Quickies: A Dead-Center Bull's-Eye Diagnosis

Please read this entire article. Here's the meat of its thesis:

The zeitgeist we are swirling in demands cold, hard decision making coupled with brutal honesty. Neither of which is forthcoming from the angry marxist college professor-in-chief and his army of racial and gender studies ideologues that are dominant in the executive branch of the national government. If you are part of that government, you’d might start to wonder if you are doing anything of value when you have to lie with every breath you take about everything you do to everyone, except to your fellow apparatchiks inside the bubble.

While the apparatchiks may think that the rest of the country is too stupid to understand, it is they who look stupid, detached from reality, and quite frankly, psychotic. Invented crises like; “climate disruption,” a transgendered military, wife beating in the NFL, white privilege, micro-aggression, the ongoing oppression of the leftist white woman in academia and corporate America, are all signs of a society that is ignoring the very real, very hard, and very deadly realities that are pressing down on the nation.

My only divergence from this assessment is this: The apparatchiks might look stupid, but there's a nonzero probability that their actions (and inactions) are having precisely the effects they intend...and that probability rises as we near the pinnacle of the power elite.

It's On, The Ongoing Saga

From Colin Flaherty:

Some stories you have to read 10 times before deciding: ’Yes: What I thought was too crazy is really true.’

This is one of those stories. Here goes, believe it or not:

A black Baltimore bus driver organized a mob of 20 black people to assault a white family of three on her bus, which they did with gusto and pepper spray. All the while, the other black passengers hooted and hollered in encouragement.

All while the bus driver waited for the beating to finish so the attackers could get back on the bus. With her thanks.

The bus company didn’t give a darnn. And it took Baltimore police two months before they even investigated it....

The Baltimore Sun said this is the second recent example of a bus driver assisting people who assault riders.

The author of "White Girl Bleed A Lot" remains alert to developments in our contemporary race war. Sadly, whites generally remain in denial about the true and horrifying state of affairs, particularly in our larger cities.

It really is on, Gentle Reader. Don't kid yourself -- or leave yourself or your loved ones defenseless.

Quickies: A Pontificate Bent On The Destruction Of The Church?

From Ann Barnhardt's latest:

    Q. How could Pope Francis keep making blunder after blunder, saying and doing things that are turned into massive media victories for the enemies of The Church?
    A. Because they aren’t blunders. It is all but certain that he knows exactly what he is doing, and the effect it is having. It is all but certain that his objective is amassing as much personal power as he can through worldly popularity, and everything else, including The Church and the souls of every human being on the planet, can LITERALLY be damned in service to that goal.

I find it difficult to believe that a pope would knowingly set out on a course that would bring about the destruction of the Church, especially since that would also destroy the basis for his authority. Nevertheless, it is possible -- and it's also possible, unfortunately, that Pope Francis has that in mind.

What's certain is that the pope's pronouncements, especially his most recent ones, are causing rifts in the Church comparable to those of Luther's time -- and Luther, at least, had a corrupt Church hierarchy, steeped in the indolence and luxuriance of Renaissance Rome, for his target.

Secular authorities -- kings avid for more power -- have claimed to have "deposed" a pope or two. I don't know if the Church even has a procedure for dethroning a sitting pope. Present papal trends continuing, the next few years might enlighten us all.

Quickies: The All-Purpose Governmental Excuse

First have a gander at this revealing story about the recent behavior of the Centers for Disease Control:

Top public health officials have collected $25 million in bonuses since 2007, carving out extra pay for themselves in tight federal budgetary times while blaming a lack of money for the Obama administration’s lackluster response to the Ebola outbreak.

U.S. taxpayers gave $6 billion in salaries and $25 million in bonuses to an elite corps of health care specialists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 2007, according to data compiled by American Transparency’s OpenTheBooks.com, an online portal aggregating 1.3 billion lines of federal, state and local spending. The agency’s head count increased by 23 percent during that time, adding manpower and contributing to higher payrolls despite relatively flat funding.

From 2010 to 2013, all federal wages were frozen because of budgetary constraints, but CDC officials found a way to pay themselves through bonuses, overtime, within-grade increases and promotion pay raises....

National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins told The Huffington Post last week that the CDC had been working on an Ebola vaccine for more than a decade but was hampered by shrinking budgets.

First, by now we all know that the CDC's budget has been increased each year for the past several years, and we all know about the fatuities the CDC has been spending its budget on. Gun control, global warming, and "bullying" are only the most widely known of them. Second, an agency formed to control the spread of infectious diseases is expected to...well...to control the spread of an infectious disease! In the typeset phrase of the moment, "You had one job." Third...bonuses? For what? What record of achievement justifies the distribution of bonuses among executives who hardly dare to face the public, and when compelled to do so, can't even tell a consistent lie?

A personal vignette: Some years ago I was foolish enough to form a subchapter-S corporation for a purpose that need not concern us today. Within a few weeks I began receiving notices from the State of New York that my quarterly sales tax remissions were late...before I had taken in a single dollar in revenue. So I called the relevant office in Albany to straighten out the matter.

I was put on hold.
I was left on hold for more than thirty minutes.
I concluded there must be a phone problem and decided to try again the next day...which I did.
The next day, I was left on hold for two hours.
But I resolved to wait it out.
And my call was answered.

I was in a fine state of anarchist wrath by then.
I upbraided the bureaucrat for leaving me on hold for so long.
Would you like me to tell you what the very first words out of her mouth were?

"We need more money!"

I'll bet she got a bonus that year, too.

This must stop. But it won't stop itself. Putting Republicans into elective offices won't stop it either. Draw the inference.

Quanta Of Wasted Verbiage

1. Ebola, Ebola, Ebola...

Our latest national scare-package is being unwrapped gradually, lovingly, such that with each new revelation a fresh batch of Americans get to worry about it. The most recent admission from the CDC -- i.e., that the transmission of Ebola does not require direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person -- should be enough to kill the airlines, the hospitality industry, and every activity that requires people to gather together with strangers. What minimum percentage of Americans will voluntarily go to work for the duration of the crisis remains to be seen.

We are being socially atomized, reduced to individuals and nuclear families...and not all families will withstand the terrors of this disease.

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2. The Midterms.

It has been said, and truly, that if the Republican Party should profit from the upcoming elections, which it appears poised to do, it won't be because of heightened public approval of the GOP, but because of deep disgust with the Democrats. All the same, a Republican-majority Senate could thwart at least some of the Obamunist nonsense that would otherwise slip by. This is especially the case with nominations to the Cabinet and the federal judiciary.

Given the unreviewable nature of Supreme Court pronouncements, the prospect of an Obama appointee to SCOTUS should frighten anyone with three functioning brain cells. Granted that there are Republicans in the Senate already who haven't got the balls God gave a cockroach and would more greatly dread the venom of the press for defying The Won than the wrath of God (not to mention that of the electorate) for going along with another Sotomayor or Kagan, we can nevertheless hope that a strengthened GOP caucus would at least retard such an appointment long enough for popular awareness to morph into indignation and anger.

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3. Hell.

The mailbag produces some fairly regular surprises. Among those are questions about theological subjects that I often feel unqualified to address. However, even the most orthodox Catholic is allowed to speculate about things beyond the veil of Time, especially since the Church itself has been more than a little wobbly about such subjects.

