This site will be for archival purposes only. So:
I'll take a full backup of this site late this afternoon. Moving the contents to Liberty’s Torch V2.0 may present some challenges, but we shall see.
"Make them live up to their own book of rules".
H/T to Ace of Spades for the idea.
There are SOME in the GOP who are arguing for a secret ballot, so we won't know they are Quislings.
Screw that.
Make the cowardly little traitors show their side, on camera, in public.
Call your two, and make it clear that a secret vote is cause for them to get NO SUPPORT, NO VOTES.
Ever.
Link here. Enter your state and find their office numbers. Emails are good, letters are better, but phone calls are best (faxes if they can't be reached by phone).
The more staff time that has to be dedicated to dealing with our displeasure, the better - they will take notice of that effort, and conclude that, no, they will NOT get our votes.
There’s a legend of sorts about the Federal Music Project (FMP), a subdepartment of the Works Progress Administration of FDR’s New Deal. That legend holds that many of the songs that became popular during that era were actually commissioned by the FMP – i.e., their composers were paid to compose popular songs. It could be true. Consider these titles:
All these songs were composed and became popular during the Depression years. There were others, of course, but these are the ones I can remember offhand. (No, I wasn’t alive then, but my father was, and he used to hum all of the above until Hell wouldn’t have them.) I’m not sure whether they were FMP-funded tunes, but their association with those years is strong.
One of my more unusual college classmates was addicted to several of the above songs. He had a habit of bursting into one or another of them in public, and regardless of the circumstances. It made the rest of us consider him a trifle odd...not the sort of bloke who’d enjoy a Led Zeppelin concert, don’t y’know. But then, his favorite band was Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, so he probably didn’t give a damn about the tastes that prevailed among the rest of our generation.
Considering the tremendous effort the Usurper Administration is putting into returning America to the conditions that prevailed during the Great Depression, it wouldn’t surprise me if Depression-era songs were to experience a renewed popularity. In fact, just this morning I woke up with “Red Red Robin” playing in my head. Not a pleasant awakening, I must tell you...especially as the clock read 2:15 AM, an early arising hour even for your humble Curmudgeon. But then, I probably would have enjoyed the experience more were it not for the Newfoundland puppy (at ten months of age, well over 100 pounds) drooling into my left ear at the same moment.
Bread lines and soup kitchens...25% unemployment...indigents with their hats out on every corner...gangland warfare and blood running in the gutters...hairy nuisances in sandwich boards proclaiming that “the end is near”...
Ah! The memories!
To Leftists, God is - at best - a collaborator in their impious schemes to gain power. That irreligious basis at the core of their revolutionary thinking is what dooms them to failure.
Former VP Mike Pence has his detractors - he was a mild-mannered and civil man, and that sometimes seemed like a rebuke to Trump. There were things he could have said, things he could have done.
The fifth day of each week, henceforth, will be know as No Politics Thursday.
I will not read about politics, write about it, or watch any news show containing any mention of it.
It's my way of carving out a respite against Politics 24/7, which the Left has decreed will be the New Standard for all social interactions.
If someone brings up any topic that touches on politics, I will inform them (quite politely) that I do not discuss that subject on Thursdays. I may have to repeat myself quite a lot, at first, as SO many conversations seem to devolve into endless discussions on that very subject.
ALL is political, proclaims the Left. And, in fact, it is true - for them.
For myself, I will abstain.
The Left spent 4 years screamng that Donald Trump was "Not MY President" (and change - they were proclaiming this even before he was inaugurated).
They went so far as to impeach him, and try him in the Senate - at which point, he was acquitted.
They bided their time, ran their Muppet-Wannabe Biden, and lost. But, then, by virtue of holding their breath until they turned blue, getting their allies in the media to prematurely declare, and using both quasi-legal maneuvers, abbreviated hearings (practically ignored by the media), and questionable court decisions NOT to intervene, got their Muppet installed in office.
They had pre-emptively impeached Trump before he left Washington, while he was still president - with the shameful collusion of the RINO contingent.
Now, they have taken the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate, with pomp and cameras, determined to vanquish the Trump-Beast, at last.
What they have forgotten:
Eventually it will have a second domain address ending in “.us,” but I have yet to figure out how to arrange for that.
Mind you, it’s not what I’d like. The host (Hosting Matters) is painfully slow. Also, it’s a WordPress-powered site, and I detest absolutely everything about the WordPress interface. But it will have to do for now. I was far too anxious about getting out of Google’s clutches.
I’ve just posted to the new site for the first time. I’ll be mirroring those posts here until I’ve finished configuring it and have seduced persuaded my Co-Conspirators to move there, at which point this site will be for archive purposes only. So mosey on over and have a look.
Many thanks to Mike Hendrix of Cold Fury for the initial installation.
All my best,
Fran
I've been kinda checking out the stats lately on this and other blogs over the last few months - the numbers are up over last year, and it looks like still rising.
And, commenting is up (on the other blogs, too).
So, I think the Much Heralded and Proclaimed "Shutting Up of the Disgusting Right" - long a goal of the Left - is pretty much kaput (as my German ancestors would say).
The latest from According to Hoyt would seem to support that assessment.
Ya' know, the Official Elite and Destined Rulers of the World don't seem to have gotten the message. That 'insurrectionary' pack of Good Ol' Boys that made their marks in the Capitol were the Gentle Ones. Hell, they didn't even bring in much in the way of weapons - I know people who could have grabbed better equipment out of the back of their truck.
If we get pissed off enough, there WILL be Blood on the Floor. There's too many who are too old to kowtow, and too proud to beg.
So.
It's time for the state governors and legislatures to show their teeth. Next time the DC Elite try to impose unconstitutional mandates on the country, we need to have some people in charge that will bare their own chompers, and bark back, too.
We can hope that'll learn 'em, but I doubt it. Don't forget, they're dumber than a box of rocks.
The world has been taught to scoff at that which it cannot see, hear, and touch. It has paid a heavy price for its scoffing. I trust I need not enumerate the many tragedies men have inflicted on one another, as faith has retreated and secular humanism, with its innate arrogance and vaulting ambition, has advanced to fill the void.
Matthew Arnold captured it in verse of crystalline brilliance:
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
But while the Sea of Faith has retreated...or has been pushed back by overweening human pride...it has not vanished utterly. The divine Immanence still manifests to those who are willing to believe what they see and hear...even if no one else can see or hear it.
