Americans are in a precarious position with regard to their own government. America has an empire, but the empire hates the Americans – largely using them as tax serfs to fund failed social programs at home and failed wars of choice overseas. If anything, the American people are an obstacle to the aims of the American Empire.
The American citizenry is one thing most of the rest of the world isn’t: A threat to the American empire. The massive reaction by globalist elites to Donald Trump shows just how particularly thin-skinned they are about peasant rebellions at home. And constant attacks on Second Amendment have failed to disarm the American middle class.[1]
Mr. Jacobs discusses the way in which changes in the lethality of military technology affect the power balance between ruler and ruled. Even armed Americans face overwhelmingly superior combat power in the hands of the state. The state has so far resorted to something short of a direct takeover but the betrayal of the constitutional scheme at the hands of the Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court has been ongoing for over a century and satisfactory to all but the most impatient of our domestic enemies. The end result of that is that now centralized political and judicial power is just as lethal as high explosives and super-accurate weaponry . . . and more cost effective, as Jacobs makes clear in his discussion of lockdowns targeting millions of small businesses and unrestrained street thuggery as an explicit threat to what remains of the yeoman class.
Violence against the American population, moreover, is problematic as members of our military may be willing to chase the Taliban in distant mountains but bombarding Omaha will not sit well with the servicemen with family in the target area.
Too, foreign military adventures can still rely on intact manufacturing and distribution systems but unpopular operations against the citizenry will not have that luxury. Rail lines, fiber optic cables, bridges, pipelines, power lines and transformer stations would require enormous manpower to secure. And truck drivers and other key people in the transportation system are unlikely to cooperate with serious attacks on the population. Not to mention the economic fragility of the nation given the gross mismanagement of the treason class. Our impressive organs of repression cannot depend on the robustness that existed in the Depression when some 60% of the population still lived on farms and had a modicum of independence from The Grid.
Even the inherently repressive or unequal feudal system involved a strong possibility of effective government that paid more than lip service to the notion of salus populi. We can discuss when and how that did not obtain then but one thing that is not true now is that our federal government is sincerely concerned for the welfare of the American people. It is not. It’s business is all about the foulest betrayal. And business is very, very good.
We’ll see how this all plays out if or when the clowns decide to make a move and order the military to take the field again a la Gen. Sherman some time ago. The vulnerability of complex systems to foot dragging and creative interruption will be tested.
NOAH: “And I’m sorry, guys, but any parent who thinks their 17-year-old school’s assignment is too explicit, they need to check out his browser history, because trust me, he can handle it. It this shows you that the real dangerous ideology in society isn’t conservatism or liberalism. It’s helicopter parenting. An AP is basically a college course. How long will this lady be trying to protect her kid?”
He is pointing out that MANY (certainly not all) 17-year olds are, in fact conversant with what used to be called ‘smutty talk”. Most of them have heard of the words, and have speculated – privately, with trusted friends – about the activities (or, perhaps, less extreme ones) mentioned in the assignments. Among closest friends, this would not be unusual to talk about.
So, even though the numbers include those 18 & 19, STILL less than 1/2. And, that does not break apart those barely adult people who MIGHT be married. I would suspect that the percent of sexually experienced teens increases sharply with age. Which would indicate that LESS than 40% of American teens aged 17 have engaged in sex.
Are SOME of those students checking out porn sites?
DUH!
Does that mean that all, or even most of them are engaging in similar activities?
Probably not. For some, looking will satisfy their curiosity. For some, the videos will lead them to experiment IRL and engage in sex. And for some, the raunchier videos will leave them thinking “Ewwww!”, and vowing to never have sex.
Researchers looking at birth records compared to wedding dates for Colonial America noted that approximately 1/3 of the births were well short of 9 months after the wedding. So, Americans have always been relatively relaxed about sex between the unmarried, as long as the couple got married.
What’s the big deal with marriage?
It represented a commitment to financial responsibility for one’s actions. Even the Puritans treated a ‘rushed’ marriage as a relatively minor incident. The full fury of the community was reserved for those cases where the man in the relationship would not marry the woman when their transgression was discovered, when one of the two was married to another, or when a woman was intimate with more than one person.
A failure to punish such acts would create a breach in community relations and possible financial costs to keep the children from starving. Shaming those who failed to uphold the standards sent a stern message to others who might be doing, or thinking of doing, the same.
Now, did that stop the antics? Of course not. But, it did drive the flouting of established morality underground. Privately, you might be a rake. But, publicly, you went along with the crowd. And, if caught, you married the woman. That action, belated though it was, satisfied the group.
Similarly, young people might discuss the most salacious acts in private. But, publicly, they generally don’t (yes, there are exceptions). The school assignment forces students to talk/write about their sex lives (real or imagined) with classmates, in a public setting. Kids being kids, any discussion will start mildly, and – as others get more outrageous, and get public acclaim for their “honesty”, even those not comfortable with it start going along with the crowd.
Once someone has committed to public talk, they find it hard to reserve their private life to themselves. This is a ‘grooming activity’ – the predator gets a kid to say something, or view some mildly raunchy porn, and it spirals from there.
I am taking the time to spell out what sensible people already know, as it needs to be stated – this is designed to de-sensitize kids about adult subjects, talking about them in public, and doing so in sex-mixed groups. The more evangelistic(!) of the pro-sex teens will drive this the rest of the way. Failure to fully participate will lead to those teens being targeted – as prudes, as liars (because EVERYONE thinks/views/talks about sex), and as people who can be ridiculed and harassed without fear of consequences. Unlike a Muslim or Hindu who will display discomfort, the Christian will be coerced/forced to “lighten up” and join in.
