Who's Confused? Biden, or Trump?

 Well, I know who I think has fallen prey to mankind's unkindest medical condition, and it's NOT Trump.

But, what I find interesting is that for Biden's supporters, the defense seems to be:

• There is nothing wrong with his thinking - and, after a virtual appearance at the DNC, his supporters are high-fiving his apparent coherence (although I, not a person who bets, would place a large sum - Okay, $5 - on the video having been spliced to remove the errors and incoherence, and the video manipulated to make it seem to be a seamless, one-take performance).
• ALL old guys demonstrate that halting speech and off-topic rambling.
• Trump does it, too, and WORSE (well, no, he doesn't).
• Trump is only 3 years younger, so that PROVES that Joe is fine (that does not even approach logical thought).

They don't release a rather simple test (Trump said it was laughably simple). My Dad was in a hospital a few years ago, after a diabetic episode. He'd been a little confused when he arrived, so naturally, when the doctor returned, he was anxious to find out whether he'd come back to functioning mentally.

Unfortunately, what my dad said didn't reassure him.

My dad was just waking up when I arrived. He saw me and said, "Hey, I just got a new laptop with X RAM and Intel inside." We talked the tech specs, slung the lingo around for a while, so the doctor began asking him questions.

The problem was, some of the questions he asked puzzled my father.

What day is it?

Do you know where you are?

Both questions were answered appropriately. Then, the doctor threw him for a loop:

Am I a policeman?

My poor father, hearing that, didn't quite know what to say for a moment. He then answered, "I thought you said you were a doctor?"

The doctor began writing down, patient is still confused and making no sense. Well, I snuck a look at what he'd written, and took him aside to explain, that, despite his fears, the 'gibberish' he was babbling about was perfectly lucid talk about his computer hobby.

“Goes To Credibility”

     “A thousand truths do not mark a man as a truth-teller, but a single lie marks him as a damned liar....Lying to other people is your business, but I tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.” -- Robert A. Heinlein

     “What do we really know of the time of our greatness? A few names of worlds and heroes, a ragtag of facts we’ve tried to patch into a history. The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always.” -- Ursula LeGuin

     There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. -- Benjamin M. Anderson

     “Never believe anything political until it is officially denied.” – old adage

     (I figured I’d get the quotes out of the way first, for the convenience of those who, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, “hate quotations.”)

     Now and then, if you watch the occasional “courtroom drama,” you’ll hear an exchange between a judge and a cross-examining attorney in which the attorney defends the legitimacy of a question he’s just asked by saying that it “goes to credibility.” There’s verisimilitude in such scenes, as whether a witness has a history of untrustworthy statements should affect what the jury makes of his testimony.

     Credibility in statement is one aspect of the condition we call trust. Can Smith trust Jones? What if Jones is known to have been dishonest in his past statements? If that’s the case, Smith would be well advised not to regard Jones as a source of reliable information. Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?

     Credibility is a characteristic we demand from institutions as well as from individuals. Indeed, it might be the most important trait an institution can have...especially a political one:

     If an evildoer should desire the destruction of an institution, probably his most profitable course is to attack its credibility. If he is successful in damaging it thus, thereafter nothing else about it will matter. Whatever assets it still possesses will steadily dribble away. But what method is most likely to avail him?

     Why, infiltrating and corrupting its communications, of course!

     How much of what any level of government emits today is believed by Us the People? How badly have politicians’ prior lies, distortions, and omissions of context undermined their credibility, and by implication the credibility of all government representations? Indeed, how much confidence can we repose in the simplest of political mechanisms: the validation and counting of our votes?

     The question is becoming ever more critical as we approach November 3.

---

     We’ve had a number of recent elections whose results were deemed questionable for some reason. Vote fraud, illegal voting, voter intimidation, and other felonies have had their place. On occasion, the reason was simple incredulity: “How could he have beaten her?” The cumulative effect of such questioning has been to undermine the reliability of election results generally.

     The Left has shrieked mightily over election results that disfavored their preferred candidates. The Right has occasionally protested a result that struck us as corrupt – the election of Al Franken as a U.S. Senator, for example – but we haven’t raised nearly the stink the Left has produced, for a simple reason: We want Americans to trust the results of American elections. The alternative to transitions of authority by ballot is the removal of incumbents by bullet: violent coups, as in various less-than-respectable nations.

     The Left has no great love for elections. Too many of the “wrong” Americans are voting. The upcoming contest on November 3 is likely to disappoint the Left yet again. That makes it the Left’s goal to discredit the result in advance, by spreading a cloud of uncertainty and distrust over the election procedures regardless of what they may prove to be.

     Wes Rhinier lays out the stakes in his most recent essay:

     I’m convinced there will be no consensus regarding an agreed upon presidential victor on November 4th, or possibly weeks after, or possibly ever. The amount of incompetence in handling mail-in-ballots by the USPO and those tasked with counting them will be off the charts. The level of fraud in attempting to win this election will be on a level never seen before, making Daley’s shenanigans to get Kennedy the necessary votes in 1960 seem like child’s play.

     When a system is specifically designed in such a way that cheating is easy, there will be a significant amount of cheating. The stakes in this election have never been higher. The future path of the nation will be set in motion by the outcome of this election. But the truth is, no matter the outcome, the losers will not accept the verdict. That is when this Fourth Turning moves into its truly violent stage, making these urban riots in Democrat stronghold cities seem like minor league play acting.

     If Wes’s prediction doesn’t send a chill down your spine, check your pulse: you may have died and not noticed.

---

     There is no Last Graf. While I believe that President Trump would win an honest election handily, I can’t imagine a way to ensure the credibility of the election to come. Should he be declared the winner, the Left will accelerate the existing violence in a last-ditch attempt to cow us into submitting to its agenda. I expect only discord and feel only fear. That’s all that’s left after trust is gone.

     Have a nice day.

Judy Shelton, Public Enemy # 1.

. . . [Judy Shelton, nominee to a vacancy on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,] is 100 percent correct when she questions why a dozen people (the Federal Reserve Board of Governors) should set the prices of capital (interest rates) any more than they should set the price of cars, houses, or bubble gum.

Markets can do that and do it better - as they did before there even was a Federal Reserve system. Shelton opposes policies that would be more at home in a centrally planned economy.^[1]

Price setting is one of the many Achilles heels of centrally-planned economies. How exactly does one "rationally" determine the price of a pencil or a ham sandwich? How does the technocrat factor into the cost of a pencil the costs of mining the graphite and what exactly should graphite cost? How exactly does a wise man person factor the cost of feed for pigs and the farmer's daughter's tuition and car insurance into the price of the sandwich?

It's an impossible task to set prices from the Olympian heights, even with a spreadsheet, and the true cost of mispricing -- which happens always, without fail, and forever -- is bad price signals to producers and consequent inefficient resource usage and malinvestment. Malinvestment and dangerous use of retirement savings being but two of the plagues coursing through our economy as we speak.

So Shelton's point is an excellent one, definitely in the "emperor's new clothes" category. Why should any narrow elite make decisions for the hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens?

That's kind of the question of the hour, come down to it. What happened to representative government and just who are these swine who dare to determine our future and the future of our country?

Go Judy Shelton!

The Federal Reserve run by the proper sort of people.

Notes
^[1] "'Extreme, Ill-Considered Views' - 38 Fed Alum Urge Senate To Reject Judy Shelton Nomination." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 8/20/20 (emphasis removed).

Hunkering Down

 Like Francis, I'm not inclined to write very long blog posts just now - mostly shorter ones. Some of this is that I'm just about caught up on news for now.

