Page 254

Police state empire

Posted on March 31, 2022April 1, 2022 by Mike

So what might possibly be done to rectify this awful, intolerable situation?

Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole’
Ramon Perez came to court last month ready to fight the tickets he’d been handed by Brookside police, including one for rolling through a stop sign and another for driving 48 mph in a 40 zone.

He swore he’d seen the cop from a distance and was careful as he braked.

“I saw him and we looked eye to eye,” the Chelsea business owner said. “There’s no way I was going to run that stop sign.”

When he got to court Dec. 2, he saw scores of people just like him lining up to stand before Judge Jim Wooten, complaining of penny-ante “crimes” and harassment by officers. He saw so many people trying to park in the grassy field outside the municipal building that police had to direct traffic.

He figured there was no point.

“I saw the same attitude in every officer and every person,” he said. “That’s why I hesitated to fight it. They were doing the same thing to every person that was there. They own the town.”
Perez, it appears, was right.

Months of research and dozens of interviews by AL.com found that Brookside’s finances are rocket-fueled by tickets and aggressive policing. In a two-year period between 2018 and 2020 Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared more than 640 percent and now make up half the city’s total income.

And the police chief has called for more.

The town of 1,253 just north of Birmingham reported just 55 serious crimes to the state in the entire eight year period between 2011 and 2018 – none of them homicide or rape. But in 2018 it began building a police empire, hiring more and more officers to blanket its six miles of roads and mile-and-a-half jurisdiction on Interstate 22.

By 2020 Brookside made more misdemeanor arrests than it has residents. It went from towing 50 vehicles in 2018 to 789 in 2020 – each carrying fines. That’s a 1,478% increase, with 1.7 tows for every household in town.

The growth has come with trouble to match. Brookside officers have been accused in lawsuits of fabricating charges, using racist language and “making up laws” to stack counts on passersby. Defendants must pay thousands in fines and fees – or pay for costly appeals to state court – and poorer residents or passersby fall into patterns of debt they cannot easily escape.

“Brookside is a poster child for policing for profit,” said Carla Crowder, the director of Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, a nonprofit devoted to justice and equity. “We are not safer because of it.”

Brookside is a poor town, 70% white, 21% Black, with a small but growing Hispanic population and a median income well below the state average. The town survives on the fringes of Birmingham with tax revenue from the Dollar General, which forms the totality of its commercial district.

In 2018, when the town had one full-time police officer and a few part-timers, it reported no serious crimes to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. Brookside Police did patrol the 1.5-mile stretch of Interstate 22 within their jurisdiction and wrote tickets that brought in $82,467 in fines. That contributed a 14% chunk of the city’s total income, a number that would be considered high in much of America.

Bad as all that inarguably is, don’t let yourself be flummoxed or distracted by it; eventually, you knew we’d come to this:

By 2020 officers in the sleepy town were undergoing SWAT training and dressing in riot gear, even as the city continued with only a volunteer fire department. It parked a riot control vehicle — townspeople call it a tank — outside the municipal complex and community center. Traffic tickets, and criminalizing those who passed through, became the city’s leading industry.

And there we have the most damaging, destructive, and dangerous development to occur in American law enforcement since I can’t remember when: the militarization of the police.

“When you look at their Facebook pages it’s almost like they are bullies. I’ve seen it,” DA Carr said. “I don’t condone it, but you know, I’m not the chief out there.”

Dude—seriously? Almost?!?

And it’s not an idle threat. Arrests on Brookside warrants went from zero to 243 in the span of two years, according to statistics Chief Jones presented to the council.

Jones — again as Mayor Bryan nodded — said the goal of the department is only to help people.

Yeah. Right. Assholes.

“It’s not about making a dollar,” Jones said.

Like hell, you lying Nazi piece of pig shit. Then again, he’s not all wrong here; it’s NOT exclusively about the bucks he’s thieving. It’s also about being able to abuse, oppress, and harrass the Serf Class yeomanry without legal stricture or consequence. Ahh, the intoxicating, heady pleasure of running roughshod over whoever you wish, any time you wish, without possibility of censure or retribution. Until the frabjous day when you choose the wrong person to victimize and get a bullet in your brainpan for your savagery. That would be a far swifter death than you deserve, but at least your unconscionable spree of lawless brutality would be brought to a permanent end.

In December the mayor provided AL.com a budget document, based on previous years’ audits. It did not feature a breakout of the police department.

Asked why that was the case, Bryan responded there had been an error, that the heading for the ‘Municipal Court Fund’ was actually the police department budget. “Sorry for the typo,” the mayor wrote.

That document budgeted $646,620 to the police this year.

The town also provided a set of police stats Jones presented to the Brookside council to push for more resources and authority.

It showed that total arrests – custodial, misdemeanor and felony – rose 1,109% from 2018 to 2020. Brookside police made 4.4 arrests in 2020 for every household.

It showed police in 2020 patrolled 114,438 miles in the 6.3-mile town and issued more than 3,000 citations – a 692% increase from 2018.

“We don’t care about tickets,” Jones said. “We don’t like writing tickets.”

Holy mother of God, the balls on these lying, amoral swine. The story goes on at some length from there, but I had to break away at that point before the throbbing headache it had given me intensified into literally life-threatening status. Cynical as I am, distrustful of authority as I’ve always been, this one still left me slackjawed and wide-eyed with shock, disbelief, and absolute horror. The very idea of outlandish corruption this extreme taking place in an American small town in the year of our Lord 2022 is absolutely staggering. But even after reading as much as I did of it, then sitting back for a few minutes just trying to take it all aboard and reason it out, I still haven’t come up with an answer to my opening question. I don’t know that I ever will.

I can tell y’all one thing, though: if BLM and the Defund Po-Po mob showed up one day and got all up in some Brookside faces, they would have my vociferous and unattenuated support for once. Thuggish cops like these Alabama fiends are going to wind up getting good cops killed right along with the predators. It’s a damnable shame and disgrace; makes me glad all the cops I’ve been either friends or related to have long since retired, which they tell me unanimously they’re extremely happy about.

These fellas—decent, humane, and likeable guys to a man, a pleasure to sit at the bar or grill burgers and dogs in the backyard with—don’t even recognize the job they once treasured anymore. So alien has policing become, so antithetical to the Peace Officer role they once gladly dedicated themselves to, that not a one of them would the slightest interest in having any part of it today.

All through the Trump Presidency, most especially during the Fauxvid lockdowns, from Australia to Canada to Europe to right here in the States, too many cops let their fascist flags fly, eagerly obeying unlawful orders to break up perfectly lawful and orderly protests, often violently; giving violent pAntifa/BLM rioters, looters, and arsonists carte blanche to wreak billions in damage to American cities; clubbing down harmless J6 protesters, then jailing them without charges in solitary confiment for months, blandly making mock of the now-moribund US Constitution and its toothless guarantees of “unalienable rights.” They’re sowing the seeds of their own destruction, siding with those who can’t get enough of that Defund ‘Em stuff against what was once their natural base of support. We’ll see how that works out for ’em in the end.

