sedative drug called soma. At every turn, the individual is infantilized and conditioned to reflexively depend on the nanny state, afflicted by learned helplessness and neediness and malleable in the Pavlovian tradition.

Nope, none of that sounds even vaguely familiar, now does it? THANK GOODNESS IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN HERE…

*groan*

Updated update! The last laugh?

OrwellDjango

Via WRSA.

Memezapoppin’!

Posted on April 18, 2023April 18, 2023 by Mike

Spencer justly lauds Twatter über-mememeister Carpe Donktum for some truly outstanding work.

Twitter Memester Carpe Donktum Mocks the Trans Cult, and It’s Riotous
Carpe Donktum calls himself an “Eternally Sarcastic Memesmith,” and his eternally sarcastic memes have earned him over 335,000 followers on Twitter, as well as the undying wrath of the authoritarian Left: his pro-Trump memes were so effective that he was banned from Twitter in June 2020, at the height of Trump’s reelection campaign, and only reinstated when Elon Musk took over. Over the last few days, he has begun calling attention to the transgender cult’s grooming of the youngest children in schools in a particularly piquant — and riotous — way.

It all started on Thursday, when Carpe Donktum tweeted: “As a 3rd grade teacher, I often talk about Jesus with my students, they are so excited to hear about my faith. They point to the cross on [the] wall and ask me about the resurrection. Some have gotten baptized in the sink, as long as they don’t tell their parents. It’s our secret.” This tweet now has 3.7 million views. It was an obvious send-up of primary school teachers who push transgenderism on their students and keep it all secret from their parents, and just in case anyone didn’t get it, Donktum drove the point home in a series of follow-up tweets.

“I hope this doesn’t get me fired, please don’t share this to [sic] libs,” he added, and then: “want you guys to understand something, I am NOT grooming these young apostles, THEY COME TO ME and I follow their questions back to it’s [sic] source These kids feel something is not right inside them and I help them to understand that Jesus is what they are missing in their life.”

Warming to his topic, Carpe kept going: “These kids are so excited about their new spiritual identity that they devote every moment to studying the Bible. But sometimes, they lack the focus, in those cases the school nurse prescribes distraction blockers to help complete the transformation. Don’t tell mom and dad tho.” He took the opportunity to push other Leftist buttons as well: “One of my fondest memories from last year was when Taleb made his transformation from Islam to Christ. To celebrate his new identity we had a pizza party with his new favorite topping, Canadian bacon. Sometimes, I buy him a hotdog at lunch, since he can’t have them at home.”

Heh. Good, tasty schtuff indeed, more of which is perusable at the link. CD’s ingenious turning of the Trannylib tables has inspired me to throw in another similarly-inclined slice of brilliance, from Matt Margolis:

MargolisTransMeme

Heh again. That one’s culled from Matt’s Meme-manic Monday Substack post, the rest of which can be viewed—and really, really should be—at the immediately-preceding link. I’d suggest y’all subscribe to the Margolis thang like I already done dood a while back, so’s you can regularly enjoy more good stuff from the comfort and safety of your own email inbox as and when. But if you haven’t signed up for The Eyrie yet, then don’t you dare, you rotten bastige.

Headless body in topless bar

Posted on April 17, 2023April 18, 2023 by Mike

The backstory of “the most anatomically evocative headline in the history of American journalism.“

This month marks the 40th anniversary of a watershed moment in journalism: the publication of the “Headless Body in Topless Bar” headline on the front page of the New York Post.

Headlines sell newspapers — at least, they sell the print newspapers offered via those relics known as newsstands. In 1983, almost all of the 965,000 daily newspapers that rolled out of the Post’s building in Lower Manhattan were sold on newsstands.

No one on the Post’s news desk debated the news value of the story: A Brooklyn man named Charles Dingle shot Queens bar owner Herbert Cummings to death and held patrons hostage. When Dingle learned that one was a mortician, he ordered her to behead the victim. Dingle, a box containing the head next to him, was arrested in an unlicensed cab in Manhattan. (Dingle died in prison in 2012, according to New York state records.)

The New York Times also covered the story, stuffing it on Page 2 of the Metropolitan section under the headline, “Owner of a Bar Shot to Death; Suspect Is Held.”

There would have been no Post headline without the gory story. Reporter Jim Norman wrote in a 2012 recollection that the police teletype in the newsroom had two items — one about the discovery in Manhattan of a cardboard box containing a head and the other about the discovery in a Queens bar of a mutilated torso. Norman said he helped to connect the dots as the “headless body” angle riveted the newsroom.

The headline went viral, by 20th-century standards. (then-NYPost managing editor Vincent) Musetto was on David Letterman’s show. It also was the title of a black comedy in the mid-1990s.

In this digital age, when search engine optimization rewards literal headlines and punishes wordplay, “Headless Body in Topless Bar” could perform well online. Was it too over the top? When veteran editor Steve Dunleavy heard criticism at the time, he supposedly replied, “What should we have said? Decapitated cerebellum in tavern of ill repute?”