I have a great deal to do today – yes, Gentle Reader, I have a life away from the computers, as implausible as that may sound – so this will be a brief piece. First, the response to:
The perfect storm has arrived and the dark winter is upon us. This is the time for serious men. Enough of the name-calling, caterwauling, one-upmanship of internet squabbles. Put it aside and concentrate on what to do about it. Yes, fight the political battles as a defensive maneuver, but find ways to go on the offensive. Strikes are one method, but somewhere along the line those who are protected by this communist regime must be exposed to the same dangers those on the right are exposed to. There has to be a challenge to the two-tiered justice system and if the system cannot administer justice, the people will have to do it themselves. A failure of justice has always fostered a vigilante solution. That knowledge used to be enough to keep the courts in line, adhering to their oaths, but one always displaces the other.
Thank you, T. L. Davis, and thank You, God! I was beginning to think I was the only one who sees it. No matter how powerful the intellect, being of unique convictions can make anyone doubt his sanity. Whew!
“I’m going to take the advice I saw on a license plate, once: Live Free Or Die.”
“New Hampshire,” Allen said. “Used to be, at least.”
“That may sound good,” Henry said quietly, “but you’re going to feel a whole lot different in your guts when the time comes—a whole lot different than you do right now. This isn’t an Outfit wiseguy who’s about to torture you in the middle of a rape. This is premeditated murder of people with families, and lovers, and kids in nursery school, and worries about the future, just like us. And on top of that, these are people who champion the democratic process. You are going to be killing a man because he voted the wrong way.”
“No,” Cindy said without hesitation, “I am going to be killing a man because he voted away something that was not his to vote on in the first place. The people making the laws think that anything is okay if they can get 51% of the legislators or the people to go along with it. One hundred per cent of the people making the rules in the Vegas outfit thought it was just fine for me to be locked in a room and taken out when it suited them. I’ve had enough of that.”
Unintended Consequences may be downloaded from here.
John Ross may or may not have been perfectly serious when he wrote the book. I have no way to ask him for his opinion today. But as old and incapable as I am, include me among T. L. Davis’s “serious men.” I endorse the remedy he’s prescribed without reservation.
The time has come for justice. Indeed, it came long ago:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Consider this rather naive piece. “More Bad Polls For Joe Biden – Will Democrats Ever Learn?” Learn what? That one should sit on one’s opportunities until they’ve evaporated, as the Republicans do? Truly, if anyone in this country knows the value of political hegemony, however brief its tenure might appear, it’s the Democrats’ strategists.
Being old, I remember many old things. One is a slice from an original Star Trek episode: “Errand of Mercy.” In that episode the Enterprise has come to “Organia,” a seemingly bucolic planet, just as a full-scale war has broken out between the UFP and the Klingons. Toward the end of the episode, Kirk and Spock are confronting Coor, the commander of the Klingon fleet that has arrived to subjugate Organia:
COOR: So, you are here. You will be interested in knowing that a Federation fleet is on its way here at the moment. Our fleet is preparing to meet them. KIRK: Checkmate, Commander. COOR: Shall we wait and see the results before you kill me? KIRK: I don’t intend to kill you unless I have to. COOR: Sentimentality, mercy. The emotions of peace. Your weakness, Captain Kirk. The Klingon Empire shall win. Think of it, as we sit here, in space above us the destiny of the galaxy will be decided for the next ten thousand years. Can I offer you a drink? We can toast the victory of the Klingon fleet. SPOCK: You may be premature. There are many possibilities. COOR: Today we conquer. If some day we are defeated, well, war has its fortunes good and bad.
From the above, Coor understands that power is to be used. It cannot be conserved. He who has power must use it or lose it. Indeed, not to use it guarantees that it will be lost all the more quickly. The Democrats understand that, too.
The Democrats are moving as swiftly as possible to build socialist institutions that will serve them as impregnable bastions. Should the next election or two go against them, as is often the case when they’ve managed to ram home one of their major strokes against freedom and Constitutional governance – remember what happened after they passed ObamaCare? – the designs of those bastions would eventually reinstall them at the top. Even if they should be compelled to wait a decade or more, they would have succeeded in centralizing key powers of national control in agencies whose very existence would render them predisposed toward the Left and its aims.
Contrast this attitude with the GOP’s endlessly repeated “Not until we’re stronger” chant, and the lassitude it induces both in their officeholders and their supporters.
The kinder assumption is that the Republican Party’s strategists don’t understand power. If that’s incorrect, then they don’t intend that it be used to further their party’s supposed aims. Draw from that whatever conclusions you prefer.
New Jersey has a record for having produced the most deceitful and utterly corrupt Democrat politicians in the United States. Phil Murphy, though he’s “the next one in the series,” nevertheless seems determined to lower the bar still closer toward unalloyed evil. If New Jerseyans allow him another term, it will only be a confirmation of Mencken’s aphorism:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The ‘investigative media’ has completely lost the little credibility that it had left. A Normal American might THINK they would be interested in uncovering the story behind the so-called insurrection.
But, no.
It makes me spitefully glad that the same media is dissolving and putting those highly-paid pundits out of business. Frankly, if it weren’t for a heavy-handed effort to demonetize the Alt-Media of the Not-Left, the last shreds of that legacy business would be – Poof! Gone.
The collapse of the media into shills for a partisan side is depressing to me. I do realize that it’s been going on for some time, but, it goes against the American Ideal of a Free Press. This piece, by an outsider, is both true and disheartening.
And, yet, Facebook and other social media continue to shoot themselves in the foot. The more they try to clamp down on dissidence, the more the not-compliant work to get around the restrictions.
If it weren’t for Facebook Marketplace (like a collection of yard sale merchandise, from individuals straight to buyers), I’d stay off it entirely. Alas, I need to clear out a house of cr@p, so will likely continue to use that part of it. Also need to buy some specific stuff for the new house.
And, to end on a positive note, the new place is beginning to take shape. I’ve bought a rug, table and chairs, and a lot of other needed items. Still spend more time shopping than I’d like, but I’m learning to shop online and use the pickup options. So, better.
The only way I’m leaving the house is if I can use drive-through or curbside pickup. The rain is heavy enough to have me looking for gopherwood. And, like a cat, I HATE being cold and wet.