Via J Kb at GFZ, who sums up nicely: If there ever was a town begging for a fully armed and armored killdozer to set things right, this is it. Got that right, J.

Dream ammo

Posted on March 31, 2022March 31, 2022 by Mike

Yours may differ, which is fine, but my own gets a mention here.

Thought I would take a minute to jot my thoughts on ballistics before we redeploy. We’ve been in heavy fighting the last few days.

5.56 works just fine on people, provided you don’t have to shoot through anything heavy. Not sure where it got the rep of not working. Expectations too high, most likely. People we shoot with it fall down and die. Very accurate.

The M4 is the perfect size. It is an excellent system, ergonomically. For law enforcement, it is perfect. For military work, with the exception of the cartridge, it is also.

We need to quit trying to optimize performance in tissue, from a military point of view. Do all that you want for cops, hunters, armed citizens but leave us out of it. I just spent the last 10 months in urban combat as an adviser to the Iraqi Army, so I have a few opinions.

Whatever round we get needs to penetrate stuff. And I don’t mean dribble out the other side. It needs to blast through cover, then through the dude behind it and preferably the dude behind him. It should, at a minimum, penetrate:

2 mm mild steel
2 inches hard wood
2 car doors with windows down
Trunk, back seat, front seat and dash
2 stacked AK 47 mags with steel cased ammo

AND do all this at minimum 250 meters. If you can get it to do this, it’ll flatten people too.

By mid WWII, ALL 30.06 was steel cored armor piercing for this very reason. Nobody who’s ever used it has complained about effectiveness. While we’re at it, we should go ahead and make it incendiary as well. No point in carrying different types. For the squeamish, it could be formulated to only ignite on hard targets. Personally, I want the guy to burst into flames when I shoot him.

So do I, bub, so do I. You said a mouthful with that, one which I will most enthusiastically second from way over here.

Welcome to Wrist Slap City

Posted on March 31, 2022March 31, 2022 by Mike

Guilty as hell, free as a bird.

FEC Fines Clinton, Dems for Debunked Dossier
The Federal Election Commission fined the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign more than $100,000 for secretly funding opposition research that falsely accused Donald Trump of colluding with Russia.

The commission fined the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign for “misreporting the purpose of certain disbursements” related to the infamous Steele dossier, according to a ruling released on Wednesday. The DNC and Clinton campaign paid more than $1 million in 2016 to fund the dossier project, but labeled the payments as legal expenses. The commission fined the DNC and Clinton campaign $105,000 and $8,000, respectively.

Disgusting, infuriating, absolutely disgraceful. No wonder We The People’s trust and faith in the fundamental integrity of their federal government is draining away faster with every passing day, like dirty dishwater schlurrrping down a brand-new sink drain. How very sad it is to have to admit that—with each fresh outrage against decency, each successive breach of the explicitly-defined boundaries of its Constitutional remit—only an abject imbecile would swallow a single word these audacious vermin vomit forth.

Spells nothing whatsoever hopeful regarding the admittedly way-slim likelihood of seeing Hunter Biden doing the Leg Iron Shuffle, either. Takes the air right out of this, too.

I’m with Morphius here.

SO, then. A lousy hundred grand pried from a rich bitch’s purse, a piffling sum she’ll never even notice is missing, exacted in “punishment” for a manifestly unlawful and consequential offense which William Barr correctly described this way:

Attorney General William Barr said that the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 was “one of the greatest travesties in American history.”

The attorney general told Fox News on April 9 that he is troubled by the findings from the ongoing investigation into the FBI by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is looking into the origins of the probe as well as what the bureau did after Donald Trump was elected president.

“My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just the mistakes or sloppiness,” Barr told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “There was something far more troubling here. We’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”

“What happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history—without any basis, they started this investigation of his campaign,” Barr said.

“And even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign. A whole pattern of events while he was president to sabotage the presidency or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

What it was, in truth, was a fucking attempted coup—a for-real case of no-nonsense, full-bore sedition,; raw treason in broad daylight, brazen and unembarrassed, before which the J6 “rioters” can but respectfully bow their heads in awe. Hillary Clinton and her cabal, in collusion with co-conspirators at the highest levels of the US government itself, did in fact plot with foreign nationals to topple a duly-elected and sworn President, nullifying the votes of millions of Americans. It’s an all the more heinous crime because it strikes at the very heart of everything America is supposed to represent, undermining if not outright obliterating the very concept of American self-government for all time. Political crimes just don’t come any more serious than that.

Yet still the witless Swamp creatures persist, studiously hacking away at their own credibility, as if the complete loss of the consent of the governed couldn’t ever have any impact on them. Thou fools. Thou purblind, arrogant fools, to imagine that the time can never come when the American people you’ve wronged over and again will rise up to avenge the long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object you inflicted on them.

Yeah, tell me again all about how important it is that we scrupulously maintain a firm faith in the basic integrity, honesty, and moral probity of the US federal government, whydon’tcha. That one’s my favorite.

*spit*

Okay, Groomer

Posted on March 31, 2022March 31, 2022 by Mike

And just like that, a new catchphrase is born.

Leftists Are Angry About The Florida Anti-Grooming Law Because They Want Your Children
First, I think this needs to be said – Public school teachers are not important. I’m sure there are many good ones out there and this is not an attack on them. What I am saying is, the glorification and worship of teachers is out of place in our society and completely overblown. At some point along the line leftists in particular decided that teachers are the emissaries of moral order and equity and their jobs should be treated as sacrosanct. This is nonsense.

Teachers are mere employees of the district they work in, that is all. Parents pay the taxes that pay their salaries. The parents are the employers, the parents are the boss and what they say goes. Teachers need to understand this; the parents own you, so get used to the idea. You are not special.

Furthermore, the views expressed in the interview with the gay Florida teacher above showcase some unhinged misconceptions and assumptions. The new law does not say that a teacher is not allowed to mention they are gay, but frankly, NO teacher should be discussing their private lives with their students anyway. At no point in my childhood did I ever hear a teacher talk about their home lives or who they were sleeping with; this is a new trend within the past decade. Not long ago teachers specifically avoided such idiocy in order to prevent rumors from circulating through the school halls about them.

And yes, we did have at least one gay teacher, and he never discussed it in the classroom, ever. His job was not under threat for doing so, he was just a professional.

This kind of professionalism is not acceptable to leftists because they view the classroom as more than just a place of academia, they view it as a place for engineering conformity, as well as a personal therapy bubble for themselves. I can’t count how many videos I have seen in the past few years of teachers “coming out” to their students in a desperate play for attention and applause. The narcissism inherent in this behavior is stunning. Teachers have turned their classrooms into environmental extensions of their own mental deformities and insecurities and now lay these problems in the hands of students.

