Roll, Tumbrels, Roll
Posted By: sagman, 11/8/2022 5:33:48 PM
Ten years ago, back in the halcyon days when we simpletons believed the Republicans were at least some of the time an opposition party, and that Willard Mitt Romney was a man of probity and character, I wrote the following in the pages of National Review Online about the election that was about to take place. The piece was entitled "Crush Them." Conservatives have a rare opportunity [today] to do something they signally failed to do in the landslide elections of 1972 and 1984: finish the job.
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sagman"
The Bible holds that “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise…” (Proverbs 17:28.) In the modern era, with attribution to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, or others, that’s been reworked as “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s latest embittered statements about the documents the FBI stole from Mar-a-Lago place him squarely within that quotation.
In the government, where it’s almost impossible to get fired, those who stick around long enough become respected, even revered. That’s especially true for attorneys who work in the Department of Justice.
he cancer of early voting tightened its deadly grip on the American body politic in last week’s midterm elections. This is yet another destructive outcome of Nov. 8.
The mad rush toward early voting accelerated thanks to another disease: COVID-19. Like so many things wrong in America today, COVID lurks just beneath the surface. Because voting in person was “too dangerous,” opportunistic Democrat lawyers sued like ambulance chasers in 2020 to widen and deepen early voting beyond its earlier, lower profile. This year, with COVID in the rear-view mirror, 2020’s “emergency” measure has become the new normal. The Democrats’ ever-leftward ratchet mechanism always works this way.
Roll, Tumbrels, Roll
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Ten years ago, back in the halcyon days when we simpletons believed the Republicans were at least some of the time an opposition party, and that Willard Mitt Romney was a man of probity and character, I wrote the following in the pages of National Review Online about the election that was about to take place. The piece was entitled "Crush Them."
Conservatives have a rare opportunity [today] to do something they signally failed to do in the landslide elections of 1972 and 1984: finish the job.
I never would have expected that I’d be one of those codgers who tools around in a vintage automobile, but circumstances dictated that I am. (snip) But the guy who fixes the Explorer, who knows what I do, asked me an interesting question when I brought the vehicle in.
“Scott, do you think it’s ever going back to normal?” he said.
He’s struggling to keep his shop open. He’s fixing cars himself, which he thought he was past doing, and he’s got to supervise the people who do show up to work at his place like a hawk because workmanship is a lost art.
President Joe Biden’s speech warning about an assault against American democracy — by Donald Trump and his core followers — was an election-season call to arms unlike anything in modern American history. [Snip] Aides said that Biden had been planning to give a version of Thursday night’s address since this past June, relaying he wanted to speak on what he saw as increasingly grave threats to the nation’s democracy. But events continued to get in the way of its delivery. Pressure built over the past few weeks, they said, amid a number of developments.
The Show Trial Is Back
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The judges also acted as jury. Their guilty verdict was inevitable — one of them, I.T. Nikitchenko, declared prior to the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal on which he served that judicial impartiality would “lead to unnecessary delays.” – Piers Brendon writing on Stalin’s show trials.
They’re baaaack.
Like a horror flick that has been sequeled out and prequeled out to the last dollar, the Orange Man horror show has come back. Or maybe it’s the old circus, with Adam Schiff, channeling P. T. (There’s a sucker born every minute”) Barnum, calling out, “Hurry, hurry, hurry into the Big Top!”
"Victory has a thousand fathers," said John F. Kennedy, "but defeat is an orphan." By that measure, America is running a military establishment that more closely resembles an overpopulated Dickensian sweat shop than a modern war machine. Indeed, it's been so long since the United States has won a war -- back when the War Department still existed, in fact -- that hardly any living American knows what "victory" means any more. But what difference does it make? This man's army is now the province of pregnant females, transsexuals, and born-male admirals in skirts. No wonder it can't fight.
As I write, on January 6, 2022, I’m reminded that sometimes government doesn’t go right.
Too often, it has been because of oppression — governments only caring about some of the people and riding roughshod over the rest. They paper over the tyranny with the appearance of legality, deepening the oppression by requiring mental and spiritual enslavement to the this caricature as if it were legitimate.
But even well-conceived nations can err. Constitutionalists know that even the best systems of law will miscarry. Juries get it wrong, sometimes wrongly convicting innocent people, sometimes failing to convict real criminals.