Musetto always said his favorite headline was “Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas” over the 1984 story about the execution of Margie Velma Barfield, who killed her husband in North Carolina. (Musetto seemed to get all the good stories. My own favorite from my year at the Post was “Art thieves take the Monet and run.”)

Heh. Good stuff, that is, from a lost era before the qualities of wry, frisky humor; convention-straining wordplay; hard-boiled iconoclasm; and an above-all-else dedication to Getting The Story encoded in the DNA of crusty, old-school reporters with the de rigeur pint of whiskey tucked away in the bottom desk drawer had all been exorcised in favor of today’s fear-mongering; obeisance to Big Government and the urgenturgentURGENT!!! blandishments of “experts”; and lickspittle fealty to the PC/Woke/Hard Left agenda entire—a noxious hell-brew that poisoned bona-fide American journalism as it had previously been known fatally, and for all time.

Back in the 90s when I was living in NYC, the Post was the only daily I cared much about purchasing and perusing. NY Newsday plainly and simply sucked, on those occasions when it wasn’t infuriating; then again, it was an offshoot of Long Island-centric Newsday, and what sophisticated, urbane Manhattanite such as moi cared a whit about what those yokels might get themselves up to way out there in the boonies, anyway?

The WSJ was meh, boring, and still is. The Old Grey Whore (a/k/a the NYT) had nearly completed her long, slow slide into total hyperpartisan irrelevance and rank dishonesty; the NY Daily News was middle-of-the-road bland, making it a small cut above the rest of the shitlib propaganda broadsheets.

Later, 2002 would see a short-lived stab at reviving the old NY Sun, but despite the sly, self-deprecating insider-witticism of being printed on piss-yellow paper early on (because yellow journalism, get it?), the Sun failed to distinguish itself otherwise and thus quickly died the death, at least in its print version. Maybe it was good, who knows; although I was still spending a lot of my time in NYC, I still can’t remember ever even reading the thing, honestly.

As for the rest of NYC’s then-crowded field of news outlets: weekly radical-Left alternarag The Village Voice…well, most of the people I hung out with bought it exclusively for the voluminous rock-show and apartment-for-rent listings; amusing if frequently scandalous, even pornographic, personal ads; and maybe Nat Hentoff, among the small handful of my punk-rocker pals who cared about topical affairs.

When it came along, Russ Smith’s NY Press felt like a welcome breath of fresh air to NYC’s minuscule minority of RightWingNaziDeathBeasts like me, but it was short on the aforementioned Voice features New Yorkers had come to rely on. Even though I bought a copy every week the minute it appeared at the bodega down the street and read it cover to cover, I never for a minute thought it could ever amount to serious, credible competition for the Voice. And that’s pretty much how it went, eventually.

Maybe the best thing about this noteworthy anniversary of an unforgettable tabloid headline is that The Power hasn’t gotten around to outlawing any remembrance or remark upon such lighthearted, entertaining mass-media insouciance yet. You can bet they’re probably working on it, though.

Laying low

Posted on April 9, 2023April 9, 2023 by Mike

Is the “get Woke, go broke” slogan finally proving out, for the first time ever?

Buyer’s Remorse? Bud Light Goes Quiet, Hasn’t Posted on Social Media Since Making Dylan Mulvaney Its Spokestrans
Cat got your tongue, Bud Light? The giant beer corporation has been silent for over a week, ever since it came to light that pretend woman Dylan Mulvaney was the pretend beer’s new spokesman. Since then, silence. Gee, Bud Light, aren’t you proud of your front guy?

Bud Light operates one of those fun, friendly social media accounts we see quite often from corporate giants these days. On March 30, it tweeted or replied to tweets over fifteen times, with messages on the order of “Win tickets to Stagecoach for you and a friend! Travel and hotel accommodations covered” and “Have a cold one for us.” On March 31 came twenty more tweets and replies, including “There’s still time to win beer money. Which women’s team do you think will win it all?,” and a reply to a well-wisher: “Bud Light loves you back.” On April 1 it was more of the same, but we haven’t heard from Bud Light since 8:50PM that evening, when it tweeted: “Beers on us? Must be game time. For a chance to win, cheer on your team with #EasyToEnjoySweepstakes in the replies.” That was the day that Mulvaney was revealed to be Bud Light’s new spokesdude. But isn’t Bud Light proud, like all LGBTQETC activists constantly insist they are?

It isn’t just Bud Light, either. The UK’s Daily Mail reported Sunday that “The famous beer also hasn’t posted on their main Instagram feeds since March 31 and have not posted to Facebook since March 30. Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has also gone without posting since April 1.” This is unusual, for “while they have gone a few days without tweeting in the past, the @BudLight is typically fairly active, as are their other regular social channels.” What could account for this? It looks as if it’s because of Dylan Mulvaney.

