The Almighty State

The words of a prophet

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Mike

Alexis de Tocqueville, that would be.

The French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) describes what form of tyranny or despotism would come to America: it would be relatively mild, retain some of the “external forms of liberty”, but the people would behave like timid “animals” and the government would act like their shepherd:

After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

In a number of quotations we have looked at writers who have likened the people to sheep who are protected by the shepherd or “state” in order to better shear them of their fleece or slaughter them for meat. John Milton was quite clear on this analogy and stressed the importance for the state of creating “sheep-like minds” in the heads of the people. Alexis de Tocqueville can be added to this list. In the longer version of the quotation he talks about the importance of “agitation” and “crisis” in creating the precondition for the expansion of state power; that in democratic America the state will create a new form of tyranny, being part despotism, part “tutorship”, and part “paternalism” of the people; that various external forms of liberty will remain but the sheer number of “uniform rules” will reduce the people to a timid and sheep-like status with the state acting like the national shepherd.

Sounds chillingly familiar, don’t it?

First thing we do, let’s Ban All The Things

Posted on March 28, 2023 by Mike

Glenn puts forth a modest proposal.

Biden’s latest target in his war on appliances: air conditioning units

Is there a war on appliances? Or is it a war on you?

I’d tell you to keep your cool, but that’s going to be hard when Team Biden takes away your air conditioner.

And the Biden administration certainly has an appetite for regulating household appliances in a way that seems calculated to make your life worse.

Now, in the latest episode of Team Biden’s “war on appliances,” the Energy Department has turned its attention to air conditioners, specifically room air conditioners of the sort used disproportionately by poor people, minorities and the elderly to keep cool in summer heat.

New energy-efficiency regulations promise to make these units more expensive for consumers and potentially less reliable and less effective at, you know, actually cooling things off.

As Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) tweeted: “They’re after our stoves, our washing machines, and now, our air conditioners. Funny you never see them coming after private jets. The only goal of the ‘green’ agenda is making you SUFFER! That’s it!”

It does seem the common thread in all these environmental proposals is making ordinary people’s lives worse. Especially senior citizens’ and minorities’.

They point to climate change and the environment. But if those problems are bad enough to justify putting our most vulnerable citizens at risk during summer heat waves, I think we need to see that our most powerful citizens share in their sacrifice.

Therefore, I have a proposal of my own: Ban air conditioning in Washington, DC.

Sure, it’ll be less comfortable. But let’s face facts: We won two world wars with a capital city that was largely devoid of air conditioning.

Now there’s air conditioning everywhere in DC, but is the government working any better?

Oh, it’s working exactly as intended. It’s just that the Serf Class definition of “working better” differs greatly from that of the Master Class; in truth, they’re diametrically opposed. For Them, the sole criterion for judging such things is whether any given measure, program, or restriction increases their own power, wealth, and control over Us, not whether it actually improves a damned thing for the lowly subjects they so disdain and despise.

Ban A/C in the Swamp? Sure, why not. But we won’t really be making solid progress towards improving our lot until we ban THEM. Which is where the torches, pitchforks, pikes, and gibbets come into the picture.

Anatomy of a Great Schism, v2.0

Posted on March 21, 2023March 21, 2023 by Mike

ZMan has a look in on all this Trump/DeSantis nonsense.

Ron Versus Don
The basic argument from the DeSantis partisans is that he has a chance to win the general election, while Trump has no chance. More important, DeSantis knows how to govern, which he has proven in Florida. There is no doubt that he has been a great governor for Florida. He also has a very friendly state legislature, which makes it simple for him to get things done. There is no data to suggest he has a better shot against Biden than Trump, but that is the claim.

The truth is electability has never been a factor in these races. Most voters are not like most Republican politicians in that they do not negotiate with themselves. They vote for the candidate they like, not the candidate that a conservative commentator swears will be acceptable to the Democrats. Even if their preferred option has no chance in the general, most voters will go for the guy who speaks to them. It turns out that most people are decent and honest, not scheming weasels.

That is the argument for Trump. Despite his faults, and he has many, he represents those decent and honest people. He is a symbol, more than a candidate. Supporting Trump is about opposing the people who rule over us. It is as close as we get in America to class warfare. Trump’s voters are the great unwashed, the forgotten Americans who hate what has happened to their country. Trump is not the solution, but he makes noise on their behalf. That is enough.

Both camps are right in the same way that two people who have different favorite ice creams are right, even though they disagree. There is no empirical argument in favor of either guy as it is purely a matter of opinion. Pedro Gonzales is mad at Trump for not being the savior he hoped for in 2016, so he is has jumped on the DeSantis side, while Scott Greer still loves Trump and now hates DeSantis. Their arguments in favor of their guy are cognitively meaningless.

That said, we can assess the electability claim. The place to start is the 2020 election broken out by electoral votes. All of those national polls that people wave around are meaningless as we pick presidents by indirect election. In the last election, Biden won 303 electoral votes, while Trump got 235. The threshold to win is 270. There were a lot of shenanigans in the 2020 election, but they were repeated in 2022, so we have to treat them as a feature, rather than a bug.

He goes on to do some juggling with the state-by-state math of the thing, and the sum of the equation is necessarily neither pretty nor reassuring.

What this tells us is the odds for a Republican win are awfully long. They have to win states that are mostly in the other camp by default. Then they have to defend their own states, some of which are trending the wrong way. The Yankee invasion of North Carolina is turning the state into Virginia. Texas is slowly becoming California as those weirdos arrive in droves. Barring some sort of black swan event, Joe Biden will cruise to victory in 2024 no matter his opponent.