This morning's eye-opener was from a reader in the Midwest:

Do you have any opinions about Hell?

Well, yes. First and foremost, I don't want to go there. But second, I think the nature of Hell, the condition of eternal damnation, is closely tied to the nature of Heaven, the condition of eternal bliss. A few words will be required to elucidate this.

We have been told very little authoritatively about Heaven, but its nature surely includes release from bondage to Time. Nothing else would be consistent with a state of eternal bliss. Indeed, an immortal sentenced to temporal eternity would find it to be the most extreme imaginable torment. Time is the medium of desire, effort, fulfillment, failure, and mortality; to compel an immortal, unalterable creature to endure it would utterly destroy any delight he might be offered within its folds.

Mix in the inescapable knowledge that one has forever forfeited both nearness to God and the gift of all-encompassing comprehension, and it sounds to me like we have a very good recipe for Hell. Maybe throw in perpetual rainfall, unending calls from telemarketers, and an eternal Obama Administration for lagniappe.

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4. The New Totalitarians.

Time was, the word tolerance connoted a virtue, the willingness to "live and let live." It was nowhere more important than in matters of freedom of speech and religious belief. That's no longer the case today. Today we suffer a totalitarian "tolerance" that includes the suppression of freedom of speech and religious belief, as the antics of the lesbian Mayor of Houston should make plain.

This is not an "outlier," but an act characteristic of the most implacably vicious activist community at work in these United States. Muslims have nothing on the homosexual activist community. Ask Brendan Eich what such activists cost him. Then ask yourself whether it's either right or possible to "tolerate" such persons in a supposedly free republic.

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5. Gun Grabbers And The Therapeutic Community.

If you want to test a man's deepest ethics, offer him power and observe the consequences. In particular, watch his responses to others who hold their own varieties of power, including the power to defend oneself:

California legislators recently passed a bill allowing family members to ask a judge to confiscate firearms from relatives who they see as a danger to themselves or others. The seizure will be enforced only when the judge deems the family’s concerns to be “legitimate”.

Liberal lawmakers, who never leave a tragedy unexploited, drafted the bill in response to Elliot Rodger’s deadly rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus earlier this year.

California Assembly Member Nancy Skinner, who introduced the bill, said: “Family members are often the first to spot the warning signs when someone is in crisis. AB 1014 provides an effective tool to get guns out of the hands of loved ones to avoid these tragedies.”

I like that "legitimate" qualifier, don't you? Given the California power elite's demonstrated hostility to the private ownership of firearms -- by anyone but politicians and movie stars, anyway -- just what degree of concern by a "family member," which I'm certain will be expanded to include neighbors, occupational colleagues, and medical personnel, is a judge likely to dismiss as "illegitimate?"

But I'll guarantee you that the therapeutocrats -- psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, and their various hangers-on -- purely love this bill. Whether they were behind it to any degree I cannot say...but I wouldn't bet against that, either.

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6. Blind Squirrel Finds Nut.

I have very little regard for Eric S. Raymond, but even he can be right now and then, and this time it's on a topic of particular importance:

"What the press is teaching Americans to assume, story after story, is that if ‘youths’ commit public violence and they are not specified to be white, or hispanic, or asian — then it’s yet another black street gang on a wilding. . . . I don’t like where I think the well-meant suppressio veri is taking us. I think it’s bound to empower people who are genuinely and viciously bigoted by giving them an exclusive on truthful reporting. I don’t think it’s good for anyone of any color for bigots to have that power."

Allow me to add a big indeed.

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7. An Intelligent Approach To The Assessment Of Islam.

Raymond Ibrahim nails it:

What relationship does the Islamic State, ISIS, have to Islam? Almost every Western politician answers: “Absolutely nothing.” President Obama adamantly stated in a televised address that the Islamic State “is not Islamic.”

So how does one determine what is, and is not, Islamic? The traditional process — the Islamic answer — is as follows:

What do the core texts and scriptures of Islam say about the thing in question? Does the Koran, believed by Muslims to contain the literal commands of Allah, call for or justify it? Do the hadith and sira texts — which purport to record the sayings and deeds of Allah’s prophet, whom the Koran (e.g., 33:21) exhorts Muslims to emulate in all ways — call for or justify it?

If any ambiguity still remains, the next inquiry is: what is the consensus (ijma‘) of the Islamic world’s leading authorities concerning it? Here, one most often turns to the tafsirs, or exegeses of Islam’s most learned men — the ulema – and considers their conclusions.

Muhammad himself reportedly said that “my umma [Islamic nation] will never be in agreement over an error.”

Please read the whole thing. Then watch the video in the post below.

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8. And Finally...

...just in case you were wondering, the quantum of wasted verbiage is the feh. Use it at your next cocktail soiree and enjoy the admiring looks!

The Horrors Of Math

In 2012, Paul Ryan gave it its day in fiscal and budgetary matters. Today, Ben Shapiro does the job on Islamic radicalism:

Watch it all. Please.

Long Divisions

One of the most important pseudo-conflicts in Western society is that between employer and employees (or "management" and "workers"). It's not a real line of division and never has been, for one needs the other just as much as the other needs the one. Yet for many decades collectivists of all stripes have striven, with a deplorable degree of success, to foment strife between the two sides. To this point, it's been the most profitable of all their campaigns.

Today we have a glaring example before us:

Speaking at a panel at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference in Washington this week, Kendell Fells a national coordinator for Service Employees International Union, said an increased minimum wage is not the ultimate goal of his group.

Fells, who also serves as president of Fast Food Forward – a group that advocates for an increased minimum wage for fast food employees across the country and including in Chicago – said his movement is more about unionizing employees in the fast food sector than it is about them making more money.

“Just to be clear, this is not a minimum wage campaign, these fast food workers are not trying to raise minimum wage,” Fells said. “They want to sit down with the $200 billion fast food industry and get the money out of their pockets and negotiate a union contract with them.”

That's an unusually candid set of admissions from a union goon. Normally they present themselves as first and foremost coming to the aid of the downtrodden and shamefully exploited worker. But Fells has openly stated that his primary aim is the unionization of the many thousands of persons employed by fast-food restaurants...not that anyone with three functioning brain cells would suspect otherwise.

With the single exception of government employees, every occupation that has suffered unionization has declined sharply as a result. The trend is impossible to hide; a reasonably alert worker, regardless of his specific occupation, cannot fail to be aware of it. As workers have fled the unionized industries, they have generally bettered their situations. The principal negative impact has been to the power, pelf, and prestige of the union barons.

Why would we expect union goons to attend to others' interests before their own? They never did so in the past. They seek only to improve their own standing, both materially and as power brokers.

Power of the sort unionists seek requires conflict: something the Left has always worked assiduously to provoke.

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The campaign to unionize workers involuntarily is merely one aspect of the "progressive" campaign to foment increasing division and strife in American society. Divide et impera is the guiding principle. "If you don't have an opposition, you don't have an issue" is the Gospel According To Alinsky. The separation of Americans from one another into mutually hostile camps, against the far more natural inclination to see others' desires as reflections of one's own, is central to their aim.