In 1917, World War I was raging across the length and breadth of Europe. Millions had already died; millions more would follow. The flower of European manhood would fall to the war and to the influenza pandemic that followed. Russia had fallen to Communism, with consequences that would impoverish and oppress three generations. The faith of the Old World had taken a terrible blow. For many, it seemed an illusion the war had disproved.
On May 13th, 1917, at noon local time in Fatima, Portugal, Lucia dos Santos, Jacinta Marto, and Francisco Marto, three shepherd children innocent in every sense, were granted a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This was the beginning of what is known today as the Miracle of Fatima: a series of Marian apparitions, each of which occurred on the 13th day of the calendar month. It culminated on October 13 with the Miracle of the Sun, a supernatural event witnessed by some 70,000 persons in which the Sun seemed to gyrate, dance across the sky, and as its finale dive menacingly near to the earth.
It happened. It was not mass hypnosis, nor mass hallucination, nor some kind of enormous hoax. At Fatima, Portugal on October 13, 1917, seventy thousand onlookers witnessed what could only have been a manifestation of divine power: a miracle.
The Miracle of Fatima brought millions to the Faith, and renewed the Faith in millions who had fallen away. God does this sort of thing when the world slips perilously close to the edge of the Great Abyss. And note: He doesn’t deliver it to kings or premiers, but to the lowest and humblest of our kind.
There have been other miracles. Many have attracted scoffers certain that they could prove that nothing miraculous – that is, nothing inexplicable by what we think are the laws of nature – had occurred. But many alleged miracles have withstood every test the scoffers have rained on them. Including Fatima.
The Miracle of Fatima is now more than a century in the past. Yet it continues to inspire men to faith...and to works of art and drama. Including producer-directors Ian and Dominic Higgins, who made of it a movie of exceptional beauty and emotion.
See The 13th Day. I just did, and I promise you won’t regret it. It’s available on DVD from Amazon, or directly from Ignatius Press.
And have faith.
Not just Trump is being silenced - so are a whole lot of other NLDs (Non-Leftist Dissidents).
Guys, this is bad, and getting badder. I don't see a lot of those so-called defenders of Human and Civil Rights standing up for us. They don't seem to see a problem with declaring a whole group of people to be not deserving of participation in American life.
OK, so no 'Impenetrable Barrier" - then, governors should give sheriffs the authority to deputize volunteers and send them to the border - with weapons - to hold the line. Make the border states NON-SANCTUARY STATES.
The individual states need to step up, and act in ways that limit the power of the Federal government. They have the superior right; they need to man up.
And, found on Peace or Freedom (picture is archived here to reduce the load on his site).
People die. All of us, eventually.
Yeah, yeah, I know: In other news, sitting in a comfortable chair for an hour or two will rest your legs. But the above is among the truths we strive hardest not to think about.
Just yesterday, Ragin’ Dave wrote of the passing of Larry King:
Dude was 87. What the hell did you think happens to people, folks? Yes, he was famous. Had a TV show. And he got old, and he died, which is what happens to people. Why the hell do random people freak the hell out whenever some celebrity dies? I'm not saying I'm happy about it, I'm saying that he was an old man and old men die.When my father kicks the bucket, I'm going to be weeping and wailing, but he's MY FATHER, not some celebrity that I never met.
Dave has a point. We routinely attribute excessive importance to celebrities. Most of them are “famous for being famous,” and very little else. If the touts and columnists had never mentioned them, they’d lack significance to the rest of us.
However, now and then a celebrity becomes emblematic of an era and its values. His passing acquires extra significance from that association...perhaps far more than his achievements, whatever they may have been, would have brought him on their own.
Consider the 1999 death of “the Yankee Clipper:” Joe DiMaggio. Joltin’ Joe was a fine player, arguably the best center fielder and one of the best hitters of his time, but baseball is merely a sport. It has entertainment value, but little other significance. DiMaggio’s passing acquired extra significance from the era in which he played, 1936 through 1951, and from his excellent personal qualities. The importance of those years to American and world history, added to his superb play and his fine character, gave him a stature unavailable from baseball alone. His admirers’ memories of him come with all of that and more besides.
Subsequent sports stars who’ve departed this vale of tears haven’t borne the glow that surrounds DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle, DiMaggio’s center-field successor and himself a fine player, doesn’t share it. Ted Williams has a fraction of it, even though he played for (shudder) Boston.
I know little of Larry King, but I doubt that his memory will have anything like it. King was a capable commentator and interviewer. He occupied a high place among his colleagues for many years. But he didn’t impress the nation in an emblematic way.
So yes: we generally attribute an absurd degree of importance to celebrities, living or dead. But there are a few exceptions. They stand apart from the rest not because of their achievements, but because of their personal qualities, their association with eras of great events, and with other persons who characterized them. They become emblems of times that we old ones, our rose-colored glasses never far from us, remember as “the good old days:” the days whose values we honored and whose passing we lament. The days when the streets were safe...when homeowners rarely locked their doors...when neighbors looked after their neighbors’ children, properties, and other interests...when immigrants were expected to assimilate and were happy to do so...when the schools taught rather than indoctrinated and propagandized...when journalists reported the news without slanting it toward their preferred political positions...when lawyers counseled their would-be clients not to sue...when politicians occasionally told the truth and didn’t regret it afterward.
Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I must turn away from this subject at once. Have a nice day.
"USNA Cancel Culture: Update on MIDN 1/C Chase Standage, USN." By Stu Cvrk, RedState, 1/24/21.
This to skewer a Naval Academy midshipman with "an exemplary record." And note the part about having the man repay $174,753, the cost of his education at the Academy.
Enough of politics and current events. These things are the source of much agony and fear, especially just now. Let’s have a day away from them. Perhaps more than one day; we shall see.
This therefore I say, brethren; the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; And they that use this world, as if they used it not: for the fashion of this world passeth away. [1 Corinthians 7:29-32]
Read superficially, the passage above seems to express a belief that was common among the Christians of Saint Paul’s day: i.e., that “the world”–a vague and expansive term, difficult to define then as now–would soon be no more. That message seemed to be consistent with Jesus’s own proclamation that the kingdom of God is “at hand.”
Yet a more literal reading of the passage suggests that Paul had another meaning in mind. It would not be “the world” but the fashion of the world that would soon pass away. And it was so. Christ Himself had caused it: by preaching the Gospel to the Jews of Judea for three years; by going to Jerusalem to face death by torture; and by rising from the dead and returning to His followers in demonstration of His divine authority. The Christian message changed the world. The simplicity and directness of Jesus’s teachings made it possible for ethical monotheism, the great religious / philosophical achievement of God’s Chosen People, to reach every part of the globe.