Yesterday’s piece, which I was reluctant to post, seems to have gotten a stir going. Perhaps that’s to the good. But if you liked it, you’ll purely love the following video: a speech from the most admirable man in entertainment, Jim Caviezel:
I believe we see things the same way, which comes as no surprise.
***
I once had a set-to with a left-liberal whose fundamental assumptions included that “the needs of the State come first.” (Yes, you read that right. He wasn’t aware of the origin of that phrase. Nevertheless, he endorsed it heartily when I cited it to him. Draw your own conclusions.) Accordingly, he approved of any and every tax measure, whether for the revenue it might generate or the effect upon people’s earning, saving, and spending habits.
And so, unless he’s learned better since then, I imagine he’d approve of this proposal:
A wealth tax on billionaires is included in the latest version of Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, but it’s a sure thing the real target is your retirement savings.
The so-called “Billionaire Income Tax” is being written by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) with “input from the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House,” according to SWFI.
“It’s not a wealth tax, but a tax on unrealized capital gains of exceptionally wealthy individuals,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN on Sunday.
That’s like saying you have a four-legged pet that eats kibble, barks, fetches, and looks exactly like a Golden Retriever — but it isn’t a dog.
Yellen told Jake Tapper, “I think what’s under consideration is a proposal that Senator Wyden and the Senate Finance Committee have been looking at that would impose a tax on unrealized capital gains, on liquid assets held by extremely wealthy individuals, billionaires. I wouldn’t call that a wealth tax.”
“Unrealized capital gains.” Do you know what that means, Gentle Reader? I do. It’s the increase in market value of the stocks and bonds in your IRA or 401(k). It’s the increase in market value of the home you own and live in right now. You would have to sell those stocks, those bonds, and that home to “realize” those gains and pay the “unrealized capital gains tax,” but what of that? The needs of the State come first!
But Yellen has called it a “billionaire’s tax.” In light of that, I must resurrect a passage about the debate over the income tax, from the dim, dark days of 1913:
The income tax is an excellent example: When the Sixteenth Amendment was being debated on the floor of the Senate, one of its opponents rose to ask the body what it could say to reassure the American public that this tax would not rise to seize some unconscionable fraction of their earnings — perhaps as much as ten percent! A pro-income-tax senator rose and replied that the country need never fear such a development: “The people would never allow it!”
I pulled that passage from this critically important Baseline Essay. Please revisit it, and reflect upon the implications for what Usurper Yellen is touting as a “billionaire’s tax.”
They are evil. They must be expunged to the last man. No prisoners and no mercy.
As the government attempts to force the public to comply with medical tyranny and lockdowns, big tech is doubling down on censorship, configuring algorithms to bury information surrounding the coronavirus and vaccines.
In 2020, tech giants brazenly censored a sitting President of the United States with no repercussions, making it abundantly clear they are tied to the hip of the Democrat Party.
An end to Big Tech’s control over digital information flow is nowhere in sight amid politicians’ empty threats of antitrust legislation.
But a video, live-streaming and social media platform that champions free speech and cannot be taken down by big tech may be a game-changer.
The new platform, Sovren, is not only “a place of refuge for free thinkers,” but it is the first social media platform built on invincible blockchain technology, explains Sovren founder Ben Swann.
There are quite a number of social-media platforms already, including several that have openly declared themselves to be “no censorship” sites, but perhaps just one more will turn the tide. I mean, clearly Gab, MeWe, Minds, Mumblit, USA.Life, Parler, OurFreedomBook, GETTR, and FrankSpeech aren’t getting the job done!
I hear that President Trump is starting a social-media platform, too. Yay, team.
***
Jim Caviezel has it right: the storm is upon us. Moreover, it’s a Cat 5, so an umbrella won’t do you any good. Even staying hunkered down in the basement is unlikely to be worth much.
We must fight. Whether via passive resistance or active insurgency, we must fight. The Usurpers have left us no alternative. They have made it plain, with:
their taxes,
their vote fraud,
their racism-shouting,
their vaccine mandates,
their assault on the dollar,
their emasculation of the military,
their indoctrination of our children,
their flood of illegal alien immigrants,
their strangulation of America’s energy supply,
their pusillanimity toward America’s adversaries,
and their vicious denunciations of anyone who opposes them,
Good morning, Gentle Reader. I’ve given much of the past day or so to thinking about this Victor Davis Hanson essay. It’s a good piece – what else would we expect from Hanson – but I think it’s missing one component to give it a full picture of our enemies: both the visible figures in the Usurper Regime and the shadowed ones who pull their strings.
Hanson leans upon ideology as the explanation for the disastrous (for the United States and its legitimate citizens) policies the Usurpers have deployed. That is: he posits that the damage they’re inflicting upon America and its people is in line with their strongly-held convictions about “the way things ought to be.” But once again: people, their desires, their beliefs, and their aversions exist in a distribution. Not everyone who publicly espouses an ideology regards it as primary, an end to be sought for its own sake. Some people promote an ideology because they believe it to be an excellent tool for acquiring what they value most: power over others.
A famous anecdote from the 1848 socialist upheaval in Paris has a coal-carrier accosting a gentlewoman, saying, “Yes, Madame, everything’s going to be equal now. I’ll go in silks and you’ll carry coal.” Though it cannot be verified owing to time and the lack of attribution, as an illustration of the sort of “equality” left-leaning types truly cherish, this one is unparalleled.
So while ideology is an important player in the dramas of the day, it’s not necessarily the Left’s end-in-itself as we might assume. Orwell was aware of this:
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were- cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
***
There is no arguing with a man who has decided that what he wants above all other things is power over you. You cannot reason with him. You cannot reform him. You cannot keep him from pursuing what he wants. Indeed, there is only one long-lasting countermeasure: you must kill him. As most of us in the Right are moderately reluctant to kill others, including the deepest-dyed of black-hearted villains, he has an edge over us that’s most difficult to overcome.
