Yech! – Page 24

The era of cynicism

Posted on November 24, 2020November 24, 2020 by Mike

It’s the only thing that makes sense anymore.

The Soviet Union, like all radical experiments, went through several phases in its roughly three generations of existence. The first phase, of course, was the revolution, in which the old order was toppled and a battle ensued to fill the void. This initial phase of revolution is always the one that attracts the most attention. This is when the great heroes of the revolution and the great villains of it are made. It is in this phase we get both Lenin and Stalin, hero and villain.

There is a phase that gets little attention and that is when the people come to terms with the irrationality of the world that has been created for them. One reason Stalin was able to send so many to their deaths or to labor camps is so many people kept thinking there was some rationality to the world being created. Some remained idealistic believers in the cause, while others became critics of the cause. They assumed the revolution would bring clarity and rationality when it brought only the opposite.

In time, the people came to terms with this. The humor of the Soviet Union reflected the fact that one got along by accepting the irrational in the same way you accept that the grass is green or the sky is blue. You don’t think about it. The jokes were often about these daily contradictions and how the unfortunate were those who did not get the joke that was at the heart of those contradictions. In other words, the joke was always on the fool who was not cynical enough to anticipate the lie.

This is relevant in our current age as we may be past the revolutionary stage and into that time when the people adjust to the irrational. The legacy conservative media keeps pounding the drum about how “we’re lurching into socialism” when we have been a socialist society for generations now. There is no aspect of our economic life outside the grip of the now semi-permanent ruling class. Telling people otherwise is just part of the way the ruling class controls the population.

Of course, this reality is dawning on even the dullest people, so we are being told that the bad guys are planning a “radical revolution.” The truth is, that revolution is well past the planning stage. It has already happened. From top to bottom, despite party labels or rhetoric, the system is stacked with people committed to the great reordering of society into the egalitarian paradise. The expulsion of Trump from office like a foreign body is the proof that the organism of state is wholly alien now.

In other words, a revolution has occurred out of view from the rest of us and now we are seeing the revolutionaries step out of the shadows. This is not a lot different than how Stalin took control of the party and government. He quietly consolidated his hold on the party, while his rivals were thinking the revolution was still ongoing. By the time they realized what had happened, it was too late. This realization was probably (the) penultimate thing that went through Trotsky’s head.

GREAT line, that one. Onwards.

Now we are in the phase where we get used to the often-bizarre contradictions in the rules being imposed by the new rulers. Some are easy, like the fact that states have put mentally disturbed Jewish men in sundresses in charge of public health. These are ornamental positions, so putting a crazy person in the role allows the governor to display his piety at little cost. Until the Covid hysteria, no one had any reason to know their state had public health officials.

Other bits of the new normal have no explanation. For example, states are now telling people they cannot make noise in their home, as part of the alleged fight against the spread of Covid. In Europe, they are banning the sale of alcohol at certain times, claiming this is to fight Covid.

Hate to bring it up and all, Z, but it ain’t just Europe.

On Wednesday, Nov. 25, restaurants and bars (in Pennsylvania—M) are ordered to suspend alcohol sales at 5 p.m. until 8 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 26. Gov. Wolf says the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the “biggest day for drinking” and acknowledged bars and restaurants have been hit hard by the pandemic, but this one-night ban is needed.

Uh huh. Now as it happens, this grotesquely un-Constitutional decree was actually issued by the very “mentally disturbed Jewish man in a sundress” ZMan mentioned above (utterly ludicrous photo of said headcase at the GP link), which is pretty funny all by itself. But El Supremo Wolf’s follow-on “don’t blame meeee!” whine is one for the record books.

“The thing that we can’t do is ignore reality and say ‘yeah you folks, for no fault of your own, have been hit hardest by this virus.’ But the virus is what’s doing this. It’s not me. It’s not the administration. It’s not the government,” said Gov. Wolf.

Oh no no no, of course not. As everyone knows, tyranny is never, EVER the fault of an invasive, too-powerful government, even less so of the overreaching crawly things in charge of running it! Why, who could ever countenance making such an outlandish, irrational claim as that, for goodness’ sake? Such talk really ought to be against the law, if you ask me.

My GOD, the balls on these oxygen thieves. But honestly, how can you not love it just the same? Consider:

The ability to spew patent claptrap with a straight-face: “The thing that we can’t do is ignore reality…”WHEN “IGNORING REALITY” IS PRECISELY WHAT HE’S DOING
Alcohol sales must be banned—because, as has been firmly established by extensive research, testing, and observation, THEVIRUSTHEVIRUSTHEVIRUS!!!™is a bigger lush than Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and the ghost of Ted Kennedy put together, and just looooves itself a good, solid toot—but only between the hours of 5pm and 8am Thanksgiving Day. After 8am, humanity will BE SAAAAAFE!!! again, and can enjoy a snort if it likes. But not a moment before. Because, y’know, SCIENCE!!!
A nonsentient cluster of RNA strands and other such granular material—without authority, official standing, or even the ability to speak or sign the unlawful order—is somehow, some way, “what’s doing this.” Again: uttered with a straight face, with as much fake conviction as any lower-tier American pro-pol slime mold can scrape up, as if the man actually expected sensible people to believe it
BE SAAAAAAAFE!!! Also, do as you’re told, or else

Please pardon me, all, but I need to ask a simple question at this point:

WHY IN THE EVER-LOVIN’ BLUE-EYED WORLD AREN’T THESE WORMS EITHER LOCKED UP OR SWINGING BY THEIR NECKS FROM A FUCKING LAMPPOST, ANYWAY?

Asking for a friend, that’s all.

Cynicism? You better believe it, chum. It’s the last refuge sane people have at this late date.