Christianity first transformed Europe. The pagans of the continent rapidly absorbed and accepted the Faith as superior to their previous ways. As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, it changed every fashion the Old World had known before it. Europe became Christendom: a continent united by faith in Christ’s Gospel. Though Christian political unity eventually dissolved, the Gospel message continued to spread, finding converts in every part of the globe. It continues to spread today.
Yes, the Faith has known setbacks. The Great Schism of the Sixteenth Century was one such. The efforts of totalitarian regimes to stamp out Christianity knew a great deal of temporary and superficial success. Militant atheists, who claim to oppose all religious belief, concentrate their preaching, as they always have, against Christianity. Yet it continues to grow, for it is a living truth.
A living truth—a truth tied not to any particular population, locale, or conditions–is unkillable. It will grow regardless of what forces are marshaled against it. And as it grows it sweeps all contrary fashions from its path. For Christianity isn’t a fashion, but a transforming force. It wields no weapon other than the truth. It penetrates men’s hearts through an innate power that no other message or dispensation has ever possessed.
What is the secret of Christianity’s power? A simple set of interlocking ideas that sit at the heart of Christ’s Gospel:
That triad of ideas continues to change the world.
Christianity’s core precepts constitute a message of hope. Hope dispels fear. Fear not, said the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem. Let not your heart be troubled, the Redeemer said to His Apostles on the eve of His Crucifixion. Be not afraid, He said to them when He appeared to them after the Resurrection. Christ’s Gospel is from end to end an exhortation to hope.
The world and its fashions will strive to make you fear. Yet with the Faith for your guide and armor, you can withstand all terrors and all threats.
The message of hope is particularly important today. Massive institutions do all they can to promote fear: to smother all hope and joy under a blanket of terror. The threats they brandish at us are many: political threats, economic forces, social disruptions, family instability, aging, abandonment, disease, and infirmity. The only tool with which we can combat those forces is hope—and there is no greater source of hope than the Christian message.
Many years ago, there was a remarkable woman named Aimee Semple McPherson. She was the best known and most effective Christian evangelist of her time. Her methods were the modern ones of radio, movies, and the stage, coupled to the mass revival meeting. However, her message was classically simple: Christ’s Gospel. In a terrible time characterized by warfare, economic depression, advancing moral dissolution, and a decline of faith in Mankind itself, she garnered converts by the tens of thousands.
Powerful forces, including the clerics of established churches, strove to destroy Aimee McPherson. She withstood them all by sticking tightly to her message. Her faith protected her. It withstood all sectarian squabbles, political controversies, and personal attacks. Christ’s Gospel was what mattered; all else was triviality and dross.
Here’s what the Boston Evening Traveler said about Aimee’s message:
Aimee's religion is a religion of joy. There is happiness in it. Her voice is easy to listen to. She does not appeal to the brain and try to hammer religion into the heads of her audience. Rather, she appeals to the hearts of her hearers. She radiates friendliness. She creates an atmosphere that is warming. She is persuasive, rather than forceful; gracious and kindly, rather than compelling.
At a time when hope was what Americans needed most, Aimee Semple McPherson brought them hope from the one unfailing source: the love of God and the truth of Christ’s Gospel. The fashions of the day could not stand against it.
Neither can the fashions of our day: the threats, the terrors, and the uncertainties that beset us. They will all pass; Christ’s Gospel will not.
May God bless and keep you all!
I found this link on Instapundit - it's chilling.
Worse, it will categorize any resistance to that control as terrorism.
(b) Considerations.—The national strategy required under subsection (a) shall include consideration of the following:
(1) The threat of a foreign state actor, foreign terrorist organization (as designated pursuant to section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189)), or a domestic actor carrying out a cyber attack, influence operation, disinformation campaign, or other activity aimed at undermining the security and integrity of United States democratic institutions.
(3) Potential consequences, such as an erosion of public trust or an undermining of the rule of law, that could result from a successful cyber attack, influence operation, disinformation campaign, or other activity aimed at undermining the security and integrity of United States democratic institutions.
How DARE you imply that we are stealing the election! To the Gulag with you!
Some of the other parts of the bill are said to have OTHER worthy causes, such as:
reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.
(Link is to the full bill on Thomas.gov). I've downloaded the pdf, and will be looking at it over the next week. So far, it looks as bad - if not worse - than the bill is reported to be.
And, in other news, it's official - we are Seditionists.
What the hell is that?
From The Atlantic (Anne Applebaum):
As a group, it’s hard to know what to call them. They are too many to merit the term extremists. There are not enough of them to be secessionists. Some prominent historians and philosophers have been arguing for a revival of the word fascist; others think white supremacist is more appropriate, though there could also be a case for rebel. For want of a better term, I’m calling all of them seditionists—not just the people who took part in the riot, but the far larger number of Americans who are united by their belief that Donald Trump won the election, that Joe Biden lost, and that a long list of people and institutions are lying about it: Congress, the media, Mike Pence, the election officials in all 50 states, and the judges in dozens of courts.
Sedition? Isn't that one of those old-fashioned words, last used in the early days of our participation in WWI?
Yes, it is - AND it is defined below:
Sedition the federal crime of advocacy of uprising or overthrow against the government or support for an enemy of the nation during time of war, by speeches, publications and organization. Sedition usually involves actually conspiring to disrupt the legal operation of the government and is beyond expression of an opinion or protesting government policy. Sedition is distinguished from treason, which requires actual betrayal of the government, or "espionage."
The federal Sedition Act of 1918 states, in part, as follows:
"Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both...."
With the Naturalization Act, Congress increased residency requirements for U.S. citizenship to 14 years from five. (Many recent immigrants and new citizens favored the Republicans.)
The Alien Enemies Act permitted the government to arrest and deport all male citizens of an enemy nation in the event of war, while the Alien Friends Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen suspected of plotting against the government, even in peacetime.
Most importantly, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which took direct aim at those who spoke out against Adams or the Federalist-dominated government.
Even as the bitter debates between the two fledgling political parties were being played out in rival newspapers and other publications, the new law outlawed any “false, scandalous and malicious writing” against Congress or the president, and made it illegal to conspire “to oppose any measure or measures of the government.”
Could the Federal government make such commentary as we post on this blog illegal? Sure they could. By use of the term 'sedition', the Left has clearly indicated their aim to Shut Us Up! (this calls for the addition of that famous phrase - By Any Means Necessary).