I would surmise that a great part of the interest being expressed in partitioning the nation into separate “red” and “blue” sovereignties arises from the unexpressed awareness that we cannot triumph over the Left without “going for the guns.” If you know that the price of victory is mass executions, but are unwilling to kill, what remains but flight? Yet even flight would provide only a temporary respite, for they who want power want it over everyone and everything. They would pursue us. Ultimately, we would have to fight them to the death.
I purely hate having to say such a thing. I’m more confrontation-averse than anyone else I know. But I can’t avert my mind from the facts and logic that have brought me here.
And with that, I must close. Some will read the above and take it as a license to kill. Some will actively go out to do so. They will look at situations such as the one reported here and feel a moral imperative to strike before the enemy does so. For our enemy recognizes no absolute standard of right and wrong. He believes himself to be the supreme moral arbiter of our time. The only thing restraining him from killing us is the fear that he might not get away with it. He’s certainly discussed it with his fellows often enough.
Still, I had to set my reasoning down in plain type. Perhaps someone wiser can find a flaw in it. I’d be grateful.
Aware that my mood and my writing have been trending darker, I’ve been trying to post as many uplifting pieces as possible. Have one right now;
Many virtuosi are more concerned with promoting themselves than with making music as it should be made. Pat Metheny is not of their ilk. Unparalleled in skill among jazz guitarists, he is nevertheless first and foremost a musician, whether as a composer or a performer. Live, he exhibits a joyous discipline that’s become all too uncommon in contemporary jazz. He and keyboard wizard Lyle Mays have produced a body of work for which I can find no equal.
“Rain River” was first recorded on the 1992 Secret Story album.
I was about to say “words fail me,” but in truth, they don’t:
There have been transwomen and transmen for at least five decades. Time was, they were tolerated without much comment…because they were discreet and undemanding. They practiced public modesty. They worked to perfect their presentation, the better to be accepted by others. They accepted that they were a minority, that the majority would regard their preference as deviant if not delusional, and they strove to “keep themselves to themselves.” But that was then.
I have two transwomen friends. Both are intelligent, courteous, and thoroughly civilized. I can’t think of a word to say against either of them. But the madness running rampant around us, nicely exemplified by the embedded tweet, is another matter entirely – and I think I know its genesis.
It started with the “pride” movements.
The origin, as far as I can tell, was in the “black power” movement of the Sixties. This ought to have been interpreted as a shot across our bow. It was openly aggressive: intended to frighten. It was reported and commented on by the media of that day in a curiously respectful fashion, as if the white majority of the nation was responsible for it, and required to kowtow to it. Yet it was only the sequel to another social phenomenon of note:
“Say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud.”
Oh really? “Proud” of what? Did you make yourself black? Did you work hard to become black? Is it something you could do for someone else who lacks the strength or the skill?
The arrant idiocy of “pride” in a birth condition – a condition whose bearer had not worked for it and could not claim to be responsible for it – went unrecognized. It ought to have garnered a strong negative response. However, the Left, ever alert for ways to divide Americans, used its colonies in the schools to encourage it, and in the media to report on it respectfully. It was treated as if all whites ought to respect it and all blacks should be chanting it. And so it gained a foothold. It became a bridgehead from which other assaults on Americanism could be launched thereafter.
Shortly thereafter we had “gay pride” and “Latino pride.” (“Illegal alien pride?”) Today we have “trans pride.” Each “pride” movement morphed into a “power” movement: a militant thrust toward special privileges that others had to grant on demand. And normal Americans, averse to confrontation and desiring only to be left in peace, gave way before all of them.
(I’m having a “waking nightmare” about “pedophile pride.” Perhaps it’s time to make another pot of coffee.)
The Left’s allegiants gave each of these things propulsion by fiercely attacking anyone who questioned them. Ugly accusations – “racism,” “homophobia,” “xenophobia” – became the lingua franca of public discourse. The Public Choice effect reared its head: once again, militant minorities with compact agendas proved more powerful than peaceable majorities with divergent priorities at shaping our language, our attitudes, and our public policy.
It could all have been avoided, if only the peaceable, easily accommodated members of those groups had disciplined the more aggressive and unruly ones from the outset. But that didn’t happen then, and is unlikely to happen now. Peaceable Negroes are as afraid of their aggressive kin as are whites; peaceable homosexuals are as wary of their aggressive fellows as are heterosexuals; and so forth.
As I wrote above, I do have two transwomen friends. I don’t expect either would publicly criticize the aggressive one whose sentiments are on display in the embedded tweet. I’d hope for it – it’s the route back to social peace and general amity – but I don’t expect it. In their position, I’d be afraid of being swarmed under by the militants, so I could never blame them for feeling the same fear.
Yet that is the one and only way back to public peace. For whites to discipline unruly, lawless blacks would be condemned as “racist oppression;” for straights to discipline unruly, aggressive gays would be similarly treated; and so forth. So the marches, the demands, the unrestrained aggression toward peaceable others – including others who are kindred to the militants — are overwhelmingly likely to continue.
What began as unearned, aggressive “pride” has become hatred and malevolence. But hatred breeds hatred. Malevolence breeds malevolence. Should this go on, there will be an inimical counter-reaction, wholly lacking in anything resembling tolerance.
May I be safely dead, may the earth be heaped high upon my grave and the mourners long departed to the proper pursuits of the living, before that day arrives.
In recent days, the UN and other international organizations have begun warning of a worsening humanitarian situation in Yemen. This is a testament to the Houthis’ success in their operations.
It has become customary that each time Ansar Allah evidently take the upper hand in the war, various international groups and organizations immediately start calling for a cessation of hostilities. The absence of those voices is noticeable when it is simply Saudi Arabia violating ceasefires and carrying out airstrikes.
There are people who don’t believe in great men. That is, they don’t believe that a man can be “great” in any sense that would command the attention and respect of others. Such a person, upon hearing a man called “great,” immediately takes exception. He tends to regard it as a personal insult.