Needless to say, there's a lot of it going on. Racial divisions. Ethnic divisions. Religious divisions. Divisions between men and women, between young and old, between better-off and worse-off.

Much of this is directed at concealing a real division: that between those who wield the powers of the Omnipotent State and those who suffer under its lash.

Kendall Fells speaks of a union contract with "the $200 billion fast food industry" as if that were a real corporate entity. But we who use words according to their exact meanings speak of an "industry" only in a generic sense. McDonald's is a real corporate entity, as is Burger King; the two, major members of "the fast food industry," have no corporate connection and no common interests. Coalescing them rhetorically does nothing to change that.

But the collectivization of fast food workers is equally a travesty. Those folks have no common interests either! Distributed as they are across a wide variety of locales, ages, and life circumstances, they cannot reasonably be said to share the same priorities. Some have just taken their first step onto the ladder of capitalism; others are earning or supplementing their family incomes; still others are merely filling their time with something profitable and (hopefully) agreeable. Compelling them into a collective bargaining contract must inevitably do violence to the interests of some of them at all times.

Fells hardly paused over those minor obstacles. Collectivists are like that. Truth, justice, accuracy of statement...all must give way to the Left's collectivizing juggernaut.

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You'd think American society already endures enough fault lines. You'd think men of good will would labor to close them, or bridge them over, rather than contriving new ones and widening those that exist. You'd be right. There are no men of good will among the union goons. There are vanishingly few elsewhere on the Left.

Expect the campaign to divide us from one another to continue and intensify, regardless of overt political developments. Division and the consequent strife are the essential nutrients of the power-brokers. Without them, they could achieve nothing for the simplest of reasons: No one would listen to them.

Verbum sat sapienti.

The Convergence Of The Fears

The list is growing very long:

• Islamism on the march.
• Russia remilitarizing as it absorbs Ukraine and eyes the Baltics.
• China preparing its long-awaited invasion of Taiwan.
• Israel beleaguered by Middle Eastern Muslims, principally through their "Palestinian" cat's-paws.
• Hordes of illegal aliens swarming across America's southern border.
• The accelerating rise of the inflation-driven cost of living.
• The jobless "recovery."
• The surging tide of government dependency.
• Federal and state harassment of political adversaries.
• Economic strangulation by regulation.
• Judicial assaults on freedom of religion and expression.
• Vote fraud and voter intimidation.
• Resurgent union militancy.
• Rising black-on-white violence.
• The use of the "Justice" Department to prevent the prosecution of injustice.
• Deliberate weakening of our military and alienation of our allies.
• Unceasing deceit from the circles of power and their media annexes.
• Refusal to close our borders against Ebola.

Perhaps I've left something out, but those are the "big ticket" items that occur to me as I write this morning.

From the above list, I'd say we have a lot to fear. What about you, Gentle Reader?

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"The State is based on threat." -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!

The critical thing about the list above is that every item on it was either originated by our federal government or is being encouraged by it. Not one of the phenomena above could sustain itself in the absence of federal support.

What other implication could there be than that Washington wants Americans to suffer an elevated sense of threat? And what other implication could that inference have than that our federal elite wants us to fear as many people and things as intensely as possible?

It is flatly impossible to subjugate a people whose confidence in themselves sufficiently exceeds their fears. To rule, you must create fear, or fears, of sufficient variety and intensity that John Q. Public will turn away from his fellows in search of a protector. If you can plausibly represent yourself as such a protector, and faceless "others" as those to be feared, you can win his compliance with your demands.

I contend that that dynamic is all the explanation we need for the nightmares of our time.

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A recent series of urban fantasies, John Conroe's Demon Accords, provides a fictional look at how the power elite views forces outside its control. Superhero protagonist Christian Gordon is a sterling example of American manhood as we once knew it: he knows right from wrong and unerringly chooses the right, even when it might cost him his life. More, he loves his country and works, tirelessly and without compensation, to combat both natural and supernatural threats to it. When he appears at a crisis site, people's fears are dissipated; the general sense of justice is restored.

So what's Washington's response to the emergence of this powerful paragon? It bends all its efforts toward gaining control over him.

When that proves impossible (for reasons beyond the scope of this tirade), the Feds change their approach. First, they attempt to bend him by kidnapping his goddaughter. When he thwarts that approach, they strive to kill him. Their tactics repeatedly demonstrate that they're determined to do so even if it should cost the lives of many thousands of innocents, including federal agents unaware of that vicious intent. The regime is simply unwilling to allow the existence of a protector who's not firmly under its thumb. They will not countenance the existence of power that lies beyond their control.

Conroe's depiction of this ongoing conflict between private and political power strikes me as appallingly true-to-life. Our power elite is just as jealous of its primacy as Conroe's fictional regime. Were a Christian Gordon to appear among us, Washington's reaction might well exceed that of the fictional version in amoral brutality.

It's not just the Muslims who seek to subjugate us at any cost.

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"When all the errors are in the bank's favor, you can be forgiven for thinking there's more at work than sloppy arithmetic." -- Me.

I've only just returned from a brief vacation during which I was (involuntarily) without Internet access for four days. A hiatus of that sort can be an important perspective restorative. In my case, it's refreshed my sense of just how bad things are getting.

I'm one of the fortunate: materially well off, a resident of a placid, low-crime locale, surrounded by agreeable neighbors, prepared for a multitude of contingencies, and personally capable of standing off quite a number of threats out of my own resources. Yet I, too, am beset by fear. I have little confidence in the future of this nation. The multiplicity of the threats we face makes planning a campaign against them a daunting challenge...perhaps an impossible one. The latest one, the Ebola threat, is separating Americans from one another as nothing but a lethal pandemic could do. A high-powered rifle is no defense against a virus, no matter how good one's marksmanship. Where are we to turn for a protector?

It's all too clear to me that Washington's masters have engineered our plight, by deliberate action here and deliberate inaction there. It's steadily becoming clear to ever more of our countrymen. Yet we do not act. Why?

A bumper sticker I saw recently makes the point in the sharpest imaginable way:

The Founding Fathers
Would Be Shooting By Now.

Why are we content to be separated from one another, huddling in family-size groups, as the fears mount around us?

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When I wrote Which Art In Hope, I had the dramatization of an important moral-ethical conflict in mind, nothing else. Quite a few readers took it as a manifesto. At first I tried to dissuade them from that view. No longer.

The midterm elections don't promise much relief. Indeed, no election for more than a century has noticeably altered the vector of Omnipotent Government. The few truly decent, principled men in high office are treated by the establishments of both parties as irritations at best, mortal enemies at worst. The "permanent government" comfortably ensconced in the "alphabet agencies," uncorrectable by external forces and protected by Civil Service rules against changes in elected or appointed "supervisors," has proved immovable.

It is vital beyond the power of words to express that the Leviathan marshaling all those fearful forces against us be put down. I know, I know: Who will volunteer to bell the cat? The dangers inherent in the enterprise take nothing away from the urgency thereof.

What, then, must we do?

We different.

All these foreign and economic woes led to political instability [in the Chinese Ming Dynasty], which led a centralized imperial bureaucracy whose rigidness and endless passing of laws was [sic] totally incapable of addressing the nation’s problems.