Surprisingly, after that stormy beginning, Applebaum calms down, and suggests that toning down the rhetoric, and finding things to talk about other than divisive politics might be a move that could lead to the opponents integrating and working together.
But, when she makes that suggestion, she ignores some things:
Thankfully, we have Silicon Valley fact checkers and corporate media commentators to lead us to the valley of truth, which informs us that all those Trump “insurgents” who invaded the Capitol building on January 6th were motivated by pure evil intentions rooted in racism, sedition and white supremacist ideology. And as Hillary Clinton suggested during an off-the-rails interview with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Trump and his motley crew of deplorables may have taken their marching orders from none other than Vladimir Putin himself. Who needs fiction writers these days when we have the Democratic Party?"Is The Dis-Uniting Of America Now Inevitable?" By Robert Bridge, ZeroHedge, 1/23/21 (emphasis removed).
I like City Journal - they have long, thoughtful, and well-researched stories.
This one is about a Diversity Training in the Southern state of Missouri. In my experience, this is Leftist indoctrination brought in - in most cases - by White Women, often whose origins are in the North. The Native Southerners really hate this stuff - both Black and White.
I'm opposed. I agree with Ace, this smacks of a fraudulently elected, Banana Republic president's concern about the possibility of his country's military having a Higher Loyalty to the Constitution.
...that has NEVER been the way we do things in this country. When you join any branch of our armed forces, you don't sign a loyalty oath to the president or any elected-official, you sign an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, period. That should be sufficient. The fact that it is apparently not sufficient enough for the incoming Biden administration speaks volumes.
Now, please remember: someone who votes Left is not necessarily a Leftist. Sometimes, they're just another sheep following the flock.
Women - and Women-ish Men, are particularly prone to this. They assume that what their flock's leaders are saying is, at a minimum, BASED on truth. In that, they are wrong.
But, they aren't lying, merely repeating a lie, that they believe to be the truth. They TRUST the people telling them those lies. They seem so relatable, so polished, so respectful of their culture.
How the hell do you uproot that nest of misinformation, and restore them to normal thinking capacity?
If I had that answer, I wouldn't be surrounded by my loving family, just about all buying into the Leftist Line.
They are - at heart - good people - generous, hard-working, living in a Godly manner (no matter what their religious beliefs). They wouldn't commit a crime for any reason. They focus on their family and neighbors. They obey the traffic and other laws (I'm not as good about obeying the speed limit - I regularly exceed it).
They pay their taxes (although, they DO take advantage of any allowable deductions to minimize them).
They vote - unfortunately, for Dems. But, they only vote ONCE, so there is that.
But, no matter what I posted on social media, no matter what I said, or how careful I was to focus on logical reasoning, they had closed their minds to the possibility of any deviation from the Officially Accepted Truth, According to the Left.
The BEST I could squeeze out of them is that they thought the riots that took over cities and burned the businesses of small entrepreneurs were bad, and should stop. In that, they are much like the rest of the country.
I'm thinking that we who want/need to affect the thinking/emotions of those in thrall to the Left, need to change tactics. We need to begin looking for ways to treat this like an egg stuck in the pan - first, remove the heat. Then, chisel around the edges, very gently. Move around the pan, easing up under the egg, careful not to go too fast, lest you break the yolk. Back and forth, moving when you encounter serious resistance, and tackling the job from another position.
Eventually, the egg will be able to be lifted, without breaking. Of course, by that time, it may be stone cold and inedible.
But whole.
Whatta you think?
If you’ve been paying attention to the caperings of the Usurper Administration, you’re already aware of some of the Usurper-in-Chief’s lunacies: e.g., letting China back into our national power grid; sending a large force of troops and armor into Syria; legitimizing “transwomen” in women’s and girls’ sports; yanking the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction permit; suspending all deportations of illegal aliens; and so on. The irrationality of these “policy decisions” is self-evident. You hardly need to think about them to realize it. Yet they’re a critical component of the Left’s initiative to cement itself into federal power.
They’re payoffs, you see. The successful practice of coalition politics requires payoffs to the various components of the coalition. A component group that deems itself inadequately rewarded for its contributions will withdraw its support and look for a better deal elsewhere. And in this dynamic lies the greatest vulnerability of power-for-power’s-sake coalition building. For as soon as the coalition reaches a size that allows it to contend for majority status, the members of the coalition will all experience a strong incentive to increase their demands.
The above makes a political coalition uniquely fragile—certainly more so than a politics of conviction. Even so, successful coalitions have been constructed, and have succeeded in wielding power for some time. But the natural fractiousness of a majority or near-majority coalition can be amplified greatly by another condition. I wrote about it here: the interests of the various components to the coalition must not be mutually antagonistic.
At the time, I was concerned with the self-defeating behavior of Republican power brokers. Their behavior these past four years suggests that they thought the “If you don’t vote for us, you’ll get them” gambit would assure the continued support of sincere conservatives, constitutionalists, Trumpists, and America-Firsters. They were wrong, as they’re learning today.
The Democrats are about to learn an even harsher lesson.
The Usurper Administration has put itself in a bind. Several of the more important components to its coalition are mutually antagonistic to others. That makes payoffs to some component groups inimical to the interests of others—and that puts a strain on the coalition that such assemblages have seldom withstood. If you think the recent actions of AntiFa against Democrat offices are a harbinger of danger for the Usurpers, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Consider as an example the Usurpers’ action against the Keystone XL pipeline and their open hostility to hydrofracturing, a.k.a. fracking. This is a payoff to the militant environmentalist groups. But there are an awful lot of jobs and an ocean of money involved in both the pipeline and fracking. Big Labor especially loves fracking, as it produces copious amounts of both oil and natural gas. The Usurpers’ strokes against those enterprises will cost the Democrats a significant fraction of their traditional support: the American blue-collar worker.
There are other, similar clashes between other components of the Democrat coalition. The feminist Left will not sit still as transwomen and transgirls flood into women’s sports. That’s to say nothing of their contention with actual women for elevation in corporate America. Big trouble brewing there.
The most interesting area is in the enforcement of the immigration laws and border control. Low-wage jobs have been going preponderantly to illegal aliens for quite some time. President Trump’s policy of intensified enforcement of the border damped that trend for the first time in decades. Real progress was being made at not merely apprehending illegals and deporting them but at discouraging them from entering the country in the first place. Low-skill Americans were finding that those jobs were open to them once again, while the employers of low-skill workers were finding that one of their illicit controls over their workforce was slipping from their grasp. The Usurpers intend to reverse that course...but you can’t incentivize illegals, thus implicitly penalizing American workers, and expect both groups to support you.