It was on April 2, Bud Light’s first day of total social media silence, that Mulvaney posted a video of himself pitching Bud Light. Mulvaney added this caption: “Happy March Madness!! Just found out this had to do with sports and not just saying it’s a crazy month! In celebration of this sports thing @budlight is giving you the chance to win $15,000! Share a video with #EasyCarryContest for a chance to win!! Good luck! #budlightpartner”

One would think that since Bud Light often uses its social media accounts to tout such offers, and had just been pushing a few contests and deals in the preceding days, it would have jumped on this and pushed Mulvaney’s Easy Carry Contest on Twitter. Instead, not a word. Could it be, could it even be remotely conceivable, that Bud Light is horrified by the backlash it has received, and is actually embarrassed to be touting this ersatz woman and attention hound?

Embarrassed? Naah, not bloody likely. They’re just afraid of the effect the brouhaha might potentially have on their profits, that’s all. Thus:

The backlash has indeed been severe. Country singer Travis Tritt banned all Anheuser Busch products from his tour bus and asserted that “many other artists” were likewise dropping their Buds, but not saying so publicly for fear of being “ridiculed and canceled.” One of those who was unafraid was Kid Rock, who published a video of himself shooting at cases of Bud Light (viewable here, in case you missed it—M). One disgusted Bud Light salesman said: “I’ve never seen such little sales than this past few days.” The Daily Mail noted that “several former customers filmed themselves pouring the beer away – down the sink and toilet – while others emptied their fridge of the product into bins.”

Over the years, I’ve seen no sign whatsoever that Kid Rock is afraid of anydamnedthing whatsoever—which is one of the reasons I just love the buck-wild sumbitch all to pieces.

I mean, come on, how could you NOT like the guy? This is the one I always liked the most, personally.

A bona fide classic, that one is. “I ain’t straight outta Compton, I’m straight out the trailer.” Really now: hollowbody guitars; dirtbikes; 70s Trans Ams; big black Peterbilts; midgets; Ron Jeremy playing whorehouse piano; hot, scantily clad, trashy-slut babes—again, what’s not to like? It’s all there, as white-trash Americana as it gets, baby.

Update! In a seperate PJM piece, Spencer delves into A-B’s reason for making this colossal mistake: Fake ’n’ Ghey Inc™ strongarmed them into it.

The “free trade” falsehood

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Mike

The implicit question: how much does it cost if it’s free?

An American System for America Prosperity
The ideology of global free trade is not American—nor is it the free market system. America had the highest tariff rates in history at the same time we saw the greatest economic expansion in history.

Our founders understood that America could not be independent and strong if we relied on other nations for our manufactured goods. They understood the United States had the natural resources, the technology, the labor force, and ample customers at home to support domestic industry and be largely self-sufficient.

As an example to his countrymen to “Buy American,” George Washington wore a suit of American-made cloth at his inauguration in 1789. “I hope it will not be a great while before it will be unfashionable for a gentleman to appear in any other dress. Indeed, we have already been too long subject to British prejudices,” he wrote. Washington believed the United States could manufacture as well as farm, and he instructed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to come up with a plan to develop industry on these shores.

Hamilton’s plan, detailed in his 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures, called for tariffs that would raise revenues and protect infant American industries against predatory competition, and government procurement contracts to encourage American manufacturers.

The American System, also called the American School of economics, guided U.S. national economic development from the earliest days of the republic, through the Civil War, and into the better part of the 20th century. It built the United States from an agrarian frontier society into the world’s largest economy and greatest industrial power.

The American System had three basic tenets to promote domestic industry. The government would:

use tariffs to discourage imports, and leverage the purchasing power of government to give preference to domestic producers;

invest in roads, ports, dams, canals, and turnpikes—then called “internal improvements,” now called infrastructure—to facilitate commerce; and

regulate credit to spur economic development and deter speculation.

Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1789 as its second piece of legislation. The opening section reads, “It is necessary for the support of the government, the discharge of the debts of the United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures that a duty be laid on goods and merchandise imported.”

The tax on imports raised revenue to fund the government and prevented foreign goods from smothering our own infant industries. Tariffs were the nation’s primary source of revenue for its first 150 years. Consider: we taxed foreign industries, not our own.

In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton delivered his Report on the Subject of Manufactures to President Washington. It laid out the plan for the federal government to nurture the growth of domestic manufacturing industries in the United States rather than allow the new nation to depend on manufactured goods from abroad.

Hamilton declared: “Not only the wealth; the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation…ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means to Subsistence habitation clothing and defence.”

A diversified economy of agriculture, merchants, and manufacturing would provide opportunities for Americans of all skills, “furnishing greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other,” Hamilton wrote.

Hamilton’s report stood in contrast to “free traders” who believed America should confine itself to farming, export raw materials, and buy manufactured goods from Great Britain.

NOTE: I am not an economist, nor have I ever played one on TeeWee. That said, I hadn’t realized before just how recent the Neocon obssession with “free trade” really was until I read this fascinating piece, nor had I known just how adamantly most if not all of the Founders were opposed to any such notion, ditto for several of our later Presidents such as Lincoln and McKinley. Buck Throckmorton, via whom etc, has this to say about it:

Principled Free Traders™ have often been the target of my writing, not because of my having a deep ideological hostility to free trade, but because they have used the term “free trade” as a false-flag for their globalist hostility to US sovereignty, and for their open contempt for working-class Americans.