Life is short, and my patience for stupidity is shorter. I am on hiatus from most social media (occasional posts, don't check for messages). I have few responsibilities right now, as I am sleeping on my brother's couch at present, as he has had health issues, and needed some assistance (and company, for a limited time). Many parts of my life have, therefore, been put on hold for now.

The DNC was largely predictable so far - I've very little doubt that Biden will deliver much of a "live" speech - it will be pre-recorded and HEAVILY edited to remove his fumbling thinking. 

The Left keeps creating "scandals" and acting "shocked" at Trump's actions, Tweets, and mis-construed sound bites. Every bit of news consists of: We (the Left) hate Trump, who is the Worst Evah, and EVERYTHING he does is wrong. And, Evil.

The details don't matter. The truth is unimportant. What matters is splattering mud on the wall, and hoping that enough of it sticks that is sways enough votes. What is enough? Sufficient to get within cheating distance of winning.

Really, it's like watching a woman whose husband has had all he can take of her Sh*t, who keeps calling the cops with specious accusations, browbeating her lawyer into filing desperate attempts to slow up or stop the process, and bad-mouthing her soon-to-be ex with anyone who she can force to listen to her b*tching. No act is too low, she is not bound by any moral restrictions, and - if it would cause him pain, she would slit her own throat without hesitation.

Of course, she would MUCH rather he die, but...

So, I'm checking in only once or twice a day on news. I've picked up a crocheting project. I'm spending time reading books I've had on the TBR list (To Be Read), and I'm enjoying life in the slow lane.

1984, Over and Over and Over Again

 At the time I first read it (high school, late 1960s), just about every kid also was assigned the book (the less academically inclined might be given Animal Farm instead - it's just shorter, and with a simpler vocabulary).

I had come to think of this as a universal experience.

The New Neo's post make me reconsider that assumption. Either some kids didn't read it, or it made no impression on them.

I'm curious - what books do you remember? I added a couple of books that might lead readers to be aware of the problems of Leftist societies, and put together a Google Forms quiz.

The anonymous quiz is here.

Masks that Work, and Those that Don't

 It turns out that a common form of covering your face, the Gaiters, may be completely worthless. And, I'm guessing, so might the scarves worn by many women.

The AntiFa "peaceful protesters" seem to be fond of the Gaiter style (I'm SURE it has nothing to do with its effectiveness in concealing identifiable facial features).

If you are returning to work, interacting indoors, or your child is returning to school, consider watching the above video. It had one tip I'd not heard of - light a candle, hold it a few inches away, and try to blow it out.

If you can't, the mask is effective. If it goes out, choose another mask.

Objectives And Constraints, 2020 Edition

     I’ve been trying to minimize my rantings on political and current-events subjects recently. I’ve needed to distance myself from them, lest they swallow me whole. If you come here for such fulminations, I can only hope that the offerings from Linda and the Colonel have satisfied you. I’ve had to refocus on other topics, probably temporarily, for the sake of my sanity.

     A couple of things from my morning reading have me thinking about a peculiar coin, one that philosophers will recognize at once. On one face of that coin is engraved:

Objectives And Methods

     ...while the reverse face is inscribed with:

Moral And Ethical Constraints

     The rim of this coin is milled as is the rim of a quarter, such that one cannot help but feel the ridges. Indeed, you might want to keep a quarter in your hand as you read this. Run your thumb along the edge from time to time. It will remind you that there can never be a coin with only one face.

---

     This morning, our favorite Bookworm declaims thus:

     Andrew Klavan often talks about the fact that the Republican reverence for the free market beginning in the 1980s had within it the seeds of the Republicans’ downfall because they forgot that capitalism works only when tempered with morality.

     Indeed! Bravo! Unfortunately, Bookworm immediately drives into the weeds:

     China is the ne plus ultra of capitalism without morality. (By the way, another word for what China is now is fascist. That’s what happens when you allow private ownership and a “free” market, but the government maintains complete control.)

     This distorts the meanings of its key words. “Capitalism” and “free market” are synonyms, though one has connotations the other does not. Fascism is not capitalist; it is socialist. In a fascist economy just as in an explicitly socialist one, production and distribution are totally dictated by the State, with a few meaningless property deeds for camouflage and decoration. (Look up the meaning of the German word Betriebsführer and its significance in the Third Reich if this eludes you.)

     However, it’s the first of the two cited passages that really caught my eye. The reason is a single, seemingly innocuous word: “works.”

     To say that something “works” – or doesn't – implies an objective to be pursued and a standard for evaluation, and such objectives and standards are seldom explicitly stated. Just now, for example, we have out-of-control riots, violence, and vandalism in several major cities, while local and state authorities alternate between wringing their hands and sitting on them. Yet I have no doubt that some persons are viewing that chaos and saying to one another “It's working.” That is: they believe it’s bringing them nearer to their objective.

     The objective being pursued, and the existence or nonexistence of moral and ethical constraints, are what really matter to the applicability of the word “works.”

---

     A people who commonly subscribe to the moral and ethical codes of the Judeo-Christian tradition will understand one another reasonably well when one of them says “this works” or “that won’t work.” They’ve agreed on the objective at issue and tacitly accept the same constraints. But if there are among them persons who don’t subscribe to that moral-ethical code, they can use the others’ fallacious assumption to work a great betrayal.

     For example: When the modern American welfare system was established in the early Sixties, it was sold to the public not as a way of life but as “a hand up” for those who became its beneficiaries. That is, it was represented as a way to reduce avoidable privation, particularly among minor children, while the beneficiaries “get back on their feet.” But the welfare system did become a way of life for a steadily expanding population of beneficiaries who remained dependent on the system lifelong. The percentage of persons who accepted welfare support and later became self-supporting was dwarfed by the percentage that remained on it permanently. So if the objective was “a hand up,” the programs failed. However, if the objective was to produce a steadily expanding population of dependents, the programs worked very well indeed.

     But decent people – that is, people who sincerely subscribe to the Judeo-Christian ethic – could not believe that anyone would have inducing helpless dependency in millions of others as his objective. It would be wrong, barely distant from mass enslavement. The idea that persons in government, whether elected, appointed, or Civil Service, would think it acceptable, much less desirable, baffled many good-hearted Americans.

     The objective pursued and the moral-ethical standard that constrained the pursuer clearly mattered. Run your thumb along your quarter’s edge and ponder awhile.

---

     The aim of the High is to remain where they are. -- George Orwell

     We’ve talked a lot about the political Establishment, here and elsewhere. Since the election of President Trump, that category of persons has chafed over being ejected en masse from federal power. Returning to their previous state of hegemony is their primary objective. They see Trump as the principal obstacle to that aim. Therefore, they seek to depose him, by any expedient means.

     The events of the four years behind us have made it plain that in that campaign, the Establishment recognizes no moral constraints of importance. They will lie, cheat, steal, betray the interests of the country, and possibly even arm America’s enemies if it will get them where they want to go. The revelations about what lies behind the “Russian collusion” hoax have made both their objective and their lack of moral scruple ever more obvious to decent Americans.

     Would these people ever admit openly to their objective? Doubtful. Would they ever admit to their lack of moral constraint? Really, now! They progress entirely because most Americans are good-hearted, naive believers in the good will of all their countrymen. They assume as a matter of course that we’re all decent sorts who want the same things and respect the same moral-ethical rules. It falls to us who see more clearly to make matters plain.

     Which brings me to this excellent piece from Sundance at The Last Refuge. In his exposition on Cold Anger, Sundance expresses our objective with maximum clarity and precision:

     You know why the entire apparatus is united against President Trump. You know why the corrupt Wall Street financial apparatus is united against President Trump. You know why every institutional department, every lobbyist, every K-Street dweller, every career legislative member, staffer, and the various downstream economic benefactors, including the corporate media, all of it – all the above, are united against Donald Trump.