But there are and have been great men: men whose deeds have shaped nations and history. Oftentimes, what made them great was their “voice:” their ability to inspire and lead great numbers of others in noble causes. In other cases, what made a man great was his ability to cause thousands or millions to go forth and slaughter as he commanded. “Great” is not synonymous with “good.”
Today, Catholics celebrate the life of a great man, a man whose life and words inspired millions worldwide and, in fact, were central to the final defeat of the Soviet Union and its dominance of Eastern Europe. That man was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. His birth name was Karol Józef Wojtyła. Early in life he proved to be a prodigy both of the mind and the body. Yet his was not an easy youth. By age twenty all the other members of his nuclear family had died. Then came the German occupation of Poland, the horrors that it brought, and the sense, which flowered during the war, that his life should be put to more than mere survival. In 1946 he was ordained a priest of the Catholic Church.
He would eventually be known to the world as Pope John Paul II. Today Catholics remember him as Pope John Paul II the Great, one of only four popes to be awarded the honorific.
John Paul II died in 2005, after a papacy of twenty-seven years, the second longest in Church history. He was canonized by Pope Francis in 2014, and is today a recognized saint. October 22 is his feast day. Historians consider him to be an essential member of a trio whose words, deeds, and policies shaped the great events of their era. The other two are Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
The century behind us was tumultuous and more. But tumult is inseparable from progress. John Paul II, by his teachings, his travels, and his gentle administration of a Church that had known much conflict and even more opposition from the forces of darkness, was responsible for more progress – spiritual and secular – than any other man of his time. To be remembered as “the Great” is an honor he richly deserved.
May God hold you close, Karol Józef Wojtyła, teacher, world traveler, Supreme Pontiff, and saint.
The owner of a New York City supermarket chain predicted the food prices will increase sharply in the coming months, with some increasing 10 percent in the next two months.
John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket owner of Gristedes and D’Agostino Foods, warned that food giants such as Nabisco, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola will prioritize raising prices on products.
“I see over 10 percent [price increase] in the next 60 days,” he said in an interview with Fox Business on Monday, adding that the trend will not drop “anytime soon.” Catsimatidis cited rising inflation and supply chain bottlenecks that are currently plaguing supermarkets and other retailers around the United States.
Catsimatidis then cautioned: “I see food prices going up tremendously” because food company CEOs “want to be ahead of the curve and the way they’re doing it is they’re dropping all promotions. They are dropping low-moving items.”
Feel the fear.
No, it’s not just that I got very little sleep last night…or that one of my dogs has been digging escape tunnels in the back yard…or that my wife got so drunk yesterday evening that she actually left her purse, which she normally clutches so fiercely that to detach it from her would take surgery, at a restaurant. Things are really, truly going to Hell in the Land of the Formerly Free.
The causal chains are somewhat tangled, but nevertheless they’re evident to anyone with eyes that see and a mind that doesn’t automatically block out the unpleasant like Zaphod Beeblebrox’s unique “safety glasses.” To my way of thinking, the most important elements are:
Usurper Biden’s deliberate attempt to shut down the American oil and gas industries;
Gavin Newsom’s decree that no internal-combustion vehicles will cruise California’s roads after 2035;
The upcoming OSHA regulation mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for all companies with 100 or more employees;
The destruction of the dollar by unlimited federal borrowing and deficit spending.
The first of these has raised the price of all petroleum and natural-gas products, which compels an increase in the prices of anything that requires energy to produce, or that must be moved from producer to retailer. The second has resulted in a sharp decrease of trucks and truckers available to move goods from California’s port cities to their destinations in the U.S. The third has caused millions – yes, millions — of American workers in every field of endeavor to leave or lose their jobs, bringing about a worker shortfall that has crippled the economy generally. And the fourth, by weakening the dollar, has stepped on the accelerator of price escalation, especially as regards anything imported.
With all this, the utterly contemptible Jen Psaki has the incomparable gall to claim that the economy is getting better because “people are buying things.” There’s the giveaway, Gentle Reader. She’s either too stupid to understand even basic economics, or she’s completely corrupt and willing to purvey any lie, however bald, that will keep her in her job at the lectern. Given that she works for America’s first demonstrably senile president – great God in heaven, you can practically see the marionette strings! – I could easily believe either or both.
There’s no more pretending that “everything will work out just fine.” The Constitutional federated republic called the United States of America is dead. The Usurpers are busily shoveling dirt into its face.
***
I just bought a second freezer. I intend to cram it to bursting with meats, legumes, any vegetables that will survive being frozen, coffee, and whatever other edibles belong in a freezer. I figure that between my two freezers and my large pantry, I can store enough to feed us for at least a year. (I can’t eat that “survival food” crap. Too much salt for a man whose blood pressure could be used to power a moonshot.) If we’re still under the Usurpers’ thumbs a year from now, I very much doubt I’ll still be alive. Some uniformed thug – “Just doing my job, sir” – will have posed me, a retiree of reclusive ways, the choice of vaccination or death.
In that event, I intend to take as many such thugs to Hell with me as I can. I’d consider it a service to my fellow freedom lovers. (Also, I want a decent honor guard when I get there.) If you’re similarly inclined, a few words of advice:
Load the shotgun with slugs;
Aim for the face.
Yes, you really did just read all that. Yes, I meant every word. For now, avoid crowds, keep your loved ones close, and be well. I’ll see you on the other side.
I happened to stop at a Walmart yesterday (needed a lot of diverse things – shower rod, hardware, and garden). I didn’t find as much in the store that I had on the list, so I decided to pick up a few things I’d been meaning to get at a grocery.
Guys, I haven’t been that shocked in a LONG time.
The staples were just about wiped out. The kind of things that sensible people have in their pantry or freezer? Flour, sugar, coffee? Seriously depleted, particularly the generic or cheaper items. You could find some gourmet or specialty brands, but you were going to pay for them.
Overall, the prices were at least 1/3 higher than they had been a few months ago. In some cases, IF the items were available, the prices had nearly doubled.