"(Deceiver) How Jesus’ Brother Killed Millions Of Chinese." By By Stucky, The Burning Platform, 10/10/14

This just in.

France’s generous welfare system has come at a price - a budget that hasn’t been balanced since 1974 . . . .^[1]

Hopes that the magic fairy will fix this isolated problem burn brightly in all those devoted to Good Speak, Good Think, and Good Do.

Notes
^[1]  "France Crushes Socialist Welfare Dream, Admits "Living Beyond Its Means" For 40 Years." By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 10/9/14.

Leftist betrayal of America.

Read the disgusting story of U.S. leftists’ support for Communists in Vietnam here:

"When Night Fell In Indochina." By Bruce Herschensohn, The New Nixon, date unknown.

It's a joy to read about that human slime. It just never grows old.

Assorted Thoughts

Yes, it’s another one of those mornings.

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I wasn’t sure why, but for a long time whenever I went a day without posting something here, I felt I should apologize for the hiatus. As of this morning, I understand the impulse.

Yesterday was a particularly intense and trying day for me. I lacked even a moment’s free time in which to write. (A condition, in case you were wondering, that severely pisses me off. I actually become dangerous to be around. That’s not a boilerplate “writers must write” homily; it’s a statement about myself and myself alone. So now you know.) Accordingly, there was no October 9 Fran Rant.

I didn’t expect the consequences: 243 emails, by actual count, inquiring as to my health and general well-being. Apparently, I’ve been so regular about pumping out this dreck that my Gentle Readers become alarmed when there’s a gap in my output.

Yes, I’ve answered them all. I came close to making a Form Email for the purpose, but retreated from the idea when I reflected on how I would feel if my expression of solicitude toward someone whose well-being I value were to be answered that way.

It wore out my fingers...but I’m wearing a huge smile this morning. Thank you, one and all, for caring.

(I’m also feeling too good to write about political crap, so proceed at your own risk.)

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Why “Assorted Thoughts” this morning rather than “Scattered Thoughts?” The number of entries involved. If it’s fewer than ten, it’s merely an “assortment.” No, there’s no logic behind it.

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Various authorities have assured me – yes, I’ve asked – that dogs are incapable of the human emotion called love. None of them have ever met Sophie the German Shepherd. This animal actually leaps into my arms at the end of the day. When I seat myself on our sofa (named “Sophia,” with companion hassock “Dominik”), she cuddles into my side and wraps her forelegs around me.

It can’t be a food-seeking response. My smell? Perhaps? Or perhaps it’s that she’s a rescue dog, retrieved from an MS-13-connected family of welfare cheats and spendthrifts. (Took some doin’, too.) Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

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I’ve recently become a practitioner of what Erica Jong, best known for her utterly execrable, semi-autobiographical pudenda-centered fiction, once called “the Jewish science:” answering a hostile question with an even more hostile, more pointed question. I get a lot of hostile questions about my politics, my religion, and my various pastimes, and this is a good way to deflect them and discourage more of them.

A hostile question is not an indication of curiosity; it’s a bully’s tactic, a probe for weakness. A smashing return of serve is always the best reply, regardless of any other aspect of the situation. Imagine yourself being cross-examined as a hostile witness, in a trial without a judge or any rules of order, and the necessary attitude will fall into place without further effort. It helps to remind yourself that you don’t owe anyone an answer to a question he hasn’t contracted with you to answer. So don’t!

There’s a lot of satisfaction in watching your interrogator’s face fall when he realizes that you’re not the marshmallow he was hoping to skewer – that crossing swords with you might be more dangerous to him than to you. Reinforces the cranky-old-man image, too.

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The C.S.O. and I are headed west a little later today, to Canandaigua, NY, for a weekend of foliage watching, wine tasting, and general relaxation. There’s a Culinary Institute of New York establishment there as well, where Beth hopes to take a day class or two. For myself, it will mainly be a chance to decompress in pleasant, stress-free surroundings, though I also intend to get some fiction writing done.

So if I should post lightly or not at all, don’t worry about me, please! I’ll be drinking New York wines and doing other relaxing things among the trees of Western New York State, where the Demons of FibreChannel dare not go. The Fortress of Crankitude will be heavily guarded, as usual, by Sophie, Rufus the Newfus, and our beloved house-sitter Courtney, the only woman I know who’s both more heavily armed and a better shot than I am. (Yes, she has a key to my gun safe. No, I haven’t trained her in the use of the mortars or the 155mm howitzer...yet.) The main threats to my health, physical or mental, will be eating too much restaurant food, drinking too much New York Riesling, and worrying about the New York Rangers’ prospects this season, after their spectacular run for the Stanley Cup this past spring.

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That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Wish me luck on the New York State Thruway, and enjoy your Columbus Day weekend!

Black to basics.

But Democrats no longer on the ballot believe the president should focus his time on his most loyal constituency.

“I’d have Obama on an evangelistic schedule of black churches all over the country,” said Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco. “I think he really should go to the black base. I don’t think there’s any other place I would trust he wouldn’t create an adverse reaction rather than a positive reaction.”^[1]

The comments on this article are, as usual, choice. The heaviest reader support is for comments extolling Obama’s "achievements" (improving economy, "saving" of GM, advance to socialized medicine, "falling" unemployment, promoting the homosexual agenda, protection of the sacrament of abortion) and/or evincing unswerving support for centralized, interventionist, constitution-optional policies and disdain for Republican "obstructionism" and hatred of kittens and the poor.

In short, a showcase of leftist delusion, economic ignorance, and blindness toward the dangers of an untouchable federal government.

Notes
^[1]  "In This Election, Obama’s Party Benches Him." By Jonathan Martinoct, New York Times, 10/7/14.

Contemplating The Eschaton: Protecting The Status Quo

Thanks to commenter Obola, I’m feeling quite a bit cheerier today. Nevertheless, this is an important subject that should be explored somewhat further. So let’s have a look at some influences designed to prevent the United States from altering its course toward the Eschaton.

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Persons who’ve “done a corner” in political and social theory will often feel that their prestige, if not their livelihoods, are tied to the maintenance of Things As They Are. Sad to say, some of these will posture as promoters and defenders of freedom. Here’s a sad example. As I don’t want to take the least little chance of misinterpreting Dr. Epstein, please read his essay for yourself.

Now, when I read that piece, I found myself thinking that Dr. Epstein doesn’t trust market forces quite as much as he once claimed. (Clearly he doesn’t trust them as far as does Dr. Paul.) His endorsement of regulation in the current paradigm and State definition of intellectual property rights opens the door to all the horrors of unaccountable, essentially omnipotent government that’s stifling us today. But regulation provides lots and lots for policy analysts to write about; it’s a form of job security for the Ivory-Tower Class. The implications are unpleasant.

Needless to say, public intellectuals less favorable to freedom are even more blatant about their approval of the Alphabet Monster. But then, it hasn’t taken a bite out of them...yet.

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Our beloved Emperor Misha (long may he reign) brings us notice of yet another stroke intended to suppress anti-regime communications:

The producer of a new movie that criticizes Obamacare has reportedly become the latest prominent conservative slapped with an IRS audit.

Logan Clements, producer of “Sick and Sicker: ObamaCare Canadian Style,” announced via press release Tuesday that he is being audited for the first time ever.