     Donald Trump is an existential threat to the existence of a corrupt DC system we have exposed to his disinfecting sunlight. Donald Trump is the existential threat to every entity and institution who benefits from that corrupt and vile system.

     They too have nothing to lose; their desperation becomes visible within their apoplexy; and they’re damn sure displaying it.

     Do not look away.

     Throw aside the sense of discomfort and bear witness to the evil we oppose. Do not turn your eyes from the hatred focused in our direction. Stand firm amid the solace of our number and resolve to the task at hand.

     Leftists who oppose our efforts hold positions that are weak, push back against them. They rely on fear…. they relish misery and despair… do not give it to them. Let them stare into the Cold Anger furnace.

     Our constraint? It is the same as our objective: justice, nothing else. If the existing institutions will not grant us justice, we will make it for ourselves, with our own hands.

     We must.

Absolutely NO shutdown agenda.

Unh uhh.

[President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko] says he was offered a World Bank loan if he did a COVID lockdown.^[1]

This is lockdown garbage is a sick obsession. It is CLEAR that mitigating the effect of the COVID-19 virus is NOT the ONLY consideration. Saving countless national economies, jobs, and small businesses is now THE MAJOR task facing world governments. At this point, it's anything but clear that we can avoid economic disaster given all the other reckless, greasy spending, debt, monetary, and cronyism excesses. But, CLEARLY, enormous economic and social harm IS being engineered by this sick focus on lockdown, lockdown, lockdown.

A little perspective from the CDC leading causes of death for 2017 with my addition of today's U.S. COVID-19 deaths:

• Heart disease: 647,457
• Cancer: 599,108
• COVID-19: 173,798
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
• Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
• Diabetes: 83,564
• Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,633
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

Even if I divide the COVID-19 number above by 8 and multiply by 12 the result is 260,697 COVID-19 deaths, still roughly half of the death tolls for cancer and heart disease. Each year.

CLEARLY people without other serious health problems, not in nursing homes, and not elderly have a much reduced, if not nonexistent, risk of serious consequences from infection. And I say this as a man well into his 70s with, fortunately, no co-morbidities other than a serious alcohol problem. I can quit any time. I'm not eager to depart this vale of tears right now but still I don't expect there to be a vastly distorted official reaction to something that ISN'T the Spanish Flu.

Okay. CLEARLY hydroxychloroquine, zinc and azithromycin have considerable value in treating the virus infection in its early stages, just as it is equally clear that there is an underhanded, dishonest effort to demonize this treatment, not least by publishing critical studies that involve abnormally high doses that no one has recommended for the virus.

And, just as CLEAR, is the full-court press to censor and deplatform views not in line with the scum-sucking establishment lunatics.

And don't forget Angelo Codevilla's take on the elite agenda recorded for prosperity on the Intergalactic Source of Truth, one of your finer blogs.

Notes
^[1] "RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 20 AUGUST 2020." By Patrick Armstrong, Sic Semper Tyrannis, 8/20/20.

Great Moments In Customer Service

Masseuse: “...and they all lived happily ever after.”
Customer: That is not what I meant by a happy ending!

     </rimshot>

Writer Reviewing Other Writer’s Books Experiences Great Consternation

     (Film at eleven!)

     Seriously, as a writer with nearly three decades of experience under my belt, it can be very difficult to assess another writer’s work in a fair and evenhanded manner. After all, most readers are not writers themselves – yea verily, even today – and are mainly interested in learning whether they would be likely to enjoy the book in question. If your review doesn’t give them a sense for that, it’s essentially pointless.

     But readers who write approach others’ fiction with a different perspective. Its essence is well expressed in this piece by Writing Observer:

     When a writer reads someone else’s work, unless they are one of the lucky few that can switch off that part of their brain at will, they are simultaneously analyzing the text flowing beneath their eyes. We can’t help it — like any other professional, we are constantly looking for help with our own efforts. What doesn’t work here, and how do I avoid it? What is a beautiful, shiny piece of prose, or scene, or entire chapter, and how do I make mine look so good?

     It’s an uncomfortable feeling — and sometimes a dangerous one. We can lose sight of the forest for the trees, people. We have to cultivate an ability to step back and look at the work as a whole — that is what makes a good (or bad) piece of work, not a few blemishes or a few shining passages. The whole work is what matters in the end...

     A writer who undertakes to review is obliged to remember that any writers who read his review will be heavily outnumbered by ordinary readers looking for a few hours’ entertainment. Any nitpicking he might express to himself about the book in question should be downplayed in favor of an emphasis on the book’s entertainment value.

     An example: Back when Tom Clancy was churning out the techno-thrillers, I purchased, read, and greatly enjoyed virtually all of them. Yet Clancy’s prose is a study in a wide variety of errors young writers are counseled to avoid. Some of those errors are serious: for example, ambiguity of viewpoint and head-hopping in mid-scene. Others are minor glitches of phrasing and style that a multitude of other writers – far less gifted than Clancy at crafting and narrating a compelling story – also commit. But the writer-who-reads and notices them can still be enthralled by the storytelling. If he chooses to review, he’s ethically obliged to keep that uppermost in mind.

     And so we come to my episode of consternation.

---

     I receive a daily email from Freebooksy that reports on the day’s free-eBook promotions. Now and then I pick up a book from that email. I last did so about a week ago: Emergence, by Liberty Speidel.

     The nitpicky, Uber-perfectionist lobe of my brain was in overdrive from the very first page. There were a lot of stylistic glitches. There was also a revelation that should have occurred but didn’t, as I would find out much later. Main character Darby was portrayed in a fashion that struck me as ambivalent: equally likely to strike a reader as sympathetic or unsympathetic. But the central premises are original, especially considering that the tale is part of the “superheroes” genre, and the plot moved me smartly along. So when I finished Emergence, I went on to Retaliation,the next book in the series.

     Well, the stylistic glitches didn’t trail off. If anything, they increased in frequency. Darby’s characterization continued to be jagged, not always effectively sympathetic. I also deemed one of Speidel’s “structural” choices to be dubious. But there was a sense of freshness about the story’s sociopolitical backdrop and its most important plot motifs. When I finished it, I went directly on to book three, Capitulation.

     I could go on in this vein through books three, four (Omission), and five (Escalation). There were more errors of the sort in the previous books, plus lots of loose ends, and at least one continuity error of note. Perhaps worst, main character Darby was ever more portrayed as headstrong, disrespectful of higher authority and heedless of others’ greater experience, and prone to acting without thinking or pondering the probable consequences – i.e., who struck me as a brat who should be sent to her room without her dinner or cell phone.

     By now you must have the idea. As much as the writer in me wanted to take Speidel across my knee and spank her soundly for her myriad errors of craft, she’d invented a setting of considerable originality, had made use of motifs that were either inherently original or original as employed, and had kept the stories moving forward at a good tempo. How to review the series?

     Great God in heaven! My writerly side kept wanting to chastise Speidel. But I’d read all five books, end to end, without pausing. To write a nitpicky, hypercritical review, as if I were critiquing my own fiction, would unfairly shortchange the entertainment value of the books. Yet not to mention the flaws at all would grate severely against the part of me that values craft and precision in writing.

---

     I’m still dithering. Perhaps the only place I’ll mention my consternation is right here. (Or at my fiction-promotion site, where this will be cross-posted.)

     I wrote some time ago about the importance of being reasonable in one’s expectations of an indie writer, especially a relatively inexperienced one. I still feel that way. So if and when I get around to actually posting a review of Speidel’s “Darby Shaw” series, I’ll have to rein in the impulse to harp on what I saw as failings of craft and emphasize the entertainment value the series offers. Ordinary Christian charity would dictate that course. For now, the above emission of steam should bring the pressure down to a manageable level.

