Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…
Lepers, unmasked.
Purity rituals now extend to almost the entire populace and to every aspect of life. Go to get food at a grocery store and violate the mask or social distancing rule, and you will be called out by the reigning religious authorities — much as Jesus was when he and his disciples were rebuked for gathering and eating grain on the Sabbath.
If you dare to go outside the parameters permitted you, be it travel to another state or to the dentist, the ritual priests will test you to see if you are fit, taking your temperature, testing for antibodies, and then pronouncing you clean or unclean. Go to church and be masked, socially distanced and don’t dare sing.
Persist in your transgressions and you will be at least temporarily cut out of the community by having to live outside the camp until you are healed. You will be a leper.
The Coronavirus has provided the extreme left with a reason to create a huge class of outcasts while also affording the opportunity to fundamentally transform society. Those who previously had been designated as outcasts, including those considering themselves to be disempowered in any way, may now find themselves uniquely qualified to enter the holy circle of the pure.
Ominously, also now outside the camp are those who were once powerful authority figures, namely, the police and the military who were appointed to confront and contain the dark side of society.
But even more worrying, in states like Maryland, one’s neighbor is encouraged to snitch on neo-lepers who endanger public health, as happened in the USSR and East Germany. This is to say nothing of those designated as having leprous minds by Twitter, YouTube and Facebook’s determiners of mental health. Spies now determine who belongs outside social discourse because of criminal thoughts and “hate” speech — which is generally defined as any speaking or writing that opposes the left.
In fact, the leftist elite believe that America’s moral health was compromised irrevocably by the events of 1619, the introduction of slavery now seen as irredeemable original sin. So inherently leprous is America and the West in general that all diseased institutions and cities need to be set on fire, much as physicians once cauterized gangrene.
Rest assured the establishment of the new caste system will continue after the fires. The current virus has set the template for future government dictates. Other diseases will follow Covid-19. More citizens will be placed outside the camp and more kulaks of private enterprise will be destroyed. Society will continue to require purification until the last virus of bad thinking is exterminated.
The authoritarian Left’s work is never done. But they’ll have to do it without any help from me. Myself, I’ll just stick with good ol’ Bob Marley.
She’s DEAD, Jim. This time for real.
I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC, it was a dream come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so many stories.
Every subculture I loved was in NYC. I could play chess all day and night. I could go to comedy clubs. I could start any type of business. I could meet people. I had family, friends, opportunities. No matter what happened to me, NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.
Now it’s completely dead.
“But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time.
“But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.
People say, “NYC has been through worse,” or “NYC has always come back.”
No and no.First, when has NYC been through worse?
Even in the 1970s, and through the ’80s, when NYC was going bankrupt, even when it was the crime capital of the U.S. or close to it, it was still the capital of the business world (meaning, it was the primary place young people would go to build wealth and find opportunity). It was culturally on top of its game — home to artists, theater, media, advertising, publishing. And it was probably the food capital of the U.S.
Altucher breaks things down into categories to explain in detail why he deems NYC well and truly doomed, but this next but for me is the important:
NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were becoming paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn’t go through this.
This is not to say what should have been done or should not have been done. That part is over. Now we have to deal with what IS.
Perzackly. As I said early on, the “unprecedented” thing about the COVIDIOT panic was never the virus itself; it’s turned out to be fairly ordinary as these things go—just a bad flu, not the planet-depopulating scourge it’s been sold as. The only thing truly unprecedented was the hysterical reaction to it; the speedy exploitation of a cringing, fearful populace by a whole damnable horde of wanna-be tyrants both high and low; and the pathetically submissive obedience in response to that exploitation by subjects of a country once proud to misnomer itself as “land of the free, home of the brave.”
Altucher goes on from there to present an intriguing take on why this time might be different:
I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship and then quickly that area became the most attractive area in New York.
And in 2008/2009, there was much suffering during the Great Recession, again much hardship, but things came roaring back.
But… this time is different. You’re never supposed to say that but this time it’s true. If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient, I hope you’re right.
I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back.
But this time is different.
One reason: Bandwidth.
In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second. That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high-quality video.
There’s a before and after. BEFORE: No remote work. AFTER: Everyone can work remotely.
The difference: bandwidth got faster. And that’s basically it. People have left New York City and have moved completely into virtual worlds. The Time-Life Building doesn’t need to fill up again. Wall Street can now stretch across every street instead of just being one building in Manhattan.
We are officially AB: After Bandwidth. And for the entire history of NYC (the world) until now, we were BB: Before Bandwidth.
Remote learning, remote meetings, remote offices, remote performance, remote everything.
That’s what is different.
Very interesting indeed. This James Altucher fella seems to be a pretty smart and perceptive guy, and you should definitely read it all. Even for those of you who give not one damp fart about the fate of what was once indisputably the world’s greatest metropolis (and I myself don’t care nearly as much as I once would have, I admit), it seems obvious to me that most if not all of this grim prognostication could probably be applied to any other American city as well—most certainly the Democrat-Socialist misgoverned ones, at least. As enjoyable as the schadenfraude no doubt is for a great many of us out here in the hinterlands now, that is NOT gonna be a good thing long-term…for anybody.
(Via Insty)
ZMan introduces his latest podcast thusly:
Fishing around for material this week, I stumbled upon some stories that brought a smile, because they featured the unhappiness of bad people. Naturally, I thought a whole show on the suffering of the wicked was a good idea. It is easy to succumb to self-pity and despair, so it is important to look at the bright side of life on occasion in order to avoid those temptations. Given what faces us this fall, there will be plenty of time for weeping and gnashing of teeth.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the people in charge are terribly unhappy with the state of things, which is why they are revolting. These punitive measures they are inflicting upon us are not coming from a supreme sense of self confidence, but from a deep fear that revolution is brewing in the shadows. The reason they are running around looking for bad-thinkers is they lie awake at night imagining one us creeping from the darkness with a My Pillow as they sleep.
There’s also the fact that these people are not gods. They slithered in through the gaps in the doors then flung open the gates to allow their co-conspirators in to take over the institutions, but they are not worthy of their positions. They are riding high only because we let them. Looking at their failings and weaknesses is a good way to remind ourselves that this lunacy stops when we make it stop. Numbers still matter. The night of the million pillows is probably closer than we think.
That’s something to keep in mind as the fall election kicks off in the coming weeks and the usual suspects are trying to peddle a bitter bindy and a dementia patient as the solution to what ails them. This really is the best they got. What comes next for them is the buck-toothed barmaid and the incestuous goatherd. As Tucker pointed out the other day, we really do need to enjoy the show. This is lunacy at a scale and intensity not seen since Caligula was the ruler of the civilized world.
“Bitter bindy, “dementia patient,” “buck-toothed barmaid,” and “incestuous goatherd” (ie, Ilan Omar, just in case that one went by any of y’all) are all pretty heady stuff, right enough. But then Tal Bachman gets downright jiggy with it.