“I had never been audited before I made this movie,” he says in a YouTube video. “There seems to be a pattern here.”

Of course there isn’t, you deranged, paranoid, right wing extremist rayciss hater! You’re sounding just like Gibson Guitars right after they were audited for the crime of donating to political causes while Republican, or when Tea Party organizers were audited, then OSHA’ed for the crime of organizing while conservative, or when Breitbart was audited for felony acts of actual journalism while conservative, or…

Oh wait… It’s almost as if there is a pattern here… Nah, can’t be.

Does everyone remember the ordeal of Catherine Engelbrecht? How about the recent prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza? Then there’s Nakoula Bassey Nakoula, and that O’Keefe fellow, and...

Seen any black helicopters in your neighborhood?

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Recently, an up and coming young actress shocked a has-been talk show host by rejecting her obligatory hyphen. Watch this brief video and decide for yourself.

No regime can oppress a people who have refused to be divided. The Old Media and regime loyalists who dominate it have, among their functions, the perpetuation of as many sorts of social division as they can maintain. Hyphens are a critical element of their tactics.

I’ve resolved to reserve the hyphen for my fiction. What about you?

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One more citation of stunning implications should serve today’s purpose:

In Connecticut, Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission has returned a curious and controversial draft recommendation: the state should increase its oversight of homeschooled children with emotional or behavioral challenges. The proposal has outraged the state’s homeschoolers, who, like homeschoolers everywhere, are keenly aware of their sometimes conditional freedoms. In Connecticut, as elsewhere, the law allows parents to homeschool if they choose. But the practice has always been viewed as threatening by left-wing academics, social architects, and teachers’ unions—all well represented on Malloy’s 16-member panel. Sadly, this is only the most recent assault on the rights of Connecticut homeschoolers.

Established to investigate the causes and consequences of the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, the Sandy Hook commission issued an interim report last year that nodded appropriately to gun safety, school security, and emergency planning, but made no mention of homeschooling. Now the panel has determined that among the things that went wrong in the run-up to that tragedy was that the killer, Adam Lanza, was homeschooled briefly as a teenager. They are recommending that the state give local officials approval power over parents who wish to homeschool children with social, behavioral, and emotional challenges. “Given the individuals involved in the tragedy that formed the basis of this commission, we believe that it is very germane,” said commissioner Harold I. Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living. “The facts leading up to this incident support the notion [that there is a] risk in not addressing the social and emotional learning needs of [homeschooled] children.” Schwartz admitted that the commission didn’t have access to Lanza’s school files and medical records. But he maintained that those records would support the commission’s proposals.

Homeschooling is a declaration of independence – independence of mind and values. It’s a refusal to allow the State to condition one’s children into politically correct, State approved attitudes. There has never been a more important target for the State to break to its harness. You may rest assured that even if the above absurd rationale fails the educrats, they will be back, and back, and back, until they’ve quenched homeschooling in Connecticut – possibly all over America – forever.

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Apropos of this topic, in his novel Kildar, John Ringo has protagonist Mike Jenkins (formerly Mike Harmon, a.k.a. “Ghost”) categorize formally organized armies according to their designed function:

• Parade Ground Forces;
• Regime Protection Forces;
• Field Forces.

This is a useful partition, to be kept in mind when assessing the military capabilities of any nation. But it also serves us somewhat here. There are “regime protection forces” well distributed and well emplaced throughout America’s key institutions. The regulatory bureaucracy might be the most fearsome, but it’s far from the only one. Consider how vital to the maintenance of the “statist quo” the educational establishment has been. Consider how viciously the victicrats wield their hyphens at us, denying us the unum our pluribus is supposed to weld. The Ivory Tower types’ influence might appear subtle from the outside, but they constitute the pinnacle of the “intellectual structure of production” from which most policy ideas are born.

The Eschaton, should it arrive, will be their doing quite as much as those at the levers of power.

Progress.

When I was a boy my momma would send me down to a corner store with $1 and I’d come back with 5 potatoes, 2 loaves of bread, 3 bottles of milk, a hunk of cheese, a box of tea and 6 eggs.

You can’t do that now… Too many [darn] security cameras.

Comment on "The Change In Cost Of Living Since 1938." By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 10/3/14.

Contemplating The Eschaton: An Introduction

In one of the blackest moods I've ever endured -- I'll tell you about it later; it's a "First World" problem if ever there was one -- I came upon this Richard Rahn column, a typical (and typically accurate) tirade whose money quote comes from others: two former heads of the Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Office:

"Civil asset forfeiture and money-laundering laws are gross perversions of the status of government amid a free citizenry."

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we were a free citizenry that upholds a Constitutionally constrained republican government? But that hasn't been the case since 1913 at the very latest. The critical transition from our republican origins to our current oligarchy was when our federal government first successfully claimed it had "interests."

"Interests" are proper to a principal: one who owns something by right, whether it be an external possession or merely his life and freedom. Government as Constitutionally conceived is not a principal but an agent: an entity that wields strictly specified powers to discharge strictly specified responsibilities. Agents cannot have "interests," for they do not own that upon which they labor.

The Founding Fathers, justly suspicious of those who would seek the powers and prestige of government in the newborn Republic, decided to add a second layer of protections to individual freedom: the Bill of Rights, which explicitly guarantees what they believed to be the critical rights against which would-be tyrants would first move. No doubt they felt that with "suspenders and belt" firmly in place, American liberty was secure for the foreseeable future.

But when government in the United States graduated from being an agent that wields enumerated powers under strict Constitutional limits to being a principal with "interests" of its own, it immediately began to use those "interests" to trump the rights of individual Americans, including every one of the rights specifically called out in the Bill of Rights. The U.S. ceased to be a republic at that time, and Americans ceased, de jure if not de facto, to be free citizens.

The logic of tyranny is remorseless. It's no accident that Washington and the subordinate regimes should assert that the State's "interest" in suppressing drug traffic and money laundering should outweigh and override a citizen's rights to his property and to due process of law; it's the evolutionary development of a scheme in which State "interests" override citizens' rights. But let's remember what rights are really about:

"Rights are an archist concept. Rights have no meaning except when confronted with superior power. They are what is left to the people after the government has taken all its wants. Your country's Bill of Rights defines your most cherished freedoms how? By limiting the legal power of government to encroach upon them." [Eric L. Harry, via fictional anarchist theorist Valentin Kartsev in Harry's blockbuster Protect and Defend.]

By now it should be clear to all that a government has never "taken all it wants."

---

We allowed this to be done to us. We accepted glittering promises of "freedom from fear" -- security without responsibility -- and "freedom from want" -- prosperity without work -- made by smarmy politicians who were groping for our wallets and our guns even as they spoke. When the bills came due we were astonished at their size...and we paid them anyway, albeit with much grumbling.

Some of those bills had to be paid with the blood of our sons: in many cases, sons who were given no choice in the matter.

We are prone to blaming power-mongers. We tend to forget that the enforcement agency for the Constitution is the citizenry in arms -- that the Second Amendment guaranteed us the means to deal with usurpers and tyrants-in-embryo. We've let those means be wrested from our hands. So today, instead of a federal city and fifty state capitals whose lampposts are festooned with the bullet-ridden corpses of our oppressors as would be right and proper, we have so little command of our own destiny that those with the means are fleeing to other lands and renouncing their American citizenship. Who among us thought he would ever see such a development?