Where Have the Weapons of the Left Come From?

 Check this piece on American Thinker out -  the writer questions the current location of all those guns and ammo that Obama's administration bought for various government agencies (NOT military units).

Here's the link.

Look for These Signs of Organization in the Next Riots

 Bookwormroom has done a tremendous service for the rest of us, by posting this information. I'd seen some info about these tactical 'tells', but it's nice to see it so detailed.

Here is the link.

Some ways the police can utilize this include use of scanners with frequency ranges close to the type of radio the AntiFa have, strategic use of paintballs to 'tag' the various leaders (perhaps different colors for different levels of operation?), and drone coverage (preferably small, and operating high enough or under concealment to enable them to keep an eye on the flow of the action, target individuals for arrest, and providing video evidence of their activities).

The Bookroom's Memes are Wicked!

 See for yourself.

Is COVID Nearly Over?

 The Democrats are sure HOPING not!

But, according to this guy, it is. He makes a very persuasive case for ending the lockdown.

The Dystopian Novels of the 60's Are Coming True

 "14 or Fight!" - a novel promoting the extension of the vote to young teens. Sloppily written, and, in the end, cautions about the lengths to which this could go, but...Yes, there are calls from Pelosi, among others, to extend the vote to 16-year olds.

Lord of the Flies - have you looked at the scenes from CHAD, CHOP, and other major cities?

And, a book that - at age 19, I did read, and found appealing. But, only until I moved away from my parent's house, and experienced what that life would be, should the hippies take over. After a relatively short time of cleaning up after people trashed the place, covering rent and utilities for the financially feckless, and missing sleep to listen to their stoned political blatherings, that got REAL stale.

That last book, about the wonderfulness of a totes cooperative and loving world, rendered so by the copious use of drugs, either consumed willing or by a "loving" friend who just KNOWS you would enjoy the experience, may be put into practice if this fool gets his way.

This is not going to strike the young as an invasion of personal autonomy; many of them were drugged without their permission, to render them compliant with school discipline. But, this extends a parental decision to government imposition.

Be warned!

How To Speak To A Democrat Allegiant In This Campaign Season

     Please review the following short video:

     David Horowitz cornered the young Muslim propagandist rather neatly. A similar approach could be used on persons who support Democrat candidates in the coming election:

“Will you condemn Antifa and Black Lives Matter as violent terrorist organizations?”

     Just a quick thought for those who haven’t yet alienated all their left-of-center relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

A Wee Bit More Sadness

     Once again, from John Hinderaker:

     The most remarkable thing, to me, is that I am not aware of a single Democratic Party politician who has condemned the violence and grotesque criminality of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. As far as I can tell, the Democratic Party is on the side of the vicious criminals whom we see in the above videos. So the lines in November’s election are more clearly drawn than ever: Good–or at least normality!–vs. evil.

     The sad part isn’t that this is a unique, unprecedented insight. The sad part is that this is completely unconcealed: to use two of my favorite words, it “should” be “obvious.” But then, a fascist political party must have a military auxiliary. Hitler’s National German Socialist Workers’ Party had the Sturmabteilung. Mussolini’s National Fascist Party had the Black Shirts. Robert Mugabe has the ZANU-PF. And the Democrats have Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

     By their fruits shall ye know them...and those fruits are on garish display in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and elsewhere.

Declaration Of Personal Emancipation

     It’s time for some personal assertions of freedom.

     I broke a pair of glasses, just yesterday. I thought to bring them to where I purchased them, whether to be repaired or replaced. But at the door was a sign that informed the prospective customer that no one would be allowed inside without a mask. I turned around, went directly home, and emailed them that they’d lost my patronage.

     I’m in New York, one of the least free, most sheeplike states in the U.S. I can’t move for reasons of family. And I chafe at the complete idiocy of persons wearing useless face coverings and demanding that I do the same as a condition of doing business with me. When the demander is in the medical field, the irritation is especially great, as these cloth masks don’t even inconvenience the tiny COVID-19 virus. All they do is impede one’s breathing while reducing one’s recognizability.

     The worst part is the cowardice. “Well, it’s corporate policy.” Then the corporation has no respect for its customers. “But there’s a dangerous disease to consider.” COVID-19 is less dangerous than the common flu and is easily remedied with safe, inexpensive drugs. “The state has mandated it.” The state has no authority to do so!

     So I’ve decided on a one-man rebellion. I refuse to do business with any firm that requires me to wear a mask. Moreover, I let them know that, for the cheek of refusing my patronage on ridiculous grounds, I shan’t do business with them ever again. Virtually every business has enough competitors that there’ll be one with spine enough to act like a free man.

     Will it have any effect? We shall see. I’ll keep you posted.

“Forward – Into The Past!”

     Among the coloring motifs of many tales about the American past is the “one room schoolhouse,” which brought children of varying ages together under a single teacher charged with the instruction of all of them. Such institutions really existed, and not just in the small communities of the western territories, despite contemporary doubts that they could have functioned effectively. Moreover, they produced reasonably well educated young Americans. I have no doubt that a lot of those youngsters would humiliate a Twenty-First Century high school graduate in a contest of knowledge of history or civics.

     You might think that no one of today would elect to resurrect the one-room schoolhouse in preference to separation by grade, team teaching, and the modern school building with its various facilities. Yet something not entirely dissimilar is happening – and it appears to be an accelerating trend. Hearken to long-time education commentator Joanne Jacobs:

     What are you doing about school? It’s a mad scramble to figure out district’s reopening or not-reopening plans and find alternatives that enable children to interact with classmates and working parents to work. People are getting creative.

     The wealthy are hiring teachers or tutors to staff “pandemic pods,” while middle-class families are sharing homeschooling duties or hiring non-teachers (lots of young people are out of work) to supervise children’s remote learning and play.

     It’s too early in the progression to have any sense for how well these new arrangements will work. Yet they’re plainly preferable, especially in the face of teachers’ unions refusals to return to the classroom, to letting Junior sit around playing video games all day. Even if the “novel” environment and having a single teacher for all subjects might seem counter-intuitive to persons accustomed to modern school structures, it has a chance of getting the kids to learn something. After all, there are usually only a few students per pod – typically fewer than ten. They’re all likely to know one another and one another’s families. And being from comparable social and economic backgrounds, their progress is more likely to be even than in a classroom as heterogeneous as is typical in a conventional modern school.

---

     Of course, the “learning pod” approach does have its critics...and I’ll bet you could tell me what field they work in:

     It is tempting to see this resourcefulness as a triumph of DIY culture. But that requires seeing it in a vacuum. When looking at the overall affect [sic] of pods, it is hard not to see how they will exacerbate the pre-existing inequities and achievement gaps that already vex public schools.

     This is pessimistic, but hear me out: Pods are almost like a 200-year leap backward in history, delivering us into a time before public schools. The difference between a group of kids learning together with someone to guide their studies versus a lone third grader watching two hours of pre-recorded video lessons, while she sits alone at home is astronomic.

     And from Joanne Jacobs’ article:

     Worried about widening achievement gaps, Will Huntsberry called Pedro Noguera, dean of the education school at USC, he writes on Voices of San Diego. He asked “if the rise of the learning pod will make existing disparities worse.”

     “It will. Because it’s gonna be affluent parents that can afford to do it,” (Noguera) said. “Many people won’t have access to that, and won’t be able to do it.”

     “I can’t blame them,” Noguera said about parents creating learning pods. “My wife is exploring them as an option for one of our daughters.”

     What we know about distance learning’s success in the spring isn’t good, writes Huntsberry. “Los Angeles Unified released a report this week that showed Black, Latino and poor students were much less likely to be engaged with online learning than their peers, the Los Angeles Times reported.”