Oh, the fun we’re going to have as the cracks in the Usurper coalition widen and spread!
Yes, it will take time to produce perceptible results. But those results are on their way. No one can long maintain a coalition of groups whose interests are mutually antagonistic. Some component groups will decide that they’re being shafted by the payoffs being delivered to others. They’ll cajole. They’ll threaten. Some will depart the Democrat flock. And the Usurpers, caught between many competing fires, won’t know what to do.
Stay tuned.
People may forget - yes, there were directives or edicts that aimed to move the German society in the direction of the Nazis wishes.
But, a lot of the implementation depended on the actions of a few - brownshirts, who caused public chaos, the neighbors, who would report those violating rules, and business, who ignored blatant abuses - all for the sake of a smooth-running business.
It took a lot of people who either feared the consequences of speaking out, or were greedy to profit at the expense of those others who'd been caught up in the Nazi maw.
Like those who won't defend people who've been Cancelled - because, you know, they want to express really ooky ideas.
Like those who won't speak out at work against policies that violate their conscience - because, they realy NEED that job.
Like those that advise their kids to just suck it up and tell the teacher what she wants to hear.
That see evidence of anti-Deplorable action, and turn their heads away.
That cave, little by little, until they look around, and see no one that would speak up for them.
Just a moment ago, the C.S.O. declared her intention to have meatball heroes for tonight’s dinner. Thereupon, she went to our freezer and extracted from it a loaf of Italian bread and a bag that contained four meatballs. She proceeded thence to arrange two meatballs and half a loaf of the aforementioned bread on each of two plates. And the conversation proceeded thus:
FWP: Thus are the limits of the ancient wisdom revealed.
CSO: Huh?FWP: Well, each of us is getting two meatballs and a hunk of bread, right?
CSO: Yeah, so?FWP: That clarifies the scope of an old, well known bit of folklore.
CSO: What are you thinking of?FWP: “You get no bread with one meatball.”
CSO: (scowls in disgust) Oh, for... (unprintable)
Sometimes I wonder how I’ve lived this long.
. . . I hope, with all my heart, they [Americans] wake up to the psychopathic, sadistic, predator class that truly rules them before it is too late for all of us . . . .[1]Completely unrelated development:
It only took Joe Biden 24 Hours to begin screwing up world affairs. The United States military is moving a MAJOR military convoy INTO eastern Syria. Russia is now moving their own MAJOR Convoy to intercept the US Convoy.[2]Russian military moves in response to said U.S. movements would be a major response. CIA-Simulation Warlord has a video of Russian military vehicles backed up on a road where a very large number of semis are also lined up. Whole lotta shakin' goin' on. The video shows only the tail end of whatever the Russians had on the road and that consists of eight heavy trucks, an ambulance, and an armored personnel carrier. That was yesterday and supposedly the convoy was heading east toward Al Hasakah in the northeast. We shall see.
However, I'm sure the part about U.S. movements is accurate.
Vanessa Beeley notes below the recent uptick in terrorist activity, which means ISIS activity I presume, but then that's just a semi-educated guess. Given evidence of prior U.S. solicitousness toward ISIS, I don't doubt "our" secret cooperation with them lives on. John McCain's chin wag with the "opposition" filth in Syria a while back didn't exactly take place in a vacuum. The "rat line" from Benghazi to Syria was not what you'd call a rogue operation and then there's the enormous support for the White Helmets that the United States and the United Kingdom provide. Because . . . why?
So this uptick in opposition activity has nothing to do with the new U.S. move? Sure.
Beeley:
I have been talking about the Biden administration for some time now in relation to Syria and I have predicted that the aggression against Syria will now be escalated. Since the New Year we have seen an increase in US-backed, trained and equipped terrorist attacks on Syrian Arab Army and civilian convoys including fuel convoys. This is a deliberate strategy to push the Syrian people further into food insecurity and depravation (sic) with the coldest winter months now here.[3]With luck the U.S. will exercise its previous restraint when confronted by Russian forces, if it comes to that. Perhaps this supposed Russian response will be enough of a message to keep oligarchic forces from making fresh moves.
Notes
[1] "Israeli war crimes in Syria – the Trump/Biden strategy." By Vanessa Beeley, The Wall Will Fall, 1/22/21.
[2] "It only took 24 Hours: US Sends MAJOR Convoys Into Syria; Russian Moving Convoys to Intercept!" By Hal Turner Radio Show, 1/22/21.
[3] Beeley, supra.
My secret sweetie Adrienne has posted a brief list of points that strike me as exceedingly good advice for the four years ahead:
An interesting comment over at Gateway Pundit carries quite a bit of truth:SURVIVING IN A SOCIALIST AMERICA
- Assume nothing.
- Never go against your gut.
- Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
- Do not look back; you are never completely alone.
- Go with the flow, blend in.
- Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
- Lull them into a sense of complacency.
- Do not harass the opposition.
- Pick the time and place for action.
- Keep your options open.
Print that list out and paste it to the wall over your computer, or wherever you’ll see it every morning.
There's an annoying character that was on the "Mom" show. In that show, Anne Ferris plays the part of a recovering alcoholic, whose youngest child went to live with his Dad and his girlfriend.
The girlfriend was played by Sara Rue.
The Rue character, Candace, always dealt with her rival by putting on an expression that Anna Ferris called her "pity face". That expression conveyed Candace's sense of superiority, conviction that she was a better person and more competent 'mother', and in every way, better than Christy.
But, that she UNDERSTOOD, and pitied her.
That's the tone that Jen Psaki takes towards the Not-Biden Rabble. That they are just deluded, simple people, who need the guidance of their intellectual, moral, and cultural superiors to re-direct their peasant yearnings for a better life into the approved Leftist Track.
Yeah.
Now you understand why Anna Ferris's character goes OFF on that fake pity.
Time and chance occasionally present a writer with a problem, or several of them, that have an odd aspect. Such a problem can at first look like a blessing. But with the passage of time its Murphy-esque character becomes clear.
As an opinion writer, my worst problem has always been having too many subjects to write about. Like most of us who blog, I keep a folder of bookmarks to stories that deserve the touch of my leaden rapier. That folder repeatedly fills up to a despair-inducing level. I periodically delete the whole thing without bothering to review its contents...and feel guilty about it for quite a while afterward.