Now, some folks think Kamala isn’t really a “sister”, but all that matters is how Democratic Party decision-makers think about race—and that hasn’t changed since the party’s founding 200 plus years ago. They still go by their old “one-drop” rule. And Kamala, despite having an Indian mother, has a black father (albeit from Jamaica). That’s not only good enough for the DNC Puppeteers, but will be good enough for every Democrat voter, no matter how much they might mutter otherwise for the next week or so. In the end, no Democrat voter is going to stay home on election night just because Kamala’s only half-black (which, of course, makes her just as black as Barack Obama), or a quarter, or an eighth, or because her ancestors weren’t slaves, or even because some of her ancestors were, themselves, slave owners. She’s brown, the end.
And most exciting of all for The Puppeteers was that now, she was, as she had always been, entirely for sale. Sure, she could scheme with the best of them, but like any lady of the night, she’d also do anything her political johns wanted. She would change policies, attack anyone, pretend to be sorry, believe and then instantly unbelieve the very same thing, falsely accuse someone, shake her booty, pretend to choke up, anything.
Hell, she was so soulless, she might even do something like announce her conclusion that Joe Biden committed first degree sexual assault (a crime meriting up to life imprisonment), but then, when it was to her political advantage, retroactively assent to the crime she believes occurred by endorsing him and agreeing to be his vice-president—all of which she’s now done. And she would do all this, and more—she would do anything on God’s green earth—without evincing even the slightest sign of shame. She was a DNC dream.
In short, once The Puppeteers chose Biden, Kamala Harris was a lock. America now has an All-Puppet Ticket right out of a Jim Henson workshop trying to win the White House. One is a short-circuiting near-cadaver—far feebler than Statler and Waldorf ever were—kept alive (in my imagination, anyway) by forced Red Bull consumption and adrenaline injections. The other is a diversity-cult showgirl for hire. Both are utterly hollow, both represent loathsome policy ideas, and—make no mistake—both are utterly loathsome human beings.
After all, it takes a loathsome human being to keep repeating a libel even after it has been repeatedly, publicly, and definitively debunked. Yet this is just what Biden did during his Wednesday press conference with Harris, once again falsely accusing Trump—the most philo-Semitic president in American history, with an unparalleled record of job creation for blacks and Hispanics—of publicly praising the Charlottesville Nazis and Klansmen as “fine people”. This is demonstrably not what Trump said. Biden doesn’t care. Why not? Because he’s a loathsome human being.
Of course, there’s much more.
Believe it or not, as fulsome a bounty of in your face, bare-knuckles, hardcore truth in all its ugliness as all that is, there IS more. There really, really is. And that’s a damned shame.
Reynolds has been saying for a long time now that Americans are cursed with the worst political class in history, and he certainly ain’t wrong about that. But I have to say that at this late date I much prefer Bachman’s no-holds-barred, personally insulting approach to presenting this grim reality. Name ’em and shame ’em, sez I. Assuming that there’s even one political parasite left alive who’s capable of shame.
And they never give in, they never tire, they never surrender or compromise, admit error or defeat. They just keep chipping away, bit by bit and inch by inch, until they get what they want.
In these times of left-wing mobs filling the streets, assaulting civilians and police officers, destroying property with apparent impunity, flagrantly defying coronavirus social distancing rules, and even seceding from the Union, one of the few consolations for conservatives is the notion that gun rights appear to be safe for a generation to come. Gun sales are booming and ammunition is selling like hotcakes, so Democrats would be suicidal to make another push for gun control, right?
Wrong. Gun control is not dead, nor does it sleep.
If you think the Left will ever abandon any of its cherished policy objectives merely because a majority of the American public strongly disagrees, you haven’t studied how the Left operates.
The Left does not care about “the will of the people” when it runs counter to their agenda. They don’t allow popular opinion to shape government; they use government power to shape popular opinion. And when left-wingers cannot get what they want through legislation, they use other forms of power to impose their preferences on the public.
As Obamacare demonstrated, leftists are willing to take the electoral hit for imposing an unpopular policy if they believe that policy will socially engineer a more compliant American public in the years to come. The push for gun control in 2021 will be absolutely irresistible for Democrats if they do exceptionally well at the ballot box in November 2020. Democrat activist groups will loudly demand action, and there won’t be much resistance in a Biden administration or Democrat Congress against those demands.
Gun control groups have heavy financial backing from left-wing billionaires, and they enjoy priceless in-kind support from mainstream media outlets. There is zero chance any significant resistance to their demands will be mounted by a single Democrat lawmaker, no matter what they tell gullible red and purple-state constituents when they run for office as “moderates” who respect the hell out of America’s gun rights.
Gun control is a social engineering step the Left must take, sooner or later. It is vital to redefining citizenship and the power of the State. The Second Amendment enshrines ideals of individual liberty and responsibility that must be wiped out. The people must become utterly dependent on the State for their physical security.
Firearms, and the culture of individual responsibility that surrounds them, are a tangible reminder that the State cannot protect your family – and as the people abandoned to violent mobs in Democrat cities can testify, it doesn’t really have an obligation to try.
This message of depending on the State for security might seem like an odd fit with the Democrats’ “Abolish the Police” mania, and it’s certainly hard to sell abolishing the police with a side order of draconian gun laws to thinking Americans – but remember, the Left isn’t terribly interested in persuading anyone, and will feel secure in its power after a big election victory. Won’t it be absurdly difficult to enforce new gun-control laws, or move toward the outright confiscation that is always and forever the Left’s ultimate goal, after a year of record-breaking gun sales? Yes, but remember, when the Left wants something, the expense of achieving its goals and the amount of compulsive power that must be deployed are features, not bugs.
John’s closer 〈Walter Cronkite voice〉oughta scaaarrre yuh to death〈/Walter Cronkite voice〉. All the more so because he is one hundred percent correct about it, and if you have a lick of sense you know damned well he is. This is war we’re in now, and the war is forever.
Update! Wanna know who one of our most powerful enemies is in that aforementioned war?
Billionaire liberal activist George Soros told an Italian newspaper that he sees the coronavirus epidemic as a “revolutionary” opportunity.
In an interview with La Repubblica, the Hungarian-born Mr. Soros also denounced President Trump as a “transitory phenomenon” but expressed hope that the COVID-19 crisis has opened up politics in a radical direction.
“I would describe it as a revolutionary moment when the range of possibilities is much greater than in normal times,” he said. “What is inconceivable in normal times becomes not only possible but actually happens. People are disoriented and scared.”
Gee, wonder how that might have happened? And who might have been behind it? Must be a coincidence, I’m thinking.
But Mr. Soros, who was being interviewed by the Rome newspaper on the occasion of his 90th birthday, warned that Mr. Trump “remains very dangerous,” despite seeing him as transitory, because of his efforts to stay in power and avoid prosecution.
“He’s fighting for his life, and he will do anything to stay in power,” Mr. Soros said, also calling the president “a confidence trickster” who can “undermine democracy from within.”
Democracy? When in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed world did a filthy rich old hardcore Leftist like you begin to give a damn about THAT, pray tell?
Mr. Soros, who bankrolls numerous liberal and leftist causes through his Open Society Foundation and other funding sources, praised the U.S. for still having “a great tradition of checks and balances and established rules. And above all you have the Constitution.”
I find it remarkable that this diabolical carbuncle could even utter those words without them leaving blisters all over his tongue.