Shit, practically the whole of society has been subjected to the same transformation; especially in our major cities, America’s public spaces have been reduced to little more than open-air theaters—mere stages where egomaniacal, self-obssessed shitlibs can work out their mental health issues in front of a repulsed and disbelieving audience, coerced all unwilling into de facto participation in a demented passion play. Bizarre shitlib freakazoids unabashedly strut and fret their hour upon the stage, then are heard no more—idiots most insufferable, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Brandon’s closing passages proffer a crucial point, one I’ll wholeheartedly endorse via the judicious and tasteful use of boldface.

It is here that I think we need to address a bigger issue which SJWs often screech about, and that’s the idea of “Gatekeeping.” I’m going to say it right here and now: GATEKEEPING IS GOOD. It always has been and it always will be. The idea that we must be accepting of everyone all the time is foolish and insane. Some people are not compatible with truth or with reason, and they need to be kept away from vulnerable institutions such as schools and away from innocent children that make up the lifeblood of our future.

The conservative argument has always been that not all change is good, and not all change is progress. Some changes are regressive rather than progressive. Some changes are simply designed to do harm, and some people are simply evil. Discrimination in some respects is absolutely necessary in order for our core values and principles to survive. There are times when discrimination is necessary for our very nation and culture to survive.
Leftists always turn to the old standby argument when they are faced with the prospect that the culture at large does not want them around; they cry that “We live in a democracy” and inclusion is somehow a prerequisite. In other words, if you go against them you are going against your own values of freedom. This is nonsense.

We are not a democracy, of course, we are a democratic republic and there is a big difference, but that is a discussion for another article. According to the non-aggression principle, freedom does not apply to the people that are trying to destroy it. Leftists do not get to target freedom for destruction and then cry victim and proclaim their love of freedom when people get in their way. Gatekeeping is good because certain pillars of our society need to be kept inoculated against the destructive methods of the political left. These people do not belong here. They do not deserve freedom, and they do not deserve to live among people that actually love freedom.

Annnnnd bingo. Bingobingobingobingoeffing BING. GOH. I swear, Brandon and I both could just quit this whole blogging thing forever now. After that, there’s really nothing more left to be said.

The debate on anti-grooming is really a debate on the necessity of gatekeeping. Leftists support it when they think they are in control and they attack it when they think it’s going to be used against them. I can’t imagine any area of our culture more vital to protect than our children; and this is where gatekeeping must be employed with full force and without mercy. Florida is doing it right, let’s hope the rest of the country follows their example.

Let us hope for it, yes. But alas, let us not count on it, nor hold our breath anticipating it, nor lapse into despair when it doesn’t happen. Because it ain’t gonna. At the very least, NYC, SF, LA, and Chicago will carry on holding the Leftard/Manwoman/Commie line against all attack; there is absolutely no chance at all that those and all too many other mighty citadels of PC enstupidation (think Madison Wi; Austin Tx; Seattle; Portland, to name but a few) are going to suddenly abandon their mulish embrace of make-believe and sheer barking moonbattery in favor of a return to boring old reality in the foreseeable future.

UNEXPECTED!™ update! Gotta confess, I find this somewhat surprising.

🚨 When Americans actually see the language of Florida's new law preventing the teaching gender ideology and sexual orientation to kids in grades K-3, there is overwhelming bi-partisan support for the law. https://t.co/N5doOFksnK

— Ian Prior (@iandprior) March 30, 2022

Is there more, you ask? Why yes; yes, there is.

A follow-up question broached the topic of gender identity. When asked whether or not gender should be removed from birth certificates, only 8 percent of respondents said yes while a whopping 79 percent said no.

In addition, the survey asked the group whether or not they agreed with the statement “transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender.” 60 percent of respondents agreed. Republicans were 85 percent positive on that question, whereas Democrats were split at a near-tie of 39 percent agree and 36 percent disagree.

Hrm. It seems as if sanity, like the flowers in springtime, might be busting out all over.

Laying blame where it belongs

Posted on March 31, 2022March 31, 2022 by Mike

What’d I tell you people.

This is not news; this national driver shortage is no shock to businessmen or policymakers. Our driver shortage contributes to empty store shelves, idled assembly lines, retail price inflation, a reduced Gross Domestic Product, and the global supply chain crisis.

This is not just one industry’s problem; it’s everybody’s problem. What is odd, however, is that so many people believe the trucker shortage is caused entirely by not enough people choosing the profession of truck driving as a career. While that is certainly a part of it, it’s not our real problem.

In fact, our truck driver shortage is caused primarily by a series of destructive government policies at every level.

…And these are just (a few of) the reasons we need so many more drivers than we should. We could also look at issues like the double-hit of the federal payroll tax that attacks owner-operators so hard. We could consider the complexities of federal Hours of Service (HoS) regulations that make every log sheet and fleet schedule a math project. We could review the federal fuel efficiency standards that have left common sense behind, chasing after ever-more-expensive, ever-less-worthwhile gains in efficiency, pricing rigs beyond the reach of entrepreneurial individuals, all contributing to the end result: making truck driving less appealing to the next generation of workers.

We could also look at, say, exorbitant license and accreditation fees, permits innumerable, and unnecessarily burdensome and costly “safety” regulations. Back when I was running the road in a big rig, I usually ran from CLT out to a small-town furniture factory in eastern Tennessee, hauling uncut blocks of foam for sofa and chair cushions. At 0-dark-thirty each morning I bobtailed up to Cumulus Fibers in Stateville to pick up a pre-loaded 53′ trailer stuffed with the material, a light load which only weighed in at four or five thousand pounds (max weight for your typical 53 footer is usually between 40 to 45 thousand pounds). I’d then head on out for the remote, decrepit old factory in Nowhere, Tn, spend an hour getting unloaded, and then come back to CF to drop off the trailer at Cumulus. Next morning: lather, rinse, repeat.

The only variation of this routine was that, about twice a week, the DMV lawdoggies at the I-40 weigh station in Statesville would wave me off to the side for yet another “safety” inspection. That would add another hour or so to my daily round, as Smokey crawled around underneath my trailer on a mechanic’s creeper filling out a list of “infractions” that would end up being about five-six pages’ worth.

There’s a reason for this, but I never thought of it as a good reason. What it was, was daylight fucking robbery by the Heat-o Banditos, raising vital revenue for the Almighty State. I swear, those po-lice should have been wearing a bandana across the bottom of their faces, and maybe an eye-mask, just to properly identify themselves.

See, those CF trailers were all ramshackly, rusted-out pieces of shit. Shabby as they were, though, the Cumulus bossheads knew they would easily hold up under the negligible load. Long as I made sure I got the trailer doors well secured—a sometimes tricky job, rasslin’ those wobbly, rusty, crooked-ass things together so that the latch hasp would mate with the cam bar lock well enough to keep the doors from flopping open on those rough mountain backroads—my tired old follow-on rig presented no real hazard to anybody.

Problem was, the Staties and DMV cops knew about the sad, sorry state of those Cumulus trailers same as I did. So a couple days a week, each and every week, I’d be honored as the selectee for a gimlet-eyed going over, after which I’d be presented with a stack of paper more closely resembling a Dostoevsky novel than a mere citation for violating “safety” regulations.