Fleeing the nest they fouled

Posted on November 15, 2020November 15, 2020 by Mike

Instead of moving down here without invitation or encouragement and ruining our homes for us the exact same way you did your own, consider giving NOT VOTING FOR ANY MORE SOCIALISTS a try, maybe.

More than 300,000 New Yorkers have bailed from the Big Apple in the last eight months, new stats show.

City residents filed 295,103 change of address requests from March 1 through Oct. 31, according to data The Post obtained from the US Postal Service under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Since the data details only when 11 or more forwarding requests were made to a particular county outside NYC, the number of moves is actually higher. And a single address change could represent an entire household, which means far more than 300,000 New Yorkers fled the five boroughs.

Whatever the exact number, the exodus — which began when COVID-19 hit the city in early spring — is much greater than in prior years. From just March through July, there were 244,895 change of address requests to destinations outside of the city, more than double the 101,342 during the same period in 2019.

The escape from New York is fueled not only by coronavirus concerns, but economic worries, school chaos and rising crime, experts say.

Michael Hendrix, director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute, which has commissioned surveys about the state of the city, was not surprised by the data.

“I think people are afraid,” Hendrix said. “They’re afraid of catching a deadly virus and they’re afraid of crime and other quality of life concerns. One thing we also hear is about trash and cleanliness of the city.”

Since I’ve expressed my thoughts on this ongoing saga several times already and no longer really give much of a damn about it, I wouldn’t have bothered posting on this particular installment unless it had some aspect I found odd or amusing. I’m pretty sure y’all caught what that aspect might have been, right?

Oh, please

Posted on November 6, 2020 by Mike

Gloating abounds on the Pollyanna Right that Biden-Harris-Whoever will find him/her/itself tied in knots by the GOPe-controlled Senate, unable to accomplish much of anything. Julie Kelly ain’t having any of it.

Yes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s record on confirming federal judges, including three Supreme Court nominees, is laudable. But the four-year reign of the Republican Senate under a Republican president is a shameful account of missed opportunities, broken promises, and straight-up subversion of Donald Trump. During one of the most fraught, destructive periods in American history, Senate Republicans squandered rather than wielded their immense political power.

Longtime pledges to reform immigration laws and repeal the Affordable Care Act were cast aside. When the president used his legal authority to attempt to secure the southern border in the spring of 2019, a dozen Senate Republicans vetoed his emergency order.

Rather than stand up to the Democratic Party’s race hustlers, Senate Republicans—including McConnell—condemned the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as racially motivated even when evidence contradicted those claims. A few Republican senators sponsored legislation to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth as a sop to the Left.

As lawless thugs tore down statues of America’s Founders and Antifa mobs occupied swaths of major U.S. cities, some Republican senators didn’t even bother to attend a public hearing about Antifa’s ongoing threat to the country. President Trump often was the lone voice defending America’s history and ideals; following his riveting July 4 address at Mount Rushmore, where he unapologetically confronted America’s domestic enemies, Republican Senators were silent.

Of course, there’s no greater example of the Senate Republicans’ abdication of power than its complete and total failure to hold accountable any of the perpetrators of so-called Obamagate for orchestrating the biggest American political scandal of all time.

Rather than put a stop to the phony Trump-Russia collusion plotline, Senate Republicans played along with their Democratic counterparts. Every single Republican senator supported the appointment of Robert Mueller, a Beltway crony and BFF of James Comey. The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) then by Graham, performed no oversight of Mueller’s destructive probe despite holding the purse strings. When the president justifiably expressed his frustration at Mueller’s “witch hunt,” instead of defending the president, Senate Republicans vowed to “protect the Special Counsel.”

At the same time, top Republicans did nothing more than write stern letters and give Fox News interviews threatening to “get to the bottom” of the real scandal. Subpoenas were blocked; criminal referrals were ignored by the Justice Department; public interrogations were canceled or delayed until public interest waned.

It’s pure folly to think this Republican Senate will act as a bulwark against a Biden-Harris Administration. Armed with a slim majority, Senate Republicans undoubtedly will play footsie with their former colleagues under the solemn banner of “bringing the country together.”

“And this election did not give the Democrats power,” Ben Shapiro tweeted Thursday morning. “Biden’s most progressive priorities are DOA in a McConnell-run Senate.”

Only people who haven’t paid close attention to a McConnell-run Senate believe that to be true. Do they really believe folks like Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ben Sasse and Lindsey Graham will hold their ground against Biden? Do they really think Mitt Romney won’t attempt to carve out some simpish “Conscience of the Senate” role that lets him find common ground with Biden and Harris for the “betterment of democracy” or some nonsense?

Pure fantasy.

Yep. On the bright side, though, as the legendary Chesty Puller once said: “We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.” Perhaps we should consider directing our initial volley to the Right.

A man of (no) honor

Posted on October 29, 2020October 29, 2020 by Mike

Another self-styled “courageous hero” of the Left turns out to be a miserable, slimy little worm.

In 2018, the New York Times proudly published an anonymously written piece from a purported “senior official in the Trump administration,” knowing that this statement was a lie. “Anonymous” claimed that Trump was an idiot, but that a brave band of “senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda.” In fact, the author was Miles Taylor, a low-level functionary in DHS when he wrote the hit piece.

The anonymous article, published on Sept. 5, 2018, bore the lofty title, “I Am Part of the Resistance inside the Trump Administration: I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” As noted above, to give the piece heft, the New York Times claimed that it came from a “senior official in the Trump administration.” We now know this statement was an outright lie, for the Times admitted that the author’s “identity is known to us.”

The article was a nauseating glue of arrogant piety and self-serving condescension. On the one hand, “Anonymous” insisted that he and others like him “want the administration to succeed” and even agreed that “many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.” Nevertheless, his brave little band of saboteurs loathed Trump, and no matter how effective he was, they were going to thwart him. It was paragraph after paragraph of smug, self-righteous glop.