Now, I’ve been insulated from this, because my husband loves to shop. Not just groceries, but also Dollar store type items, clothing, hardware – you name it, he loves to look for bargains. Until recently, I hadn’t been in a store for some time. The only shopping I’d done was with my budget-minded daughter, who steered me to a discount clothing store. And, a local resale shop, where I’d picked up stuff for the new house at bargain prices.
But, in Walmart, I was seeing prices that the average household was paying for basic necessities. And, it was chilling.
Not only higher prices, but things that were not available – for example, crunchy peanut butter. Basic brand-name types of creamy peanut butter were there, as were high-end brands.
But, no crunchy.
I’ll admit it – I’m your standard American – spoiled rotten with expectations of shopping abundance, choice, and prices within reach of the average person. Any shortages are short-term, and often weather or natural disaster caused.
This is a man-made, deliberate change. It has been caused by Leftists and their collaborators, and designed to break our will and ability to resist government authority.
It’s nothing new. Famine and disease have long been used as a tactic against political and ideological enemies. Some famous examples of that include the Ukranian Holodomor, the Ethiopian ‘famine’, and the deliberate starvation of enemies of the Reich. Even a dedicated Leftist, Theodore H. White, recognized the tactic when he saw it in pre-Maoist China. I read his autobiography when it first came out – you can still find used copies. I remember being surprised at his candor about his radical political beliefs. It’s a good look at the issues and forces that lay behind the loss of China to communism (slanted, but also remarkably candid at times).
You have to use caution when reading those books your enemies wrote, taking a skeptical position as to veracity and missing information. But, it does help you to get an appreciation of their viewpoint, as well as understand the seductive nature of their arguments.
Good Morning, Gentle Reader. As the Usurper Administration, figureheaded by Joe “Gee your heir smells terrific” Biden, proceeds with its campaign to reduce the U.S. to a Third World banana republic, albeit without the bananas, we have some interesting developments for your perusal. One is massively ironic, a second illustrates the extent to which the Usurpers will go to further their agenda, and the third is of truly global import.
The ACLU of Virginia filed an amicus brief in the Loudoun County Circuit Court on behalf of ACLU Virginia, ACLU, Equality Virginia, Equality Loudoun, Side By Side, and He She Ze and We. The brief, filed on October 13, 2021, is in opposition to an emergency petition and preliminary injunction request filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf Mr. Cross and his fellow plaintiffs.
Mr. Cross is a teacher in Loudoun County and is challenging Policy 8040. This policy was adopted by the Loudoun County School Board before this lawsuit was filed and provides protections to LGBTQ+ students in Loudoun County schools. The Policy includes provisions requiring teachers to use students’ gender-affirming pronouns, which is crucial to the mental health and well-being of trans and gender-expansive children. Mr. Cross spoke in opposition to Policy 8040 at a school board meeting, and refused to comply with the provision requiring teachers to use gender-affirming pronouns, arguing that this requirement violates his free speech rights. He was subsequently suspended, and he then sued to have his job reinstated. The Court ordered his reinstatement, with the Supreme Court of Virginia upholding this order. The case is now back in Loudoun County Circuit Court, with two added plaintiffs Kimberly Wright and Monica Gill, and is challenging the policy itself. Policy 8040 passed during the time Mr. Cross was challenging his suspension.
While the teachers may disagree with the policy, they do not have the right to violate it in their capacity as K-12 teachers in the Loudoun County school system. The policy protects trans and gender-expansive students from discrimination, and necessitates equal treatment of all students in Loudoun County. We know that discriminatory practices, such as the refusal to use a student’s gender-affirming pronouns, can exacerbate gender dysphoria and harm socio-emotional development during critical childhood years. Policy 8040 ensures that trans and non-binary students can focus on their education without the added stigmatization, stress and anxiety of being misgendered by their teachers.
Some will agree that schoolteachers may be restricted in what they can and cannot say to their students as a condition of employment. After all, on what other basis could parents prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory? But the salient point here is that this is the very first time the ACLU has ever argued against free expression, whether in a classroom setting or anywhere else.
Does anyone else remember Frank Collin, the American Nazi Party, and the Skokie, Illinois case?
Planeloads of underage migrants are being flown secretly into suburban New York in an effort by President Biden’s administration to quietly resettle them across the region, The Post has learned.
The charter flights originate in Texas, where the ongoing border crisis has overwhelmed local immigration officials, and have been underway since at least August, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Last week, The Post saw two planes land at the Westchester County Airport, where most of the passengers who got off appeared to be children and teens, with a small portion appearing to be men in their 20s.
Westchester County cops stood by as the passengers — whose flights arrived at 10:49 p.m. Wednesday and 9:52 p.m. Friday — got off and piled into buses….
On Friday night, one bus left the Westchester airport and barreled down the Hutchinson River Parkway — which is off-limits to commercial vehicles — at speeds greater than 75 mph before crossing the Throgs Neck Bridge….
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed outrage at The Post’s findings, with a spokeswoman saying: “If the Biden Administration is so confident that their open-border policy is good for our country, why the secrecy?”
“Why is the Biden Administration refusing to share even the most basic information about illegal alien resettlement in communities throughout our state and the entire country?” spokeswoman Christina Pushaw said.
The Great Replacement is an essential component of the Usurpers’ Great Reset. Other components of note are:
The strangling of America’s energy industry;
The destruction of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency;
The use of the Pandemic Panic to force millions out of their jobs and into government dependency;
The alienation of America’s allies and client states;
The empowerment of Communist China.
And it is proceeding unchecked and largely unmonitored.
Beijing has mocked America by saying their secret test of a 21,000mph nuclear-capable missile, which orbited the globe before returning to Earth to strike its target, is a ‘new blow to the US’s mentality of strategic superiority over China’.
The jibe follows a report from the Financial Times, which cited five unnamed intelligence sources, said the Chinese military launched the Long March rocket in August carrying a ‘hypersonic glide vehicle’ into low orbit.
It circled the globe before descending towards its target, which is missed by about two dozen miles, in a technological development that would overcome US anti-ballistic missile systems.