     “Inequities!” “Disparities!” Well, the “public” schools are familiar with those, aren’t they? Have one more set of unctuously expressed concerns:

     Tina Cheuk, an education researcher at California Polytechnic State University, said she is troubled by the trend toward learning pods and the related push to finance them with public funding that normally would go to the schools.

     “That decision has implications for public education,” she said. Not only would it defund public education but it threatens to de-professionalize teachers, who are often “replaced” in pods by college students or retirees, she said.

     “You choosing to be in a pod may seem very innocent – ‘well, of course, it makes sense. I’m looking out for my family,’” Ms. Cheuk said. “It’s these unintended consequences for public education, which we either ignore or we choose to ignore because our private interests trump the others that we don’t know.”

     “De-professionalized” teachers! Dues-paying members of the “educators’ unions” being replaced by outsiders – possibly even uncredentialed college students! Horror of horrors! What sort of monster would put the education of his children above that overwhelming concern?

     Do you sense that the “educators” feel that their rice bowls are being threatened, Gentle Reader? I do.

---

     Survey after survey tells us that the most important factor in student educational performance is parental involvement. It trumps teacher “quality,” the range of “facilities” available, the age of the textbooks used, and so forth. Parental involvement is the asset most strongly in favor of any homeschool or homeschool-like arrangement. The learning pod scheme combines the probability of high parental involvement with the employment of knowledgeable, capable instructors whom the parents can hold to account – and that threatens the “professional educators” more than any other aspect of the phenomenon:

• Parents will interview candidate instructors, choose them on the basis of the criteria that matter to the parents, and will monitor their performance.
• The best instructors will command the highest fees, regardless of whether they’d been school teachers or – God help us – members of an “educators’ union” before this.
• Capable teachers previously employed by a “public” school will be tempted out of the bureaucratic “public” school system and toward the learning pods.
• Homeschooling already threatens the “educators’” bastions. The learning pods will intensify the threat, increasing the pressure on state education departments to move toward a school choice system in which the money follows the student, rather than going invariably to his district’s “public” school.
• Learning pods will be unencumbered by the administrative overhead that “public” schools endure, making them more economical by far than the “public” schools.
• Disparities among social, ethnic, and economic strata will appear to increase. But this will merely reveal a reality the “public” schools have been doing their damnedest to conceal.
• And of course, the “educators” will fight viciously to suppress the learning pods, as they’ve been doing with homeschooling since the failure of the “public” schools became too obvious to conceal.

     Gentle Reader, this could be the start of something really big and really good. It would be one of the few really good things to come out of the pan[dem]ic. Stay tuned.

The Saddest Thing I’ve Read In A Long Time

     When a highly intelligent, observant, and articulate man with a strong record for accurate analysis says something really gloomy, it’s wise to pay attention. He might be wrong, just as the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong...but that’s not the way to bet.

     Concerning the Durham investigation into the sources and methods of the Russian Collusion Hoax, from the great John Hinderaker of PowerLine:

     Traditionally, DOJ does not release a report or announce indictments within 60 days of an election, where such action might have political consequences. I think it virtually certain that Durham will respect that tradition, meaning that his report will issue by September 4 or else not until after the election.

     By which time, of course, it will be much too late. But then, it is probably too late already. The wholly unsupported and frankly insane Trump-Russia narrative, cooked up out of nothing on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and propagated by the Democratic Party media, has taken hold. And we live in a world of narratives, not a world of truth, thanks in large part to our utterly corrupt press. The Russia collusion hoax was the biggest scandal in American history, but it will be left to a future generation to take its full measure.

     Hinderaker might be wrong...but that’s not where my money is going.

The Red Devil and His [Communist] Playbook.

From someone who knows.

By Katarina Jovanović, 8/15/20.

From the YouTube page:

"Theoretical backgrounds of two opposing ideologies. One has created the most magnificent civilization in the history of mankind, while other has pushed civilizations into the abyss of Hell during the 20th century.

"If not stopped, it will leave its bloody mark again in the 21st century, and the world we knew will cease to exist, forever."

"Unclean! Unclean" - The New Normal - A Society of Lepers

 The essay at the link encapsulates my thinking about the ritualized, mandatory masking of great parts of the public areas of our country. Those who insist on masking are self-righteous about it, and viciously hostile to those failing to mask (or, deliberately refusing to mask), to the point of verbally abusing and even physically attacking the non-compliant.

There is no good evidence that masking - of the kind that does not involve N95 PPE - is all that effective. Far more important is washing your damn hands - often.

Let me be clear. Who should be required to wear a mask:

• Those caring for hospitalized, or medically fragile patients (that would include those in nursing homes)
• Those who are providing care for family members who are infected, or who are at high risk of serious complications
• Those with the following conditions - heart problems, lung problems, asthma, diabetes, immunity issues, advanced old age (75+) and morbid obesity
• Those who work in close quarters with others - meat-packing plants, for example

That's it. Other than those, it should be optional. Of course, a business or other organization (as well as individuals) may decide to require use of a mask. They are free to forbid entrance to the unmasked.

But, they should not be required to be the enforcement arm of the state.

Nor should police be brought in to remove people not following the rules. For crying out loud, the police are currently being denounced because of a few situations when they were brought in to arrest people who had broken relatively small laws. 

Do we really want them to have the responsibility to put people in handcuffs, taser them, or otherwise use their powers to force compliance because the person won't put the Magic Piece of Cloth over his mouth and nose?

I'm in favor of setting a date for No More Masks (other than in the listed cases of exceptions). Whether or not the epidemic is over, that's the end of the mandates. After that date, people who are germ-phobic are free to mask to their heart's content, but the rest of us are also free to follow our own judgement.

Let's end the mark of COVID Leprosy.

Flashpoint for WWIII?

 I really do appreciate those who post this kind of informative essay. I would not have known of the importance of this region, or of the reasons WHY it is so valuable that nations would want to war over it.

The Caucasus region - why you need to put a feed to news in that part of the world.

Fighting Back Against the Left

 It can be done - but, it will likely be costly.

Read the story of how Poland, assisted by volunteers from many nations, drove back the Russian attackers and forced a peace.

Guys, this is not gonna be a quick rout. Oh, sure, they may collapse quickly in the aftermath of a Trump victory (optimistically assuming it). But, the people behind the "mass movement" - those who pull the strings - need to be identified, removed, and de-fanged.

George Soros is not the kingpin - he is merely the willing banker. By sowing chaos, he has, and hopes to continue, profiting from the wild swings of the stock market, destabilized currencies, and other money-making opportunities. The Left has been perfectly willing to let him do this, as the incentive keeps him supporting their takeover of America.

It's the United States that stands in the way of their complete control of the world. We, alone, have resisted the lure of their "ideal world". The Normals and Deplorables that make up most of America are stubbornly resistant to the would-be Elites telling them what to do, buy, eat, and speak. They want their OWN homes, and separate ones, at that. They want to send their kids to schools that will properly prepare them for real life, not that Unicorn-Filled World that the Leftists want to pretend can be theirs, just for the capitulation.

They stubbornly resist sharing the wealth they have given up large parts of their lives for. They have confidence in their ability to manage those lives, without advice from Cat-Ladies and Man-Bun Boys. And, Glittery Twinks and Karens - lots of Karens.

IF men wanted know-it-all women who despise men to tell them how they would be permitted to live, the guys wouldn't have divorced their first wife. Very young men will ignore the hectoring and whining, for the chance to have hot sex. It's only later, when the frequency and quality of that sex has dwindled, that they realize that the woman is a real PITA (Pain in the A$$).

Do you know why divorce is so expensive?

Because, sometimes, it's really worth it. (saying of John Wilder, creator of Wilder, Wealthy and Wise.