The funny part is, back then the fines were handled differently than now. All I had to do was hand the paperwork over to my boss, who would then mail it off to Cumulus Fibers, who would just pay ’em all off. There was never any thought of fixing the crappy trailers, much less buying new ones. The State got its pound of flesh, Cumulus could keep operating on the cheap, and I could keep my job. The fines were no more than a cost of doing business, that’s all. Nowadays, however, fines for almost anything at all are levied against the shipper and/or recipient involved, as well as the trucking company, as well as the poor old truck driver.

If he’s a company driver, and depending on who he works for, he may or may not get partially reimbursed. Although not usually; the company he works for will almost always, as a matter of policy, require their drivers to inspect their ride before leaving the hub; report any problems via a printed checklist and verbally; and demand a truck that’s up to snuff while the faulty rig gets down-checked for a trip to the shop to be repaired. This, in Cubical Land’s view, leaves Night Crawler, the Road Roller, or Ratchet Jaw ultimately responsible, so he gets to pay for his lax standards of professional conduct his own self. Just never anybody mind that he’s probably been writing up that same burned-out tail light, broken horn, or bald retread for weeks if not months, with all his paper shuffled, passed around, filed, and duly forgotten by the bossheads at Corporate. Trust me, it happens all the time, then and now.

If he’s an owner operator—a righteous entrepreneur working hard to grab himself a piece of the American Dream—well, he’s just screwed, basically.

As anybody who knows anything at all about the nature of government knows, said fines are way, WAY higher now, too.

We do need more truck drivers. Transportation is at the heart of everything in our economy, from food prices to energy, from necessities to the little luxuries that make for a modern, first-world standard of living. It’s government actions and government choices that hamstring the industry, drive up costs and drive down efficiency.

It’s government that makes us need so many more drivers than we should, and dissuades the young from going into it as a career.

We can hardly be blamed if we are reminded of the late President Reagan’s dictum: The nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Smart man, that Gipper was. It should be noted by one and all that the further we’ve strayed from that wise maxim, the worse our situation has become. Which is why today we struggle to get by under the less-than-capable hand of a fraudulently-installed “president” with obvious mental degradation and severe integrity issues—an inarguably untrustworthy mountebank wholly unfit for the position he finally swindled his way into, after decades of scrabbling after it so desperately. Throw ruinous taxation, crippling overregulation, and an indifferent, inflexible, and out of control bureaucracy into the pot, and the rank fetor of one hellacious stew to be finding oneself in suddenly wafts up, strong and unmistakable.

If you mean it, they will come

Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Mike

DeSantis’s knock ’em down, keep ’em down, never back off governing style pays off bigly.

Florida Democratic hearts just sank as a new St. Leo University Poll of 500 voters shows that Gov. Ron DeSantis has a combined job approval rating of 58.8%.

This is crushing news for Florida Democrats.

“Governor DeSantis is benefitting from a strong economy and a lack of COVID cases in the state over the past few months,” said Frank Orlando, director of the Saint Leo University Polling Institute and a political scientist.

Perhaps, perhaps. Myself, I much prefer another scenario: that DeSantis The Barbarian is benefitting mostly from governing like a Real American, in perfect accord with Constitutional requirements.

“While he gets lots of national attention for provoking the ire of liberals on things like masking, it doesn’t seem to hurt him in Florida, and in fact continues to raise his national profile.”

In head-to-head gubernatorial matchups between Gov. DeSantis and the other three Democratic gubernatorial candidates—Sen. Annette Taddeo, Rep. Charlie Crist, and AG Commissioner Nikki Fried— DeSantis leads them all by double digits, and bests perceived Democratic frontrunner Fried by 23%.

A small sample in this poll, admittedly. Plus, what the hell, it’s a damned poll; y’all already know well enough just how much stock I put in those things. Still, though, it’s encouraging news. Anytime I read of Demonrats being “crushed,” I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Keep up the skeer, Gov; don’t take your hands off their throats, squeeze harder instead.

The wheels of justice, grinding slowly

Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Mike

But surpassing fine.

In October of 2020, a bombshell report detailing possibly incriminating emails (and generally degenerate behavior) from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden dropped. That report, originally published and expanded on by The New York Post, was relentlessly censored by social media companies and maligned as “Russian disinformation” by the mainstream media and the Biden campaign.

That didn’t stop right-leaning media from digging deeper, and the revelations were stunning, including Hunter Biden making $80,000 a month from a Ukrainian oil company and receiving a $2 million “retainer” to sell influence to the Libyan government. His dealings with China were also extensive and at the very least, seemed to cross into the realm of criminal FARA violations. To this day, Hunter Biden has yet to fully divest from his partial stake in a Chinese-controlled venture capital firm.

Still, all of that has been known for a long time, yet the media’s response has been to completely ~~ignore~~ suppress it while the Biden administration has continued to lie about the origins of the emails. That was, until the last few weeks.

Fixed it for ya.

Suddenly, for no reason whatsoever I’m assured, the liberal news industry, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, decided to ~~“confirm”~~ admit all the reporting we already knew was true. Further, the Post’s write-up goes so far as to detail some of Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings, specifically regarding the Chinese. That’s quite the about-face.

Fixed it for ya again.

We should be asking ourselves why the Times, the Post, etc. just walked through the door with a six-pack and their dancing shoes on. Nothing, and I mean nothing that is harmful to a major Democrat gets printed by accident. There is always an underlying reason why a report gets made at the time it does, especially when we are talking about a story that was previously suppressed.

So what’s going on here?

My guess is that the hidden Power behind the DC throne has decided, for reasons we’ll never know, that it’s just about time to cut the drooling retard Biden’s strings to replace him with another, less laughable marionette as frontman for their ongoing charade. Either that, or Praetorian Media suspects that, their stifling of the Biden laptop story having passed its sell-by date, the whole sordid affair is about to come out whether they will or they nil. So they badly need to find some way, somehow, to hang onto whatever gossamer-thin tatters of credibility they have left by getting out ahead of it. That seems to be where Bonchie is placing his bet:

I think one only has to look at the media’s history to see a pattern when it comes to harmful revelations about Democrat figures. When reports start coming out that simultaneously make major admissions but still attempt to white-wash what’s happening, that’s usually because forces within the government are leaking information in order to get out in front of a story and preset the narrative.

The Times and the Post reported on the Carter Page FISA abuse, but only after it became clear much more was about to come out showing the FBI’s abuse of power. The Times and the Post reported on John Durham indicting Michael Sussmann, but only as a way to suggest the indictment was weak. When the actual indictment dropped, it was far worse than described.

Do you see what I mean? Something big is coming regarding the corruption surrounding Hunter Biden (and possibly his father). That’s why we are getting these reports right now, and that’s why those privy to the FBI investigation into Joe Biden’s son are suddenly leaking like crazy. They want to set the narrative before it becomes apparent just how bad things truly were. That means you can take the Post’s newest report and assume it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

All fine and well, but don’t let’s be counting any chickens as to whether Hunter might actually do time for his serial criminality—much less his senile, corrupt-to-the-marrow dad. All I have to say about THAT is, I’ll believe it when I see it. Also, harrumph.