As a fiction writer, my worst problem is ideas. No, not a lack thereof; a superfluity, an embarras de richesse. Other fictioneers have dismissed it as “a good problem to have.” I’ve tried to view it that way, but it truth it’s an albatross around my neck. A novelist who seizes upon a juicy, perhaps entirely fresh idea but fails to exploit it suffers incredible guilt pangs over it.
(No, we seldom “give away” such an idea to other novelists caught in a dry spell. Very few writers are that generous. Instead the idea gets filed away for future exploitation “when I really need inspiration.” In the usual case, the idea is misplaced, lost until some other writer happens upon it. Ironies abound.)
Earlier this morning I was grumping over my inability to choose from among four separate novel-scale plots when I happened upon an “I wept that I had no shoes” situation: a writer who feels compelled to write a story he detests:
... I haven’t been able to write anything else. I should be working on a sword-and-sorcery short for Tales From The Magician’s Skull, which is due before April 1 and should take about a week, if I buckle down and get to it. But I may have to finish the d-mned novel first. This is the time for multiple projects at once, and for the first time in my writing life, I can’t seem to manage it.For a book that might not even be publishable.
I don’t know the writer cited above personally. I have no idea why he detests time-travel romance, the genre in which he currently feels compelled to write. I don’t know why he thinks the ultimate product might be unworthy. But as one who has occasionally suffered similar agonies, I feel for him.
Fiction writing is tough enough without feeling a need to do something you abhor. It’s the sort of thing that makes one question the reality of free will. Whatever the case, it leads to a story I’ve told now and then in a writers’ circle. Perhaps it will help take my Gentle Readers’ minds off the horror of our political situation and its likely fruits, at least for a little while.
Way back in the early Cretinaceous Era, when I was still doggedly pursuing “conventional” publication, I had a series of agents. All three were perfectly nice people. All three were striving for a respectable place among their colleagues. And all three of them spoke warmly, even fulsomely, of my books. But they couldn’t move them. Then as now, my stuff was too far off the beaten track for any publisher to take a chance on it.
Publishing is, after all, a business. Publishers may have gotten into the business out of a love for fiction, but they must make money to remain in business. The key to success in publishing is to anticipate correctly what a significant number of readers would buy. That’s a lot harder than marketing a gadget with a specific function. It makes the Prime Directive of the publishing world a phrase that writers repeat to one another and themselves as something between a mantra and a cri de coeur: “The same, but different.”
The difficulties publishers face in assessing the marketability of submitted novels gave rise to the system of genres that characterize the fiction world. Yes, Gentle Reader: there was a time before bookstores were neatly arranged into genres. Genres were publishers’ first thrust at customer targeting: aiming the product more or less directly at him who is most likely to find it attractive. The subgenres that have proliferated in recent years are just an extension of the approach. The system benefits publisher and reader alike.
And there is this: the genres are not equal. Some are more popular than others.
So my first agent counseled me to write a romance. Romance, she said, is the easiest genre for a new writer to penetrate. The market for romances is truly immense. So write a romance, Fran—and keep all that weird crap about anarcho-capitalism, alternate Creation myths, and millennia-long combat between immortal representatives of the demigods out of it!
I disdained her advice without giving it serious consideration. She kept slathering my books with praise, but she remained unable to move them. We parted sadly, but on good terms.
My second and third agents were similarly inclined. My novels intrigued and pleased them as readers—both told me that they’d never encountered anything quite like them—but they were as unable to move them as my first agent. And both counseled me, for reasons that require no further elucidation, to try my hand at romance. I shied back from the notion as I had previously. I insisted that it wasn’t “my thing.” In point of fact, I simply lacked the necessary respect for the genre and its devotees...but I was unwilling to admit it.
(“Ve get too soon old und too late schmart.” – Old saying)
Eventually (2016) I did write a novel-length romance. And I found that not only was it more popular than all my other stuff combined, I actually enjoyed writing it. I loved the characters and the central idea. I enjoyed crafting a series of escalating problems for my protagonists to surmount. I’ve written other romances of varying lengths since then, and I’ve enjoyed them just as much. And I’ve occasionally wondered what my earlier stubbornness had cost me.
Sometimes, we humans are unwilling to be candid about “the problem.” We routinely objectify it, separate it from ourselves, and push it out to arm’s length where we can sneer at it. But sometimes the problem is inside us. Sometimes the key to solving it is honesty about one’s own limitations, or preferences...or prejudices.
Just a few morsels for casual contemplation.
I can no longer remember where I first encountered the title word. It may have been in Thomas Sowell’s writings. In any case, I’m sure it was some time ago. Dictionary.com gives its meaning as “the leader or chief official of a political district under Nazi control.” It’s a rough equivalent to a word of great importance in the late, unlamented Soviet Union. That word, when transliterated from the Cyrillic, is usually spelled zampolit. It refers to a political-orthodoxy officer, one of which was attached to every Soviet military unit of any size.
The gauleiter was an important figure in Nazi Germany, just as the zampolit was in the Soviet Union. He was de facto the superior of those in his charge, regardless of formal considerations of rank. Regardless of whether a Leftist regime is structured along Nazi or Soviet lines, maintaining absolute conformance to Party doctrine is an important aspect of all such regimes. Dissent from Party doctrine is such a regime’s greatest enemy.
The United States doesn’t have gauleiters. Of course not! We’re free. We can believe whatever we please. Saying it out loud, though...well, that can have consequences.
Consider the following tweet:
Consider also this story:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo derided "multiculturalism" and other "-isms," tweeting Tuesday that they "distort" the nation's founding."Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is," he said. "They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker."
His comments came after a speech last week when he attacked "censorship, wokeness, political correctness."
“Systemic racism” and “multiculturalism” are Leftist doctrines. If we had a Leftist regime, the gauleiters would be all over Carol Swain and Secretary Pompeo, immediately silencing them and removing them from any perch from which they could promulgate their heresies. But we don’t have any such officials in these United States...or do we?
See for yourself. Do a couple of Google searches: the first for “Carol Swain” AND “systemic racism;” the second for “Mike Pompeo” AND “multiculturalism.” Survey what those searches bring you. Then decide for yourself.
We don’t have gauleiters who wield the force of the State...yet. We do have plenty of folks who’d love to fill such positions. Many of them work in the “mainstream media.”