And a confession to having committed numerous acts of sabotage intended to hamper and undermine the Trump admin’s policies and initiatives that, were there any justice in America, would leave the cringing pantywaist wide open to indictment for sedition.

Taylor accompanied his confession with yet another pompous screed in which he explained why he’s so much better than everyone else. If I had to imagine purgatory, it would be sitting in a room listening to this guy trash other people and justify his higher morality and intelligence.

I hope you caught Taylor’s assertion that “Trump is a man without character.” Let’s talk about character. Taylor lied when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him if he was “Anonymous”…

Even worse than that, Taylor allowed a terrible smear to lie against Victoria Coates’s name. And while he’s acknowledged that he owes Coates an apology, none has been forthcoming.

Nor will it ever be, I’d bet. Oxygen thieves like Taylor don’t apologize for their misdeeds; the most anybody ever gets out of them is one of those too-familiar “I’m sorry if you were offended” pseudo-apologies which, true to form, satisfies no one but themselves. Contrition? Honest admission of guilt? Don’t make me laugh. Bottom line:

Miles Taylor is why the American people voted for Trump in 2016 and why, with all due disrespect for the polls and the pundits, it looks as if he’s going to win again in 2020. Americans have had it up to here and beyond with the self-righteous, dishonest, hypocritical, arrogant, self-serving professional governing class. These people are a plague on the American political body, and they need to go find an honest living in the private sector where they cause less harm.

Yeah, well, they aren’t gonna do that on their own initiative. Tragically, it becomes more apparent each and every day that Real Americans are going to have to take direct and forceful action to root them all out if the country is to survive relatively intact.

The Argument

Posted on October 28, 2020October 28, 2020 by Mike

Forget Huntergate. Forget the decades of unrestrained graft and corruption. Forget the sleaze, the lies, the patent incompetence. Forget the fundamental absurdity of a powerful career politican who’s spent almost five decades with his greedy snout rooting in the government trough now pledging to “fix” problems he never bothered himself about before, if we only make him president first. There’s only one argument anybody needs to make in support of the fact that Dementia Joe Biden is unfit to be president, and this is it.

Wow. Clearly, it’s not as bad as we thought it was; it’s much, much worse.

The binding chains of history

Posted on October 26, 2020October 26, 2020 by Mike

This one’s going to require a lot of excerpting, but I’m not going to tuck any of it under the fold. It needs to be up front and in easy viewing reach, in its entirety.

Seated at his kitchen table, finishing off the remains of a Saturday breakfast, Hunter Hollingsworth’s world was rocked by footsteps on his front porch and pounding at the door, punctuated by an aggressive order: “Open up or we’ll kick the door down.”

Surrounded on all sides of his house, and the driveway blocked, Hollingsworth was the target of approximately 10 federal and state wildlife officials packing pistols, shotguns and rifles. And what was Hollingsworth’s crime? Drugs, armed robbery, assault, money laundering? Not quite.

Months prior, in 2018, the Tennessee landowner removed a game camera secretly strapped to a tree on his private land by wildlife officials in order to monitor his activity without apparent sanction or probable cause. Repeat: Hollingsworth’s residence was searched by U.S. government and state officials, dressed to the nines in assault gear, seeking to regain possession of a trail camera—the precise camera they had surreptitiously placed on his private acreage after sneaking onto his property at night, loading the camera with active SD and SIM cards, and zip-tying the device roughly 10’ high up a tree—all without a warrant.

Can the government place cameras and monitoring equipment on a private citizen’s land at will, or conduct surveillance and stakeouts on private land, without probable cause or a search warrant? Indeed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Welcome to Open Fields.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, SCOTUS has ruled that private land—is not private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling area, according to SCOTUS.

However, SCOTUS’ Open Fields doctrine has been bucked in Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon and Vermont through protections granted by state constitutions, and for many American landowners, the more they discover about Open Fields—the more questions they have regarding the bounds of government power.

In Tennessee, Hollingsworth and Terry Rainwaters, another landowner who discovered multiple trail cameras on his property placed by the state, are taking their cases to state court, claiming violations of the Tennessee State Constitution. The Rainwaters and Hollingsworth stories contain alarming claims regarding the behavior of wildlife officials and raise a bevy of questions over Open Fields, states’ rights, and the sanctity of private property.

It shouldn’t be shocking, I know. All of us should be fully cognizant by now of the boundless reach of the State, at every level. Certainly this past summer has provided confirmation aplenty of even the wildest, most out-there conspiracy theories when it comes to the audacity and omnipotence of the almighty government. Nonetheless, somehow, I have to admit to being shocked by this one.

On bottomland squeezed in the rolling hills of northwest Tennessee’s Benton County, a short walk from the banks of the Big Sandy River, Terry Rainwaters, 53, owns 136 acres of land containing two homes, farmland and an equipment shed. Rainwaters and his son, Hunter Rainwaters, 20, live in one of the homes; a tenant occupies the other. The acreage is the physical center of Rainwaters’ life—a small place to farm, hunt and reside—with one way in, one way out, and a gate that stays locked, backed by “no trespassing” and “posted” signs.

On his way to hunt on his father’s land during the first week of December 2017, Hunter Rainwaters was driving a side-by-side through the property when he noticed an oddity positioned roughly 4’ off the ground. He popped the brakes, backed toward the object and looked in surprise at a trail camera belted to a tree.

“I didn’t see any words or stickers on it, but I knew right away it wasn’t ours,” Hunter Rainwaters recalls.

Following the hunt, he drove back onto the family property and spotted a second trail camera attached to a tree with several branches removed to allow for an unimpeded lens view. Rainwaters dialed his father’s cellphone, and described the two cameras: “I was shaken up when my son called and I knew immediately it had to be the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency),” Rainwaters recalls.