George Soros is nothing less than evil incarnate, a rapacious financial marauder bereft of morals or conscience who made himself obscenely rich via undermining entire national economies and raking in quasi-legal billions from his manipulations—taking advantage of troubled times and instability, creating nothing, contributing nothing to the world he casually plunders, with nary a backward glance after he’s all done getting his. Over the course of his too-long life, he has been the direct cause of more harm and suffering for more people, worldwide, than probably any other single human being (if the rest of y’all actual human beings will forgive the implied insult-by-association) alive today. He simply has to be stopped, along with his equally-abominable son, using whatever methods or means necessary. That’s really all there is to it.
My kneejerk response to the collapse of New York City at the hands of Hizzoner Bill DeBalledZero goes something like, “Too fucking bad, assholes. You elected the bastard, now you can stew in it. Enjoy the socialist hellhole of your votes’ devising, and don’t you even DREAM of moving here.”
On the other hand, some of the most wonderful, memorable times of my life were spent in NYC. Heck, I even married a born-and-raised Manhattan girl and remain close to her mom now that she’s gone, along with several good friends I made over decades of living and playing music there. I still have a certain fondness for the place, even now.
But frankly, I can’t say I care anymore if I ever go back there.
The New York Times reports that national retailers and restaurant chains such as J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Le Pain Quotidien, and Subway are permanently closing locations in New York City in response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a “mass exodus” of residents and businesses.
Business leaders warn that the city is facing a crisis of “historic proportions,” according to the Times.
Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, which owns the popular Bryant Park Grill & Cafe, told the New York Times he would never open another restaurant in the city. “There’s no reason to do business in New York,” Weinstein said.
With tourists staying clear of the city and surrounding office towers mostly empty, the restaurant has been forced to close its 1,000-seat dining room and move service to the patio. As a result, Weinstein says the restaurant brings in only about $12,000 a day—an 85 percent drop in revenue.
Here’s a real grabber for ya:
The flagship Victoria’s Secret store at Herald Square in Manhattan has been closed for months and has not paid its $937,000 monthly rent in the meantime. “It will be years before retail has even a chance of returning to New York City in its pre-COVID form,” the retailer’s parent company recently told its landlord.
Dear God, how many lacy underthings must they have been selling to be able to meet close to a million bucks a fucking month in rent before this mess started? David Marcus, for his part, explains the rapidly-dissipating appeal of the New York Groove:
Why I Won’t Leave New York City, But Probably Should
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why people are leaving and I don’t really blame them. Living in New York City is an expensive transaction, not just in terms of money but in terms of lifestyle. We often pay more money to rent a small apartment than most Americans pay for the mortgage on their house. The city is not easy to get around, and we all navigate the panoply of cultures and tongues, our Lingua Franca a kind of unwritten “rules of the city.”But then there is the other side of the transaction, the wonderful restaurants, bustling bars and jazz clubs, the Cyclone at Coney Island, the rushing mass of pedestrian frenzy assuring us that yes, this is the center of the world, the current Rome. Today, for now at least, all of that is gone. All of the bad things are still bad, worse actually with the crime wave and all, but the good things are all still locked down, which means we are too, locked in those little apartments.
And it gets worse. Schools are only partially opening, leading parents to look for pods in some vain hope that their kids can be educated. Empty apartments sit unrented, sparsely populated subway cars have an air of fear not felt by most for a very long time. But for all this, for all of these overwhelming reasons to get the hell out and find a picket fence in Jersey, I just can’t do it. New York is stuck with me. For better or worse.
There are some things I know about New York City. I know that as the Great Depression dragged along, Gotham was home to the birth of Method Acting and changed theater and film forever. I know that while World War II ravaged nations, New York stole the title of center of the visual art world from Paris. I know that in the drugged out riotous 1970s and 1980s, the city built Disco and pop art and hip-hop. I know that in the shadow of a skyline with teeth knocked out, white belt Williamsburg hipstered in an Electroclash revolution.
Do not mistake this for a childlike nostalgia for the bad old days. Nobody who was an adult back then wants that. It is rather a matter of being resigned to see this thing of ours through. So no, I will not be on the midnight train to Georgia, or Florida, or the Oranges. I have to stay in the husked out shell of greatness that even Bill de Blasio can’t blunder into oblivion because I have a chance to help bring it back. And I trust my fellow New Yorkers, the ones who stay to be just as committed to that.
Even in the best of times one has to be a little crazy to want to live in New York City. These days, one has to be a stark, raving mad lunatic. But that is kind of the point of New York City. After all, even raving mad lunatics need someplace to live. And in the Big Apple those kinds of people have a really successful track record.
Marcus expects NYC to make a comeback once the DeBalledZero lockdown is lifted and life gets “back to normal,” but he’s missing something: the lockdowns aren’t GOING to be lifted, in NYC or anywhere else, without massive, serious, overwhelming pushback all across the nation. Actually, my money is on the opposite: anybody out there seriously think there’s going to be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade this year? Will the Power allow a Thanksgiving holiday gathering of any kind? Will people be social distancing around their T-day feast, chatting gaily through their masks, scrubbing surfaces and utensils down every five minutes with bleach to stave off the Great Plague?
Will there be a huge, beautiful Christmas tree brightening up the Rockefeller Center ice rink in 2020? Those famous midtown store-window displays to attract the gaze of celebratory shoppers who just aren’t around anymore this year? Anybody out there planning on letting their kid sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s? Will old Kris Kringle be able to hear and understand as the kids recite their wish-list through the mandatory proper face-covering? Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve? Christmas Day services? Carollers strolling the neigborhood, their voices muffled and unclear because of those same masks?
I seriously, seriously hope none of you have made plans to attend the Times Square ball-drop on New Years Eve this year, I really do.
You say that Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years Eve displays, parades, and festivities all being wiped from the calendar by our esteemed rulers seems a bit of a stretch, do you? Well, they damned sure cancelled Independence Day fireworks all across the nation this summer, now didn’t they? Didja ever imagine you’d see such a thing as that?
Even after a mass rebellion that at the moment looks like a no-show, alas, recreating New York as anything other than the miserable, oppressive, and life-threatening ghetto it’s been “fundamentally transformed” into will be a Herculean task—one which will be vehemently opposed by at least half of the lunatics who live there, just as the Giuliani Renaissance was back in my own New York days. I’ll be rooting for it; New York was a unique and wondrous place, the greatest city on earth, for a long time. But I can’t say I’ll be counting on it.
But maybe there’s a small, fragile seed of hope taking root in Wisconsin:
On Sunday, Wisconsinites protested a new state-wide mask mandate by Gov. Tony Evers at a “We Will Not Comply” freedom rally held in the rural town of Mosinee. It was also a protest against the recent Marathon County online reporting tool for violations of the mask mandate.
Marathon County Health representative Judy Burrows said the online complaint form and tracking process will help officials identify businesses or organizations with multiple reports. “Our primary intention is to educate on the need and benefit to wearing a face covering to prevent the spread of COVID,” Burrows said.
The event was organized by Get Involved Wisconsin, a grassroots organization that was also responsible for an April rally held at the same location to protest Evers’s stay-at-home orders.
The rally this past weekend drew national speakers such as Dr. Simone Gold and local physicians, including cardiac surgeon Fernando Riveron. Both doctors asserted medical experts are being silenced by corporate media and big tech companies about the true risks of coronavirus and weighing those against other medical concerns.
Doesn’t seem like much, I admit. But from tiny acorns, mighty oaks sometimes grow, right?