In his book A Time for Action, William E. Simon wrote scathingly of the “media megaphone.” Have a choice snippet:
One episode especially vivid in my memory arose when there was speculation that I might be President Ford’s running mate on the ’76 ticket. This possibility prompted several major media outlets, including Newsweek magazine, to bankroll an “investigative” task force to look into my background. A reasonable investigation into the views and record of anyone mentioned for higher office would not, of course, be objectionable. But this, I found, was something else.
I first heard about this venture when friends of mine in the press corps called and said that people were poking around trying to plant stories that, when I was with Salomon Brothers, I had been involved in laundering money for the Mafia! The idea was so ludicrous I simply laughed at it. Then I started hearing rumors picked up by my staff that a major newspaper in the Midwest was planning an expose of me, including the aforementioned charge....
A second episode occurred after I had left public office. In late 1978 I was involved in negotiations to buy the Baltimore Orioles. I am a longtime sports nut, and owning a major league baseball team would have been, for me, a boyhood dream come true. It appealed to me both as a business proposition and as an outlet for my interest in sports.
For some unknown reason, this touched off alarm bells at the Washington Post. I was back working in New York and wasn’t aware of the paper’s concern until General Al Gruenther called form Washington and advised me I should sue the Post for libel. That aroused my curiosity, and when I got a copy of the paper, it was every bit as unfriendly as he suggested.
Played across the top of the Post’s first sports page I found a long attack on my personality, work habits, and service as Treasury Secretary. The author described me as a formed “bond salesman” and a “political and financial gadfly,” accused me of being a “darling of right-wing Republicans,” derided my stand for balanced budgets, attacked a “tour” I had made to the Soviet Union at the end of my tenure at Treasury, and made me out to be an ogre with my staff. What did all this have to do with sports? Answer, according to the headline: I’m used to playing “hardball” (get it?). In fact, the article—written by a political-financial reporter—had nothing to do with sports, the Orioles, or anything else except intense dislike of William Simon’s philosophy and politics. If you can’t destroy the message, someone once said, destroy the messenger.
When the message is conservative, pro-freedom, pro-Christian, or pro-America, the major media immediately whip out the big guns. They are too deeply in bed with the Left to permit any such messages to gain popular attention—because the Left cannot argue successfully against them. But for that reason, the guns are trained on the messenger, having first been loaded with all manner of libels, rumors, and innuendi. If the messenger is tarred with sufficient slander, the reasoning goes, no one will give his message any credence.
Gauleiters? Persons assigned by the State to ensure conformance with Party doctrine? Persons empowered to remove or destroy those who dare to depart from the official line? Of course not! We don’t have any such officials.
Not yet. Not officially, anyway.
One final observation: Many have spoken of a “revolving door” between government and the major media. There is a steady flow of persons between the two...but the door revolves freely only for persons on the Left. Former members of conservative administrations are excluded from major media positions from which they could make their viewpoints and arguments heard by many. Yea verily, even during Leftist administrations, despite the media’s claims of being in “an adversary relationship” with government.
Ask yourself why.
Nothing says 'landslide win' like 25,000 troops guarding your inauguration and a wall around your offices. Nothing.Comment by Zorch on "McConnell Sparks GOP-Split Talk, Claims 'Mob Was Fed Lies...Provoked By Trump.'" By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 1/20/21.
Guess he got addicted to that Facebook Farmville app and decided to win IRL.
Also, just noticed that today - 1/20/2021 - is a palindrome.
After I finally, really woke today (I went back to be after I posted this) I started to actually think about the aim of this takeover of land.
Gates will partner with the Big Food Companies, getting a good-sized foothold in the marketplace. Not a monopoly, but near.
SUDDENLY, a virus will be discovered, that is a DANGER to the food supply. It will be carried by seeds - EXCEPT for the seeds of a single hybrid! Which will be available, at first, from a single company (or, perhaps, SEVERAL of the largest companies).
Strictly because of this EMERGENCY, the government of Biden-Harris - VERY RELUCTANTLY - will be forced to OUTLAW use of any other variety for these plants. Violators will be fined, and - if they CHOOSE to use UNAPPROVED SEEDS (the heirloom kind that can be saved and re-used) - THEIR FARMS will be forfeited to COMPLIANT NON-KULAKS.
TPTB MAY carve out an exception for a few groups (the Amish and others), but probably not. They will likely be forced to stop using the heritage techniques of their community, and become dependent on the public.
Protesters will be met with force (WHAT a surprise!). It will be illegal to have a garden that uses non-approved seeds. If resistance in a group (perhaps those White Supremacists?) is great, ANY garden activity will become illegal.
Problem solved. No more unapproved sources of food.
Or, for that matter, pot. The USA will start importing from Mexico, only the finest hybrid-seed pot. That will eliminate a source of income for Non-Party dissidents.
I haven't figure out just how they are going to shut down home distilling/brewing, but - considering that the products are made with substances derived from seeds - I imagine they will figure out a way.
If you’ve read any of David Eddings’s fantasies, you might have encountered the concept expressed by the title of this piece. And if you’re moderately well educated, you’re aware of the principal function of a guild. That gives Eddings’s notion a particularly piquant irony.
Medieval occupational guilds existed to protect their members from occupational competitors. They often possessed a de facto legal privilege to use force to do so. That made them extensions of the State: a status for which they often paid a heavy fee to the “official” rulers.
Today we don’t have guilds of that sort. Instead we have licensure: The State plays arbiter over who can offer what services to whom, and extracts a fee from those it permits to operate. In effect, it steals one of the peaceable man’s rights – the right to earn a living as best he can – and sells it back to him...or not. Over the century behind us, licensure has expanded to cover more than 1100 different occupations.
Very few significant occupations remain unaddressed by licensure. However, there is one unlicensed occupation of massive significance...the most lucrative of all.
No one needs a license to run for elective office. Whether it’s local, state, or federal, the requirements for assuming an elective office are spelled out in plain English in the relevant Constitution or charter. Normally, they reduce to three:
A candidate who attains elective office can begin to steal at once.
What’s that you say? A public office is a public trust? Such offices should be occupied solely by men of unquestionably high character? I can’t disagree. But all too often, it turns out to be exactly the other way around.
Consider the percentage of our federal legislators that are exceedingly rich men. Many of them didn’t become rich until they were elected to Congress. And despite Honore de Balzac’s fervent declaration, while it isn’t quite true that “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” you could bet on it without going against the odds.
The principal attraction of political office is power. However, more often than not those who acquire such power will use it to benefit themselves and their families materially. The corruptocrat who will be inaugurated into a stolen office tomorrow at Noon is only the most prominent example before us. His political mentor, who is likely to use him as a puppet, was himself no slouch in that business.