Deeply disturbed, Rainwaters arrived home later in the afternoon and took a look at the two cameras, mulling over whether to remove the pair. Two days later, with Rainwaters in limbo on what action to take—both cameras disappeared.

“Ask TWRA how many cameras they have on people’s private land right now watching their every move,” Rainwaters says. “I’ll bet they won’t answer that question and we all know why. No warrants, no judge, and no crime necessary, just set up surveillance and do whatever they want to.”

And guess what. Go on, just guess.

(Farm Journal asked TWRA multiple questions related to the use of trail cameras in surveilling Tennessee residents, including, but not limited to: Does TWRA have a list of past camera locations and current, active cameras? Who in TWRA is allowed to view the footage? How long are the cameras allowed to operate in place? Does TWRA recommend prosecution for a landowner for breaking or removing a camera? TWRA declined comment: “The Agency cannot comment on matters in litigation, nor can we provide comment on issues that are currently being litigated.” TWRA directed all questions to the Tennessee Attorney General’s office. However, the Tennessee AG office declined comment.)

Okay, I’m NOT shocked by that. Not in the least, I ain’t. But now we accelerate right on past merely shocked, to flat-out pissed the fuck off.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled that private land—is not so private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling and curtilage, according to SCOTUS. Curtilage is an arcane term loosely translated as the area directly around a home, or the yard.

In 1924, Hester v. United States set up the Open Fields framework and said the U.S. Constitution does not extend to most land: “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.” Significantly, Open Fields is translated beyond its literal sense, and basically is defined as general acreage: woods, fields, farmland, barren ground, and more.

Further, in 1984, SCOTUS gave additional strength to Open Fields in Oliver v. United States: “open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops, that occur in open fields.”

Disturbing, infuriating, and downright frightening as it is, you need to read all of it. Once you have, you need to do another thing. Distasteful and unpleasant as they are, you must accept and internalize a few realities:

You have ONLY whatever liberty Government deigns to allow—which liberty may be denied, wholly or in part, summarily and at Government’s whim, with neither notice nor explanation
You have NO rights
You have NO privacy
You have NO security
You own NOTHING, and “private property” is a misnomer; it is NOT private, and is under the control NOT of the putative “owner” but of the State
You are NOT in any meaningful sense a “citizen” of the US and your state of residence; you are the wholly-owned PROPERTY of those entities

One needn’t be in the least doubt as to what Thomas Jefferson would have had to say after discovering government surveillance cameras strapped onto trees around Monticello—placed there clandestinely, his permission unsought, by trespassing government spies skulking about in the night like contemptible house-burglars. But it is incumbent upon us—upon ALL of us—to ponder his inevitable response to such an affront thoroughly, and most gravely.

Jefferson and his fellow Founders would have been apoplectic, of course. But there’s no reason at all to think any of them would have been shocked. Those men had a deep and thorough understanding of exactly what government, ALL government, really is. Of how every government throughout history—no matter how well-intentioned, carefully conceived and constructed, and competently administrated—eventually devolves into corruption, despotism, and petty bureaucratic abuse. Having been schooled in the classroom of first-hand experience, they paid strictest attention to the lessons taught there.

Alas, their complacent and oblivious descendants have done no such thing. The lessons of history having been ignored, the explicit warnings of far-wiser ancestors spurned, the inattentive students wound up in precisely the straits foretold for them. Not really shocking at all, is it?

Having a stroke

Posted on October 23, 2020October 23, 2020 by Mike

Defending the indefensible.

Penn prof defends Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom mishap

“Mishap”? More like a “misfap,” I’d say.

University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education professor Jonathan Zimmerman argued that New Yorker columnist and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin’s accidental self-exposure during a work video conference call was a “pseudo-scandal” rooted in Americans’ “collective unease with masturbation.”

Toobin was suspended from the New Yorker after he left his camera on while engaging in an act of self-pleasure during a Zoom meeting with colleagues. He said he believed that he had turned off his camera.

“We Americans love to talk — and talk, and talk — about sex,” noted Zimmerman while discussing the incident in the New York Daily News. “But there’s one topic that remains taboo, and Toobin is paying the price for it.”

“You might say that he shouldn’t have been pleasuring himself during a work call, but that’s his business rather than yours,” said Zimmerman, noting that Toobin’s exposure was not intentional.

Au contraire, bub. The chicken-choker made it everybody’s business when he failed to make the critical but very easy distinction between what “Mute” means, and what “Video ON” means.

But should we just accept on faith that the Rub A Dub Schlub really IS that stupid in the first place? This is a Mark-1, Mod-0 Enemedia propagandist we’re talking about here, after all. Going strictly by the available evidence, every one of those people—from Charlie Rose to Matt Lauer, Male, Female, or one of the 73-and-counting flavors of Other—is a perverted, bizarre sexual sicko. Hell, even the Demonrat candidate for POTUS is a confirmed creepazoid who gets his jollies sniffing and snoodling little girls, ferchrissake. So, bearing the core truth of twisted shitlib sexual obssession in mind, just how sure can any of us really be that Toobin’s live-streamed weenie-wrangling was all that “accidental,” anyway?

DID he hit the wrong button out of nothing more than profound ignorance? If so, maybe someone should pull (ahem) Toobin aside and explain to him the modern miracle of a small piece of black electrical tape; placed carefully over the computer’s camera lens before going trouser-spelunking in front of a live monitor, it makes for an inexpensive and wonderfully effective prophylactic measure.

Or is it far more likely—well into the computer/internet/tech era, when even a relatively slow pre-pubescent comprehends that “Mute” has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with video—that Loobin’ Toobin was trying to get his rocks off via exposure of an act of solo self-indulgence,in flagrante dick-yecchto, to all and sundry? That forcing unwilling others to become active participants in his own personal kink, and the concomitant humiliation, is part of the thrill for him?