Cannon Hinnant And “Exploitation”

     If you read about this unbelievable atrocity, which I linked to in this piece, you may be aware that the head of steam building under it is cresting toward an explosion. This morning, courtesy of Ninety Miles From Tyranny, we have a couple of logs more for the fire:

     The tragic, heinous murder of white 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant has brought many together in their demand for justice for this innocent child who was executed by his black neighbor....

     One man, again a generous term, on Facebook, who listed his place of employment as Taco Bell, appeared to openly celebrate the murder, Nationalist Review reported.

     “Ion (I don’t) give a sh** he is white it’s time for revenge we tired shit over with now we shooting yall go cry to you moma,” an account belonging to Terrell Kent, who lives in the same town as the victim, said.

     After being bombarded with hate mail for the abhorrent comment Kent posted again, this time saying that it was his brother, not he, who made the statement.

     Is steam pouring from your ears yet? But wait! there’s more! From the same Federalist article:

     But sadly, the comment on Kent’s page was not the only comment of celebration regarding the death of the innocent 5-year-old child.

     “Blew his little white privileged brains clean out of his head #BlackLivesMatter,” a person by the name of Dante Salvador said on a post about the murder.

     A certain Michael A. Lewis dislikes that we’re a bit exercised over this:

     This is not a contest. People are exploiting this heinous, disgusting crime and it is sad. Some are talking about who didn't cover it. Others are comparing it to the Floyd matter, some are doing the if the colors were reversed.

     ALL need to stop it. Nobody is talking about what matters. This little angel was killed in a painful, horrific and senseless attack. The man who did it and is in jail without bail. He can rot there for all I care. He should. Personally I wish he could get shot in a different place every day until the day he dies. This is not about coverage, Floyd, racial divides... This about Cannon Hinnant! It is horrible what happened to him. The family deserves and shall receive justice.

     To which I replied thus:

     You don’t like it, Mr. Lewis? You aren’t happy that a crime of the very worst sort has been ignored by the major media because the races involved don't fit their “narrative,” but now that word’s gotten around the outrage is explosive? You call the outrage “exploitation?” That’s really too bad. Imagine how whites feel about the “exploitation” of the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and so forth. Imagine how we feel about several of our cities being reduced to embers and rubble by mobs rage-fueled by such “exploitation.” And after you’ve gotten past those imaginings, imagine what’s going to come of it should American whites decide that we’re one side in a race war, and that it’s time to go to the guns.

     That’s the perception American Negroes are feeding. The riots, the looting, the “knockout games,” the demands for “reparations” – I never owned any slaves; have you ever picked any cotton? – and the constant shrieking about how “oppressed” your people are have gotten on a lot of nerves. We’re close, Mr. Lewis, very close. Don’t bother protesting that you and yours “aren’t like that.” By tolerating and protecting the criminals, looters, and vandals among you, by passively allowing the agitators to fill young Negro heads with envy and anger, and by keeping silent when they act up, you’ve made the worst among you the emblems of your race. As a number of others have observed, if the switch flips we whites won’t care about anything but the color of our targets’ skins.

     Perhaps you should talk to Anthony Kent about “exploitation.”

     The time for the “we aren’t like that” sort to take responsibility for having tolerated and shielded the “yeah, we’re like that and what are you gonna do about it, honky?” sort is long past. Unless the “we aren’t like that” types among American Negroes get the upper hand and prove it:

• By demanding that the media cover interracial crimes objectively and evenhandedly;
• By toppling the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, Louis Farrakhans, and Maxine Waterses from their perches;
• By taking a hand in disciplining their own: especially black criminals and black unwed mothers;
• By utterly condemning all further discussions of “reparations” and political initiatives toward any such;

     ...there will be war. Even the best possible outcomes won’t be pleasant.

The Weird, Wonderful World We Live in

 I've been goofing off carefully, thoughtfully updating my knowledge of world events, and have run across multiple WT* moments. Below, in no particular order, are the ones that struck me as noteworthy.

COVID-19 Panic - the limitations of Science (capitalized, because Important). I've long been aware of the problems of inaccurate results - both False Positives (you DON'T have it, but the test says you do), and also False Negatives (you DO have it, but have been assured you don't).

The False Negatives cause more danger for both the patient and the public, usually. You may not get treatment, until too late, because of that kind of result. If you are infectious or contagious (not the same thing), you may spread a mini-epidemic before the error is corrected.

But, in the case of COVID diagnosis errors of the False Positive kind, there are worse outcomes - you may isolate, and fall into depression, you will likely lose money - either directly through paying for useless treatment, or by being forbidden to appear in public/on the job - or, both.

As very few have the actual disease, the problem of False Positives is a bigger problem. We have virtually shut down massive numbers of people, based on the idea that the disease is running rampant through their state. A substantial number of the "positive cases" are not; but, as that cumulative total keeps getting publicized, the panic in the easily frightened is growing, not shrinking.

How many? One study found 30% False Positive, 20% False Negative.

A better metric is: Currently Affected. That would include all of the current cases, and also include those who have not fully recovered (a small portion). By seeing that number decline, people might take heart, and begin to clamor for release from lockdowns.

That's why the media and the Leftists won't use that number.

Even without test errors, the problem of bad data persists. A CA official, the Health Director of the state, Sonia Angell, has just resigned because of the mismanagement of the statistics relating to this case. In that instance, UNDER-reporting was the problem.

AntiFa rioters are using the revolving door method of incarceration, facilitated by Leftist organizations with big bankrolls and attorneys on call. How about a change in the bail system? Don't just make a cash bail a criteria, make the person signing for the release, AND their organization, if any, PERSONALLY responsible for the cost of any crimes committed while on release.

The idea of 'Soft Leftie' is one that I want to think about for a while. It probably is a better description of many average people who have traditionally voted Left/Dem. Many of them are: Yes, but- on many issues. 

They are against racism, but really don't like the system being stacked against all men and most women, based on their color.

They are for - sort of - abortion rights, but squeamish about the limits of it being unrestricted. And, they are REALLY against the harvesting of body parts.

They are in favor - in public - of Black Lives Matter protests, but REALLY, REALLY opposed to riots. And, as the riots seem to follow the protests like lemmings to the sea, their thinking about the 'rightness' of BLM is lessening.

It's not Proust, but it is a remembrance of things past - in this case, quite appropriate to our current situation. If you believe all of the experts, the NLDs (Non-Leftist Dissidents) are about to have their asses handed to them in the upcoming election - and beyond, as Civilization Falls.

John Wilder reminds us that we don't just fight for ourselves and our families. We also fight for time, so that those who follow can continue the fight.

Who else is heartily tired of the phrase, "The New Normal"?

It is decidedly Ab-Normal. It may become a common situation, but it will NEVER be Normal.

Does anyone reading this have free time, and an investigative bent? Wikileaks released 137 files on Kamala Harris - I've no time to spend on the project. If you have, here's the link. Give me a way to contact you, and I can arrange for you to report out on your findings (either you can write it, or we can converse, and I can record it/take notes and post it).

I, like many with ties to Cleveland, OH, have followed the career of Lebron James from the beginning. I wasn't that bothered by his move to FL (although, I thought he did it in a particularly poor way), as he stood to make a LOT more money, in great part due to no state income tax.

I'm just not all that interested in basketball. I topped out in high school at 5'3" tall - even in girls' sports, I'm too short (and with few ball handling skills) to be a useful player. I mostly watch the sports I've played. But, as I am surrounded by rabid fans, I've kept up on the controversies.

But. 

Lebron, and other multimillionaire players are making a very bad decision in supporting China's policies against Hong Kong and the Uyghurs, and failing to act on the exploitation of Asian workers in the many factories in that region, who make the shoes he, and other players, benefit from via contracts for their endorsements.