What this says is that the choice for Republicans is not centered on electability, but who they prefer to see lose in 2024. The neocons and conservatives prefer to see Trump lose, but they are so full of hatred of white people now, they will root against him in the primary, even if it works against their interests. The DeSantis fans are coming around to the same view, thinking that Trump is some sort of bad juju that must be exorcised in order to return to the 1980’s.

For dissidents, it is a different question. DeSantis is a good governor and it would be better if he finished the job and set an example for others. We do not need another too nice to win loser presidential candidate. Trump is a crazy man who sends the bad guys into paroxysms of vengeful hysteria. He was a lousy president, but he has proven to be a great wrecking ball. His revenge tour, especially if he is indicted, will be the mother of all crap shows. A good time will be had by all.

I’m with him on that. Read on to the very end; Z’s conclusion—“there is no path forward in the current system”—is dead accurate, as well as damned unsettling. I wish there was a credible counterargument to be made, but honestly, there isn’t. No honest, genuine candidate intent on real reform will ever again be “elected” President. Should one somehow manage an end-run against the rigged process and prevail, against all odds, he will be thwarted by the Shadow State apparat entire right from Day One. If you want Unity, well, you’ll certainly see some then—all you ever wanted to see of it, and then some.

Update! Bill is slightly more optimistic—at least, this is what passes for optimism in these dark, parlous days.

I think this is probably right, at least for America right now. But I don’t think the current situation will maintain for that much longer. There are too many systemic, technological, and generational forces at work reshaping our nation, and it is by no means certain that the nation as presently constituted will survive them, especially since they will be coming to a head over the next six years or so.

Which means that we may have only one more “normal” election cycle before all hell breaks loose. So don’t place any long-term bets on what that red and blue map says today. It may not even exist for the 2026 and 2028 elections. And although we can’t see them clearly (yet), I have to assume there is a whole flock of black swans flapping around out there, looking for places to come home to roost.

Yep. In times like this, the one and only thing we can know for sure is that we won’t know for sure until we find ourselves right smack in the middle of it. Not a particularly cheering thought, but it’s the best we’re going to get. As all the cool kids like to say nowadays, it is what it is.

If that isn’t what the cool kids say, please don’t tell me, aiight? Ahem.

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.

The wheels grind inexorably on

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

I seriously doubt they have much if anything to worry about, but it’d be nice to think they’re right to be worried just the same.

BREAKING: Federal Law Enforcement Preparing for Mass Chaos With Potential Trump Indictment
Five senior officials have disclosed that local, state, and federal law enforcement and security agencies are getting ready for a potential indictment of former President Donald Trump as soon as next week. The agencies are in talks about potential security measures for the Manhattan Criminal Court and its surroundings, should Trump be charged in relation to a supposed hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels.

The magnitude of agencies involved includes the NYPD, New York State Court Officers, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The scale of preparation highlights the gravity of the situation and the chaotic impact that an indictment could have on Trump’s 2024 campaign and legal future.

From a legal standpoint, an indictment would require Trump to mount a defense and could potentially result in a conviction and sentencing. The investigation into the alleged hush money payment has been ongoing for years, and an indictment would signal that prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence to bring charges.

The preparations being made by law enforcement agencies suggest that they are taking the possibility of an indictment seriously. However, it is important to note that no charges have been filed yet, and the conversations and planning are currently precautionary in nature.

Trump, the dope, should’ve taken me up on what I’ve been suggesting since the fraudulent immaculation of “Joe Biden” as pRetend “pResident” in 2021, to wit:

Buy yourself a small, uninhabited island in the Caribbean someplace, assuming you don’t already own several
Lay undersea minefields around said island’s perimenter
Post a reinforced company of armed security—full combat loadout, to include SAW-gunners and grenades—on all beach approaches, with blanket lethal-force authorization should a single living soul so much as even look like they’re thinking about trying to wade ashore
Establish concealed .50 cal machine-gun emplacements and light-mortar positions well inshore, with interlocking fields of fire outside the shoreline, tasked with interdiction of attempted incursion via small boat and/or submarine, to be maintained at ready-5 alert status, deployable as and when
At least one (1) fully-qualified sniper team situated on whatever higher ground might be available? Gedouddaheah with your silly fookin’ questions, eedjit—of COURSE!!
Once total, unbreachable security has been ensured, put on the swim trunks and some sunscreen, drag out a comfy beach chair, and just lie back in the sun sipping on a frozen piña colada whilst enjoying the succulent view of your gorgeous, hot-ass wife frolicking happily in the surf wearing the skimpiest imaginable thong bikini. Or, better yet, nothing whatsoever.

Hey, beats rockin’ orange all hollow, every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Prithee tell, what sound-minded soul, be he ever so humble, could possibly blame Trump if he did? If it was me, I’da done it a looonnnnng damned time ago—in fact, I’da had my bags pre-packed and skedaddled for Andrews the moment “Deep State” Pence stabbed the whole country in the back, fiercely buggered Real Americans without the courtesy of either lube or a reach-around, wantonly defied the very concept of “consent of the governed,” and shat all over his sworn oath to the Constitution.

On TeeWee, no less, right out in front of God and everybody, the shameless, despicable fucksicle.

Even if they don’t manage to get Trump thrown in the jug this go-round, The Power at all levels will assuredly be persecuting him for the rest of his days, if only to make an example of him pour discourager les autres. And that’s provided they don’t just have him assassinated outright, something I’ve been expecting with dread since his unlooked-for victory over “Cankles” Clinton (a/k/a She Who Will NEVER Be President™) in 2016.