Either way, let the horselaughs and making of sport continue, sez I. The rest of us have every bit as much right to our own preferred brand of fun as pud-pounder Toobin does.

Busted!

Posted on October 19, 2020October 19, 2020 by Mike

As I just cross-posted on MeWe: I love this story SO DAMNED MUCH.

The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on a Zoom video chat between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio last week. Toobin says he did not realize his video was on.

Two people who were on the call told Motherboard separately that the call was an election simulation featuring many of the New Yorker’s biggest stars: Jane Mayer was playing establishment Republicans; Evan Osnos was Joe Biden, Jelani Cobb was establishment Democrats, Masha Gessen played Donald Trump, Andrew Marantz was the far right, Sue Halpern was left wing democrats, Dexter Filkins was the military, and Jeffrey Toobin playing the courts. There were also a handful of other producers on the call from the New Yorker and WNYC.

Both people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, noted that it was unclear how much each individual person on the call saw, but both of the people we spoke to said that they saw Toobin jerking off. The two sources described a juncture in the election simulation when there was a strategy session, and the Democrats and Republicans went into their respective break out rooms for about 10 minutes. At this point, they said, it seemed like Toobin was on a second video call. The sources said that when the groups returned from their break out rooms, Toobin lowered the camera. The people on the call said they could see Toobin touching his penis. Toobin then left the call. Moments later, he called back in, seemingly unaware of what his colleagues had been able to see, and the simulation continued.

And we’re all supposed to believe that it’s Trump who’s the degenerate.

Update! Didn’t think of it until just now, but I believe I’m gonna put up permanent links to MeWe, Gab, and Duck Duck Go over in the right sidebar. Just as a public service, y’unnerstand.

The grifter class

Posted on October 18, 2020October 18, 2020 by Mike

The crooks are in charge of the jailhouse.

Hunter’s family is his only asset. How else did someone with no special skills manage to collect such huge payments from foreign companies with deep interests in US policy? He has no knowledge of Ukraine or China, no experience in energy or banking, and a crack pipe full of personal problems. So, how exactly did he get rich?

For that matter, how the hell did Joe get rich? Or hapless Nevada real-estate failure Harry Reid? Or Obama, the “community organizer” who never did a second’s worth of productive labor his entire life? Or Stretch Pelosi? John Dingell? Or any of thousands of other Career Politican slimewads, from all across this once-great nation?

Last I looked, a US Senator makes (not “earns,” mind you) 200 grand a year. The POTUS gets 400k. That might be the stuff of wistful dreams for those of us who have to spend the closing days of every month choosing which bills they’ll be able to pay and which they’re going to have to skip this pay-period. But given Morder On The Potomac living expenses, along with the requirement that Congresscreatures maintain some sort of pied a terre in whatever state they pretend to hail from to be eligible to run for office, it still does NOT add up to leaving that cushy DC sinecure a multi-multi-multi millionaire. No way. The math just doesn’t work. No matter how you slice it, it’s still baloney.

And yet. There is no further evidence needed to show just how badly out of whack and off the rails the Amerika v2.0 system of government really is than the simple fact that so very many of the amoral, conscience-free arachnoids among us disdain True Crime as a profession to instead go into “public service” (HA!) with one purpose in mind, and one only: to get stinkin’ rich.

I hasten to add that there ain’t a damned thing in the world wrong with getting rich, despite how strenuously the Church Ladies of the Left preach a different gospel. Nor should any Real American have a problem with anyone harboring ambitions towards same. But ain’t it funny how every last one of these Demo-Marxist Swamp critters—all of them comfortably afloat themselves on a mighty sea of decidedly ill-gotten personal liquidity—spends so many of their “working” hours passionately denouncing “capitalist greed”; the “heartlessness” of free-market economics; the corruption of Big Business.

And all the while, these virtuous souls are also piously extolling the dire need to palliate the brutality by exorbitantly hiking taxes on “the wealthy”; zealously over-regulating all private businesses, both great and small; and advocating the “equality” and “fairness” of some form of barely-disguised Marxism, of all things. Inexplicably, the Savior Left carefully avoid any mention of how the self-same Proles they copiously weep crocodile tears over consistently fare whenever their self-proclaimed betters have finally contrived to bring those unfortunates under the grinding, bloody heel of it.

Should you or anyone else try to helpfully correct the oversight and stimulate discussion by bringing such a distasteful subject up yourselves, you might just get shot in one of their “mostly peaceful” riots or run over or maybe Arkancided, depending on what’s most convenient. Then there’s doxxing, SWATting, hounding you out of gainful employment forever, and wee-hours bullhorn-wielding mobs on your front lawn issuing threats of violent retaliation, starting random fires, shitting all over the begonias, and generally despoiling the neighborhood.

At the very least, you’ll never be posting another goddamned thing on Twatter or Fakeblecch again, you evil fascist Nazi.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the answer. Joe Biden himself could figure it out. The money was meant to open doors in the Obama administration and potentially a future Biden one. It was meant to inform mid-level US bureaucrats and diplomats that these companies had very powerful connections. The message: your bosses will be happy if you meet with these fine folks and even happier if you can help them.

These damning facts were well known before the New York Post published its latest cache of documents, supposedly to and from Hunter Biden. (The word ‘supposedly’ is used here since the documents must be verified.) What’s new about these documents is their avalanche of details, their list of additional companies and specific executives, and the scale of payments, some which were simply for Hunter making ‘introductions’.

The logic here is simple: outsiders purchase access and influence from insiders who sell it. That has long been the story of Washington lobbying and revolving-door politics, which grows in tandem with the size and scope of the federal government. Economists call it ‘rent-seeking behavior’.