Unlike 1990s-era free trade, which was promoted as being about reciprocal, barrier-free trade, America’s 21st Century Principled Free Traders™ have advocated for unilateral surrender to foreign mercantilism. (Mercantilism is the economic theory that a country’s wealth increases by having a surplus balance of trade, using protectionism as necessary to ensure the favorable trade imbalance.) Principled Free Traders™ favor unrestricted access to the US market for products made in hostile, authoritarian countries, while gladly accepting that those countries maintain tariffs and prohibitions on importing products from the US.

After doing a learn-to-code grave dance on those working class Americans who lost their middle-class lifestyle, Principled Free Traders™ argued that it was all cool, because products made by cheap foreign labor (and slaves) gave Americans more spending power.

As for me, the reality is that I’ve historically been more of a reciprocal free trader – what many of us called “fair trade” – than a protectionist, thus my contempt for the globalists who actively sought to harm America in the name of free trade.

Our founders and our greatest Presidents agreed that that the US must never be dependent on foreign countries for food, provisions, or the ability to secure our national defense. And even the Father of Capitalism stood for economic nationalism.

I’m proud to be an economic nationalist if the alternative is “free trade” that is designed to harm Americans.

Amen to all that, my friend. Funny, innit, how very much of the Vichy GOPe/Uniparty/Neocon agenda does indeed seem designed to damage AINO rather than to help, their indignant protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Miss Lindsey defends Trump

Posted on March 18, 2023March 18, 2023 by Mike

Standing up tall and proud, vowing he’ll “get to the bottom of this. No, really, for sure this time. I mean it. Dammit, stop laughing, you guys!”

Graham slams soft-on-crime Bragg for targeting Trump while New Yorkers ‘lucky’ not to get ‘mugged’
Graham said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is doing more to help Trump get elected ‘than any single person in America today’

And just like clockwork, another Blue Ribbon Panel appears.

Like Graham, other Republican lawmakers are also pushing back against the possible Trump indictment, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who said Saturday he is directing House committees to investigate whether federal funds are being used for “politically motivated prosecutions” like that of Trump.

“Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” McCarthy wrote in a tweet.

OHHH yeah, they’re gonna SPRING INTO ACTION to investigate this bare-naked, purely-partisan criminality. THIS! SHALL! NOT! STAND!!!

Ho fucking hum, with a cherry on top. “Here we go again” is right on the money, but not in the way McCarthy intends. Hope somebody in Trump’s retinue is intelligent enough to get cracking most ricky-tick on having his boss sized and fitted for the orange jumpsuit he’ll soon be wearing.

Update! Francis nails it.

President Trump had better watch his back. He’s well guarded, I know, but as Michael Corleone said to Tom Hagen near to the end of The Godfather Part II, “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it’s that you can kill anyone.” The Left would be desperate enough to try anything. Bombs? Plausible. An enfilade with machine guns? Not beyond the bounds of possibility. Throwing waves of bodies at the president-elect, spending lives by the hundreds just to get one close enough to Trump to snuff him out? I can imagine that, too.

Do not imagine that any degree of carnage would strike the Left’s planning cadre as unthinkable. Trump restored to the Oval Office is their worst nightmare. Moreover, in this they have allies throughout the Republican Establishment. Trump threatens to upset their applecarts, too.

But there’s this, too: Were anyone to succeed in assassinating President Trump, it would herald the end of all law and all order in these United States. The event would dissolve all obfuscation about the bipartisan political Establishment and the Deep State. No level of government would be able to assert and enforce its authority in the chaos that would follow. Electric Boogaloo? Try Nuclear Tarantella.

Stay tuned.

We can but hope.

Wish in one hand

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Mike

Shit in the other. You know the rest of it.

Majority of Voters Want Buttigieg to Resign

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday found that most American voters want Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to resign after the East Palestine, Ohio disaster. Buttigieg received criticism after telling a reporter he was on ‘personal time’ when asked when he would visit East Palestine. The Biden official eventually visited East Palestine, Ohio, albeit one day after former President Donald Trump.

51 percent of registered voters answered yes when asked, “Should Buttigieg resign as a result of how the Transportation Department handled the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio?”

The Rasmussen Reports poll data showed 68 percent of Republicans, 51 percent of Independents, and 35 percent of Democrats believe that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg should resign due to his handling of the East Palestine Ohio Train derailment.

In response to the poll, Congresswomen Lauren Boebert (R-CO) endorsed the sentiment in a tweet. “51% of Americans want Pete Buttigieg to resign from his position as Transportation Secretary. Proud to be cosponsoring a resolution calling for exactly that. Pete’s incompetence & disregard for the American people has no place in our government,” Boebert wrote.