Update! Did someone say rebellion?
It appears that government-imposed restrictions on travel, business, and social contact don’t become more palatable with age. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to simmer, the one competency that officials have consistently displayed is in tightening the screws, using the licenses and permissions they require as enforcement tools. For people tired of being bossed around, the obvious response is to carry on without the government’s imprimatur—and they’re doing so in droves. It’s an attitude likely to live on long after the crisis has passed.
“Our businesses are doomed,” Chris Polone, co-owner of a Fort Worth bar that was one of more than 800 such establishments to open in defiance of Texas closure orders, said at the end of July. “We have nothing to lose. We can either fight this thing, Or we can starve ourselves out.”
As apocalyptic as that sounds, it’s a reasonable statement when the review site Yelp reports that 55 percent of all businesses shut during the pandemic are believed to have closed their doors forever. For many entrepreneurs, breaking the rules may be the only way to survive.
Bold above mine, and absolutely critical; as in just about every conflict, numbers matter. Any nascent citizen uprising can only come to grief unless it occurs en masse. As long as only a sad handful of Americans are willing to risk getting up to stand on their feet again, they will all continue to live on their knees. Doesn’t have to be universal; doesn’t even have to be a majority of the populace, even. But it absolutely has to be more than a handful, and when you’re trying to face down governments that have far eclipsed their rightful boundaries, the more the merrier.
At least some encouraging news regarding the overdue groundswell of grassroots defiance in this article, though—very little of which will be reported by Old Media media, assuming any at all is. Bottom line:
Officials in Los Angeles have run into so much push-back that now they’re threatening to cut water and power to businesses and homes that don’t comply with lockdown orders. Depriving people of electricity and running water seems an unlikely means for improving public health, but officialdom is always more interested in compelling submission than in achieving reasonable outcomes.
But submission is harder to come by when the stakes are so high. The government is actually ordering people to refrain from earning their keep, and instead to humbly submit to bankruptcy and beggary. To some, submitting to the rules can look foolish and suicidal—like baring your throat to a predator.
And once you’ve battled government officials threatening your ability to make a living during hard times, why would you assume, after the crisis passes, that they’ve suddenly become wiser and better disposed to your wellbeing? People who have questioned officials’ judgment and defied their orders are unlikely to lose that habit after the pandemic passes. Sure, they’ll probably continue to apply for licenses to operate just to make life easy. But they’ll remember that officials tried to strip them of the “privilege” of putting food on the table and they’ll realize just how dangerous it is to rely on such permission.
Viewed from the historical perspective, would-be despots always end up sowing the seeds for the own destruction. They may reign for a while, even a very long while, yes. But sooner or later, their subjects get a belly full of it and take them out, one way or another. We Will Not Comply indeed, you commie motherfuckers.
Know how some Dissident Right folks have begun whining lately that Trump has accomplished nothing whatever during his first term, even going so far as to join chinless Quislings like Bill French and David Kristol in endorsing Biden?
Yeah. About all that.
While it is not unusual in political circles to describe something as a historic breakthrough, it is unusual when the term is justified. Yet that is the right way to describe the three-way agreement announced Thursday by the Trump White House, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Based on its immediate impact alone, you can even call this one an earthquake. In an instant, regional fault lines are redrawn and the door is thrown open for Israel to normalize its relations with other Arab states.
The agreement also dramatically turns up the heat on the Palestinians to make a deal, lest they find themselves further isolated in their standoff with Israel.
“It means they either have to finally come to the negotiating table, or keep going where they’ve been going,” Jared Kushner, the top American official involved in crafting the terms, told me.
Indeed, there is a sweetener in the deal aimed at the Palestinians. Israel’s agreement to suspend its plan to assert sovereignty over much of the West Bank is a huge concession that buys time for the Palestinians, but not endlessly. Kushner defined the suspension as covering the “foreseeable future.”
He said UAE leaders were concerned that the Israeli move would be a “big setback in relationships” and thus pushed for the suspension.
Meanwhile, establishing formal diplomatic relations and starting direct airline flights means Muslims from the UAE will be able to fly to Israel and visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. That opening shreds the claim from Islamists that Israel prevents them from worshiping at the mosques, among Islam’s holiest sites.
The enormous trade-offs vindicate President Trump’s policy of strengthening America’s alliance with Israel and countering Muslim extremists. The usual critics, including Democrats, most European governments and United Nations bureaucrats, predicted that Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights would lead to greater Arab unity and possibly war.
In effect, the critics were endorsing the very policy the Obama-Biden administration pursued, which yielded only negative results. The former team gave Israel, Saudi Arabia and other traditional allies the back of the hand while wooing the Palestinians and Iran. In exchange, it got nothing except Palestinian intransigence and an emboldened and aggressive Iran.
By going in the opposite direction, Trump, Kushner and Ambassador David Friedman are using strengthened American-Israeli ties as a rallying point for Arab states who fear Iran more than Israel.
As they damned well should. Like Real Americans here at home, all Israel really wants from her neighboring Arab antagonists is just to be left alone; granted that, the Israelis are perfectly willing to return the favor. Personally, all I need to know about the agreement is: 1) whey-faced rectal polyp Rashida Tlaib, miscellaneous Ogabe junta Iran-baglappers, and the PLO swine are all unhappy about it, and B) Senile Uncle Gropey immediately committed another act of plagiarism, sort of, to glom credit for himself. With all those bitter malefactors left scrambling and flailing witlessly about, how could it NOT be a very good thing?
Hell, as Glenn says, this one is so damned big even the NYT’s pinko ChiCom pom-pom girl Tom Friedman can’t find a way to downplay it.
For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”…
Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.
It’s a geopolitical earthquake.
To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.
As far as I know, unlike the previous deals with Egypt and Jordan, this agreement is the first wherein an Arab state expicitly acknowledges Israel’s right to exist without sidestepping that crucial issue. That alone qualifies as historic. I know I registered a complaint about Kushner’s influence in the Trump admin not long ago; knowing what his ideological leanings are, I remain highly skeptical of the guy. But he appears to have done some truly fine and important work on this one, and I doff my cap to him.
Update! Not quite as momentous, admittedly, but still not “nothing” either.
Seth Borenstein, an environmental whack job at the Associated Press, filed a story, “Let it flow: Trump administration eases shower-head rules.”
In it, Borenstein took cheap shots at President Donald John Trump for daring to reverse Obama’s draconian and arbitrary rules on how much water can come out of a shower head.
According to the story, Congress gave the federal government the power to dictate the water flow. This was done to conserve water, which makes no sense because there is plenty of fresh water in the Great Lakes and most if the rest of the nation.
Of course, millions of people chose to live in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. They have a problem with water supplies. That gave the government the excuse to regulate showers.
In his story, Borenstein wrote, “Publicly talking about the need to keep his hair ‘perfect,’ President Donald Trump has made increasing water flow and dialing back long held appliance conservation standards — from light bulbs to toilets to dishwashers — a personal issue.
Loosening the grip of meddlesome, intrusive tyranny, one tentacle at a time. If the shitlibs, environazis, Jurassic-media “journalists,” and Deep Staters are howling, then it’s a win. And hey, I’ll take it.
Ones with scary answers, too.
Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America?