The Clinton Foundation set a new standard for this rent-seeking. Its scale was unprecedented, and so was the cleverness of making it a tax-deductible charity. It worked smoothly when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and the favorite to succeed Barack Obama. How do we know the money funneled to the Foundation and the Clintons personally was designed to buy access and influence? Because it all dried up after Hillary lost. As politicians in the old Chicago Machine used to say, ‘don’t back no losers.’

It is easy enough to see this as corruption, pure and simple. That’s because it is. The recipients are grifters, even though they wear Hermès scarves and ties. They are paid by companies seeking influence in government and the profits associated with it. This is Washington’s Circle of Life. Trump calls it ‘the Swamp’. Retired politicians and generals call it a living.

“Easy enough” to see it? Only a willfully blind man or a pure-tee dumbass could possibly miss it. Read the whole thing, depressing and maddening though it surely is.

“Is the nation’s top law enforcement agency protecting society from sociopaths or is the bureau itself sociopathic?”

Posted on October 17, 2020October 17, 2020 by Mike

Take a wild guess.

After 9/11, the FBI spent few years going after very petty Islamists while covering its collective eyes to the work of major sources of trouble, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia—each beloved by parts of the ruling class. But before and after this period, these profiles more often than not pointed to the ruling class’ favorite enemy: fellow Americans “excessively concerned with their liberties.”

The FBI’s method? Place agents among the target group, stoke their sentiments, and lead them to say or do something that could be characterized as a crime, then arrest them and claim credit for foiling a plot. In intelligence lingo, that is provocation. In legal terms, it’s entrapment. By whatever name, this is the work of cheap, dirty cops.

In the 1950s, the joke was that any meeting of a Communist Party cell in the New York area was likely to consist of two-thirds infiltrators, half from the FBI and the other half from the New York Police Department. But these FBI infiltrators, like those of the Vietnam era in the 1960s and early ’70s, and like those who penetrated organized crime were merely watching. Doing an honest job. They were not provoking or entrapping, not creating something that would never have been there except for their presence.

Fast forward to our time. The contrast between how the FBI behaves with regard to persons connected to the ruling class and those who are not speaks for itself. The 918 Americans who died in mass suicide in Jonestown Guyana in November 1978 were victims of a cult that had been closely associated with the California Democratic Party. Relatives of the people who were being drawn in had complained to the FBI. But the FBI had refused to keep an eye on the movement, and later officially argued that doing so would have infringed on its political and religious liberties.

And yet when the Tea Party movement arose to protest collusion between the Republican and Democratic parties against popular sentiment on a host of political issues, the FBI rushed to infiltrate it.

The FBI has been corrupt since its inception, and it always will be. Its officials, both high and humble, conspired to first rig and then reverse a legitimate election via a plethora of obviously illegal and unethical acts, for which they will suffer no consequences whatsoever. It is a rogue, unaccountable, out of control agency whose continued existence in any nation that dares to flatter itself with empty platitudes about “liberty” and “the rule of law” is an abomination. It should be dismantled. Period.

Update! Let’s not leave this out.

One of the strangest details of the exclusive New York Post story involving the recovered data from a computer linked to Hunter Biden is the story of the laptop itself and what is alleged about it. You can read about the evidence alleging that Hunter Biden was trading influence with foreign actors in Matt Margolis’s piece here. But what also interested me was the part of the NYP investigation where they claim there’s a sex tape and pornographic photos starring Hunter on the laptop—and the FBI knew about it in December.

Let’s forget for a moment that there’s reportedly a video of Hunter Biden smoking crack and romping with hookers on the laptop. That’s par for the course, isn’t it?

What about the part where the FBI had possession of this information back in December? Why didn’t the FBI come forward with this evidence about Hunter Biden’s emails, which appear to show collusion and influence-trading? Isn’t that something they should have told the president or members of Congress? Was the FBI deliberately covering it up? If the good citizen who came forward and alerted the FBI of the contents of the laptop had not made a copy of the information, it would still be under FBI lock and key. But the computer repairman did make a copy and sent it to Rudy Giuliani. If true, it’s a stunning indictment of the FBI that an American citizen—who alerted them to alleged multiple crimes involving a guy with the last name Biden—knew not to trust them and made other arrangements should they try to cover it up (which, apparently, they did).

That, too, is par for the course.

Tell me a story

Posted on October 16, 2020October 16, 2020 by Mike

Oh no, Daddy, not THIS one again.

In 2020, it appears the official story tellers may have another problem on their hands with the Biden campaign. The story they are selling this time is the public is tired of the tyrant Trump and ready to lift-up world-weary old white man, and his super-smart diverse sidekick, and carry them to the White House. You see, world-weary old white man had a nice run, but now it is time for him to go. His last act will be to vanquish mean old white man and then hand the baton over to diverse sidekick.

It’s a familiar story, one that is the center of so many bad movies it is amazing that they keep trying to sell it. In this case, world-weary old white man is a vegetable that has been in hiding for most of the year, because he has shark eyes and says wacky things suggesting he is not all there. Super-smart diverse sidekick is pretty dumb and reminds everyone of getting their license renewed. It’s a bad story that no one wants to think about and the characters don’t work for the audience.

Compounding it is the world-weary old white man has a son that likes to smoke crack and film himself banging hookers. Fair or foul, people judge people by their children and Hunter Biden is a vulgar degenerate. He lies, cheats, steals and does not seem to have anything resembling a conscience. Worse yet, he seems to be an uncommonly stupid person, getting jammed up over stupid things like leaving his laptop with a repair shop, so the contents can be sold to the tabloids.

If the contents were just an unusual amount of cat pictures, people could possibly generate some sympathy for his parents. They gave it their best shot, but the boy was never right in the head. Instead, it’s videos of him smoking crack with hookers and having them perform unnatural acts upon him. Then there are the e-mails from foreign potentates suggesting he was the facilitator in a bribery scheme involving his father, who was vice president at the time, emphasis on the vice.