“No place”? In OUR government? With all due respect, you must be joking, ma’am. Incompetence and disregard for We Duh Peepul is the very bones and sinew of FederalGovCo—it’s what the goobermint is, what it does. Nowadays, those things amount to a de facto job requirement, really.

Maybe Ms Boebert has her heart in the right place with this toothless, ineffectual resolution, I couldn’t say. Maybe not. But if she sincerely expects it to amount to anything more than the usual DC smoke-and-mirrors dumbshow, much ado about nothing whatsoever, then she’s delusional, and is about to be extremely disappointed with the results she gets: zip, zero, nada, a big fat stinking zero.

Can’t keep a good man down

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Mike

As we might well have expected from him, true American Hero James O’Keefe has just proved it.

James O’Keefe Makes His Move After Project Veritas

On Wednesday, James O’Keefe, the former founder and CEO of Project Veritas, announced the launch of his new media organization, named O’Keefe Media Group.

In the video, O’Keefe discussed how he had faced defamation, arrests, and raids and was ultimately removed from the organization he’d spent a significant amount of time building credibility for. Last month, O’Keefe was kicked out of Project Veritas a couple of weeks after the board suspended him.

But, as expected, O’Keefe is bouncing back and seems determined to go bigger and better in service of his original mission.

“The irony of the ACORN story is that it took a 25-year-old with a hidden camera a few days to do what billion-dollar networks and journalists could not do in a decade,” O’Keefe says in a video announcing his new business venture. “I spent 14 years creating the most effective nonprofit newsroom this country has ever seen, and in paving the way to establish citizen journalism, I have been defamed, arrested, raided, and ultimately removed from the organization I spent so much time developing credibility of.”

“I always knew they would try to ruin the reputations of those who expose them,” he continues, “the pharma giants, the three-letter government agencies, and those who I thought I could trust. But in response, we are going to build an army of investigators and exposers. They have awakened [a] sleeping giant.”

“I’m back,” declares O’Keefe, who revealed that a small, tight-knit group of “the most elite journalists in the world” remain by his side.

“Exposing corruption requires standing up to power because power hates sunlight. We are sunlight.”

O’Keefe’s new venture is called the O’Keefe Media Group, which he insists “will never be shut down.” Not only does O’Keefe own it, but anyone can pledge their support to sponsor his army of journalists by becoming a founding member.

Good for him, and may he have tremendous success with his new venture. After so many years of catching miscellaneous evildoers with their pants down—and also seeing as how PV has been hemorrhaging supporters and staff since O’Keefe was unceremoniously shoved out on his ass—I’d estimate his prospects for attaining similar success going forward are pretty good.

Now SWEEPING the nation!

Posted on March 15, 2023March 15, 2023 by Mike

The greatest television show ever created. Well, excepting Firefly, of course.

In the new doc “Anatomy of a Hoax” The Jussie Smollett faked story:

The Osundairo Brother detail what really was Jussie’s plan and why.

They also say they still feel ‘betrayed’ by his hate crime lies
🔗: https://t.co/2W96GU0Zux pic.twitter.com/ezGeA8xXix

— Glock Topickz (@Glock_Topickz)

March 14, 2023

As Ace notes, “Apparently the Osundairo brothers are amusing hosts and naturals on camera.” They are indeed—quite personable, glib, and just damned funny as all hell, as the above vid amply demonstrates. Mo’ bettah:

Brothers in Jussie Smollett hoax break silence, say actor wanted to be ‘poster child for activism’
Abimbola “Bola” and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo speak to media for the first time in ‘Jussie Smollett: Anatomy of a Hoax,’ streaming now on Fox Nation

Early in the morning hours of a polar vortex in January 2019, FOX’s “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett claimed two White supremacist Trump supporters attacked him near his Chicago apartment in a racially-motivated hate crime that would soon incite outrage from activists and the media.

It’s the “hate crime” that dominated headlines, but facts proved none of it was true.

In December 2021, the now-40-year-old actor and singer was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct. One year ago, he was sentenced in March 2022 to 150 days in county jail.

Forgive me for saying so, but ol’ Juisseh (hey, that’s the way I’ve always pronounced it, just ’cause I think it’s funnier that way, no other reason) being both black and a rump-ranger, I have a hard time picturing jail as any kind of real hardship for him. A deee-luxe vacation, a rest-cure, more like.

Yes, I know, I know, I’m a homophobic racist bigoted racist H8RRRR.

I DENOUNCE MYSELF…!!!

I DID mention the Osundairos are quite personable and funny, right? Why yes, I believe I did at that.

“You know Eddie Johnson [former Chicago Police Superintendent] said he could tell in the footage that you guys are Black, right?” an off-camera interviewer asked the brothers.

“Really?” Ola asked. “I feel like he’s just saying that… we were in character the whole time.”

“So you think you guys are believable White supremacists?” the interviewer pressed.

“One hundred percent! Look at me,” Bola laughed. Chicago Police released images of the incident shortly after it took place, but Johnson said the initially released image of two silhouettes walking shoulder-to-shoulder down the snowy Chicago street was not the best image they had at the time.