How much longer will it be before the last of the cosmetic facades of "freedom," regularly scheduled elections, falls by the wayside as well? Surely Washington can come up with an "interest" that trumps that particular fetish. Not that it's meant much in these latter days of near-perfect incumbency and government by faceless bureaucrats. Yet many people seem more attached to it than is reasonable, considering that no election has caused a significant change in the vector of State predation since Woodrow Wilson (and his butt buddy Edward M. House ) seized power. So perhaps the electoral farce will be permitted to continue in form for a while longer.

---

There are too many converging threats to what remains of these United States to remain sanguine about our future. Renascent superpower hostilities, our vitiated military, Islamic militancy, our uncontrolled borders, our collapsing economy -- don't allow yourself any illusions about that -- the steady acceleration of currency inflation, the demise of marriage, the "birth dearth," and the complete corruption of moral and ethical standards are only the worst of them. Yet of those nine, any three taken together would be sufficient to destroy any society known to history.

Each of the nine constitutes a war that must be won, conducted against us by adversaries determined to cast us down. Even the most prosperous, peaceful, and confident republic cannot fight three wars at once. Two can be managed by a United States in the fullness of its health and strength; after all, we've done it before. But three at once creates a thrashing effect that no polity but an absolute dictatorship can withstand...and even the most thoroughgoing autocracy can lose its way amid the complexities of a three-front campaign.

There are eighty-four possible combinations of nine things taken three at a time. That's the magnitude of the crisis upon us. Perhaps I'll analyze a few of those scenarios these next few days. At least it will make for entertainment of a sort as the foundations of our world crumble beneath us.

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What's that? You want to hear about what brought about the "black mood?" It's fairly simple really, a confluence of two "First World" challenges, neither of which is insoluble by any means. The first is by far the less weighty: my employer has started to plead with me not to retire. He can't prevent it, of course, but he's playing on my sense of responsibility to my work with a fair degree of success: pointing out that he has no one who could plausibly take over my duties without severely undermining them. I'll beat that one even if I have to buy an F350, hook it to an Airstream, and leave no forwarding address.

The second one is far more formidable: the machine gun turret in the Solarii headquarters. Some help and guidance would be appreciated, but so far I've discovered none.

Back tomorrow, hopefully more...hopeful.

Squirrel Food

This promises to be an unusually hectic Monday, so please enjoy the following brief bits in place of the usual master's-thesis-length screed,

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1. A Meeting Of Significance.

Via Doug Ross comes this colorful story about a meeting between a commentator and former Reagan-era Budget Director David Stockman:

I live only a two hour drive from New York City, but it is a world apart from my daily existence. I’ve visited the Big Apple probably a dozen times in my life, but never for longer than two or three days. I have a soft spot in my heart for NYC because it is where I proposed to my wife on a bitterly cold December evening in a horse drawn carriage ride in Central Park, twenty five years ago. But, I can honestly say that I never feel comfortable in the city.

Last week we had an opportunity to get away for a long weekend. My wife had gotten tickets to the Jimmy Fallon Show for Thursday afternoon and we decided to get a hotel room for one night and then drive directly down to Wildwood for the remainder of the weekend. My mother-in-law agreed to watch the kids, so we had ourselves a mini-vacation. I anticipated a more laid back trip than our visit to Occupy Wall Street a few years ago, that led to one of my most read articles.

A couple years ago I was shocked to receive an email from David Stockman, complimenting me on a particular article I had written. When a former Reagan budget director, founding partner of the Blackstone Group, and world renowned financial mind takes notice of something you’ve written it really boosts your morale. We have had a periodic email dialogue ever since. When he created his own website earlier this year, he asked me to be a contributor. He also told me that if I ever make it to NYC, let him know and we would meet for a drink.

But strangely enough, the meeting between Quinn and Stockman was only half the story. Please read the whole piece; It's worth your time, especially if you're not familiar with New York City. It caused me to recall a passage from one of my novels:

    They hadn't yet reached the subway station nearest to Sentry Munitions' complex when Conway began to feel afraid.
    Either his memory was faulty, or the city had changed greatly in the years he'd been away. He didn't remember the strange, ill-fitting garb the youngsters all wore, nor the oddly colored makeup, nor the bizarre hairstyles and piercings they affected. He didn't remember the deathmatch blare of boom boxes mounted on windowsills, stoops and shoulders, each screeching something obnoxious that possessed neither melody nor harmony, no two emitting the same noise. He didn't remember the dirt, the smells, or the casual discourtesy of the ubiquitous mobs.
    Conway didn't fear for himself. His size deterred most improprieties, and his physical competence had always been sufficient to deal with the remainder. He could shrug off most of the lesser nuisances. He worried for Rolf and Louis.
    Rolf looked as if he were straining not to notice a million different things. Whenever Conway watched the older man's face for more than a second, he could see Rolf's eyes cutting didoes to avoid staring: at a multiply pierced young woman in skin-tight satin leggings and a belly-baring blouse, who traded loud, profane taunts with a group of gangbangers in colors, combs stuck in their hair like axes and weapons jutting from their pockets; at a derelict who lay insensible on the sidewalk, his eyes open to the sky but no consciousness in them, while pedestrians streamed over and around him as if he were invisible; at a gaggle of ragged teenagers, two of them shoeless, one hugely pregnant, who squatted in the doorway of a tenement and squabbled over a crack pipe; at a skeletally gaunt man with wispy white hair, his calves bare below the hem of his raincoat, who grabbed at passers-by and strove mightily to convince them that the end was nigh.
    Louis was the really scary one. The wunderkind's face said nothing at all. His was the expression of a man deep in an analytical trance, computing whys and hows. Conway didn't know him well, but he was reputed throughout OA to be a genius, and as headlong a man as had ever lived. Every time his eyes locked onto something, Conway wanted to interpose himself, lest Louis decide to fix it and get them all into the soup.
    This was my idea.
    There was no comfort in that.

Quite a few readers -- all of them a fair distance from the Big Cancer Apple -- wrote me to say, more or less, that "It can't be that bad!" I forbore to disillusion them.

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2. Your Tax Dollars At Play.

Apparently, Colorado has some funny ideas about what constitutes "welfare:"

For nearly two decades, Colorado law has prohibited the use of welfare cards at casinos and liquor store ATMs, and in 2012 federal law also required states to have policies prohibiting the withdrawals. But in the past two years at least $489,000 in taxpayer money has been withdrawn in exactly those Colorado locations, Watchdog.org found.

The Colorado Department of Human Services, which manages the program, knows about the withdrawals but hasn’t punished recipients who violate the law or blocked the use of cards at casino and liquor store ATMs.

Welfare recipients withdrew about $340,000 in taxpayer cash at liquor store ATMs and another $149,000 at the state’s casinos in the past two years, according to a Watchdog.org computer-assisted analysis of a welfare ATM database. State law doesn’t require liquor license holders or casino owners to monitor patrons who use their ATMs so store, casino and bar owners haven’t done anything wrong.