Offhand, I’d say the answer depends on which military we’re talking about here. Is it the higher-ranking officers put in place by the Obama junta after Jugears McNoChest had spent purging the military of nearly all its actual military types and replaced them with PC dweebs, FOBbits, REMFs, and Blue Falcons uninterested in, y’know, winning wars—preferring instead to humiliate its enlisted ranks by forcing them to march on parade in stripper-pumps? Or would it be the crusty old lifer Senior Chiefs, Gunnies, and Command Sar-Majors, who must be scratching their heads in puzzlement by now over the atrocity that’s been wrought on what was once, long ago, the most effective, well-trained, and just plain dangerous military in existence?
Because one of those things is NOT like the other.
Between the perma-coup against the American people, the mainstream media’s myriad and shameless lies, and the Democrats’ election fraud agenda (including the Golden Ticket to anarchy that is mail-in voting), it is absolutely clear that the Democrats will not accept Donald Trump’s impending victory. It is also clear that their plan is to sow chaos when they lose, with outright ballot box-stuffing, riots, and endless counts and recounts, so that they can obscure Trump’s win enough to create a patina of fake doubt about the result. Then they will rush into some Hawaiian courtroom and get some Hawaiian judge to announce that the Delaware Basement Crustacean won the election. The idea is to then have a deus ex militaria where somehow the establishment gets reestablished forever at gunpoint. And the liberal elite is said establishment.
Look at CNN and see the endless parade of fully semi-automatic Obama generals babbling like idiots about how Trump is ruining their sweet gigs, though they don’t put it quite that way. Look at the appalling Chairman of the Joint Chiefs apologizing for following the elected president’s lead. And, especially, look at their horror that America is ending those endless wars.
Those are the generals, and they have the elite’s back, not yours. A general who said “all lives matter” or refused to buy the ridiculous but fashionable notion that America’s greatest strategic threat is the weather a century hence or uttered some other heresy would not be a general much longer – and certainly not cash in on a sweet post-retirement gig at Boeing.
But most Americans don’t see that. Because America remembers the military of 30 years ago that could actually win a war in a reasonable period of time (as we did in Desert Storm), today’s generals benefit from residual respect for yesterday’s Cold War military. Americans are unaware of the devastated culture cultivated by our military senior leadership. Here’s the ruinous legacy of today’s generals: Afghanistan is a disaster and still not won, ships colliding and catching fire due to gross failures of leadership, boats of sailors on tape whimpering as they surrender to the Iranian Navy, senior officers leaking to the media, colonels, generals and admirals getting court-martialed, massive prosecutorial misconduct by JAGs, woke West Point (which recently graduated an open communist), and troops kneeling before rioters. It’s a military that puts Diversity Day before D-Day.
We know we cannot trust this generation of generals to stand up for freedom, but I’d like to think that a good portion of the troops would refuse to enter civilian politics in favor of the anti-American left. Yet, I would have also liked to think that we’d never see law enforcement officers eagerly obeying the fascist decrees of liberal poohbahs. The sight of overeager Barney Fifes hassling citizens about piehole thongs made it clear that for some people oaths come behind the giddy joy of power and keeping their pensions.
And yet here we all are, alas. The really scary part comes at the very end:
Sadly, we cannot rely on the generals to not make the error. Let’s just hope that the danger is mooted because Trump’s margin of victory is so great that the Democrats cannot cheat.
It won’t be, I assure you; mail-in voting will see to that all by itself, plus whatever other fraudulent skullduggery the megalomaniacal Democrat-Socialist flim-flam men can dream up too. Not a single peep from any of you people claiming that “they can’t” do this or that “they wouldn’t dare” do that, either. They’ll be “finding” and counting “votes” behind closed doors for however long they need to—even into early January if necessary—until they have enough to “prove” they won.
Doubt me? Don’t. See Al Franken, election of, just for one example. Small potatoes though it may seem now, remember ye well that the election of “Senator” Franken ended up being decisive in snaking Obamacare through the Senate and driving a stake through the heart of American health care forever.
Even if Trump should somehow pull off a true miracle and win so overwhelmingly that his victory is impossible for the Left bunco artists to deny or subvert, the rioting will intensify by orders of magnitude until we’re all so fed up we just start gunning Libtards down on sight. No matter how the Last American Election shakes out, things are looking to get mighty sporty indeed in its aftermath.
The truly dismaying thing to me is that I can remember a time when to so much as pose such a question would seem utterly preposterous on the face of it, dismissible with a snort and an airy wave of the hand. Not now, though. We’ve come a long way, baby.
The entire restaurant industry is “on the brink” of economic collapse as COVID-19 shutdowns and restrictions have cut sales nearly in half in some cities, according new figures released by the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
The group estimates that five out of six restaurants face permanent closure, and up to 16 million jobs could be lost.
Well-known TV chef Andrew Zimmern is behind a new TV ad detailing the restaurant industry’s politically-induced woes. The ad is narrated by Morgan Freeman who intones in that way of his that restaurants are “facing extinction.”
This comes as no surprise. The restaurant industry has high fixed costs and razor-thin profit margins typically not much better than 3%.
Already successful restauranteurs will take hits, sure, but it’s the mom & pop places — and all the people they employ — whose businesses, savings, and dreams will be crushed by this economic collapse.
“Two weeks to flatten the curve” has morphed into “however long it takes to crush the economy.”
That’s not COVID-19. That’s your city or state government at work.
The destruction so wantonly wrought on this country by an unholy combination of power-drunk demi-tyrants, opportunistic Democrat-Socialist politicians, a wholly-complicit media establishment, and a fearful, easily-stampeded populace is way beyond criminal.
He’s the blibbering, blundering exemplar of absolutely everything wrong with American politics today.
The thing about Joe Biden is, he’s never had a firm grip on reality. Perhaps not in the “mental decline” sense, but in a very real sense nonetheless.
Everyone is the hero of their own story, but Joe is the super-hero who saves the planet on a regular basis. All throughout his career, when talking about himself, he embellished and flat-out lied in ways that made himself look “more” than he was.
Sometimes he lied for sympathy, as in the case of the tragic death of his first wife and daughter, which he has claimed involved a drunk driver. But no alcohol was involved. And sometimes he lied to simply make himself seem involved, like when he claimed to have participated in the Civil Rights Movement when he did not.
What kind of a man does such things? He was much younger, so senility wasn’t yet a factor. The only rational answer is that he is a profoundly insecure man.
Insecure? Nah, I have a much better answer than that: he’s an evil, contemptible reprobrate, dishonest and self-seeking to his very marrow, rotten through and through. I admit, though, that amongst the listed examples of Senile Uncle Gropey’s detestable nature, I had forgotten about this blast from the past:
“I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect,” Joe famously responded to a man asking about his education during his 1987 run for president. “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” he continued.
“The first year in law school I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class. And then decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class,” Biden boasted. He then went on to list a bunch of law school accomplishments which, it turns out, were all untrue.
Everything Joe said in that exchange was untrue. He didn’t have an academic scholarship; he hadn’t won a moot court competition; he wasn’t listed as an outstanding student. Even though his claim of being in the “bottom two-thirds” of his class and finishing in the “top half” makes no sense because there’s enormous overlap between the two, he actually finished 76th in a class of 85 students.