Watch the vid, read it all. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Update! In comments, Aesop says: “Chapelle dealt with the whole incident better in 3½ minutes than the entire woketarded media did in 3½ months, and distilled that @$$hole’s entire career down to a single punchline.” And he’s right about that.

Many thanks for that gem of a find, Aesop.

Space Farce

Posted on March 9, 2023 by Mike

FederalGovCo, as is its usual wont, is putting the cart far, FAR before the horse. Hell, you could say it doesn’t even have a horse. Or a cart, for that matter.

There’s a new push to create a Space National Guard. Lawmakers say the price is right.

Lawmakers from both parties have failed — twice — to give the Space Force its own Space National Guard, which they say the new service needs in order to draw on skilled personnel, just like the Army does with the National Guard.

Now, supporters of creating the Space Guard have mounted a fresh pressure campaign with a revised pitch to win over the Biden administration and other opponents: it’s not as expensive as you think.

It’s the latest round in a cross-party turf war that pits members of Congress and National Guard leaders against fellow lawmakers and an administration wary that standing up a separate Space Guard — which would see some current members of the Air National Guard transfer over to the new service — will result in more expensive bureaucracy.

Before starting in on any fanciful speculation regarding some entirely-notional Space National Guard, whatever the price, the goobermint might first want to see about addressing its current lack of any ability to get men into space at all, perhaps. Because as things now stand, the one and only person in the US who’s actually capable of doing anything more than just talk about it is Elon Musk.

Which, to be honest, I’m perfectly okay with.

(Via Glenn)

Buttplug blasted—again

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Mike

And nearly bursts into tears of OUTRAGE!™ over being called out on his manifest incompetence and indifference.

Potty-Mouthed Buttigieg Has Hissy Fit Over East Palestine Critics: “You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl’s?”

Biden Transportation Secretary Pete “I’m Taking Some Personal Time” Buttigieg, in an interview with CNN published Sunday, lashed out critics of his handling of the toxic train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio last month, swearing and accusing them of being out of touch East Coast elites as he defended wearing designer dress boots to tour the derailment scene.

Buttigieg singled out President Trump and Fox News Channel prime time host Tucker Carlson in his hissy fit interview with CNN, even swearing at one point (excerpt):

“It’s really rich to see some of these folks – the former president, these Fox hosts – who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite, whose top economic policy priority has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn’t know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country,” the Transportation Secretary said. “You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl’s?”

…The secretary visited East Palestine a day after former President Donald Trump went to the town, calling out President Joe Biden for not having made his own visit and slamming the administration’s response.

Trump’s visit, Buttigieg said, was “somewhat maddening – to see someone who did a lot try to gut not just rail safety regulations, but the EPA, which is the number one thing standing between that community and a total loss of accountability for Norfolk Southern and then show up giving out bottled water and campaign swag?”

…As for any suggestion from Trump or supporters that the former president’s trip to East Palestine pressured him to go: “That’s bull—-,” Buttigieg said. “We were already going to go.”

Suuuure you were, Peter-puffer. Because hey, you care so very, very deeply about the plight of all those hate-filled, homophobic Flyover Country bigots.

These boots are made for stomping. Buttigieg got emotional when his choice of footwear for his visit to East Palestine was mentioned:

The attention to the boots Buttigieg wore when he visited a day later, he said, was also “maddening.”

His voice got tighter.

“Who cares what shoes I was wearing, when I was there to draw attention to an agenda that will save lives on our railroads?” Buttigieg said.

Uh huh. Hey, as everyone knows, the shitlib agenda is all about “saving lives,” right? After all, Leftism, Statism, socialism, communism, however you may choose to label it, has proved to be so very proficient at that over the last hundred years or so.

Eat a bag of dicks, shitheel. You’re no better at lying than you are at being head of the DoT, it seems.

“A woman is not a suit you put on”

Posted on March 5, 2023March 5, 2023 by Mike

You never go Full Woke Retard. Which is exactly what Hershey’s just did.

#TransWomenAreConMen goes viral after Hershey allows a man to take the place of a woman

Last Wednesday marked day one of Women’s History Month, an annual occasion described by the official website as a “national celebration” to commend the value and contributions of the female sex upon society. In the movement’s own words:

Since 1995, presidents have issued a series of annual proclamations designating the month of March as ‘Women’s History Month.’ These proclamations celebrate the contributions women have made to the United States and recognize the specific achievements women have made over the course of American history in a variety of fields.

\Well, welcome to a modern and Orwellian America, where a jabbering Supreme Court justice infamously couldn’t define “woman” and intact males eclipse and dominate real women in every sector, every day: competitive sports, beauty pageants, magazine covers, advertising campaigns, government posts, etc. You name it, and men in drag are there, overshadowing their female counterparts by leaps and bounds. Didn’t you ever hear that joke about when Glamour magazine bequeathed former Olympian Bruce Jenner with a “Woman of the Year” award? It went a little something like this: “Just to prove men are better at everything, it took a man to win a women’s achievement award.”