Trump’s impertubable but misguided faith in the US, its people, and its rotten-to-the-core institutions—the “justice” system most especially—is gonna be the undoing of the poor man. In fact, it already was, and he just doesn’t seem to realize it quite yet. Or can’t admit it to himself, maybe. Somebody close to him needs to whisper in his ear that the country he harbors such strong patriotic sentiment for went tits-up and extinct a goodish while back.

I’d love to be proved wrong— that, following Trump’s indictment, show trial, conviction, and perp-walk out of the kangaroo-courtroom, the ensuing retaliatory uprising would be swift, sweeping, and utterly merciless. I’d love to be, but I can’t say I think it at all likely. We Duh Sheepul, even the most zealous of OnlyTrump partisans, have been all-too-thoroughly cowed at this late date. If that wasn’t so, a righteously furious horde of Real Americans would have descended on DC to spring the unjustly-Gulagged J6 dissidents from their durance vile already.

It’s often been said, regarding the slim-to-none chances of honest-to-God rebellion and revolt against burgeoning FederalGovCo tyranny, that nobody wants to be the first to die. Nor is there any discernible interest out there in becoming a martyr for a doomed-in-advance Lost Cause, let alone for any specific individual. With Trump Fatigue settling in upon an increasing number of us, that would doubtless hold true even for The Donald himself.

Such reticence among a great preponderance of Normals may be thought of as ignoble, even downright dishonorable, particularly in comparison with the courageous, selfless sacrifices unflinchingly proffered by the sainted Founders we claim to reverence. That said, it’s by no means unreasonable, at least to a degree understandable, even. Although it does make for some mighty unpleasant contemplation of what it all bodes going forward—not just for President Trump, but for all of us.

Telltale timeline

Posted on March 9, 2023 by Mike

Commenter regitiger over at Sundance’s hang gets down to the real nitty-gritty.

I think most (not all, but a large number ) of people are totally missing what happened…and why this happened on jan 6.

I am going to try my best to outline the events that day…blast past the commonly held assumptions and get right down to the core corruption.

I will present this as a series of questions and answers.

q1: how do you prevent congress from delaying the certification of state electoral votes?

a: it requires a crisis. A crisis that creates an “emergency”…An “emergency” that invokes special house rules.

facts: remember, carefully…focus please…remember…just moments..literally 3 minutes before two representatives issued a vote for motions to suspend the certification the House members were “informed” by capitol police and other “agents” that a protest was about to breach the chambers. It was at this time that key people: pence, pelosi, schumer, mcconnell can be seen being walked out and escorted from the chamber. This effectively halted the Entire Chamber Process.

q2: why was it necessary to halt the chamber process

a2: the crisis was created to eliminate the motion challenges to halt the certification and to begin voting to look into voting irregularities and fraud.

facts: the two motions were completely legal and constitutional under at least two constitutionally recognized procedures…procedures that would REQUIRE the house to pause the certification and then vote to determine whether the motions of suspend could move forward.

q3: what was so important to refuse this motion and the subsequent votes to suspend the electoral certification

a3: it was important to remove that process entirely and continue the fraud and certify the fraud with no detractors on record. This effectively gives no standing for a scotus ruling appeal! understand this. If those two motions, even just one had successfully been voted EVEN IF THE MOTIONS were DENIED IN VOTE, this gives those who presented them with STANDING FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL LEGAL ARGUMENT BEFORE SCOTUS. Understand this.

q4: could this have been done some other way other than creating a crisis/protest?

a4: unlikely…In order to prevent those two motions, requires that speaker of the house, minority leaders, and the president of the congress (vice president of the united states: pence), to NOT BE PRESENT IN THE CHAMBERS. Once the capitol police and other “law enforcements agents” informed the speaker and these three other individuals, pelosi UNILATERALLY UNDER EMERGENCY RULES, suspended the business of the congress. This protest was necessary ..the crisis was created..because there is no other way to suspend the business of certification UNILATERALLY. By creating a crisis…invokes emergency procedures. No other circumstances other than war or mass simultaneous explosive diaahrea can create such unilateral speaker delivered suspension of the certification.

q5: Why did the motions, once that the speaker RECONVENED congress, move forward back again to the floor for votes? Why were members dissallowed to even consider putting forward ANY motions to the floor in when the chamber business was reopened?

a5: the speaker initiated the NEW sessions under special emergency rules. These rules abandon and make it clear that the ONLY purpose of the new session was to EXPEDITE the certification and dismiss all prior regular session procedural rules. This is why those two motions to table votes to consider a debate and pause to the certifications of state vote electors never happened later that evening when the house business was reconvened!

q6: Other than new rules, emergency rules, what other peculiar things occurred when the speaker reconvened?

a6: members were allowed to “vote” in proxy…remotely…not being present…(you can use your imagination about what conditions were placed on ALL members during this time to prevent anyone from “getting out of line”. Also clearly, it was at THIS NEW SESSION that VP Pence, President of Congress, would also have no ability to even consider pausing the electoral certification…because there was no motions of disagreements on the matter. So in a technical legal claim, he is correct that he had no constitutional authority to address any issues of fraud or doubts about electoral irregularities. But this completely dismisses the FACT that congress created rules in this crisis/emergency that never allowed them to be floored!

understand what happened in jan 6…don’t get hung up on viking impostors, stolen pelosi computers, podium heists, and complicit capitol police.

understand the process and what happened and what WAS NOT ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.

this was a coup….it was a very organized and carefully planned coup. VP Pence without a doubt as well as most members of the house were quite aware of how the certification was going to be MANAGED.

it would require new rules to prevent the debate clause from occurring!

new rules that ONLY AN EMERGENCY CRISIS COULD CREATE!