Those lies were exposed by none other than the New York Times in 1987, back when they were a newspaper.
Heh. I see what you did with that nice little double-smack there, Derek.
What’s remarkable about this isn’t how reflexively dishonest ol’ Gropey is, but how stupid he must be to tell these easily-disproven whoppers thinking he won’t get called on it. Then again, though, throughout his over-extended career of grubbing at the public trough and befouling everything within reach he’s done it over and over—in some cases doing real injury to innocent people who found themselves caught with their butts in the blades of the Biden sleaze mchine, as with Gropey’s egregious smear against the “drunk driver”—without ever paying any price for it at all. Well, unless you count having his home-state idiots voting him back into office for interminable decades as some kind of punishment, that is.
A stirring, if bleakly realistic, call to arms.
America is at a crucial moment in history when one system has failed and all wait and wonder what the new system will be. Very likely, with all of the momentum in the direction of tyranny and force, it will be an ugly, miserable system. While they might hope for a resurgence of American freedom, the opposite has been steadily built on top of that very freedom, smothering it for decades, piling rules and regulations on top of one another until their weight is so great that freedom is no longer known, much less imagined or brought into the light.
It is not enough to win an election. It is not enough to reverse the ruthless penalties brought onto the heads of those laboring to survive not only the pandemic, but the economic disaster it wrought. It is not enough to beg for what little freedom is left. One must be rabidly anti-communist. One must thirst for freedom, demand it beyond all restraint, settle for nothing less than an eradication of the small ministerial laws that sneak communism into every corner of the republic, for that is the root of all we see today. That is the root of Antifa/BLM and Revcom. It is the normalizing of force, the institutionalizing of extortion. Even one law that places the state above the individual is one too many. That one law becomes a guidepost for imprisoning a barber for cutting hair. To imagine that possibility is an affront to American freedom. It still rings with the sound of a thousand chains in the patriot’s head.
What comes to America after the election, no matter which way it goes, is a fight for the survival of American freedom. It is not something that can be done through elections. Each law that allowed petty tyrants to destroy the livelihoods of fellow citizens must be ripped out by the roots. Communist actors that enter the neighborhood must be forced out. If anything has been made abundantly clear over the past few months it is that the police will not help. They have lost the understanding of their oaths. They are subject to the whims of heretical politicians and that makes them dangerous to freedom, because they have no reasoning, no understanding of right and wrong, just instructions, whatever those instructions might be. They rely on no laws, no legislation, but respond to the orders of tyrants and dutifully obey. Breaking that relationship should be high on the agenda as well. There is room for reorganizing the police as so many communists demand, but reorganizing them to fit a model of freedom is just as easy and more necessary.
There will be a lot to do in the coming months. It will be an uphill fight with every institution against one’s efforts. Not even those on the side of freedom know what that means, they repeat it like a parrot, but do not know. Show them. The world waits your every move.
We can only hope it’s not already too late. But TL is correct right down the line with this one, of which you should read the all.
Sorry for the extended absence gang, but I seem to have incurred a rotator-cuff problem with my right shoulder so excruciating it’s pretty much rendered sitting at my desk and typing completely intolerable. Also, y’know, sitting, standing, lying down, driving, moving around, not moving around, and so on. Got some exercises I’m trying out to get some relatively not-screamingly-painful movement back, but until I do the pickings might be a little slim ’round these parts.
Do allow me to put up the most wonderful video in all of history, though, and don’t say I never gave ya nothin’. I promise, if you haven’t seen it already you’re gonna love it. And if you have, you’ll want to enjoy it again and again. To wit:
LOl heres the antifa ass whooping footage … i guess what started it was they attacked an oldman in wheelchair … you'll see(fckin twitter sucks i had to re-encode each one bc fckin idk) pic.twitter.com/1ryt43EPM8
— 🏴☠️👨user("/n/3/f/").adm1n=255()👨🏴☠️ (@nulluser10) August 9, 2020
RELAX, IT’S BASICALLY A PRO-BIKER PROTEST RALLY: Editorial: ‘Utter disaster.’ Allowing Sturgis rally to go on puts nation at risk.
Say I had heard that Antifa was going to try to disrupt things there. Any word on how that’s going?
And all the “public health” people complaining about this can go fuck yourselves. You squandered all your moral authority rushing to line up in favor of the Black Lives Matter protests because you valued politics more than health. Now nobody will listen to you, because you’re a joke. If people die because you squandered your credibility, that’s your fault. You’re not disgraces to your profession, you’ve made your profession a disgrace.
Bold mine, because OUCH THAT SMARTS. Anybody still willing to place a single micron of trust in Amerika v2.0’s lying, manipulative bureaucrat-shitweasel class is worse than a purblind damned fool at this late date—whether it’s regarding the Shanghai Sniffles swindle, or any other matter under the sun.
STILL think this is really about a virus, do ya?
Thou fool.
Physical distancing, mask-wearing could be in place for 2-3 years even with vaccine, Dr. Tam warns. COVID-19 vaccine won't be a 'silver bullet,' chief public health officer says. https://t.co/hJ4rqD5qGz
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) August 4, 2020
She really thinks Canadians will put up with that!
I pray she’s wrong, and that we don’t put up with it.
There’s never even ever been a vaccine for coronaviruses; who’s to say we’ll even get one, so, what, we’ll remain locked down indefinitely?
NOW you’re getting it, buddy. I repeat: goalposts. On wheels. Forever and ever, amen. As for “not putting up with it,” early indicators are extremely discouraging on that score, and by no means only in Canada, alas. Now for another one a bit closer to home, at least pour moi.
It’s truly incredible how we went from “we need a brief pause to build hospital capacity” in March to “we must indefinitely suspend any activities that could allow the virus to spread” in August. https://t.co/rFheB88iF0
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) August 6, 2020
My God, the balls on that sleazy sonofabitch.
They’re not even bothering with PRETENDING to try to fool us anymore. They’re just waving the bloated, blubbery Phallus Of Contempt—grotesquely engorged, an obscenity—right in our very faces, shamelessly defying the hapless Sheeple to utter Peep One of protest over it.
But hey, never mind all that stuff. Y’all just be sure and always wear your little Mask Of Submission now, y’heah? It’s IMPORTANT.
The top immunologists and epidemiologists in the world can’t decide if masks are helpful in reducing the spread of COVID-19. Indeed, we’ve seen organizations like the World Health Organization and the CDC go back and forth in their recommendations.
The truth is masks have become the new wedge issue, the latest phase of the culture war. Mask opponents tend to see mask wearers as “fraidy cats” or virtue-signalling “sheeple” who willfully ignore basic science. Mask supporters, on the other hand, often see people who refuse to wear masks as selfish Trumpkins … who willfully ignore basic science.
Whether one is pro-mask or anti-mask, the fact of the matter is that face coverings have become politicized to an unhealthy degree, which stands to only further pollute the science.
Last month, for example, researchers at Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy responded to demands they remove an article that found mask requirements were “not based on sound data.”
The school, to its credit, did not remove the article, but instead opted to address the objections critics of their research had raised.
The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective.
They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker, according to world-leading public health officials.
That is not just a violation of the Effectiveness Principle. It’s a violation of a basic personal freedom.