Now, Hershey is going balls (literally) to the wall, and in honor of female fortitude, the company has decided to highlight a man who goes by the name Fae Johnstone. See the clip below:

.@Hersheys is putting the face of a trans-“woman” on chocolate bar wrappers with “HerShe” highlighted in honor of international women’s day.
Hershey’s is erasing women. pic.twitter.com/JzRkAtwTdO

— Leftism (@LeftismForU)

March 1, 2023

Do be sure to watch the vid; somehow, it manages to be pathetic, appalling, and funny as hell all at the same time. But wait, it gets even better still.

Now, the erasure of women and our uniqueness isn’t funny, but in a hilarious turn of events, an anti-woke company known as Jeremy’s Razors branched out into…Jeremy’s Chocolates. (You’re going to enjoy this.)

And trust me, you surely will at that.

Heh. Jeremy’s Chocolates is an offshoot of founder Jeremy Boreing’s Jeremy’s Razors, which came into being thusly:

HARRY’S AND THE DAILY WIRE HAD A DEAL.

They paid us. We advertised their razors.

But after we said that boys are boys and girls are girls, they publicly condemned our views as “inexcusable” and dropped their ads because of what they called “values misalignment.”

You’re damn right our values are misaligned. We value truth and the right to speak it.

We embrace masculinity and the courage to uphold it. And since no other razors out there did… we built our own.

Every dollar you spend here is one less dollar in the pockets of woke razor CEOs who profit from putting you down.

They make money by making you feel bad. Jeremy gets rich by making you look great. And by creating alternatives in the market that actually give you a choice. So you don’t have to cut away your values, every time you shave your face.

We can’t build this parallel economy overnight – it’s going to take time.

But with your commitment it will happen. And razors, are just the start.

Well said, sir. From Jeremy’s I Hate Hershey’s webpage:

Some chocolate companies don’t even know what a woman is. But we do.
Indulge in the chocolate binary. One with nuts, one without. You know which is which.

Indeed I do. In fact, contra the ever-heightening pile of “transwomen are REAL women” horseshit, we all do.

More fun quips ‘n quotes from Boreing.

It is nearly a year after Harry’s removed its ads, The Daily Wire has initiated its new razors alongside a humorous four-minute outstanding web ad which is the talk of the internet nowadays.

The ad starts with “god-king” Boreing setting fire to rubber to work in an electric-blue McLaren. After virtually jogging over an employee in the parking lot, he exits the car and asks, “Do you recall when there were only two genders, and only one and a half of them had to trim their mustaches?”

And that is only the warm-up.

He whips out the flame thrower and further adds, “If you have had enough of the woke bullshit,” and you are tired of paying groups like Gillette and Harry’s to hate you, then get my new razor instead.

Along with flame throwers, the ad also features sexy women, hot cars, a shirtless, carved Adonis, and that is the most homoerotic time you will ever get from a Jeremy’s Razors commercial and over-caffeinated Dennis Miller as it defines Jeremy as the razor of choice for men, firefighters, cowboys, and ‘those gentlemen who shot Osama bin Laden.’ The ad is marked as funny. However, it is not all over-the-top humor.

He whips out the flame thrower and further adds, “If you have had enough of the woke bullshit,” and you are tired of paying groups like Gillette and Harry’s to hate you, then get my new razor instead.

Along with flame throwers, the ad also features sexy women, hot cars, a shirtless, carved Adonis, and that is the most homoerotic time you will ever get from a Jeremy’s Razors commercial and over-caffeinated Dennis Miller as it defines Jeremy as the razor of choice for men, firefighters, cowboys, and ‘those gentlemen who shot Osama bin Laden.’ The ad is marked as funny. However, it is not all over-the-top humor.

“Our country is in distress,” Boreing instructs as the commercial draws to a climax. “Conservatives are being abolished by the media, Hollywood, universities, and now, Harry’s Razors. Resist lending your money to woke companies who do not believe you deserve their product. Offer it to me instead,” he concludes as a huge flag emblazoned with his picture, and the phrase “Shut Up and Shave” unfurls from the roof.

The commercial is entertaining, and the product illustration comprises “the best shave kit ever built and its preferred pronouns are Buy Now.”

Any red-blooded Real American Normal has just gotta love it…and I assuredly do. As Tennessee Ernie Ford used to say, in those old TV ads for Martha White flour: “Goodness gracious, it’s pea-pickin’ good!”

State of (perpetual un)readiness

Posted on March 2, 2023March 2, 2023 by Mike

PopMech takes a look at yet another disastrous multi-billion-dollar boondoggle from the once-mighty US military—a bigger one, probably, than even the F35 Turducken.

How the World’s Greatest Aircraft Carrier Became a $13 Billion Fiasco

Can the military save the USS Gerald R. Ford?

Wrong question. The real question is: should it?