The Biden-for-Prez story is old and stale by now. But Slimey Joe keeps on trotting the musty old thing out anyway, hoping for the happy ending at last.

Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!

Posted on October 11, 2020October 12, 2020 by Mike

Francis waxes even more outraged than I did over the Left’s desecration of LOTR.

“Worried” doesn’t nearly cover it. I’m outraged by the mere possibility.

Their moral clarity is one of the main reasons for the immense popularity of Tolkien’s works. They pit good against evil, freedom against enslavement, and heroes against villains, vacillators, compromisers, and the “let me think it over” types whose sole concern is to be on the winning side. Those who insist that “there’s no black or white, only shades of gray” can never be comfortable with such a premise.

Please don’t confuse moral clarity with prudishness. No, there are no sex scenes in Tolkien’s stories, but that’s irrelevant to the larger issue. George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, best known by the title of its first volume, A Game of Thrones, is founded on a completely different moral perspective: one in which essentially everything goes and who was in the right is determined, after the dust has settled, by the victors. It’s not founded on a clash between good and evil, but on what the movers and shakers are willing to do to triumph.

A simple touchstone – “Would you prefer to associate with Tolkien’s heroes or Martin’s?” – dramatizes the differences between the two conceptions, and the reason for the far greater (and more enduring) appeal of Tolkien’s oeuvre.

Cold comfort it may be, but it’s still true: The products of Tolkien’s creative genius will remain with us long after the Left’s peurile attempts to sully and diminish them have been forgotten. In their twisted ignorance, they think they’re “expanding” them, “enlarging” them, “broadening” their scope. They will not do so, because they cannot. To paraphrase Lincoln, Tolkien’s works are far beyond their little ability to add or detract; they can only make themselves smaller and more miserable by the effort.

A new low

Posted on October 10, 2020October 10, 2020 by Mike

Yes, Virginia, there really IS nothing they won’t try to debauch, defile, degrade, and destroy.

Amazon Prime’s “Lord of the Rings” series set to release in 2021 has been eagerly anticipated by devoted LOTR fans around the world. The $1 billion series will be set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, which spans 3441 years, before the events of the LOTR movies.

Unfortunately, it looks like the creators of the series, which they claim is based on J.R.R Tolkien’s original work, may be trying to imitate “Game of Thrones”-type nudity and “rapey” storylines. This, no doubt, will delight the left, who have long detested Tolkien’s writing and distinctive Christian influence on popular culture.

According to TheOneRing.net, the casting agency for the series put out an open call for actors who “must be comfortable with nudity.” In addition, Amazon Studios has hired an “intimacy coordinator,” and the writer and producer from “Game of Thrones,” Bryan Cogman, has officially been hired as a consulting producer.

Tolkien’s books were deeply religious and purposeful. As David Platt wrote in a “Standpoint” article, “Tolkien combined his extraordinary talent for story-telling and philology to communicate conservative and Catholic values and images through his captivating fictional tales of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Dwarfs.” “The Lord of the Rings” is, as Tolkien said, “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work…”

As Platt pointed out, the left wins political battles “through the domination of institutions, the professions, culture and received thought.” The “social conservatism of Middle Earth” is one of the few things in pop culture that is antithetical to the left’s worldview and goals. Naturally, then, the left has employed their usual tactics to take down Tolkien and his Legendarium, pronouncing “The Lord of the Rings” racist, sexist, and non-inclusive of LGBTQ+ people.

The left is already cheering on the beginnings of the presumed assassination of Tolkien’s legacy. The leftist “NY Magazine” ran a story this week headlined, “Give Us the Horny Lord of the Rings Show We Deserve.” “Are we sure that an overwhelmingly erotic Middle Earth experience is such a bad thing,” read the article. “Make the elves get a little freaky. Allow the hobbits their fun. Give a new meaning to the inscription on the West-door of the Mines of Moria: Speak, friend, and enter.”

It’s actually a sickness, this insatiable megalomania filtered through the dark lens of the Left’s twin obssessions: politics, and sexual perversion. I’ll agree with one thing, though: a “horny Lord of the Rings show” actually IS what you deserve. Because an elevated, ennobling, world-changing work of literary art is over your pointy little head, far beyond the pitifully limited comprehension of intellectual and moral dwarves such as yourself.

What you deserve is exactly the kind of grubby, vapid, here-today-gone-tomorrow piece of garbage you’re going to get: a contemptible reboot of a bona fide masterwork thoroughly grounded in Christianity, collapsing into a sooty pile of pure nothingness from having all the Christianity excised from it. You lack the wit to realize why the only thing you’ll take away from the experience is a nagging dissatisfaction, as only an unimaginative brat’s bootless attempt at cocking his snook at the product of true creative genius can bring forth.

LOTR will live on regardless of shitlib vandalism and desecration; Porno Middle Earth will be totally forgotten the moment it gose off the air.

Trump-Wallace debate is ON!

Posted on September 29, 2020September 30, 2020 by Mike

BIDEN WINS BIGLY!

U.S.—In a highly accurate and scientific CNN poll taken pre-debate, presidential candidate Joe Biden has had a clear win over incumbent President Donald Trump, with 98% saying Biden won the debate tonight and only 2% saying Trump won.

“Biden just dominated Trump with his very non-senile performance,” said pundit Jacob Ingram. “Or at least that’s what everyone knows is going to happen.”

The Trump campaign has denounced the poll as “fake news,” even though the poll was made using numbers and a computer which are common instruments of science.

It is unclear if the actual debate tonight could affect the poll results, but most experts expect that it will not.

Of course, all Biden ever had to do was show up on time, be able to stand without visible assistance, and not actually foam at the mouth for The People Who Matter to declare him the “winner.”