As counter to my usual cynical suspicion, however, the Bidengate plot is definitely thickening.

On Monday, two Republican members of the United States Senate revealed evidence that Joe Biden’s son Hunter received payments of at least $100,000 from Chinese oligarchs.

As reported by Fox News, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) took to the floor of the Senate to provide a receipt for a payment of $100,000 from the Chinese energy company CEFC to Wells Fargo Clearing Services, with “further credit” being paid to Hunter Biden’s firm Owasco.

In his speech from the Senate floor, Johnson criticized the mainstream media’s efforts to deliberately cover up Hunter Biden’s numerous scandals.

“Over the course of our investigation into how Hunter Biden used his father’s position and name to enrich himself and his family,” Johnson said on Monday, “the dishonest press published countless stories reporting on the Democrats’ false charge that we were soliciting and disseminating Russian disinformation.”

Mo’ bettah still—but not for Grifter Gropey and his seedy spawn.

On Tuesday, The Federalist reported that two GOP senators, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, released actual receipts of payments Hunter Biden received from foreign oligarchs that indicate “the extent to which President Biden might be — and almost certainly is — compromised.”

“There’s no middle man in this transaction. This is $100,000 from what is effectively an arm of the communist Chinese government direct to Hunter Biden,” Grassley said from the Senate floor on Monday. “To the liberal media and my Democratic colleagues: Is this official bank document Russian disinformation?”

Don’t you get it yet, Chuck? To the sleazy, scummy Left, it’s anything they need it to be, or nothing at all. Whatever advances the agenda another step down the road to Marxist utopia and unchecked, limitless power, that’s all that matters here.

Update! A NY Post deep dive into the corrupt Biden Family’s criminal connections to Chinese espionage agents, from last January.

For those wondering why Joe Biden is soft on China, consider this never-before-reported revelation: The Biden family has done five deals in China totaling some $31 million arranged by individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence — some reaching the very top of China’s spy agency.

Indeed, every known deal that the Biden family enjoyed with Beijing was reached courtesy of individuals with spy ties. And Joe Biden personally benefited from his family’s foreign deals.

In 2018, I was the first to report on Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). Hunter even introduced his dad to a company executive in December 2013 when father and son flew to Beijing on Air Force Two.

In October 2019, Hunter Biden’s lawyer George Mesires said Hunter would be resigning from the BHR board, without receiving any return on his investment or shareholder distributions.

What Team Biden failed to address was the fact that Hunter Biden still owned a stake in the investment fund, said to be 10%.

When I first reported on Hunter Biden’s China ties in 2018, Team Biden denied that they existed. Then they absurdly claimed that his stake in the BHR investment fund was only $420,000.

Steven Kaplan, who conducts research on issues in private equity, venture capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate governance and corporate finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said a private equity fund with $2 billion under management will typically generate fees over its life of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It is difficult to imagine, if not incomprehensible, that a 10% stake in those economics is worth only $420K,” Kaplan said via email. “The distinction they appear to be making is they capitalized the management company with $4.2M even if the fund manages $2B. The value of that management company is likely far in excess of $4.2M if they are managing $2B.”

Much, much, MUCH more follows before landing us here:

These deals are disturbing enough, and are exacerbated by the fact that every one of them was made possible by an individual with ties that sometimes went to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.

But there is also the curious fact that in 2014, Hunter Biden took the unusual step of telling the Secret Service that he did not want protection when he traveled overseas. The request happened shortly after he began securing deals in Beijing.

Money that Hunter Biden received from his overseas deals flowed to other members of the Biden family.

Joe Biden’s brother James  received over $1 million originating from the spy-connected Ye, according to a US Senate investigation.

And Joe Biden benefited, too.

Well, of course he did. Lest we forget, another scrupulously-ignored news item gives the memory a gentle nudge.

Bombshell: Emails show Hunter, Joe Biden shared bank accounts, could drag him into Hunter’s FBI tax probe
WASHINGTON, DC- A blockbuster report by the Daily Mail is reporting that the current occupant of the Oval Office (when he’s not in the fake set across the street) Joe Biden may soon become caught up in the FBI’s probe into Hunter Biden’s finances, according to some experts.

Emails obtained by the Daily Mail gleaned from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show that Joe and Hunter Biden not only shared bank accounts, but also paid each other’s bills. The report also notes that Joe Biden may have in fact contributed to funding Hunter’s 2018 prostitution and drug binge, albeit inadvertently.

The emails, between Hunter and his business partner at Rosemont Seneca, Eric Schwerin revealed the latter was working on Joe Biden’s taxes, showed discussions revealing the Biden’s paid each other’s household bills, fielded requests for a book deal for Joe Biden, then serving as vice president, and also the donation of Biden’s papers from his time as Senator to the University of Delaware.

The emails raised some questions as to why Schwerin was so involved in Joe Biden’s affairs as vice president as opposed to government officials assigned to the vice-president’s office.

The claims made by Hunter of a shared bank account with his father also begs the question if the funds from that joint account were used for Hunter Biden’s May 2018 bender with a prostitute in a Hollywood hotel, the Mail piece reported.

The existence of a federal investigation into his tax affairs was admitted by Hunter Biden himself last December.

Of course all of this also calls into question claims that Joe Biden had made that he had no knowledge of his son Hunter’s business dealings, an important claim because Joe Biden used that as an excuse claiming no quid pro quo in Hunter’s membership on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company whose CEO was being investigated by a Ukrainian prosecutor.

One expert says that if Joe Biden were not ~~currently president~~ a Democrat he would likely already be on the prosecutor’s radar by now, along with Hunter. So says John Cassara, a former U.S. intelligence officer and treasury special agent, an expert in money laundering investigations.

“Corruption is a predicate offense for money laundering. And besides corruption, it’s the perception of corruption. This kind of thing should not be happening. It undermines full faith in the US government. It undermines trust and our international reputation. It’s an embarrassment.”

As well it should be, to any of us with a shred of integrity and a functional moral compass. Which would most certainly NOT include any of the Biden clan, a family of crooked blood-ticks who have miraculously become filthy rich on a US Senator’s relatively-measly salary (174k, as of last year).

When the Bear slaps, it hurts

Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Mike

Ignore strategic analysis from sources whose visceral loathing for all things military is so deeply ingrained in their psyches that it simply overwhelms any possibility of rational, objective commentary.

The Russian military operation in Ukraine began with a rather small force of some 150.000+ men against a much larger (including reservist and territorial forces) Ukrainian force of some 400.000. The Russian force used maneuver warfare to fix the larger Ukrainian forces into place. It attacked on a large front and threatened major population concentrations, i.e. cities.