The late 20th century was a time of supreme American confidence and rapid innovation. The Cold War was drawing to a close, the digital age was around the corner, and the Pentagon saw an opportunity to capitalize on peacetime and begin preparing for future conflict. With few diplomatic or military distractions, the United States ushered in a revolution in military technology.

Out of that boom period came ambitions for a new class of aircraft carrier headlined by the transformational USS Gerald R. Ford, a ship featuring an expanded flight deck, a boosted power plant, and support for almost two dozen emergent technologies. Expectations were high. The Ford’s nuclear reactor and propulsion system would triple the electrical power of the preceding Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Its state-of-the-art weapons elevators would move 20,000 pounds of munitions at speeds of 150 feet per minute compared with the Nimitz‘s speed of 100 feet per minute. Its new launch-and-recovery system would be able to handle 270 planes in a single day. From bow to stern, the ship’s innovations—designed to save time, costs, and crew—would revolutionize the way the U.S. military built and used carriers. The Ford would be a symbol of American superiority, one that would project power to American adversaries for five decades of dependable service.

Well, they got the “transformational” bit right, anyway; the Ford definitely IS that. It’s just that it’s part of a decidedly wrong-way transformation: from a capable, powerful military—along with fighters that can’t fight; tanks that can’t tank; rifles more prone to jamming than a pimply, teenaged Stevie Vai wannabe at Sam Ash on a Saturday afternoon; and battalions of mincing, simpering dick-choppers who only signed up so they could get their bulbous naughty parts lopped off by an Army surgeon for free—into a hapless, bumbling, incompetent one.

“There was this thinking of, ‘We are so far ahead of everyone else that we can afford to take a strategic pause and take risks on our acquisition and try new and untested technology,’” says Eric Wertheim, a defense analyst and expert with the U.S. Naval Institute, of the nation’s mindset after the Cold War. “And there was this feeling that the rest of the world is at least 20 years behind us.”

But after two decades of development and delays, the audacity that conceived the Ford seemed to usher its doom. Expected to save the military $4 billion during its life span, the Ford has actually cost billions more than initial estimates. First expected to deploy in 2018, it has been projected to deploy as far out as 2024. When the ship reached the Navy after construction, it was already two years behind schedule, with work outstanding on thousands of items. In 2015, Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Navy aviator, called packing all that tech onto the Ford “the original sin” that damaged the program.

Even the Navy’s top officer acknowledged the problems that have plagued the carrier. “We had 23 new technologies on [the USS Gerald R. Ford] which, quite frankly, increased the risk of delivery on time and cost right from the get-go,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday at a virtual talk before the Navy League’s 2021 Sea Air Space exposition. “And I think industry’s in full agreement with this: We really shouldn’t introduce more than maybe one or two new technologies on any complex platform like that, in order to keep risk at a manageable level.”

Meanwhile, naval advances by U.S. adversaries have added urgency to the Ford’s troubleshooting. The ship’s critics point to its expanding budget and timetable as evidence that the U.S. military should reconsider developing massive nuclear carriers as a foundational element of its naval program. Military advisor Norman Polmar points out that America’s most recent conflicts in the Middle East didn’t even use the Nimitz class to full capacity. “Look what we did in Iraq,” he says. “We launched [just] 20 or 30 strikes a day from a carrier that has 70 airplanes.” And Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has questioned whether the Ford’s price tag justifies its utility. During a 2021 Brookings Institution discussion, Smith asked if there are other ways “to get unmanned systems closer to the fight that don’t cost $12 billion.”

All part and parcel of the truism that generals and admirals are always preparing to fight the last war, in this case WW2. Out of the myriad mistakes, flaws, and failures of the Ford, this one remains the most jaw-dropping to me.

One standout feature of the Ford—albeit a troublesome one—is its state-of-the-art Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG). Prior to Ford, American carriers used a hydraulic arresting system to slow and stop landing aircraft, but the AAG uses an electric engine and a water twister to accommodate a broader range of aircraft—including unmanned aerial vehicles. Engineering and manufacturing of the AAG began in 2005, with 2009 the targeted end date. But a 2016 Pentagon Inspector General report noted that developmental testing for the AAG would continue through 2018; the system still hadn’t proved capable or safe enough to test on the Ford. Between 2009 and 2012, the AAG’s power conditioning system failed across multiple tests, and both its inverter system and cable shock absorber required redesigns. The setbacks ballooned the AAG’s development cost from $143 million to more than $1 billion, according to a report from Sen. McCain’s office.

(Now-retired Navy captain Talbot) Manvel says he resisted AAG on the Ford as early as 1998, wanting to push it onto the subsequent ships in the class after its design had matured. He had his way until Rumsfeld stepped in with his transformational vision. “This was transformation run amok,” Manvel says.

That it surely was, sir. Which, once the temptation of it is yielded to, is what usually tends to happen.

It all makes for a depressing read for anyone who grew up believing that the American war machine was nigh-invincible, without Earthly peer or parallel amongst its adversary nation-states. That’s simply no longer the case, if it ever really was. Which, given certain harsh realities of life on this here planet, it almost certainly wasn’t.

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