The incident caught the US intelligence community by surprise, sources say, as it shows ‘China has made astonishing progress on the development of its hypersonic weapons’.
One person familiar with the test said: ‘We have no idea how they did this.’
They did it with stolen American technology. That’s China’s principal method for “advancing” in engineering of all varieties. But that’s not really news, is it? The news is rather more somber.
The U.S. has long opposed the placement of weaponry in Earth orbit. At this time, the prospects for destroying a warhead coming straight down – the ideal trajectory for any sort of bomb – are slim to none. Existing anti-missile technology is effective in a missile’s launch and cruise phases. Once its payload enters final descent, it’s close to unstoppable. An orbiting delivery system could contrive to put its payloads in as close to a straight-down trajectory as orbital mechanics makes physically possible.
Time was, we would have approximately twenty-five minutes’ warning of an incoming missile bombardment. That’s now down to about five minutes, with a sharply reduced possibility of averting the bombardment altogether.
That’s all for the moment, Gentle Reader. I have a novel to finish, and a cover artist to hector negotiate with, so I’ll probably be back tomorrow. Until then, be well.
People occasionally ask this question about the formerly famous who are no longer mentioned in the entertainment magazines and gossip rags. “Whatever happened to Deanna Durbin?” rises the cry. “What became of Andrea McArdle?” was heard for years after Annie finished its run on Broadway. “And what about Naomi?” is heard in certain less-populated precincts. It’s all quite natural. The disappearance of such figures is a warning to us mortals that someday our time will come. (And to those Gentle Readers who accompany me in the Boomer Generation: keep your eyes on Keith Richards.)
Lesser creatures come and go, too, and we seldom remark on their passing as we do for the formerly famous / infamous / notorious. How much time have you invested in lamenting the disappearance of the passenger pigeon, the dodo, or the coelacanth? They hardly have an entry on my agenda. And in this lies an under-acknowledged tragedy of sorts.
All of the above must be accorded a mention in the thoughts of those who ruminate on the inevitability of change: “And this, too, shall pass away.” But today my attention is centered on a non-living item that was once ubiquitous and has seemingly Rung Down the Curtain and Joined the Choir Invisible: the coffee table book.
“What’s that?” I hear you cry. AHA! You don’t have any either! Perhaps you don’t even have a living room coffee table! (If you have a living room, that is.) But the glitterati of our time once made a fetish of them. Social climbers splurged on unnecessarily large apartments on the Upper East Side, just so they could have living rooms large enough for coffee tables. If you had one, to festoon it with books appropriate to your social standing was obligatory. Why, the Wall Street Journal itself has noted the cultural significance of the coffee table book! How, then, could such a totem object have slipped from our national consciousness?
It’s my one and only, and I prize it greatly. But I don’t leave it on my coffee table. I can’t. My Newfs have tended to drool on it, and my cats won’t have it at all. So it sits, blatantly out of its proper place, on one of my bookshelves, waiting patiently in the perhaps forlorn hope that it will someday be returned to its place of pride.
Perhaps all one can do is lament. But I’m not “one.” (No, my name isn’t “Legion,” either.) And so, in a display of my lofty social consciousness…and because I’m disinclined to produce anything serious today…I present the following, which first appeared at Eternity Road on January 5, 2005.
***
A Project For The New Year
Your Curmudgeon has taken some fire, both from Eternity Road readers and from folks who know him through other avenues, for always being so deadly serious. Since he takes all criticism seriously and maunders over it interminably, often to the considerable exasperation of the C.S.O., who regularly asks him why a Certified Galactic Intellect should be concerned with the opinions of cretins, he’s decided to do something humorous this coming year.
What sort of humor, you ask? A book, of course. Software, management, and writing are all he really knows, and it’s very hard to write a funny program or a funny performance review. So he’s decided to produce a coffee-table book.
In case the term is unfamiliar, a coffee-table book is the sort one leaves on one’s living-room coffee table. It is unclear why one should want to do this, nor is it much clearer why a particular kind of book has evolved to fill this niche. Nevertheless, the facts are inescapable: there exist coffee-table books, they occupy places of honor on our nation’s coffee tables, and dash it all, someone has to write them, at no small investment of effort and time.
Coffee-table books, apart from their places of honor on coffee tables, all share certain characteristics:
They’re physically large.
They’re printed on glossy stock.
They’re heavily illustrated.
They present a history or a survey of a narrow subject of interest: for example, the history of a particular river, or a survey of the work of a particular artist.
They’re shriekingly expensive when first offered for sale, but not long thereafter can be found on remainder tables at a deep discount.
They’re more often purchased to be given as presents than by the persons whose coffee tables they’ll eventually grace. Indeed, no one has admitted to purchasing a coffee-table book for his own coffee table since before World War II.
To persons who lack an interest in the subjects they discuss, they’re pointless impediments to getting at the cheese-and-crackers board on the far side of the coffee table.
In recent years, the coffee-table book market has fallen on hard times. The books tend to go from first-retailed to remaindered with far greater speed than only two or three decades ago. They turn up less as presents, and are less frequently seen on the coffee tables of America’s tastemakers and trendsetters. Possibly this is a consequence of the Great Weehauken Coffee Table Disaster of February 1978, when a suburban New Jersey family, despondent over its failure to capture the pole-lamp entry, aimed at the Guinness title for most coffee-table books in a single middle-class home, and caused a tectonic subsidence that closed most of the Eastern Seaboard for a full week. (And you thought it was the snowstorm.) If so, it’s understandable; people were plenty nervous about bridges after Tacoma Narrows, too.
Nevertheless, it is an established facet of our era that he who is willing to defy the trends will often reap a mighty reward, or lose his shirt. As your Curmudgeon has plenty of shirts he’s willing to lose…well, actually, it’s the C.S.O. who’d like to see them vanish, along with most of his shoes and all his ties, but why split hairs?…he’s decided to play for the stakes and advance boldly into this under-served market segment.