It's hypocritical to expect the average person to relate to aggressive support for Black causes, while ignoring other causes that - should you but flex your celebrity muscles - could make a real impact on the lives of truly oppressed humans.

Take a stand, Lebron. You have clout, and your failure to use it will NOT lead to glowing treatment by historians of the future.

The Madness Has Gone Too Far

     Much, much too far. Via Red Pill Jew comes a report of an unthinkable outrage:

     August 12, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Yesterday, a Dallas judge took away Jeffrey Younger’s say in his son James’ medical, psychological, and psychiatric care, giving that power to James’ mother, who wants to “transition” him into a “girl.” After receiving national attention in October 2019, the bitter parental dispute had ultimately resulted in both parents getting a say in decisions regarding James and his twin, Jude; this ruling effectively reverses that.

     James Younger’s mother, Dr. Anne Georgulas, will now be able to enroll the eight-year-old in school as a “girl” named “Luna” and subject him to transgender medical procedures.

     This is child abuse. Vicious, flagrant child abuse. What sort of “mother” would even conceive of doing such a thing to a defenseless eight-year-old boy? And what of the judge who has permitted it?

     Yesterday, Judge Mary Brown, who was appointed to the case in January, granted Georgulas’ requests to force Mr. Younger to pay for counseling for James and Jude and attend family counseling. Mr. Younger previously objected to both of these requests as he was not allowed a say in the selection of the boys’ counselor or the family counselor....

     Judge Brown’s ruling came without the hearing that was scheduled to take place yesterday. There was no explanation why Judge Brown issued her order without the proper hearing.

     Please read it all – and thereafter, shower this “judge” with your most candidly expressed opinions.

The white man as moron.

He suffers from in-your-face betrayal by his governments. True. But still he supports those governments with every fiber of his being.

Hat tip: TravellingMan.

Because We All Need A Little Catharsis Now And Then

     If you’re familiar with Mervyn Peake’s neglected fantasy trilogy Gormenghast, you’ll know the story of Fuchsia, the daughter of Lord Sepulchrave Groan, 76th Earl of the isolated community of Gormenghast. Fuchsia begins the story as an immature yet sensitive child, isolated by her position and her personality, who finds her deepest solace in dreams. As her young brother Titus, who is destined to occupy the Earldom, ages toward maturity, her isolation deepens, and she spends ever more time in the pursuit of love and acceptance through dreams and reverie.

     Fuchsia is perhaps classic fantasy’s most pathetic character: incapable of fulfillment until the instant of her accidental death. Yet it is her very insufficiency that makes her appealing. As the daughter of a noble house whose powers pass through primogeniture to the oldest male descendant of the expired Earl, she is of no use to the house except as a means by which to form a useful alliance through a politically advantageous marriage – something impossible to the completely isolated House of Groan.

     Readers have lamented and dreamed alongside Fuchsia for decades. But John Ford and Richard Hudson of the Strawbs were the first to immortalize her in song. Immerse yourself in her sorrows now, along with some beautiful images, woven into a compelling pastiche.

A child denied all love can't weep
But bravely bears her life alone
So Fuchsia as you try to sleep
You dream of friends you've never known

In troubled years when no one cared
You searched for comfort everywhere
For heavy burdens never shared
Became too much for one to bear

So much to give, but those who live
Don't know of you...
Your fantasy of love to be...
Cannot come true:
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia

Now poised above the castle walls
You look your last on lonely skies
Night owls pray for you as they call
Returning ere the dawn shall rise

Your loveless life has led you here...
Not knowing why
Your troubled mind's no longer clear...
To live or die:
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia
Oh Lady Fuchsia

Hear The Machine Roar

     “What machine?” I hear you cry? Why, the media machine that’s bound and determined to foist a mentally defective president and a totalitarian-socialist vice-president on these United States!

     Have a few links:

• Don’t you dare question Joe Biden’s health.
• The media gaslighting for Kamala Harris has begun.
• The New York Times, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and Economist dub Harris a “moderate” and “centrist.”

     It’s all too terribly clear, but then, the media did their damnedest to elect John Kerry and Walter Mondale, and to return Jimmy Carter to the White House after a disastrous first (and thankfully, only) term there. For them, any Democrat is better than any Republican, regardless of the office in question.

     The Democrats have put a great deal of effort into enlisting and retaining the major media as allies, starting in about 1912. That effort has paid them handsome electoral dividends, as Newsweek’s Evan Thomas would remind you. And a symbiosis between a corporate entity and a political party is not easily sundered, for reasons beyond the scope of this tirade.

     There are factors that make this even more interesting. First, we have Biden’s rapid, unconcealable descent into dementia, which even troubles the party that has nominated him. Should the Biden / Harris ticket actually prevail on November 3, it’s nearly certain that it won’t be Biden who runs the executive branch of the federal government. Will it be Harris? Possibly, but if not it will be a committee of Democrat gray eminences whose agenda Harris shares. (Don’t dismiss the possibility that Hillary Clinton will be among them.) Any public discussion of the situation will be forcibly suppressed.

     I consider the above beyond dispute. Else the Democrats’ kingmakers would not have imposed hard-left, openly totalitarian Kamala Harris on the hapless Biden. (It’s just as unlikely that Harris was Biden’s personal choice as it is that he’d have a non-cosmetic role in operating the federal government.) Their primary concern is winning back the presidency in time to preserve the power and prerogatives of the political Establishment. They selected Harris to preserve their hold on the Negro vote, as well as for her likely compliance with their wishes.

     So from now until November 3, the media will proclaim the magnificence of the Biden / Harris combo, downplay the thousand and one faults, failings, and fouls in the candidates' records, and denounce anyone who dissents even marginally from their gospel. Should President Trump be re-elected, which I consider the more likely outcome, they’ll go back to delegitimizing him at every opportunity, but then, you knew that already.

To no productive end whatsoever.

It's estimated that up to 75% of all stock market gains can be traced back to the hundreds of billions of dollars corporations have borrowed to buy back their own shares.^[1]

The ghastly off-shoring that corporate America inflicted on American industry and all Americans was bad enough but these stock buy-backs benefit no one except insiders and stockholders -- and that in a patently short-term way.

In my various market boondoggles, entrepreneurial Valhalla to me was reaching a point of simple profitability so that I could possible contemplate the doors remaining open for the foreseeable future. All kinds of other possibilities loomed as well, such as being able to make a beneficial difference in the lives of customers, clients, and employees. Adding value, success, growth.

This seems to be in stark contrast to these business leaders who squandered stability, growth, innovation and employee futures as though they were trifles.

I don't know what it is about 21st-c. America but we seem to have cornered the market on business and political leaders who yearn to foul their own doorstep. And ours. And who are so shortsighted that they look no further into the future than their next half-caf cappuccino with soy milk and a caramel swirl. Hold the saliva.

Notes
^[1] "Could Wall Street Lose The Election?" By Charles Hugh Smith, ZeroHedge, 8/13/20.

Conversations

     There’s a saying that goes “I wept that I had no shoes...until I met a man who had no feet.” It’s supposed to evoke a sense of proportion, in recognition of the fact that for most of us, there are a lot of people who are worse off. However, one of the “updates” on that old saying runs: “I wept that I had no shoes...until I met a man who had no feet. So I stole his shoes. Hey, he didn’t need them, right?” So there’s “room to differ” with the sentiments in that old maxim, one might say.

     You have to preserve your room to differ. It’s the essence of freedom of expression. All the same, it’s well to remember that there are people much worse off than you...unless you’re Arlo Guthrie’s “last guy,” as he described in this famous song.