The Russian operations started with the destruction of the Ukrainian command and control network. Over the last four weeks the Ukrainian navy, its airforce, its radars and air defenses and a huge number of its armored vehicles were destroyed. Throughout the last week fuel depots all over the Ukraine were attacked and destroyed over night. Ukraine’s large ammunition depots are gone. Military production and repair facilities have likewise been destroyed. The Ukraine is no longer able to move large numbers of troops between the various fronts. Its army has lost its mobility.

While this was ongoing threats to Kiev, Odessa and other large Ukrainian cities have held significant numbers of Ukrainian troops in place and prevented reinforcements to move to the east. There units from the Donetsk and Luhansk republics attacked the 60,000 strong main force of the Ukrainian army to keep it in place.

This allowed Russian forces from Crimea and from the Russian border in the north to move into positions that will now enable them to envelope the east.

The Russian forces will probably take another four weeks to destroy the Ukrainian units at the Donetsk front. The Russian command will then have to decide which parts of the Ukraine it will want to keep under control. Next to Donetsk and Luhansk the region north of Crimea is a likely candidate. Odessa and Dnipro may also be still on the menu. The regions can be kept as statelets under local control or form a confederation that may well institutionalize a new country.

Anything beyond that depends on the willingness of the U.S. proxy government in Kiev to submit to Russia’s demands. Russia can leave it at that or it can continue to mow the grass until none is left.

Bill is eagerly anticipating the moment when “all the propaganda blows up in the usual faces,” but it won’t add up to anything. Based on observation of their past behavior, there will be neither acknowledgement of error nor any expression of contrition or apology for their self-serving blunder. They’ll just keep right on truckin’ as before, quickly moving on to the next campaign of manipulation and deceit.

At the start of a long, dark road

Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Mike

As I keep saying.

Two Years After Lockdowns, The West’s Troubles Aren’t Ending — They’re Just Beginning
Two years ago this week, the United States shut down. Churches, schools and businesses went dark. Weddings, funerals, and birthdays went silent. City streets stood empty, with an eeriness closer resembling occupied Paris than the bustling hubs they’d been just days before.

Two years later, as the last of the mask mandates for school children falter and crack, it’s tempting to believe our nightmare is finally over. Just as the disease is going to haunt us a long while, however, so too will the effects of how we tried to fight it.

Americans’ relationships with our politicians, bureaucrats, schools, media, police, and churches are fundamentally altered. Indeed, the entire West’s relationships with these major segments of society are forever remade. As we look out on the wreckage of two years of Covid policies, as well as our spiking fuel prices, rocketing inflation, a contested election, a Chinese Olympics, and a land war in Europe, it’s increasingly clear that, far from standing at the end of a dark era, our civilization teeters unsteadily at the very beginning of one.

It’s hard to notice at first. The modern West has become so accustomed to a slow, steady decline — the kind Merle Haggard sang about, and Ronald Reagan ran against — that complaining about it has become cliché; like the angry old man waving his cane.

More than that, it’s very tempting to view the past two years as separate from our other major problems. But just as Black Tuesday began an era marked by the Depression, the Dust Bowl, the New Deal, the Second World War, and a fundamental reshaping of the American life, so too will the Lockdowns mark the start of a ride we can’t get off.

Even in states that have long since shrugged off the bureaucrats’ Covid demands, trust is broken. The people had believed in March 2020 that if they did their parts, all would soon be well. As President Calvin Coolidge famously said, “The chief ideal of the American people is idealism…[and] the chief business of the American people is business.”

Neither Americans’ idealism nor our industry were rewarded, however. From March 2020 on, ours was rule not by people, but by bureaucratic diktat.

Our politicians betrayed us: flying abroad, getting haircuts, going maskless, holding parties, and dining out while also closing schools, forbidding gatherings, banning amenities, and demonizing all who resisted — or even questioned — their orders.

Our corporate media betrayed us: propping up liars and fools, tearing down all who spoke against their champions, and spreading fear and hatred of dissent as far and wide as their words would carry.

Our teachers betrayed us: using Covid to gain a grab bag of vacation time, control over parents, wage hikes, and other unrelated perks, all while punishing school children with years of masks, separation — and the educational and developmental retardation those rules cost.

Even our much-vaunted hospital workers betrayed us: keeping dying husbands from their dying wives, grown children from their elderly parents, brothers from their sisters, and babies from their mothers — all to ensure “Covid safety.”

As hard as it seems, much of this might be good. Not that our politicians, media, teachers, and health care are broken — as the most important essay of 2021 laid bare — but that Americans now recognize just how broken they all are.

A most excellent essay, one I can’t recommend to you CF scapegraces highly enough. I don’t really have anything to add myself in the way of commentary; Bedford pretty much said it all, and said it quite damned well, too. Most of it we’ve already covered here anyway, enough so that I’m starting to feel like Chris’s “angry old man waving his cane.” Although I admit that could also possibly be due to my being…well, an angry old man. No cane at the moment—although with the fake leg coming along in the next several days (or so I’ve been told), I’m going to have to get myself one soon.

All over the place

Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022 by Mike

This one is so great I just…just…I just can’t even.

There’s a lot to take in here pic.twitter.com/YcWkWcXu2q

— Dr Simon (@DrSimonCMP) March 27, 2022

The question confronts us: what does one even say to something like this? And the answer comes back: I have no fucking idea.

Via Bayou Peter), who seems to be about as gobsmacked by this as I am.

Hammerdown

Posted on March 29, 2022March 31, 2022 by Mike

DeSantis the Barbarian by-God don’t let up.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday that the Walt Disney Company “crossed the line” when it announced its intention to repeal the Parental Rights in Education bill, which DeSantis signed into law on Monday.

During a press conference in Tallahassee on Tuesday, DeSantis told reporters, “For Disney to come out and put a statement and say that the bill should have never passed and that they are going to actively work to repeal it, I think one was fundamentally dishonest, but two, I think that crossed the line.”

He added: “this state is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida. It is not based on the demands of California corporate executives. They do not run this state. They do not control this state.”

To no one’s surprise, there’s much, much more of this wonderful stuff. For instink:

Just one day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill, the Republican is now suing the federal government for its never-ending mask mandate for public transportation and airlines.

More than two years since Covid-19 reached our shores, the Biden administration is still ordering that Americans wear face coverings on planes and to commute. After the Trump administration opted not to require masks on public transport, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order in late January 2021, which prompted one from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in February 2021 shortly after Biden’s inauguration. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody says these federal agencies “never had the power to issue” these mandates.

TSA’s rule was supposed to expire in May of last year but was instead extended to September, then January of 2022, then March, and now April. DeSantis and a horde of other states are trying to change that by arguing that the federal mask mandate goes beyond the CDC’s authority and violates state laws that ban forced masking.

“It’s not something that’s grounded in any science,” DeSantis said during the press conference, showing that just like you don’t have to be a biologist to know what a woman is, you don’t have to be a virologist to understand basic sense. “If you have somebody sitting in the window seat and they’re nibbling on peanuts for two and a half hours, they can have their mask down. You have the person in the middle seat that is not eating, and if they just want to read a magazine without their mask, then somehow that would be a big problem.”