So: the taxonomy is established, the nature of the market is confirmed, and an opportunity awaits. There’s no time to lose! All your Curmudgeon needs is a topic, and he’s narrowed it down to two:
Great Water Towers Of The United States,
A History of Tubular Foods.
Eternity Road readers are invited to contribute to this Titanic undertaking. Please send your Curmudgeon pictures of significant (by your judgment) American water towers, or pictures of significant (by your judgment) tubular foods, along with your reasons for thinking they’re significant, would look well on glossy stock, and deserve space on America’s coffee tables. Everyone who provides such a picture will be credited as he wishes in the eventual publication.
A few qualifications:
If you send a picture of a water tower:
Please include its location, its dates of active service, and as much of its history as you can amass.
Please do not include any excessively personal details about any ways in which you might have exploited your favorite water tower; this will be a PG-13 rated publication.
If you send a picture of a tubular food:
Please give the name by which it’s best known, its culture of origin, a recipe for it, the format in which you first enjoyed it, and how far you’d run to avoid enjoying it again.
If there are historical incidents in which your tubular food figured prominently, please include those as well. However, your Curmudgeon reserves the right to edit such stories, particularly any that involve sex scandals, well known statesmen, or Tom Cruise.
In either case, please include your full name, your city and state of residence, your occupation, your sex, your age, height, weight, shoe size, marital status, bust, waist, and hip measurements, your favorite song and movie, and how you feel about cats.
Once more, dear friends: Into the breach!
***
It seems so long ago! I suppose I was born too late after all.
MAJORITY LEADER: All right, why are you holding us up now? MINORITY LEADER: The usual reason: you’re overspending, you’re doing unConstitutional stuff, and you’re weakening the country.
MAJORITY LEADER: You’ve gone along with us before. I know this bill doesn’t have as many sweeteners in it as previous ones. MINORITY LEADER: I’ve gone along with you, and advised my caucus to do the same, when the alternative seemed worse – like when you were threatening to withhold all defense spending.
MAJORITY LEADER: A generous defense budget is included this time. Your buddies will get plenty of swag. So what’s the big deal? MINORITY LEADER: The “big deal” is that if I let you get away with this one, my constituents will crucify me!
MAJORITY LEADER: Oh, I don’t think so. They might primary you, but you have your state party pretty well under your thumb, don’t you? MINORITY LEADER: Well…
MAJORITY LEADER: I think you do. So in the end, it’ll come down to voting to re-elect you, or to replace you with one of us, won’t it? MINORITY LEADER: I suppose, but I don’t want the odium for going along with your budget-busting!
MAJORITY LEADER: Alright, enough beating around the bush. What’s your price? MINORITY LEADER:How dare you!
MAJORITY LEADER: Drop the pretense. You have a price. You just haven’t published it yet. MINORITY LEADER: My “price,” if you like, is returning my party to majority control of the Senate!
MAJORITY LEADER: And you don’t think this bill would see to that? MINORITY LEADER: (Stunned, momentarily speechless)
MAJORITY LEADER: By now you should know how the game is played, my friend. We alternate in power, each of us playing the “principled opposition” while in the minority, each of us gradually expanding the federal government’s power and reach, neither of us doing anything that would seriously rock the boat. We’ve already carved the country into blue and red zones, each of them safe for its owner, and a “gray zone” where we pretend to fight for the uncommitted. When we’re in the majority, we pay you guys off with appropriations you can take home to your people, and when it’s your turn you do the same for us. If we haven’t yet made enough provisions for your zone, just tell us how much more you need to go along. MINORITY LEADER: You’re being awfully candid.
MAJORITY LEADER: This room is soundproof and is regularly swept for bugs and micro-cameras. Why do you think we always meet here? MINORITY LEADER: I…had wondered. MAJORITY LEADER: So what’s your price? Which states, which districts, which companies, and how much? The bill can absorb another half-trillion or so…
As Biden doubles down on the bad (yet deliberately distracting) hand of what was hoped to be an optically humanitarian policy of vaccine mandates, the masses are getting restless as well as fired…
Solution?
Criminalize the non-consenting as anti-vaccine, anti-science or anti-American “flat-earthers” while denying open discussion on such otherwise relevant topics as basic math, constitutional law, calm science or individual rights…
Meanwhile, those who won’t tow [sic] Biden’s increasingly incoherent mandate (or Don Lemmon’s always coherent ignorance) are losing jobs and/or [being] forced to prioritize (in a Jeffersonian way) individual liberty over financial security.[1]
Choice stuff. You can cut the censorship with a knife these days. These days of Orwellian propaganda and MSM utter [garbage].
As an aside, to not a few people the proper spelling of “lose” has become one of the great mysteries of our time. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon it seems to me but maybe it’s just because skulking around the internet, as I do, exposes me to a great deal of writing that has not seen the eyeballs of any editor. Error correction is also the source of much whoa, it’s true, but I’m not sure that explains the prevalence of this particular mistake.
Coming up on the outside is the difficult task of spelling “toe” as in “toe the line.” Anyone who’s ever seen a formation of troops must surely be able to guess that the phrase connotes obedience to authority, conformance to a standard and not towing anything. But no.[2]
There’re the perennial stinkers of lie/lay, there/their/they’re, criterion/criteria, phenomenon/phenomena, infer/imply, and the dreaded “there’s” plus plural noun of your choice, the incorrect use of which words alerts me to the possibility that the conclusion that the writer or speaker has reached has been arrived at by a process involving but casual observation, little research, limited reflection, and intermittent attention to the rules of logic.
Get the small stuff wrong and I should trust your larger point? is my basic thought here.
Notes [1] “Distraction As Policy While Our Economic Rome Burns.” By Matthew Piepenberg, ZeroHedge, 10/16/21. [1] If I’m going to confer the honor of a “Pearls of Expression” designation on our excellent author here I’m just going to decree that I know he knows better.
(I don't endorse any of these sites. I list them to marvel at how many people and organizations want to run a "news site," but have no idea what that entails. -- FWP)