The actual debate, as expected and as always, is between the Republican candidate and the “moderator.”

This was just stunning.

There has never been a presidential debate where a moderator has so openly interrupted and argued with not only a candidate but THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Then when President Trump brings up the Biden Family scandals Chris Wallace CUTS HIM OFF!

And to top it off — Then Chris Wallace LECTURES THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES on interrupting!

Chris Wallace is a Disgrace!!

Just doin’ his job, man.

Update! In perhaps the most surprising moment from tonight’s “debate,” Biden proudly unveils his new campaign slogan:

Once a plagiarist, always a plagiarist, eh Gropey?

Fairly unbalanced update! Quite a showing.

Chris Wallace was always going to be a terrible choice as a moderator for any of the three presidential debates, let alone the first one, but good God, did he fulfill that destiny with flying colors.

We knew it back in July when Wallace attempted to fact-check President Trump on the accurate claim that former Vice President Joe Biden was on the record committing to defunding police departments. Biden is, in fact, on record committing to that, and yet, Wallace pretended we hadn’t heard it with our own ears.

The Fox News anchor was supposed to show up and moderate a debate, with it having expressly been stated that he wouldn’t operate as a fact-checker, and yet, that’s all he did for at least the first hour of the debate. It got so bad that, at one point, he asked Trump not to interrupt his opponent (there were many fine interruptions on both sides), and when the president asked Wallace to make that same point to Biden, Wallace puffed up his chest to tell Trump that it was actually him doing more interrupting.

Even if you could prove that the president was the champion of interrupting every person on Earth, let’s talk about what Biden did: He told the president of the United States during a nationally televised debate to “shut up,” to “keep yapping,” and he called Trump a “clown.”

All of that actually happened, and not once did Wallace reprimand the former vice president. He might have perhaps even asked that Biden keep things civil, given that, you know, Biden’s whole thing is “restoring the soul of America.”

Time to face facts here, people: apart from Tucker and Hannity, Fox News has become just another Enemedia outlet at this point. Although Hannity grates on me something awful and always has, I’d still love to see those two walk away from that dumpster fire and start their own damned network.

Numbers don’t lie update! The whole farce in a nutshell.

Chris Wallace interrupted Trump 35 times tonight.

He did not interrupt Biden once.

— JT Lewis (@thejtlewis) September 30, 2020

Hey, seems perfectly fair to me. TIME TO MOVE ON…

Keep the faith, baby

Posted on September 25, 2020 by Mike

Not crazy. NOT. No, really. I mean it.

The Death Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Pushed Me To Join The Satanic Temple

See? NOT crazy. Just a perfectly normal, sane reaction to the death of a sickly, feeble, 87 year old woman who had been battling cancer for years— a woman you never even met, no less.

I am a 40-something attorney and mother who lives in a quiet neighborhood with a yard and a garage full of scooters and soccer balls. I often walk with my children to get ice cream and spend weekends hiking through a national park. I am not the type of person who would normally consider becoming a Satanist, but these are not normal times.

And YOU are not a normal person.

Like so many other women in the United States, when I learned of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, my first reaction was not grief but fear. I fear that American citizens are inching closer to living in a theocracy or dictatorship and that the checks meant to prevent this from happening are close to eroding beyond repair.

Those checks having been eroded by…let’s see now, which side is it that’s been hacking away at the Constitution, the Founders, and the idea of limited government since its inception, anyway? Remind me, if you would, I’m having trouble remembering.

When Justice Ginsburg died, I knew immediately that action was needed on a scale we have not seen before. Our democracy has become so fragile that the loss of one of the last guardians of common sense and decency in government less than two months before a pivotal election has put our civil and reproductive rights in danger like never before.

Common sense. Decency. Government. One of these things is not like the other, dearie.

And, so, I have turned to Satanism.

Well, what the hell else were you supposed to do? I mean, really now, who WOULDN’T have?

Members of the Satanic Temple do not believe in the supernatural or superstition. In the same way that some Unitarians and some Jews do not believe in God, Satanic Temple members do not worship Satan and most are atheists. They are not affiliated in any way with the Church of Satan. Instead, the Satanic Temple uses the devil as a symbol of rebellion.

Just like other faiths,

Nice to see that little back-door acknowledgement of atheism as another “faith,” babe.

the Satanic Temple has a code that their members believe in deeply and use to guide their lives. These Seven Fundamental Tenets include that “one should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason,” that “the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions,” and that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

Reading through the Seven Tenets, I was struck by how closely they aligned with the unwritten code I had used to try to guide my own life for several years. I realized, happily, that these were my people and that I had been a Satanist for several years without even knowing it.

Oh, I can one-hundred-percent assure you that Satanists are “your people” all right. In fact, for Leftists, they always have been.

In the hours after Justice Ginsburg’s death, I sat wondering what the future would hold for my daughters.

If they turn out like Mom, I’d say their future includes: nihilism; narcissicism; mindless, directionless hedonism; intellectual vapidity; dissatisfaction; an aimless, selfish existence bereft of real fulfillment, contentment, and enduring happiness.

Oh, and lots and lots and lots of abortions, denying you any grandchildren; your genetic line will end with them, for which the rest of us can only be thankful. Any cultural and intellectual influence you may have had will die with your daughters—washed away like footprints in the surf, your personal legacy wafted away like dandelion fluff on a stiff breeze. A tragedy for you, a boon for Mankind.

One more thing, since I’m tired of having to wade through the HuffPo muck and am not going to waste any more time on it. Given the incredible frustration, angst, and just plain misery even the possibility of losing an election creates for you people because of the grotesque, all-encompassing importance of politics it suggests, you Progtards might want to reconsider that old “the personal is political” slogan of yours, I’m thinking.

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