     I’m in frequent communication with others of the remaining Blogosphere. Most of them are “getting on in years,” and several of them have sad stories to tell. One of them, who shall go unnamed, has been alone in the world since his wife passed away some twenty years ago. Just today he hit me with a tale of woe I’d never heard before.

Fran: How’s it been going?
Blogging Colleague: Pretty lousy, if I’m going to be honest.

FWP: Why? What’s been happening?
BC: Well, I’ve been pretty lonely these past few years, you know?

FWP: Well, yeah. So...?
BC: So I’ve been hurting for female attention.

FWP: I hadn’t thought that was such a burden, at our age.
BC: Ha! You’ve still got your wife. I’ve been alone for twenty-two years, and as wretched as I am, I couldn’t get a woman to talk to me if I offered to pay her. Forget getting one to have sex with me!

FWP: So...?
BC: So I bit the bullet and ordered one of those ultra-realistic sex dolls. You know, the kind that come with an artificial intelligence module.

FWP: No, really?
BC: Yeah.

FWP: Has it...I mean, she arrived yet?
BC: Yeah, just today.

FWP: And you’ve unpacked her?
BC: Yeah.

FWP: Well...?
BC: She said she just wants to be friends.

     So remember, Gentle Reader: there’s always someone worse off than you.

Not to Alarm Anyone...

 ...seen on The Feral Irishman:

Comedy Is Hard...

     “I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” – Will Rogers

     Commentary is easy, especially when comment is essentially unnecessary. Governments and those who “run” them, provide a lot of material for us to laugh at, though the laughs are usually quite hollow. In particular, politicians never, ever accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong because of their policies...but watch your step, private sector! The least little bobble and we’ll nationalize you in the “public interest!” Venezuelans could testify to the consequences.

     The syndrome is not confined to our South American neighbors. Have a case in point:

     After facing widespread criticism for being out of town campaigning for president during the previous weekend's blackout in Manhattan, de Blasio called a rare early-morning press conference to discuss his complaints over Con Ed's handling of the recent outages.

     De Blasio said he was “extremely disappointed” with Con Ed, echoing recent remarks by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and saying the city still didn’t have adequate answers about what caused a power outage in midtown Manhattan last week....

     “It’s very clear we have to question whether Con Ed as a structure now can do the job going forward or whether we need to do an entirely different approach,” de Blasio continued.

     De Blasio raised the possibility of a public takeover of the utility without fully committing to the idea, insisting that an independent investigation must take place first.

     This...person, whom Big Apple voters have given the mayoralty of The Once Greatest City In The World, has turned it into an impoverished hellhole in which violent crime has exploded and rioters own the streets. Now he seeks to take over a private company that has served the region faithfully and well for many decades – a company whose progenitor was founded by Thomas Edison himself. Who on Earth, given the record of nationalized and municipalized utilities here and elsewhere, would imagine that de Blasio and the cronies he’d put in charge of New York’s electric service would do a better job?

     We’ve known de Blasio is a Marxist ideologue since he first ran for mayor. His deeds since then have made it plain that he’s a Stalin wannabe, as well. When will New Yorkers regain their senses and eject him from office?

     Somehow I don’t think even Will Rogers could get any laughs with this.

     “Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.” -- Will Rogers

Gittin' 'er duuhhhn.

"10 Ways the Communist Manifesto has Infiltrated the USA." By Joe Jarvis, ZeroHedge, 8/12/20.

All excellent points in this article. I particularly like the point about illusory property ownership. Having paid off a mortgage last year on property I own, I now get to appreciate the naked truth about property taxes. I don't own my property outright it seems. I must rent it from the country to the tune of some $300 a month to fund expenditures for purposes that I effectively have no say over. High school classes on "white privilege" or "gender fluidity"? Why, what could be better? Here let me help pay for that noise.

Then there's the matter of the citizen's labor. We all know that we labor until early May each and every year to pay our taxes to federal, state, and local governments. Four months of corvee labor there. Or am I missing something? At least we get contractors to build our Great Walls these days.

I produce yet again a statistic I internalized some time in the early '90s. I can't source it any more. What source I recorded has long since been swallowed up in not a few hunks of computer plastic and silicon I've owned over the decades. Be that as it may, someone once pointed out that around 1990 the average family of four paid something like 22% of its income in income and employment taxes. Flash back to 1948, and the percentage was . . . wait for it . . . 2%. Same problem as illuminated by Tax Freedom Day but a little more up close and personal. Women essentially were driven into the workplace to pay the taxes (and heavy expenses for childcare by strangers). In essence, kids have been delivered into the hands of strangers to be raised and educated until their 18th year. Also highlighted by Mr. Jarvis.

Our troops are often said to be "protecting our freedoms" but that seems hollow when seen in the glare of government parasitism, control, oppression, and abdication at every level that only grow stronger and more immune to citizen rejection each year. Every word in the Communist Manifesto is there to justify total control of the individual and you may count the steps in that direction. The forms of our constitutional republic speak the word "liberty" but the reality is tyranny.

So, Jarvis has the fascinating but depressing story. Clearly, we need to take to heart Confucius's warning that if we allow words to have false meanings the ruler ends up being unable to formulate right policies. Black failure, rejectionism, and hatred today come out of the word machine as insuperable problems due to "structural racism." And it goes downhill from there. And, channeling Jarvik, "tyranny" comes out as "our constitutional republic, free speech, and the rule of law." Communism being tyranny in case no one has not noticed.

Some Stories Speak For Themselves (UPDATED)

     Like this one:

     In the early hours of the morning yesterday, there was a massive party taking place on the 3300 block of Dubois Place in Southeast Washington, D.C. The good times came screeching to a halt when sustained gunfire broke out. When the smoke cleared, one 17-year-old male was dead and another twenty people had been shot. Among them was an off-duty police officer who had responded to the violence and was left “fighting for her life.” No suspects have been identified.

     Here’s the curious part about this horrible tale. Unless you happened to live in the District and were watching the local news, you probably didn’t hear about it. If we all put our heads together, we might be able to figure out why. (WJLA News, ABC7, Washington)

     Care to guess the race of the partygoers...including the one who did the shooting?

     Oh, there’s also this story:

     25-year-old Darius N. Sessoms of Wilson, North Carolina is in police custody for executing a 5-year-old boy.

     5-year-old Cannon Hinnant on Sunday was riding his bike in front of his home when Darius Sessoms ran up to him, put a gun to his head and executed him in front of his two sisters.

     Nothing but crickets from the mainstream media.

     According to neighbors, Darius Sessoms lives next door to the victim’s family and just had dinner at their home.

     Sessoms was taken into custody on Monday and charged with first degree murder.

     These events have received zero mainstream media coverage. I think you know why.

     Word gets around...and when it does, it’s gonna blow. Be a miracle if it don’t.

     UPDATE: The hits just keep on comin’, don’t they?

Gettysburg? Are they serious?

 It's always good to end the day with a chuckle, and today's is the leftist hot take on the possibility that Trump will give his speech at Gettysburg. Some idiot at CNN claims this option shows his love for the Confederacy. 

I grew up around people who liked to sport a sentimental attachment to the Confederacy, and I can tell you, they got hives if you merely mentioned Gettysburg. It was like visiting Winston Churchill and trying to chat about Gallipoli. It was like dropping by St. Helena to ask Napoleon how he felt after Waterloo. It was almost as bad a faux pas as mentioning the Battle of Mohacs to a Hungarian. 

But sure, CNN. Speaking from Gettysburg is a sure-fire draw to all those white supremacists who haven't given up fighting the last Civil War. Looting luxury stores is a peaceful demonstration of concern about police brutality. And lighting a candle only proves how much you love the darkness. Can you guess how many fingers I'm holding up? (Hint: one on each hand.)