“Florida has led the nation in standing up to misguided federal government policies and fighting back against heavy-handed mandates that have no scientific backing,” DeSantis said. “If politicians and celebrities can attend the Super Bowl unmasked, every U.S. citizen should have the right to fly unmasked. It is well past time to get rid of this unnecessary mandate and get back to normal life.”

Yet more enheartening quotes from Ron the Great at the link. Circling back around to the infamous and inhumane “Let’s Lynch All Teh Gheys!!!” bill—as Leftards have labelled it in their usual calm, rational, not at all overly dramatized manner—our enemies have slipped up and given the game away.

Teachers Who Insist They’re Not Teaching Your Kid About Sex Also Weirdly Outraged By Ban On Teaching Your Kid About Sex
ORLANDO, FL—On July 1st, teachers throughout Florida will no longer be permitted to encourage discussions about sex with children in grades kindergarten through grade 3. Florida teachers have been adamant that they’ve never encouraged such discussions in their classrooms but they are weirdly outraged that they will no longer be able to.

“I have never once told a boy they are really a girl, or a girl they are really nothing, or a man that they should be comfortable loving children. Not once. BUT IT’S OUTRAGEOUS THAT I CAN’T,” said Ms. Feilershiek, a kindergarten teacher at Chickasaw Elementary, while picketing in front of her school instead of teaching children.

One third-grade teacher, Mx. Pat Frumouge (ze/zir), had begun teaching zeir students about LGBTQ culture full-time ahead of the July 1st deadline.

“Look, I don’t groom any kids. But I have to constantly explain why I look like a porcelain fish-being,” ze said, visibly shaken. “This law is going to erase me as an individual. My sexual identity and favorite kinks are my entire identity…if I can’t share that with children—which I don’t—then I don’t know what I’m going to do. Teach math?”

Children at Chickasaw Elementary School are reportedly failing at math and science but excelling at peer-pressuring other children to switch genders at will. Teachers insist the kids are doing that on their own, however.

According to sources, teachers are preparing for the next year by abandoning all subjects entirely in favor of full-time LGBTQ lectures to make up for the fact they won’t be able to indoctrinate children next year—even though they don’t do that.

And again, we have to ask ourselves: is it satire, or is it for real? It just gets harder and harder to tell. Pity the folks at the Bee; they have the toughest jobs in the world. Trying to find a way to effectively exaggerate the Left’s positions and statements—already so extreme they observably warp and distort actual physical reality—for purposes of satire must exhaust a body to the very edge of total collapse. Meanwhile, another whackadoo shitlib demonstrates why the loony Left can never really be defeated.

The angry teachers of TikTok are rolling in after Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education law (also known as “Don’t Say Gay,” because politics demands that every bill signed by a Republican must be demonized). The word “gay” is not in the bill. The bill actually protects children in pre-K through third grade from being assaulted with discuccion of sex and gender issues that they are not ready to handle. For some reason, people on the left are having meltdowns because they can’t talk about their personal sex lives with little children and, in a bizarre trend, they’re making videos about it…

Libs of Tik Tok on Twitter is at the forefront of exposing all the teachers who are carrying on like stuck pigs because they can’t indoctrinate children anymore (at least in Florida). Not only did the bill outlaw discussions of sex and gender with students from pre-K to third grade, but it also outlawed hiding information from K-12 parents about their children’s gender identity or any other information that would be important for them to know. There is a disturbing trend of public schools actively keeping secrets from parents that has led to suicide attempts and harm to children. In Florida, that’s no longer allowed.

But at least one teacher, Amber Mercier who works at The Academy, says she’ll keep lying to parents about their kids, and she’s willing to lose her job over it.

Mercier is gay, and she believes keeping secrets about sexuality from her students’ families — if the student wants her to — is worth losing her job over. “I just want to go ahead and state that I would rather lose my job than out one of my students to their families. Being a safe person and a safe place for kids who don’t have that at home is one of the best parts of being a teacher, so, yeah, I’m not doing it. Fire me, sue me, take me to jail — I’m not doing it.”

Okey doke, fine by me then.

As if the previous nutjob and her oath to lose her job weren’t radical enough, though, there’s also this clearly sane, perfectly normal adult.

Teachers are DESPERATE to talk to little kids about sex. It’s a disorder pic.twitter.com/6lWzpdWhBy

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) March 27, 2022

Only one correct response to that proposition, I believe.

See what I mean about it being impossible to defeat them, though? For Leftards, EVERY hill is a hill worth dying on. Plus, they DO NOT moderate, they DO NOT yield, they DO NOT bargain in good faith. For these relentless zealots, every setback is only temporary, their eyes always locked on the ultimate goal. They’re a lot like cyborgs in that. You can’t defeat them; you can only either shut them down or destroy them. Listen, and understand.

A little (election theft) history

Posted on March 29, 2022March 29, 2022 by Mike

Q: Have American “elections” always been a fraudulent farce, something any self-respecting banana republic would look at with horror and disgust?
A: Pretty much, yeah.

The scenario is familiar. A presidential election ends with uncertain results. Millions are convinced the election has been stolen. Congress steps in to reassure the nation, picks a president, and opens a wound that just divides the country further.

Welcome to 1876. That was the year Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and was just one vote short of an Electoral College victory, but somehow lost to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes when the electoral votes of four states were “reconsidered.”

If you think the presidential election of 2020 was controversial, suffice it to say that if half the irregularities of 1876 had been repeated in 2020, America would have been torn apart.

Not only was an Electoral College majority certified for neither candidate, Congress opted in 1876 to invent a wholly novel “solution.” Instead of following the constitutional mandate putting an unsettled election in the House of Representatives to resolve, Congress improvised, passing a law on Jan. 29, 1877 that formed a 15-member Electoral Commission which was authorized to decide for the entire country who had won the election. Not surprisingly, every decision favored the Republicans on an 8-7 party-line vote, and the commission ended up awarding all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Democrats reportedly allowed Hayes to become president in exchange for his promise that he would end Reconstruction and withdraw federal troops stationed in the South after the end of the Civil War.

Trust me, if there had been an Internet or 24/7 cable news back then, the “Compromise of 1877” probably would have ignited a second civil war instead of putting an unofficial end to the first one. But even without the nonstop blare of social influencers and the Twitter mob, plenty of people knew they were being had.

The Savannah Morning News spoke for many when it opined in its Feb. 24, 1877 edition: “[T]he Democratic leaders in Congress have been bullied, cajoled, betrayed and cheated into a surrender not only of the fairly won victory of the party at the polls, but of the constitutional right of the people to self-government.”

Consider for a moment what that statement means in the context of 2020, when mainstream Republicans were bullied by the mainstream media into abandoning President Trump and his claims of a stolen election. The lesson is clear: If you think the election was not free and fair, if you think victory was stolen from you, then fight for it with all your might. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it. Don’t surrender because someone told you it was a bad look.

As the Savannah editor wrote in the same edition: “A people who can calmly submit to and acquiesce in such a betrayal of their rights and liberties need give to history no better proof of their unfitness for self-government.”