NOW you’re REALLY getting it, buddy. That’s precisely what they’ve done, all right; horrifying, to be sure. But even more horrifying is how handily they’ve gotten away with it so far. I dunno, it begins to look as if we may have waited a bit too late to start in on thumping the living daylights out of Ken and Karen a la my earlier post. We should’ve been doing it from jump, just on general principle.
An evening with Charles Bukowski, my own personal Poet Laureate.
The drunken, womanizing, raucously incorrect world of Charles Bukowski may seem out of touch with contemporary sensibilities. Yet, most of us in these quarantine times can learn how an uncensored night at home could be well spent from “You Never Had It — An Evening With Charles Bukowski,” coming to Kino Marquee virtual cinemas in the Bay Area starting Friday, Aug. 7.
Less than an hour long, this conversational documentary with the prurient poet of Los Angeles’ lower depths is remarkably rich with insights into the writing craft and business, sex and love, humanity’s lack of humanity, and more.
Unlike at his often rowdy and combative public readings, Bukowski comes off as a gently growling, even cordial host here. He’s funny as hell, knows it and is pleased to prove it. All while consuming copious amounts of wine and skinny, Indian bidi cigarettes.
Among many gems that came out of Bukowski’s mouth that January evening:
“Writers are very despicable people; plumbers are better people,” following a revelation that he declined an invitation to meet Jean-Paul Sartre while on a book tour in Paris. “I’m a writer.”
“Why is everything sex?” during a stretch of playful, if morbid, back-and-forth on their cream-colored couch with his future wife, Linda Lee Beighle. “Can’t I ride a bicycle down the street without thinking about sex?”
“Take all these people in the world,” he says at one point, chillingly foreshadowing what a lot of us have just come to realize in the last several years. “They’re more full of hate than they are love. This is our society. Let’s go with the flow, let’s not kid ourselves.”
This is one flick I’ll have to see, since I’ve been a huge fan of Bukowski’s work for many, many years now. I’ve always found his bloody-knuckled insights on the writing life to be arresting, pungent, and penetrating—maybe even more so than his other stuff, which doesn’t exactly pull any punches either. Exhibit A:
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you think they didn’t go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you’re doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you’re not ready.
Oof. Still makes the hair on back of my neck stand up, even after long years of familiarity with the man’s work and decades of dabbling myself in writing professionally, albeit writing of a very different style and sort. There are a few other poets I like a lot too, but only Bukowski can hit hard enough to stand you straight up and lay you out flat like that.
From a good and decent man, a man of courage and integrity, who also happens to be one of Amerika v2.0’s first true martyrs.
We are witnessing a vicious assault by enemies of all that is good, and our president is having to act in ways unprecedented in decades, maybe centuries.
The biblical nature of good versus evil cannot be discounted as we examine what is happening on the streets of America.
It’s Marxism in the form of antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement versus our very capable and very underappreciated law enforcement professionals, the vast majority of whom are fighting to provide us safe and secure homes, streets and communities.
We can no longer pretend that these dark forces are going to go away by mere prayer alone. Prayers matter, but action is required.
This action is needed at the local, state and federal levels. Action is also required in the economic, media, clerical and ecclesiastical realms.
Decide how you can act within your abilities. Stand up and state your beliefs. Be proud of who you are and what you stand for. And face, head-on, those community “leaders” who are willing to allow dark forces to go beyond peaceful protests and destroy and violate your safety and security.
Read all of it—and acknowledge, if you haven’t by now, that this is indeed war: REAL war, war to the knife, war for all the marbles.
If you haven’t noticed yet, our political life is rapidly descending into a series of charades with the potential for catastrophe. In case you think that a “charade” is just a parlor game, here is a dictionary definition: “an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance.” The peril created by false appearances in the current political climate is blindness in the face of the evil that threatens us.
…Republicans collude in these dangerous charades. Democrat leaders like Pelosi call Republicans Nazis, Russian agents, traitors. And Republicans respond: “Democrats are playing politics.” No they’re not. This is not the language of politics; it’s the language of war. It’s designed to destroy you. From the moment Trump emerged as victor in 2016, Democrats declared war on the president and therefore America, whose duly elected commander-in-chief he was. They also declared war on everyone associated with the White House and supporting its agendas. Republicans need to wake up. The most important decision they can make as we approach the November elections is to end the charade, accept that it is a war we are facing, and return the Democrats’ fire with fire.
Damned skippy, right down the line. Read all of this one too. It’s a short ‘un, but there’s some very sobering stuff tucked between my ellipses.
Your feel-good video of the week is a real delight, folks.
Yes, by all means, heed the title’s directive and WATCH. I promise you’ll feel a warm frisson of pure pleasure. Although I do have one small nit to pick, which I’ll get to anon.
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. – A bloody brawl broke out in Manhattan Beach after a couple confronted two men for not wearing masks, causing an argument that turned violent when the woman threw coffee into the face of one of the men.
The brawl was all caught on video, recorded by James Hernandez’s bodycam, which he says he has to wear as a Trump supporter.
“Because I wear a trump hat I’ve had a lot of confrontations, I guess,” he said.
His camera was rolling on Friday when he says he and his friend, Matthew Roy, were eating burritos outside without masks on, and a couple criticized them.
“Y’all need to be wearing masks,” the woman can be heard saying.
“No we don’t,” Hernandez replies. “We’re locals here but were on the other side of the fence, we don’t believe in this stuff.”
“I hadn’t even gotten to start eating the burrito yet before someone wanted to give me a mask lecture,” Roy said.
Roy says the woman then stuck her middle finger in his face, and tensions escalated further until she threw her coffee in his face.
Roy immediately gets up, and begins punching the woman’s boyfriend in response.“She decided to slam her coffee into my head and that’s when I decided to get up and beat up her boyfriend,” Roy said.
Which he did, slinging Karen’s stupid-cunt ass around a little as well, just for good measure. Which is where my quibble comes in. The problem: He stopped with the righteous ass-whuppin’ way, WAY too soon.
I am deadly, deadly serious about this right here: There should be many, many repeats of this action, all over the country. BUT…these beatings should NEVER end prematurely. They should, they must continue until the sniveling COVIDIOTS are bleeding profusely on the ground, a bedraggled mess of torn flesh, broken bones, and loosened teeth, completely incapable of struggling to their feet and staggering away under their own power. Otherwise, the salutary purpose of ramming a most useful lesson right down the throats of these meddlesome, self-righteous busybodies will fail to really stick.
And we can’t be having that, now can we? Ah well, enjoy the vid anyway; as they say, the journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. And while we’re embedding videos here, I dunno, but somehow the star-belly sneeches getting their just comeuppance above reminded me all to hell and gone of the lyrics to this old classic.
They matter far more than you might realize.
Due to the draconian responses to COVID-19, America has been seeing the temporary triumph of the new ax wielders. A whole network of institutions that are the bedrock of neighborhoods are under attack, including shops, bars, pubs, restaurants, concert halls, movie theaters and churches. Even some church choirs are silenced by a ‘no singing’ rule.
The smashers of neighborliness and camaraderie are, like Carrie Nation, doing so in the name of righteousness and the improvement of American’s physical health—a principle that seems fair enough.