Allow me to recount a tale from an old book: Quentin Reynolds’s book Courtroom, a legal biography of the great defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, who later became a judge in the Brooklyn courts. The segment I have in mind concerns the murder trial of one Joseph Scutellaro, a building contractor who operated in the 1930s and 1940s in Hoboken, New Jersey. At that time, political power in Hoboken was tightly gripped by the McFeeley family, described by Reynolds as follows:
The McFeeley family represented the Hague machine in Hoboken. The McFeeley family? Well, there was Mayor Bernard J. McFeeley; his brother, Police Chief Edward J. McFeeley; Police Captain Bernard McFeeley Jr.; Police Lieutenant Dennis McFeeley; James McFeeley, contractor; and David and Joseph McFeeley of the Hoboken Law Department.
Broadly, in that period you had to have the good will of the McFeeleys to get anywhere or do anything of even modest consequence in Hoboken. The demonstration:
Joseph Scutellaro, a small, dark, intense-eyed man, also lived in the city of Hoboken. He and his father operated a small building concern. They were prosperous in a modest way and their future seemed assured. Then father and son made a grave mistake. Frank Barletta, a member of the City Commission, broke with the McFeeley machine and ran as a Republican. Both Joseph and his father campaigned for Barletta. But Barletta lost and so did everyone active in his campaign. Suddenly the Scutellaros found that they couldn’t get any contracts. If they did manage to pick up a small job here and there, the people engaging their services found they couldn’t obtain the necessary building permits at City Hall. Finally not a single vestige of a once-prosperous business remained. No other contractor would hire either of them.
The story gets worse from there. Without going into details, the Scutellaros were even denied public relief. Poormaster Harry Barck, a loyal cog in the McFeeley machine, simply refused to disburse it to them despite repeated applications. In consequence the whole Scutellaro family, which included two minor children, neared death by starvation. When Scutellaro appealed personally to Barck, the Poormaster suggested that Scutellaro’s wife become a prostitute.
The tale doesn’t end there. Joseph Scutellaro was arrested and tried for the murder of Poormaster Harry Barck. Despite Leibowitz’s efforts, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. What became of his family is unrecorded.
Sometimes it seems the world is wholly made of irony. As its substance is at least one-third nickel-iron amalgam, what remains is hardly an obstacle.
These past four years, we have enjoyed the tenure of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Trump is one of two presidents in the past century to attain that office without having held any other elective or appointive public office; the other was Dwight D. Eisenhower. He’s also the first man in at least a century to leave that office a poorer man than when he arrived in it.
Trump campaigned as a political outsider, one who would “drain the swamp” that the federal government had become. He strove mightily to do so, and despite considerable opposition from the swamp-dwellers and their political protectors, he achieved a great deal. But he never had the allegiance of the political Establishment: the men and women who deemed federal power to be theirs by right. Given his outsider status, he could not have imagined that they would approve of him...and they did not.
We have witnessed the Establishmentarian rejection of Trump and all he represents. The silent acquiescence of a great part of the Republican elite to the theft of the presidency makes clear that while there is no “official” licensure for elective office, the unofficial mechanisms of Washington were incensed by his rise and determined to see him fall.
Trump ran for president knowing that it would be so. He knew that he, his whole family, and every element of his many enterprises would come under attack. He knew that should he win, the attacks would escalate to previously unimagined heights. He accepted that that would be the price.
But the price might not have been levied in full quite yet. The Establishment doesn’t merely want to see Trump removed from office; it also wants to prevent, in perpetuity, any other outsider candidate from doing what Trump did: The privilege of stealing from the public must be reserved to us and us alone! The most effective way to deter non-Establishment candidates for high office is to present them with the prospect of paying an exorbitant price.
What the thieves’ guild we call the political Establishment has in mind for Trump, his family, and his business interests once he’s departed the White House can easily be imagined, in magnitude if not in all its details. Pray for him.
The left has never tried to solve any problem, only capitalize on them. After all, they are trying to destroy the country as founded, not fix it. They aren't going to start now.Comment by RexSeven on "Now, The Left Owns It All." By Pat Buchanan, ZeroHedge, 1/19/21.
Liberals who implored us to understand the grievances of the rioters, looters and arsonists last summer have become sudden converts to the church of law and order."Now, The Left Owns It All." By Pat Buchanan, ZeroHedge, 1/19/21 (emphasis removed).Elites who had condoned the smashing of statues and monuments to Columbus, Washington, Jefferson and Jackson as a needed cleansing of our hateful history have declared themselves sickened that Trumpists would desecrate the temple of democracy.
Had it been antifa or BLM that carried out the invasion, not one statue would have been left standing in Statuary Hall, and we would have been instructed that it was slaves who had, after all, built the Capitol building.
No, that's not a typo; one of my strongest memories concerning MLK is about the memorial service that was held at UT. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of students sitting on the ground in front of the Tower to listen to the speakers, and I was in the middle of that crowd.
When a speaker announced, "We are ALL guilty of Martin Luther King's death," I stood up and made my way out of the audience.
For years I felt modestly proud that I had stood up to groupthink and collective guilt. But recently I've been thinking that the important part of that memory is: Nobody else walked out.
My generation has not served freedom well.
It's the kind of skill they used to teach in those classes on Office Procedures - how to file things so they don't get lost.
Evidently, the guys at the DOJ did NOT take those classes.
Perhaps the folks at Sesame Street might add those to its offerings on Letters of the Alphabet.
Here's a link to the full Alphabet, in order, just for those who are Challenged in that skill. With cute little Muppets to help them remember.
ARRL - the American Radio Relay League, the organization that generally interacts with the FCC regarding radio communications between amateurs. has posted a warning regarding use of radio communications to commit crimes (defined by whom?), and that any such use will be followed by prosecution, fines, confiscation of equipment, etc.
This would be a Duh! No Brainer moment, except for the fact that the federal government, in its Deep State arms, tends to smear a wide range of legally-protected communications as seditious, criminal, and Not-To-Be-Engaged-In. The message is dated 1/17/221.
Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up, given that we had discussed permissible communications alternatives on this blog. I don't believe that I ever suggested using them in a crime of any kind. Just as an alternative way to keep in communication with loved ones/neighbors, in the event of a communications blackout.
FWIW - no, of course, you should be using them for legal purposes. Having said that, I really don't see a problem for the licensed amateur. The radios aren't controlled items; anyone can buy one, without having to show a license.
Yet.