Ouch. Can any of us feel anything less than great personal shame that present-day Americans have so completely confirmed the veracity of those words?

Then again, though, a people in such an advanced stage of degeneracy and decline probably don’t care a whit about self-government anyway, and are blissfully unaware that the right to self-government was stripped from them long ago. Happily, not all of us fit that description, not quite yet.

If Twitter had been around in 1877, however, the Savannah Morning News would have been censored. If there had been an equivalent of the Jan. 6 House select committee, the editor would have been subpoenaed, shamed, and possibly prosecuted. As the mainstream media has essentially told us, when it comes to elections: “If you see something, say nothing.”

But just as in 1876, millions of Americans don’t believe what they are being told, and they don’t want to just shut up and go away, which has made them enemies of the establishment. Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Ginni Thomas and others who dispute the 2020 election results aren’t committing treason; they are committing free thought. And they are being treated as criminals for doing so.

The rest of us are being told to stand down, to acquiesce to the idea that the votes of the American people should never be “overturned” once they are officially recorded. This is ridiculous, both as a matter of logic and as a matter of history.

The logical fallacy is easy to spot. Only a fool would claim that elections are the one area of human experience that is immune from fraud, corruption, or criminal conspiracy. Because so much is at stake in elections, especially the presidential election, we must posit that they would be a most attractive target for subversion.

Would it matter to Democrats that the Electoral College appeared to confer the victory on Trump if they had evidence that an election was stolen? Of course not. Would they stop fighting simply because the other side called them sore losers? Hell no. And if we mean to take democracy seriously, then we have to be prepared to admit that if an election is found to be corrupt, there is no morally viable solution other than to overturn the result. Again, forget about the 2020 presidential election. This is not an issue that should be decided by whether or not you like Donald Trump.

What we need to ask is how to deal with election fraud when and if it inevitably occurs.

Whatever specific measures might be adopted in this entirely hypothetical attempt at reform, the punishment must be swift, certain, and extremely harsh. Such a hard-handed approach would serve several useful purposes at once: it would reflect not only the seriousness of the crime, but that We the People are cognizant of that seriousness, and will not tolerate any flouting of it; it would serve as a real deterrent to all but the most hardened Democrat fraudster; it would restore and nourish a sense of community and shared values which the Left deliberately stripped Americans of in their fanatical pursuit of the Marxist fever dream.

In any event, I think it fair to say that this hypothetical reform is just another one of those many things that of right ought to happen—need to happen, in fact must happen—but never will, unless and until Real Americans rise up, force the issue, and make it happen.

Can’t get enough of that DeSantis stuff

Posted on March 29, 2022March 29, 2022 by Mike

I missed this oldie but goodie its first time around, but it’s still solid gold.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In an exclusive interview with The Federalist, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis challenged the right to take a proactive stance on cultural issues, not just a defensive one.

“Do you want to be the Harlem Globetrotters or do you want to be the Washington Generals? D.C. Republicans, a lot of them are my friends, but they’re like lovable losers,” he said. “They let the corporate media define the narrative and it’s like trying to fight your way out of a wet paper bag. You have to reject these narratives.”

Recognizing Americans who “aren’t captive to the Acela corridor or the far left coast,” DeSantis noted a hunger for strong and active conservative leadership. “If all you’re doing is, the Democrats propose $2 trillion in infrastructure [legislation], so we say we’ll do $1.5 trillion, that’s not going to animate anybody,” he said. “That’s just Me Too Republicanism and ultimately that’s not going to be successful.”

While so many Americans feel they’re on the defensive against an onslaught of cultural threats to their faith, families, and patriotism, DeSantis encouraged them to fight back. “The goal is not to just lose ground more slowly,” he said. “The goal is to regain ground in an offensive direction.”

“This last year was a fundamental test [for the Republican Party] about leading against lockdowns and leading to get kids in school and leading to make sure people weren’t under the yoke of oppressive regulations,” said the governor, noting his lawsuit against the federal Center for Disease Control over its attempt to force the cruise industry to require vaccine passports from passengers. “We are going to pry open every portion of this country one way or another.”

Plenty more where that came from, folks. Don’t miss a single scrumptious word, you’re gonna love it.

A becoming modesty

Posted on March 29, 2022March 29, 2022 by Mike

It ain’t bragging if you can DO it.

Many people are asking, so I’ll give it to you now, it is 100% true. While playing with the legendary golfer, Ernie Els, winner of four Majors and approximately 72 other tournaments throughout the world, Gene Sauers, winner of the Senior U.S. Open, Ken Duke, and Mike Goodes, both excellent tour players, I made a hole-in-one. It took place at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on the 7th hole, which was playing 181-yards into a slight wind. I hit a 5-iron, which sailed magnificently into a rather strong wind, with approximately 5 feet of cut, whereupon it bounced twice and then went clank, into the hole. These great tour players noticed it before I did because their eyes are slightly better, but on that one hole only, their swings weren’t. Anyway, there’s a lot of chatter about it, quite exciting, and people everywhere seem to be asking for the facts. Playing with that group of wonderful, talented players was a lot of fun. The match was Ernie and me (with no strokes) against Gene, Mike, and Ken. I won’t tell you who won because I am a very modest individual, and you will then say I was bragging—and I don’t like people who brag!

Oh, of course not, Mr President, sir. Perish the thought. Your well-known modesty is in fact what so many of us admire most about you.

AHEM.

Not the Worst that Could Happen

Posted on March 29, 2022 by SteveF

A number of people are in a tizzy about the possibility of Kamala Harris — Heels Up, Kneepads, the Sloppy Seconds in Command, or whatever you want to call her — being declared President if the Joetato dies (naturally or otherwise) or is found to be unfit (which would be nothing more than an acknowledgement of something which has been obvious for over a decade) or even is impeached and removed (unlikely but not completely impossible).

Here I am, messenger of joyous tidings that I always am, to tell you that such an occurrence wouldn’t be all that bad. Bad, yes, but not as bad as all that.

For one thing, it wouldn’t really matter. Do you think that the Drooling Imbecile in Chief is really in charge of anything more significant than choosing what flavor pudding he gets for dessert? The diseased hyena will likewise be a figurehead or she’ll be removed just as easily.

For another, the witch drives people away at a rate matched only by other incompetent, screaming tyrants — Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo come to mind. Any chiefs of staff, agency heads, and anyone else with anything on the ball will turn in their resignations in a hurry, leaving only inept chairwarmers. This would leave the machinery of government in the hands of the bureaucrats, not ideal but better than what we’d see with a handful of energetic, capable, charismatic progressives in charge.

Finally, and most importantly, Harris sliming her way into the oval office would give her the title of First Female President, taking away that prize from any number of mostly progressives, some of whom might have some shred of competence in carrying out their destruction. Even better, Harris would taint the idea of a female President as thoroughly as Obama tainted the holy goal of a black President. It’s even possible that she’d kick off the long-awaited backlash against progressives and their goals.

So: not good, but it could be worse.

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.