But if the health of Americans was truly the issue, there would not be so much arbitrariness and inconsistent application of rules and regulations. The people who are under the laws of the new Prohibition can see the inconsistencies clearly. It seems odd to them that COVID-19 virus is apparently far more active in churches, small businesses, and eateries, than it is in densely packed crowds of protestors whose righteous ideology apparently immunizes them from the virus’s deleterious effects.
It even would be acceptable if it were a sensible means of protecting one’s and others’ health. Most reasonable people are open to sensible precautions. But even when the State has allowed the denizens of the cities and small towns it is “protecting” from the virus to gather, government officials continue to regulate venues in ways that have nothing to do with health but which make the public discourse and camaraderie of bars, cafes and eateries nearly impossible.
For example, recently the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board updated their COVID guidelines to define the acceptable purchase of alcohol at a restaurant or bar. If you want a drink, you have to purchase a meal, defined as “food prepared on the premises, sufficient to constitute breakfast, lunch or dinner.” Just to be absolutely clear, “a snack, such as pretzels, popcorn, chips, or similar food, does not meet the definition of a meal.” Also, no drinking after eating your meal! “Additional drinks may be purchased while the customer is consuming the meal, but no further drinks may be purchased after the meal is finished.”
Not only is the customer told when, where and how to eat and drink, but more arbitrary regulations ensure no friendly give and take is allowed. Customers who formerly enjoyed shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow discussions have been replaced with expressionless, masked and muffled anonymous clients who sit at tables six feet apart from one another, only daring to lower their masks to eat, not to talk. Meanwhile, the familiar senior citizen coffee klatsches at McDonald’s have been abruptly disbanded and sausage biscuits are now impersonally dispensed from the takeout window.
What do all of the minute regulations have to do with public health? Not very much.
One cannot help but wonder if in addition to suppressing free discourse, something else is at work; namely H.L. Mencken’s view of puritanism, which he called “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
People who knew who you are and with whom you amiably rubbed elbows at the bar or in the pew, are now excised from your life. At the local café, it’s been your neighbor you’ve been talking with. It’s your neighbor whose business you’ve been supporting. The camaraderie, humor and mutuality of belonging to the human race is there at the local tavern. The mutuality of the faith community that recites creeds, sings hymns and prays together is found when meeting in person, not in cyberspace. ‘Tavern’ and ‘tabernacle’ spring from the same Latin root, taberna.
Just as bad, the demise of the familiar pub, the neighborhood restaurant and cafes; and the shutting down of church fellowships seems to have left protest marches as the only viable outlets for free speech.
Something is profoundly wrong with a society when the only acceptable and freely chosen social gatherings are protest marches rather than humble camaraderie as the unifying emotion. Something’s desperately amiss when the chief form of socialization is angry protest. It’s on the local level that true diversity exists, not on the macro stage with blaring megaphones drowning out all other voices.
Those whom you would rule, you first make afraid: dehumanize them, demoralize them, isolate them, confine them, terrorize them. Anybody out there seriously think the Left doesn’t understand all that, better than anybody ever has?
Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…
If you are, like me, stuck in a state where coronavirus restrictions have turned your life upside down, bankrupted your business, and traumatized your kids, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you might be considering a big relocation. There are plenty of states that are retaining liberty in spite of the Chinese flu virus that has a 99% recovery rate. If you are considering fleeing your state for a new one, then look into the following five states that scored the highest in a data-collection study by the financial site WalletHub, showing which states have the fewest coronavirus restrictions. (Please note that coronavirus restrictions change daily. It is possible that by the time this is published one or more of these guidelines will have changed so verify before you pick up and move.)
After the list, she appends a “Whither Texas” update at the bottom that is, frankly, quite depressing.
Sadly, shockingly, Texas does not make the list of places I would move anymore. The left has taken over the major cities in Texas. Invaders from California, bringing their politics with them, have made Texas a place that needs major rehab. Coronavirus restrictions are also quite stringent and Texas ranked as the 46th-worst state for restrictions on freedom in the WalletHub study. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? We should all consider that winning a presidency without Texas is going to be damn near impossible. So for that reason alone, it might be a place to move if your goal is moving to politically strategic places. But don’t expect an abundance of freedom in Texas. Those days are over.
It would seem so, alas. Progtard locusts have the most amazing ability to destroy our liberty, independence, and dignity no matter where the swarm ends up.
Odd how closely it parallels our farcical post-9/11 Security Theater, innit? Why, it’s almost as if the goobermint only has one tune in the whole hymn book.
If you go to a restaurant in Gotham right now, you might be subjected to a temperature check. It’s no big deal, it takes a second — but it’s pointless; plenty of COVID-positive people don’t have a fever. So why do we do it? It’s part of a growing trend of COVID-19 security theater. We do things that have no bearing on our actual safety but that make us feel safe.
Take masks. It makes sense to wear masks inside businesses or for any close contact with strangers.
But why are people wearing them outside, when they’re not near anybody? Neighborhood message boards across the country are filled with complaints like: “I saw a bicyclist without a mask today!”
The problem is messaging from the top. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus guru, is the man we all look to for direction. In March, he said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Now he’s gung-ho, yet his mask instruction is very convoluted.
He wore a mask to throw out the first pitch at the Opening Day game at Nationals Park — while standing more than 60 feet away from the nearest person. Then he sat down in the stands with his wife and friend, and they all took turns wearing and removing their masks.
In restaurants in New York, you must wear a mask to your seat. But then you take it off to eat, drink and talk, which is clearly where all the danger lies.
Not to worry; once the dwindling few NYC restaurants still hanging on by their fingernails are driven under too, that little conundrum pretty much solves itself. Of course, the, ummm, flexible standards the “elite” hold themselves to are yet another indicator that this whole shamdemic thing is just so much smoke. But speaking of NYC, there IS some truly hilarious news:
The governor of New York has begged the city’s wealthy, who fled the coronavirus outbreak, to return and help it recover.
Andrew Cuomo said he was extremely worried about New York City weathering the Covid-19 aftermath if too many of the well-heeled taxpayers who fled to second homes decide there is no need to move back.
“They are in their Hamptons homes, or Hudson Valley or Connecticut. I talk to them literally every day. I say. ‘When are you coming back? I’ll buy you a drink. I’ll cook,’ “ Mr Cuomo told MSNBC, naming popular getaways for the rich.
Lawmakers have proposed a wealth tax targeting the city’s 100 billionaires to help fill a $30 billion (£23bn) budget shortfall created by the Covid-19 crisis.
However, Mr Cuomo, a Democrat, said he could not support greater taxes on the ultra-wealthy as rich people already have one foot out of New York City and he fears they will leave for good if their taxes go up.
Instead, he wants the federal government and New York’s congressional representatives to send billions of dollars in aid.
LOLGF, asshole-eyes.
Update! What the hell, more NYC hilarity.
.@NYCMayor: I’m laying off 22,000 city workers if the feds don’t give us a bailout pic.twitter.com/iWkSh4N8yJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 4, 2020
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." – Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." — Daniel Webster
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged." - GK Chesterton
"The only way to live free is to live unobserved." - Etienne de la Boiete
"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil." - Skeptic
"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork." - David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar
"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine." - Joseph Goebbels
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” - Ronald Reagan
"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it." - NC Reed, from Parno's Peril
"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in." - Bill Whittle
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