so they created an emergency.

noting: I understand why many people have great interest in debunking the j6 event…I get that. I think it is important to dissect and examine the events of that day.

but please…step back and understand WHY these things happened…examine the chain of events in congress…why those two motions that would have at least paused the certification THAT WOULD GIVE VP PENCE THE CONSTITUTIONALLY RECOGNIZED POWER TO MOVE TO SUSPEND THE ELECTORAL CERTIFICATION AND THEN EXAMINE THE IRREGULARITIES AND CLAIMS OF FRAUD!

at the very center of this coup stands Pence…the same individual who also spoiled President Trump’s first opportunities in the earlies hours of his Presidency just 4 years prior, when he created and facilitated the removal of LTGEN Flynn. I will not spend much time on this thread explaining why LTGEN Flynn was so important to President Trump and why the IC was so afraid he would have advisory power to the President. That I will leave for another day, another time. But understand this clearly: MIKE PENCE WAS AND IS WORKING FOR THE MOST CORRUPT CRIMINAL TREASONOUS PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT.

protip: if you really want to get a true understanding of this matter videos of protesters walking in the capitol is not going to address them. Actual video and time line records of events and the specific actions taken by the speaker just moments before TWO MAJOR ELECTORAL ALTERING MOTIONS WERE ABOUT TO BE FLOORED. This crisis was developed just in time with a precise coordination to prevent those two motions to be entered into the chamber record. The two motions do not exist. The emergency powers established in the new session made sure they never could be entered. The emergency powers could never happen without a crisis…

I tried to find a way to just run an excerpt instead of lifting the thing wholesale, but couldn’t without disrupting and diluting it too badly for it to make any kind of sense. Seeing as how I think Tucker’s J6 expose amounts to one of the most important acts of True Journalism that’s occurred in my lifetime, I offer no apology for making that call. This needs, nay demands, the widest exposure we can possibly give it; as a blogger of twenty-plus years’ standing, I am pleased and proud to make whatever little contribution I can to this effort.

Yes, it really is, as I said yesterday, a Big Fuckin’ Deal.

Deception, intrigue, and coverup: the games they play

Posted on March 4, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

It didn’t begin with Decomposin’ Jaux, it’s a longstanding Presidential tradition.

Deception and Failure
From Wilson to Roosevelt to Biden, and beyond.

White House physician Kevin O’Connor recently proclaimed that Joe Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” The Delaware Democrat quickly raised doubts by stumbling up the stairs of an aircraft, a feat he once performed three times on a single ascent.

Dr. O’Connor failed to reveal how Biden’s mental competence test had turned out, or even if he had taken one. As on the fitness side, the evidence is already out there.

Joe Biden is sometimes unaware of his own location and mounts a public search for people who recently died, such as Rep. Jackie Walorski. Biden is also famous for spouting gibberish beyond any comprehension, such as here, here, and here, to cite only a few.

For all but the willfully blind, Joe Biden is not mentally and physically fit to exercise the duties of the presidency. To be fair, the Delaware Democrat is not the only White House occupant ever to be in such a condition. Consider, for example, Woodrow Wilson.

From there, the tale of the malignancy Wilson’s rapid-fire sequence of three (3) debilitating strokes and his wife Edith’s all-but-official assumption of the throne in his stead is recounted, along with the polio-stricken FDR’s now-well-known infirmity and the meticulous concealment of same by shadowy, skulking minions in the government he eventually was too incapacitated to “lead.” This specific incident of that long, sordid history is one I hadn’t heard about before:

During the 1944 campaign in New York City, Roosevelt rode in an open car for more than four hours and was “seen by millions, looked cheerful, animated, conversing, waving, throwing his head back with that famous contagious laugh…It seemed evident to all that day in New York that he was as strong, as resilient as ever.” The press and the public had no clue what was happening behind the scenes.

“At points along the parade route the Secret Service had commandeered garage space,” Gallagher recalled. “As the presidential cavalcade passed the garage, the president’s car was turned out of the parade into the warmth of the heated building. Secret Service agents quickly lifted the president from the car and stretched him out full length on blankets laid on the floor. They removed his clothes down to the skin. He was toweled dry and given a rubdown. He was redressed in dry clothes, brandy was poured down his throat, and he was lifted back into the car. The pit stop was quickly done and the president was soon back in the cavalcade.”

WOW. Okay, that is some SERIOUS skullduggery right there. Now, back to our contemporary contretemps.

Call it the Pangloss presidency, an ongoing disaster proclaimed to be the best of all possible worlds. And for all but the willfully blind, a Pétain presidency is also going on in the United States of America.

In Conrad Black’s phrase, Joe Biden is a waxworks effigy of a president, physically and mentally unfit for duty. This deception is not splendid and the failure already evident. The aftermath will likely be much worse than anything that took place in the wake of Woodrow Wilson or FDR.

Well, in Wilson’s case anyway, the nation was fortunate enough to have one of the very best American Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, to come along behind him and undo nearly all the damage Wilson had wrought. Alas, with national “elections” now reduced to patent farce—locked down tighter than Dick’s hatband via D卐M☭CRAT chicanery compounded by Vichy GOPe co-connivance and Praetorian Media’s unflagging efforts in support—this generation’s Coolidge would never get within shouting distance of the Oval Office.

Doesn’t much matter anyway, I’m afraid; at this late date, we’re way past all that sort of thing now. Far too much has gone on, far too much let slip for far too long. No, the die has long since been cast. If this mess ever is to be cleaned up, it can only be accomplished using means and methods a good bit more drastic, direct, and stringent than mere politics.