But the state is required to prohibit the transactions, and CDHS provided a letter with the database CD that shows state staff clearly knows about the violations of state and federal laws.

“Please note that fewer than one per cent of the transactions detailed occurred in prohibited locations for an amount less than one percent of the benefit dollars accessed,” wrote CDHS spokeswoman Liz McDonough.

State and federal law doesn’t say it’s okay to allow withdrawals in prohibited locations if the amount is only a small portion of the roughly $85 million in annual cash benefits taxpayers provide to Colorado welfare recipients.

“Clients shall not be allowed to access cash benefits through the electronic benefits transfer service from automated teller machines in this state located in licensed gaming establishments … or retail establishments licensed to sell malt, vinous, or spirituous liquors,” Colorado law says. Additionally, the federal law requires states to prohibit welfare withdrawals in casinos, liquor stores, adult businesses and other locations.

(Applause to Random Nuclear Strikes for the link.)

One of the verities most resented on the Left is that you must never give a pauper cash. Why, after all, are you giving him anything? Because his life, or the lives of his dependents, are imperiled by his pauper status. So what do he and they need? Food, of course, and perhaps clothing, shelter, and heat. But not cash. It's the pauper's job to acquire that through his own efforts.

Especially in a rich, advanced society like ours, very few persons are "poor," whatever your definition, for no fault of their own. Most indigents are either ne'er-do-wells or spendthrifts. To give such a person cash (or something he can easily convert to cash) and trust him to spend it wisely is like giving whiskey to a lifelong alcoholic.

But you can't say that to a liberal without being called "everything but white."

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3. The Thriller Doldrums.

A fiction nattering for you to close up. Recently I've been using BookBub's recommendations as a source for leisure reading, on the supposition that a cheap book might be good anyway -- mine were very cheap (free) for about a year -- and I'm under no obligation to finish a bad book. Besides, I can always delete anything that turns out to be garbage.

I didn't expect the torrent of crap that's currently being promoted as "thrillers."

"Crap" might be too charitable a description, actually. Of the last ten low-cost thrillers I've purchased, I've finished one, and it was in the mistaken belief that it had to make more sense than it seemed, and would all come together if I could just...reach...the end. (Dear God, what was I thinking?)

The problems in the thriller genre appear to be fairly uniform:

• Implausible premises that underpin trite, overused plots;
• Cardboard protagonists that would look better in tights and capes;
• Bad, bad writing!

For the first time in my life, I've been awarding such books scathing reviews at Amazon. But what baffles me is the number of four and five-star reviews they get. Clearly there's a market for crap.

Thriller aficionadi, if you haven't yet done so, try this one. Not only is it vivid and honestly exciting, it's intelligently premised and beautifully written. You'll thank me, I guarantee it.

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That's all for today, Gentle Reader. Pray for me; I'm about to wrestle Satan himself FibreChannel again. Alternately, you can extend your condolences to the C.S.O.

The Ebola Farce: A Guest Post by Ol’ Remus of The Woodpile Report

[It’s an all-Ebola weekend here at Liberty’s Torch. To continue the festivities, we have an unflinching, unsparing piece from one of my favorite Web writers, sure to be inducted into the Calls ‘Em As They Sees ‘Em Hall of Fame immediately upon his retirement despite the statutory five-year hiatus before eligibility begins. (I’ve already spoken to the Commissioner about a waiver.) -- FWP]

Prediction. Our institutional defenses against epidemics assume 1950s-style civic support. Those days are gone. Even so, it'll work for a while, not perfectly, but well enough. For a while. Ebola will go exponential when it gets into our Haiti-like urban areas and separatist enclaves. Necessary but inconvenient countermeasures will be widely evaded, denounced as genocide in disguise. Those who demand drastic action in defense of the nation will be slandered as paleo-rednecks.

From then on events will be decided by doddering civil rights agitators, the gullible morons who support them and lunatic opportunists in DC. Naturally those who are actually stricken will demand priority on a "Poor, Minorities Hit Hardest" basis. The irony will go unnoticed. Worthwhile results will be either accidental or unavoidable. Ebola will burn its way through the populace all but unimpeded, and when the last victim collapses in a mushy pile of its own bloody excretions, victory will be declared. Heroes will be acclaimed and every faction in the country will have made new, enduring enemies. This is easy. It's like predicting the past. But, details. We want details.

Our farce thus far. How competent are our medical institutions with their world-class facilities and internationally renown experts, the same experts who tell us our fears are unfounded? Apparently word hadn't gotten to them that people coming from Ebola-infested pest holes in Africa may have Ebola, duh, including one who exhibited advanced symptoms and offered himself up:

Thomas Eric Duncan told a nurse at a Dallas emergency room that he had recently visited Liberia, which has been ravaged by the Ebola outbreak. But an executive at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital told a news conference that the information was not widely enough shared with the medical team treating Duncan, and he was diagnosed as suffering from a “low-grade common viral disease”.

-- Gambino and Dart at theguardian.com --

As a result of this lapse, Thomas Duncan was able to leave the hospital and interact with more people while experiencing symptoms, which is when the virus becomes contagious.

-- Mark Berman at washingtonpost.com --

He didn't go to a first aid outfit in some backwater town. He went to Texas Health Presbyterian, one of those outfits with nice corporate graphics which busies itself with "raising awareness" and gives itself awards. Top shelf, in other words. Here's how obvious it had to be before he they admitted and isolated him:

“When the ambulance came his whole family were all screaming, he got outside and he was throwing up all over the place … when he was throwing up he was trying to walk and he couldn’t walk.”

-- Mesud Osmanovic, neighbor, to Gambino and Dart at theguardian.com --

Which means from the 24th to the 28th of September he was stumbling around loose among the people of Dallas with infectious Ebola , and he did so until his nephew called CDC directly—which, incidentally, suggests the reason for his trip here in the first place. He all but handed them a signed affidavit with "I HAVE EBOLA" across the top in all caps, yet Texas hospital says:

Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full teams. As a result, the full import of that information wasn’t factored into the full decision making.

-- Mark Lester, Texas hospital, via news.yahoo.com --

We fully understand. He wasn't coughing up lung tissue or spurting blood from his eyeballs so hoo cudda fully node. But just a few days before Mr. Duncan arrived, none other than President Obama assured us:

We've been taking the necessary precautions, including working with countries in West Africa to increase screening at airports so that someone with the virus doesn't get on a plane for the United States. In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we've taken new measures so that we're prepared here at home.

In Obama's defense, he's a liar. His core supporters believe him, who can ask for better evidence? No sense in getting all worked up about it. Some people are left handed, some people are short and others tall, some people stutter. Obama lies. It's just his way. He can't help it so let it be.

Cynics say Duncan was knowingly set loose, that this is a trial run for a Club of Rome-style population reduction. How else does a driver for FedEx in Monrovia come up with airfare—about $3,500 one way—and a visa, apparently on short notice, they ask. Others say it's a psy-op calculated to prod the populace into demanding a national lockdown under martial law.

