I just saw this graphic over at Mike Miles’s place: But Congress, which is 95% recidivists and 50% millionaires, would balk at both propositions. For one thing, the swollen Defense Department appropriations are a fertile source of pork for their constituents. For another, it’s a safe bet that a lot of them are …
Category: Establishment
Nov 27 2023
Notes On Extremistry
Yes, that’s a coinage. It’s in the vein of chemistry, which is the study of how chemicals behave. There’s also palmistry, which is the study of palm trees. (What’s that? Palmistry has nothing to do with palm trees? Well, never mind then.) However, the comparison isn’t all that close. What I mean to tag …
Nov 10 2023
The Biennial Serving Of Kool-Aid
DON’T VOTE: It Only Encourages them! – from a West Coast shopping bag I’m in a dour (dire?) mood this morning. Part of it arises from a taxing, difficult chore I’ve been straining to put off, the day for which has arrived and cannot be hired out, delegated, or otherwise shoved aside. But a …
Oct 26 2023
The Question That Perpetually Goes Unanswered
I was musing over problems of veracity tests and identity management – in less highfalutin’ terms, truth and trust — and spontaneously remembered something I wrote back in 2015, at Liberty’s Torch V1.0. I reproduce it below, in its entirety. I’ll rant on from there. The GTOFTS Gazette: Audiences (No points for guessing …
Oct 24 2023
They Want You To Notice
It’s been a while since the term studied insult was common in American discourse. Yet the thing itself has been much with us these past few years, so it’s well to understand what the term signifies: studied insult: An insult carefully designed to pertain to a particular person or group, such that the insulted …
Oct 01 2023
Sharp Questions Dept.
The right question to the right person at the right time can puncture a huge balloon of hypocrisy. Interestingly, a stimulus to such questions arrived only a few minutes ago. The stimulus is a campaign fundraising email from Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida. Here is what I hold to be the critical portion: …
Sep 18 2023
Commitment
You don’t really need to find out What’s going on You don’t really want to know Just how far it’s gone Just leave well enough alone Keep your dirty laundry [Don Henley] I don’t generally watch long videos, and the one below is over 25 minutes. But I watched it from end to end. …
Aug 30 2023
A Must-Watch
Tucker Carlson has distinguished himself as one of the bravest media figures of our time. Perhaps in times past he was inhibited against speaking his mind by the attitudes and dictates of his employers at FOX news. No longer. The two-minute video below is an example of what he’s willing to say now: …
Jul 24 2023
The Chronicle of the DC: 13Jul09 Archives
John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet At that link is strong evidence that the Biden regime is clearly following through on what the Obama regime started. Not only that, but the Trump interim didn’t seem to slow them one bit as the excesses we’ve witnessed …
Jul 20 2023
Assume Trump Is A Living Emmanuel Goldstein. What Then?
Anyone who ever read Orwell has likely had this assumption cross their mind. But it is the “What Then?” that becomes a very difficult problem to contemplate. Let’s explore the reasons for the difficulty simply arising from even thinking about the assumption. Getting people who like Trump to accept any notion that he’s an establishment …
Jul 18 2023
So You Think The Republicans Represent You?
You think the GOP is the party of “limited government?” That it’s the one and only counterforce to the Left’s determination to make the Omnipotent State supreme over everything? That unless we elect Republican majorities, the Left will steamroll us into a new Soviet Union? Think again: For those of us who …
Jul 14 2023
A Striking Inversion
Apologies for yesterday’s absence, Gentle Reader. It was a “low” sort of day. Perhaps today will be better. At any rate, it’s starting better. And for openers, I’ve got an old “favorite” subject on my mind, about which Divemedic has a few words to say: The majority of domestic flights do not have accessible …
Jul 06 2023
“National Security,” Again
When it comes to matters that touch upon law or politics, many Americans have chosen to disbelieve the major media as a matter of policy – i.e., as the default condition. This appears to be the majority stance at this time. But as you can imagine, the media don’t like that very much. Rather …
Jun 22 2023
The Hunter Biden Saga
Yes, it’s been going on for quite a while now. Many are asking whether it’s genuinely important or one of the Establishment’s diversions. I’m no longer sure. But of this I am certain: developments are telling us in the plainest possible manner that the American ideal of classlessness has been overthrown. There is now …
Jun 21 2023
Frontiers In Doublespeak
If you’ve never visited the Baseline Essays collection, I exhort you to spend a couple of minutes there perusing what’s on offer. Yes, it’s all old blather from one of the wordiest people ever to infest the Web. Still, some of those pieces are actually…ahem…interesting. My focus today is on the wildly popular Dictionary …
Jun 06 2023
Evidence, Interrupted
Yes, friends, you guessed it: Christopher Wray has refused to surrender the “Biden bribery” FD-1023 after all: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is afraid its informant who provided information about an alleged bribery scheme by the Biden family will be killed if their identity is exposed. …
Jun 06 2023
The Imperative Question
Toward the end of Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden has a final meeting with the “looter elite” in which they propose a “Steel Unification Plan.” That “plan” is plainly just as vampiric as every other that emerged from the looter-ruled economy described in the novel. Yet the elite are solidly behind it…which causes Rearden to …
Jun 05 2023
Perhaps Things Are Turning Around
One hopeful sign of a rising consciousness of what’s really going on – the sign that the public’s eyes are turning from the distraction to what the prestidigitator is actually doing – is when “respectable” sources begin to cop to it: Christianity Today published a curious piece by Paul Miller on Thursday calling …
May 12 2023
The Shell Game Part 2
Friends of mine – yes, I have a couple – have returned to a hopeless task: persuading me to re-engage with electoral politics, possibly (ulp) even as a candidate for office. They been saying some of the most incredible things: “If you want to change the system, you have be part of it.” …
Apr 27 2023
Recent Revelations
“You still haven’t got over the idea that politicians are important because the newspapers tell you so.” – Sir Frederick Hoyle It’s become critical to our individual and social mental health that we draw a firm distinction between two categories of vermin. The first of these, the politician, runs for elective office. If …