Tyranny, straight up

Posted on March 4, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

As Limbaugh frequently did, one can only ask: WHO THE HELL DO YOU ROTTEN FUCKING BASTARDS THINK YOU ARE, ANYWAY?!?

Okay, maybe Rush never put it quite that way.

The U.K. Briefly Considered Killing All Pet Cats Early in the Pandemic

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little was known about the virus, the U.K. government briefly considered asking the public to exterminate every cat amid fears that the pets could spread the disease.

Lord Bethell, a former deputy Health Minister from 2020 to 2021, revealed the news Wednesday during an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News.

“Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?” he added.

Well, I can certainly tell you what I HOPE would have happened, what SHOULD have happened. But the UK being the endarkened, blighted shitrapy it’s become, I seriously doubt anything much at all would have, sad to say.

The bombshell revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight. 10 Downing Street’s own feline friend Larry’s unofficial Twitter parody account wrote: “hard not to take this personally.”

One would like to think so, surely. But then you groveling serfs didn’t raise much of a squawk about all the other things your tyrannical goobermint has taken from you over the years, now did ya?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, animals do not appear to play a significant role in spreading COVID-19 to humans, but cases of animals have been documented and most of them were “infected after contact with people with COVID-19.”

So, it’s us hoomans who pose a threat to the animals, not the other way ‘round, eh? Of course, that’s never been any obstacle to any government taking STRONG, VIGOROUS ACTION™ to save us all from something or other, now has it?

Despite this, some countries have pursued the mass culling of animals or pets in a bid to contain the virus. Hong Kong tested and euthanized some 2,000 hamsters in January 2022, after several tested positive for the virus in the weeks prior. Earlier on in the pandemic, in November 2020, Denmark culled 17 million minks over fears that a mutation could be transferred from minks to humans.

Denmark was the world’s largest mink producer and the decision was found to have no legal justification. The fallout prompted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to call a snap election in October last year after a member of her ruling coalition government threatened to withdraw their support amid the controversy.

Bold mine, because…well, y’know.

Never, ever fool yourself for a moment that there is ANYTHING AT ALL that ANY government, ANYWHERE, wouldn’t DARE to do with or to you, anytime it feels like it, for no reason whatsoever beyond that they just want to. “Legal justification”? “Moral/ethical propriety“? Scientific/medical/public-health emergency”? “Economic/military/cultural/climate ‘crisis’”? Stop it already, you’re killing me over here. Sorry and all, but that ain’t the way this works. Your pets; your charcoal grills; your gas stoves; your cars; your guns; your money; your home; your very lives—all those and plenty more are fair game, just grist for the mill.

Once the Superstate beast has been allowed to establish itself and begun to spread its leathery wings in triumph, there’s no longer a single thing that’s out of bounds. We don’t have to like it. We DO have to live with it. And as the Founders well knew, that’s never a good or pleasant thing.

Democracy, yes?

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Mike

“Democracy,” NO.

The Façade of Democracy
Democracy today means nothing more than fulfillment of the Left’s agenda and their consolidation of power. Neither Ukraine nor America are democracies.
It appears that the definition of “democracy” is rather fluid. In fact, it doesn’t really mean democracy at all. Rather, it is an authoritarian and undemocratic term used by self-interested politicians to defend and promote their own desired outcomes. Last time I checked, violent coup d’état wasn’t emblematic of “democracy.”

The Democratic Party and even many RINOs assign the same undemocratic meaning to their use of the term “democracy” in the United States.

The United States supported the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine, which has been called a “Revolution of Dignity.” But American protesters on January 6, 2021, who were overwhelmingly peaceful—the only murder was committed by a Capitol police officer, who shot an unarmed female protestor named Ashli Babbitt—were called “insurrectionists.”

In contrast, cries of voter fraud in the Ukrainian elections of 2004 were met with serious concern by the U.S government. The mass protests were encouraged and supported and the overturning of the Ukrainian election results heralded as a win for “democracy.”

Cries of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election were summarily denounced and dismissed. The United States rushed to declare the 2004 election results in Ukraine illegitimate. The United States rushed to declare the U.S. presidential election in 2020 the most free and fair in our history.

Is America even a democracy?

Of course not; it was never supposed to be, as everyone here will know full well. The Founders, hallowed be their names, hated and feared democracy as nothing more than “mob rule,” and as time has proven beyond all debate, they were perfectly correct to shun it as they did. It amounts to yet another confirmation of their unimpeachable wisdom, which we have ignored to our own profound detriment.

Just as Democrats had no regard for our own election results in 2016, they had no regard for the election results in Ukraine, when they successfully ousted Yanukovych.

The lifeblood of a democracy is free speech and the general diffusion of knowledge, which ensures the voter is informed. Yet the Democratic Party and the FBI colluded with social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election and falsely dismissed it as “Russian disinformation.” Was this democratic?

The Democrats continue to pursue their witch hunt against former President Trump in hopes of ultimately preventing him from running for re-election. This effort too is justified with claims of “defending” or “protecting” democracy.

Democracy is a façade in America and when the term is thrown around by Democrats its new meaning is tyranny.

Democracy today means nothing more than fulfillment of the Left’s agenda and their consolidation of power. Neither Ukraine nor America are democracies. Democracy is tantamount to destruction and both Ukraine and America are being destroyed. Democracy is under attack; in the name of protecting democracy, of course.

If Democrats succeed in protecting democracy in America, we won’t have any democracy at all.

Well, DUH. For tyrants such as they, that’s a feature, not a bug. For us as well, really, just not in quite the same way or for the same reasons.