Look what we have on the other side. Texas Health Presbyterian "regrets" their incompetence. They'll take even newer measures so that we're even more prepared here at home. Measures like a seminar, say. Off site. Nassau perhaps. Signup is by the door. Not a compelling counter argument. Denying entry to travelers with West African passports is a compelling counter argument. So is defending our borders and controlling immigration. DC is proudly and emphatically doing none of these so "oops" is their only counter argument.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took to the airwaves to assure the public that there is no risk of widespread infection. The reason: The United States has a strong health system and trained health workers who can efficiently and effectively contain Ebola.

-- Ashley Judd at cnn.com --

From farce to tragedy. Let's look at CDC's and Obama's claim American medical facilities are so sophisticated "the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low". Assume each suspected Ebola patient in high-level isolation requires eight medical professionals per shift. That's twenty-four per day. Should there be, say, one hundred high-risk patients admitted to isolation, that's 2,400 medical professionals, and all the necessary equipment and supplies for one hundred containment accommodations. It's already unrealistic. No hospital could function with that many diverted assets. Perhaps efficiency measures could bring these numbers down. Or perhaps these numbers are too low to begin with. What if there are not one hundred high-risk patients, but five hundred? Or a thousand.

Use CDC's "RO"—reinfection rate per 21-day cycle—and say one out of every ten high-risk patients is a confirmed case of Ebola. Every person they've been in close contact with is now another high-risk patient. Use twenty each per 21 days. Multiply these new numbers by twenty-four medical professionals each—plus or minus. Now your alternatives are to lower the standard of care to third world levels, or to concede outright defeat and make a run for it. Numbers are numbers, here or in Africa. And oh by the way, it's game over if they start missing one or two infected contacts here and there. Think they won't? There's also an infection rate for the medical professionals. And don't bet against asymptomatic carriers.

Then there's this:

The Texas health commissioner, Dr. David Lakey, told reporters during an afternoon news conference that health workers should have moved more swiftly to clean the apartment but that they had had trouble finding an outside medical team to do the work. They encountered “a little bit of hesitancy,” he said.

-- Sack and Marc Santoraoct at nytimes.com --

There's an old comeback to the self-proclaimed dedicated professional 'serving mankind': would you still do it if you weren't getting paid? Now we have to ask if they'll still do it at a substantial risk to themselves of a painful and gruesome death. The realist says the occupancy rates at exclusive resorts will rise. Rule One for survival applies for everyone everywhere: stay away from crowds.

The bottom line. A realistic mortality estimate has to include secondary effects, which includes a drastic reduction in ordinary medical services, disrupted transportation of food and other necessities, much diminished commercial activity and the like. If we discount "perfect storm" scenarios and stay with the likely, a mortality of 25% in the US is a reasonable estimate, secondary effects included, assuming a burnout time of three years. In 2017 denying visas to West African nationals, defending our borders and controlling immigration will be seen as the missed opportunity of a lot of lifetimes. Alas, that opportunity is foreclosed even now. The mother of all buyer's regret is setting in. The dark side of globalism is about to have its way with us.

Ann Barnhardt Speaks On The Ebola Crisis

[I have a tremendous admiration for Ann Barnhardt, who might just be the ballsiest person currently writing for the Web. This is a woman who demonstrably lives her convictions. She never retreats from a standard of absolute candor. If Zoroaster were asked to cite an example of one who always “speaks truth and shoots the arrow straight,” he’d name Miss Barnhardt without hesitation.

Below I repost, with her permission, Miss Barnhardt’s “Important Ebola Note” from October 2, 2014. Please, please press this piece upon everyone you know – especially the politically-correct sorts who don’t want to close our borders against travelers from West Africa because it would be “racist.” It bears a far more important message than any alternate I might compose today --FWP]

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So there is tremendous chatter about this guy from Liberia, and we now have enough of the backstory to see just how maliciously negligent the so-called protection agencies really are. But what I want to focus on is Thomas Eric Duncan – the Liberian who after hauling his sister’s still living yet rapidly disintegrating body to and from the hospital thought it would be a great idea to take a three-legged flight to Dallas, and then just casually forget to mention at the Dallas emergency room the whole “I hauled my sister, dying of Ebola, to and from the hospital a couple of weeks ago.”

There is speculation that Duncan is a psychopathic arch criminal, or that he was recruited by musloids to make the trip. Nope. I doubt this very, very seriously. Then how in the world, you may ask, could he possibly DO THIS? I’ll tell you the likely answer if you really want to know, but I warn you, our culture has conditioned even the “strongest” of you to reject the truth I am about to lay out. Are you sure you want it? Fair warning has been given. Complaints will not be fielded.

The AVERAGE I.Q. amongst Liberians is 67. Anything below 69 is considered severe impairment. Only people who are profoundly mentally retarded, such as with severe Down Syndrome, have lower I.Q. scores, and many folks with milder Down Syndrome actually have I.Q. scores in the 70s and 80s. What we are talking about in Liberia is the AVERAGE IQ of non-impaired human beings. AVERAGE. Which means, by definition, that half the populace is above 67, and half the population is below 67.

CITATION HERE. A ranking of nations by average IQ. Fascinating.

Mr. Duncan, in all likelihood, got on a plane bound for Dallas because all was was thinking was “the Americans will save me”. He gave NO THOUGHT whatsoever to the consequences of his actions or to other human beings, nor did any of his family members, because people who are dim-witted think only about themselves and the immediate gratification of their immediate needs and wants. We see this manifested in our own western cultures, wherein people who OBVIOUSLY have lower I.Q.s are far, far more prone to crime – such as theft – and sexual promiscuity, as well as drug use, because they lack the powers of impulse control and consideration for other human beings that is an undeniable characteristic that goes along with an IQ that is several standard deviations “left” on the bell curve. When all you are capable of pondering is yourself and your own physical pleasure, or the maintenance of your own life, when a person or people is so collectively impaired that thinking through the consequences of actions three or four steps ahead, or of thinking of how one’s actions will affect other people, is almost impossible, then Thomas Eric Duncans happen.

The first step to defending against this reality is to ACKNOWLEDGE IT.

People have been saying for years, “This political correctness is going to get us all killed.”

Yes. Yes, it is.

Now, if you are sitting there squirming thinking that I am being all racist, let me just copy and paste that last sentence and make one little adjustment:

When all you are capable of pondering is yourself and your own physical pleasure, or the maintenance of your own life, when a person or people is so collectively impaired that thinking through the consequences of actions three or four steps ahead, or of thinking of how one’s actions will affect other people, is almost impossible, then contemporary American culture happens.

I wrote this not just to make the point about failing to acknowledge and deal with objective reality, and how that is now LITERALLY going to kill people, I wrote it to hopefully rehabilitate Duncan’s reputation. I doubt he is a psychopath. I doubt he is a terrorist operative. I think he is just a sub-Saharan African who is probably teetering on the precipice of mental retardation, because that is what the odds clearly, clearly dictate.

-- Ann Barnhardt, 10/02/2014 –

Unspeakable tragedy.

"Average_guy" comment on The Guardian’s Sophie Heawood’s angst at her failure to rear a "gender-neutral" daughter (who now likes to wear pink tutus and look at herself in the mirror):

Good luck dealing with the unspeakable tragedy that your daughter likes being a girl. It's a cruel world, for the modern intellectual.

"Sophie Heawood: why family life is like a Slinky." By Sophie Heawood, The Guardian, 10/3/14.