Just keep on keepin’ on

Posted on February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 by Mike

Gonna have to “excerpt” damned near all of this one, I’m afraid, since it expresses my own thoughts on DeSantis the Destroyer pretty precisely.

We Need to Talk About Mark Levin’s Interview With Ron DeSantis Last Night
On Sunday night, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared on “Life, Liberty, and Levin” on Fox News, purportedly to promote his new book, The Courage to Be Free, which comes out this week.

While DeSantis has not yet declared that he’s running for president, he certainly sounded like a man who’s making the case for his candidacy. Or, if not, he’s making a case for conservatism as the path to American success and prosperity— the subtitle of the book is “Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”

As my colleague Stephen Green pointed out earlier today:

DeSantis isn’t traveling to early presidential primary states like Iowa or New Hamphire, at least not yet. Instead, his most recent tour was through three struggling Deep Blue cities to tout what he’s done differently in Florida… DeSantis is calmly but quite publicly holding up his state as a model for the nation, just like a governor running for president would do. Except that he has yet to announce that he’s running. He hasn’t even formed one of those exploratory committees that allows a not-yet candidate to fundraise.

I don’t see how it’s a bad thing for DeSantis to wait to announce, if he does indeed plan to run. Does anyone really think the primary season is too short and needs to be lengthened? The 2016 primary seemed like it would never end—and the personal attacks and circular firing squad did nothing to help spread the message about the benefits of conservatism.

To the best of my knowledge, contra the ceaseless nattering from Vichy GOPe blowflies seeking to play Da Guv off against Trump for their own purposes, the one and only thing DeSantis has said to date about running for Prexy in ’24 is that he ain’t gonna. He’s perfectly free to run if he wants, just as who even knows how many other ambitious governors have before him; there’s nothing especially sinister or shameful about that, really. That said, I still very much hope he won’t. For me, it all boils down to this:

Whether or not DeSantis decides to run for president, he’s demonstrated over and over again that it’s possible to stand up to the woke mob and The Swamp and win. He stood up to Disney and won—depriving the woke company of its special tax breaks and self-governing authority. He noted in the interview that on his first day in office, he sat down and read what authority the governor had and then went to work. He fired a George Soros-backed DA when he refused to enforce the law; remade a failing Florida university in the image of Hillsdale College; went after venues hosting perverts performing drag shows with little kids in the audience; and banned sexually explicit materials in the classrooms of children in grades K-2. He was one of the first governors to re-open his state during the covid pandemic and he ordered children and teachers back into their classrooms. He also refused to force vaccine mandates. Unlike Trump, who stood mutely next to Dr. Fauci while he stood at the podium and spewed his lies about the origins of the covid virus, masking, and the vaccine, DeSantis did his research and decided for himself what was best for his state.

And those are just some of the highlights.

There’s been an effort by some to portray DeSantis as a Swamp creature, beholden to Paul Ryan (who?) or something, but that’s laughable on its face. This guy is fighting the liberals and WINNING. Who cares if he ran into Kevin McCarthy in a men’s room once, or whatever it is the Twitter bots are saying this week? All I care about is winning and taking back the country. If the GOP elites want to pour money into his campaign, let them. You can’t win the presidency without money. There’s more than enough proof to indicate that DeSantis is his own man and not beholden to special interests.

Noticeably absent from the interview was any mention of Trump’s recent attacks on DeSantis. Levin mentioned that the book, which DeSantis actually wrote himself, doesn’t contain any of the gossip or attacks on other politicians that tend to be a staple in political books. Instead, it focuses on DeSantis’s biography and his policies and principles.

“It’s like if you and I would have had a private conversation three years ago, why should I regurgitate that and put that out there when you were talking to me in confidence?” the governor explained. “And so I try to focus on the policies. What does it mean to be a leader in this day and age because, as you know, Mark, when you’re standing for our values, you come under assault in American society.”

“If you’re standing for the right things, you’re going to have to show courage under fire if you ultimately want to bring this stuff in for a landing, and so we had to do that so many different times. And I just felt that’s something that people are gonna be more interested in than any kind of dishing about private conversations I may have had with somebody.”

If there’s one thing we all should have learned since 2016—the last two nightmarish years especially—it’s that the President is nothing but a figurehead, a dumbshow put on for the edification and/or entertainment of the flyover Great Unwashed rubes by the Men Behind The DC Curtain. Do yourself, your state, and your nation a solid, Ron: don’t fall for it. You’ve accomplished some truly worthwhile, significant things as governor, something no real outsider or reformer will ever be permitted to do in Mordor On The Potomac so long as the Barad-Dur still stands.

Let the Swamp players keep playing, the manipulators keep manipulating, the Beltway Bandits keep up their banditry; they’re going to, no matter what you or anybody else does or says. As we saw with the Agony of Trump, no one man can possibly fix all that’s wrong in the Garden of FederalGovCo. You’ll do much more good where you’re at than you will under siege in the White House—ineffectual, beset on all sides, while we look on in despair as the jackals strip yet another carcass clean to the bone.

Do not take this cup from them, no matter how passionately it’s urged on you. Stay the course. And for Christ’s sweet sake, stay right where you are.

The Big Con

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Mike

Little did MAD magazine know how truly big a thing they were onto with this classic cover:

Ahhh, innocence! — *The con has only gotten bigger since then*

Fran calls it the Longest Long Con, which works for me equally well.

If the media megaphone can get you charged up about a notionally two-sided contest — with the help of the contestants, of course — it can keep your attention on what’s being said and away from what’s being done. That is the pattern of the last forty years at least. It keeps the political parties fat and happy, the media moguls dancing in dollars…and you and I bereft of the thing this nation was founded to protect and preserve: FREEDOM.

It’s a con game, Gentle Reader. It’s been nothing else since Ronald Reagan left office — and do you want to know what the Big Giveaway is, the one that everyone in this country should reflect on? It’s right out there in front of God and everybody, but only a handful of commentators have even brushed their microphones against it:

It’s the swindling of Donald Trump.

Trump was a genuine Outsider, a maverick determined to do right as he saw it. That made him an unacceptable, permanently “outside the tent” figure to the master croupiers of the Con Game, they who pour the Very Best Butter over the cams of the Big Rake-Off Machine we call party politics. They labor ceaselessly to keep We the People in Us vs. Them mode, that the oceans of campaign dollars might continue to flow uninterrupted into their coffers. Despite their best efforts, Trump gained the White House and set about doing as he said he would do. Unthinkable! the masters of the Establishment said to one another. No one keeps campaign promises! That’s why we let our puppets make them!!

So Trump had to go. The theft of the 2020 presidential election was the plainest imaginable revelation about the essential phoniness of contemporary political “conflict.” But despite Election 2020 and subsequent developments – Ukraine, anyone? — only a few have caught on.

Disaffiliate yourselves from the farce. Stop paying it any attention. Stop expecting political mechanisms to solve any of your problems. Concentrate on doing the best you can for your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your community, however defined. The game is rigged — so completely that even though “it’s the only game in town,” there’s absolutely no point in playing it any longer.

Be free. Freedom is not granted; it is taken: by you or from you. And the longer you focus on the con game called politics, the longer it will be withheld from you — by your own stubborn inanition.

Wait, if by that you mean I can no longer poke fun at the buffoonish, shambolic FiNC (Feeb in Chief, that would be), then I’m totally NOT down with that, now.

When you’re Right, you’re right

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Mike

Surber runs down a disturbing list of some of the many, many things we foolish, overly-paranoid Reich-wingers had right all along.

Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons say, “Foolish Earthlings.”

Lefties say foolish right-wingers.

Nik Popli of Time magazine wrote, “This isn’t the first time a culture war has targeted a common household appliance (ie, the ongoing crusade to ban gas stoves—M). Republicans have been venting their frustration over federal energy-efficiency standards for more than two decades — including over the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that forced U.S. consumers to switch to more energy-efficient light bulbs.”

Conservatives warned at the time that the replacement — Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs — contained mercury.

On July 31, 2007, Dr. John Balbus, Chief Health Officer at Environmental Defense Fund, assured one and all that there was no problem with CFLs.

He wrote, “Despite some alarming news reports, you don’t have much to worry about. If a CFL breaks, some of the mercury that’s contained in the bulb will evaporate into the air. How much? It’s hard to be certain, but one study looking at long tubular fluorescent bulbs found that over a two-week period, only 17% to 40% of the mercury in the bulb evaporated. The rest remained stuck in the bulb. Roughly one-third of the mercury that evaporated did so in the first eight hours after the breakage; the rest seeped out slowly over the remainder of the study period.”

Foolish right-wingers.

15 years later, lighting manufacturer TCP reported, “You’ve seen the headlines. CFL light bulb bans started making their way through state legislatures last year, and California has become the second state to sign one into law. Vermont’s light bulb ban passed in May, forbidding sales of CFLs as of February 2023. California’s phase-out begins in January 2024.”

Gee, why is that?

TCP reported, “Because CFLs and linear fluorescent lamps — aka those long, slender tubes in overhead fixtures — contain the known toxin mercury, the CFL light bulb ban is framed as a protection for both waste workers and the wider environment.”

So we switched over to LEDs. I cannot wait to find out what the flaw is in LED so lefties can ban them as well and replace them with wax cylinders that provide light as they burn down. Remember, the answer to the question what did socialists use before they used candles is electricity.

Foolish right-wingers keep being right.

Hey, it’s right (ahem) there in the name, and there’s a reason for that.

The Great Debunkening

Posted on February 11, 2023February 11, 2023 by Mike

Looks like the science is finally settled.

I’m pro-science. That’s why I’m anti-mask

The landmark Cochrane study shows that the mask skeptics were right

I believe in the scientific method: make an observation. Ask a question. Form a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. Listen to the answer. Insisting on the answer before pursuing this methodological approach is not science, it is propaganda.

And “masks work” was never more than propaganda — rooted in mechanical plausibility, not actual science — furthered by public health officials, left-leaning government leaders, the press and the party faithful starting in 2020 and continuing to the present day.

The left is holding fast to the idea that masks do work, despite all the evidence to the contrary. In fact, as of February 6, mask mandates have been reinstated at four elementary schools in Marin County, California.

Will there be redemption for those who had the audacity to challenge authoritarian public health bureaucrats? No, it seems. Will there be a change in policy now that the science is clear? Again, no, it seems.

Will there be a doubling down, with the self-proclaimed pro-“science” crowd continuing to insist masking works despite the scientific evidence showing us that they don’t? Yes. It appears so.

What seems clear is that the enthusiastic, religious devotion to the dogma — “masks work” — signified adherence to a set of beliefs: I mask therefore I am good. I mask my children therefore I am loyal to the Democratic Party and public health diktats. I mask therefore I care. I am a loyal follower of “the Science.” My faith is unwavering.

Those who claim to be on the side of “the Science” will continue to push unscientific policies in order to prove that they were right all along. This is the sunk cost fallacy writ large. Don’t admit mistakes. Ignore the actual science in favor of “the Science.” And continue to punish those who challenge. As well as those most vulnerable who simply aren’t in a position to challenge at all.

“Science” has apparently been rebranded by the left. It is now a slogan — a tagline — shouted at heretics to signify one’s moral superiority and loyalty to the party. What we have now is “science” that ignores the scientific method, which means “the science” is a cult. And a dangerous one at that.

Yes, it most certainly is. That is neither coincidence nor happenstance.

The larger issue here is that Leftists, having by now promoted their misbegotten ideology on up to de facto religious-cult status, while also being constitutionally incapable of leaving anything under the sun imaginable alone and untampered with, must therefore pretzel actual science into “The Science” in order to bring it into compliance with their contradictory catechism.

They’d adamantly deny there’s any religious-cult aspect to their beliefs, natch, particularly as it applies to the Church of the Eternal Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ denomination. But the truth couldn’t be more obvious to any reasonable, thoughtful person.

Which is not to suggest that science and religion are incompatible, mind. It’s just that they’re two very different things, that’s all—distinct modes of thought whose focus is on two separate realms, which we might think of as the practical and the ethereal. Religion is definitionally a matter of faith, and matters of faith are NOT amenable to empirical proof. That built-in contradiction in terms is just another of the myriad reasons why, intellectually speaking, shitlibs can’t help but trip over their own dicks fifty times before lunch every day.

Intellectually speaking.

The aforementioned Cochrane study is here, and says this:

One of the largest and most comprehensive studies on the effectiveness of masks found they do almost nothing to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.

The study reviewed 78 randomized control trials—experiments that have long been considered “the gold standard” for medicine—which assessed the effectiveness of face masks against flu, COVID-19, and similar illnesses. It found that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” for the general public, no matter what kind of mask is used. Even N95 masks, considered the most effective at filtering airborne particles, showed no clear benefit for health care workers.

The study was published on January 30 by the Cochrane Library, a world-renowned medical database that is famous for its high-quality evidence reviews. It comes as a battering ram to the recommendations of the U.S. public health establishment, which urged children as young as two to wear masks throughout the pandemic.

“This amounts to the scientific nail in the coffin for mask mandates,” said Kristen Walsh, a clinical professor of pediatrics in Morristown, New Jersey. “I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that some schools are still actively forcing children to wear masks, much less children who need to see faces to learn.”

You shouldn’t try; it makes sense only when you recognize that the Scamdemic entire wasn’t really about health or safety, but about the twin pillars of authoritarian tyranny: power and control.

(Via Ed)

Free speech: dead as the dodo

Posted on February 11, 2023 by Mike

The incomparable John Hayward’s latest.

A generation after the supposed triumph of classical liberalism at the “end of history,” free speech exists nowhere on Earth as a matter of principle. Every single tech mogul’s commitment to free speech evaporates when powerful authoritarians demand censorship.

Authoritarian foreign regimes know they only need to threaten blockage of Western social media services to make their management comply with censorship demands. Some push back harder than others, but in the end, they all cave. They can’t afford to lose access to growing markets.

Tech moguls rationalize to themselves that they can still do some good in oppressive countries by complying with some censorship demands – it’s better than being silenced completely. Any way you rationalize it, it’s a power calculation that limits the speech of the powerless.

Domestically, we’ve seen government officials using economic leverage and ideological affinity to limit speech in collusion with their Little Partners in the private sector. The ruling left-wing Party has operatives in tech companies that did much of the dirty work.

The power calculations have shifted a little lately, especially after Musk bought Twitter, but they’re still power calculations, not adamant defenses of free speech as a matter of principle. The variables changed, but the equations remain.

A troubling percentage of the free world’s population evidently believes censorship IS free speech – as though speech were a limited resource that must be allocated by the State with an eye toward “justice” and “equity.” Only by silencing some can others be truly free to speak.

“Hate speech is not free speech!” is a pure power calculation: those with power will decide what constitutes “hate speech.” They invariably rule that disagreement with their ideology and political demands is “hateful” and must be silenced.

How utterly convenient for them.

In America That Was, the very place where such forgetfulness was never supposed to happen, we somehow lost sight of the fact that “offensive” speech is the very embodiment of free speech—that once we’ve allowed TPTB to stifle speech they deem “offensive,” the hourglass has been turned over, the countdown to the inevitable loss of yet another Constitutionally-enumerated right has begun. Thus:

Speech is vital to political organization – in the Internet era, they are nearly synonymous. Twitter mobs have a direct pipeline to real political power via lazy, biased legacy media – provided they agree with the ruling Party. That pipeline is tightly shut against dissidents.

“Disinformation” is also a crude political calculation, not a high-minded and principled commitment to protect the population against fraud. We see examples every single day of disinformation that is tolerated, and boosted, when it comes from members of the ruling Party.

As with hate speech, the powerful decide what constitutes actionable “disinformation,” and they cannot resist the temptation of heavily tilting those scales against dissenters and speakers of forbidden truth. Party apparatchiks are never banned or reprimanded for disinformation.

The “end of history” was actually the triumph of authoritarianism, not classical liberalism – political scientists and commentators were just too giddy over the fall of the Soviet Union to see it. Individual rights, beginning with free speech, have steadily eroded since then.

It’s Doc Zero; reading it all isn’t mandatory, but you’re going to want to nonetheless.

Another FederalGovCo cash grab

Posted on February 7, 2023February 7, 2023 by Mike

The goobermint is your enemy.

Those 87,000 new IRS agents that you were promised would only target the rich…

They’re coming after waitresses’ tips now: “monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer’s point-of-sale system.”https://t.co/WAvh0t2cNN

— Mike Palicz (@Mike_Palicz)

February 7, 2023

Hey, no need to fret, it’s a purely “voluntary” program. For now.

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