Fight the American Stasi with Mockery
14 replies
In a 2019 article for The Atlantic, “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance,” Charlotte Bailey explores how many of the thousands of Germans who were victims of the The Ministry for State Security—commonly known as the Stasi—still suffer from psychological trauma. The Stasi were part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Before its collapse in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the GDR, as Bailey describes, “went to extraordinary lengths to spy on and control its citizens.”
Rubio and the Tech Robber Barons
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America took a jump backward about 100 years last week, and it was an interesting sight to see.
At issue was Sen. Marco Rubio and an op-ed he wrote for USA Today. Rubio announced a surprising change of position — specifically, that he backed Amazon workers at a facility in Bessemer, Alabama, in their effort to unionize against the e-tail giant.
Republicans throwing in behind unions? Is this a sign of the apocalypse?
You’d think so, but according to Rubio’s op-ed it isn’t much of a sea change in the GOP’s economic policy. Instead, he’s taking the stance as a result of Amazon’s toxicity in the culture wars:
We have Had Enough Lockdown
11 replies
Take off the masks and remove the “social distancing” circles from the floors. Open the schools, liberate college campuses, fill the restaurants and the gyms and the churches and the salons. Enough.
If 2020 wasn’t twisted enough, the current political imbroglio centers around a verboten visit to a California boutique for a routine blow-out. (Snip) The incident is the latest in a series of “rules for thee but not for me” gut punches from the ruling class; whether it’s mask-free trips to the park or crowded funerals for anointed heroes or casual meals munched indoors, the government-ordered shutdowns apply to everyone except the sadists running government who order said shutdowns.
Trump and His Campaign
Are Being Outclassed 39 replies
Are Being Outclassed 39 replies
Joe Biden delivered a solid, if overhyped, speech last night accepting his party’s nomination for the highest office in the land. It effectively put a cap on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and summed up the Democrats’ case thus: Joe Biden is a good and kind man; Donald Trump is not. Biden’s decency has been hugely exaggerated, as my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru has explained at Bloomberg Opinion, but he does seem a Boy Scout compared with his opponent. (Snip) Trump and his team have played right into Biden’s hands too.
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Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is doubling down on his belief that former President Donald Trump is the wrong choice for Republicans in 2024, saying he would not support Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee for president.
“There are too many people like me in the Republican Party who would not support him if he were the nominee, and that is why I don’t think he’ll be the nominee,” Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview.
WASHINGTON— The U.S. military on Saturday shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America. China insisted the flyover was an accident involving a civilian aircraft and threatened repercussions.
President Joe Biden issued the order but had wanted the balloon downed even earlier, on Wednesday. He was advised that the best time for the operation would be when it was over water, U.S. officials said.(Snip) ..(Video) China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticized the U.S. for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”
The Biden administration was aware of the Chinese spy balloon entering United States airspace on January 28 but tried to hide its existence from the American public until being forced to go public, according to a report on Saturday. Bloomberg News reported that the Biden administration was “well aware” that the balloon had entered U.S. airspace on Saturday, January 28, but decided to keep quiet about it so as not to ruin a planned trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China.
Fighter jets shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic today after Joe Biden vowed to 'take care of it' and the FAA shutdown three airports in the Carolinas.
The balloon was seen bursting at 2.38pm and its payload - the metal structure carrying its cameras - appeared to have been separated as it plummeted towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.
The Biden administration confirmed the shoot-down order around 2pm after the President this morning vowed, 'We're gonna take care of it,' as he stepped off Air Force One at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, upstate NY.
Anne Holton, wife of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), denounced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as “fundamental in enshrining slavery.”
Holton made the comments as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) new history standards were approved 5-3 by the Commonwealth’s Board of Education, upon which she sits. She said:
To an audience as inclusive as our Virginia is, you cannot reference the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as ‘remarkable documents’ without also acknowledging that they [are] fundamental in enshrining slavery, and limiting the protections that they provided only to white property-owning men.
Bloomberg, which exists to serve active traders on Wall Street, is throwing shade on the January jobs report that “surprised” a lot of people with its positive numbers. Before addressing the technical factors used to produce the rosy numbers, consider the buried lede hundreds of words into the piece. Stripped of all the technical jargon is this stark reality:
"On an unadjusted basis, payrolls actually fell by 2.5 million last month."
Joe Biden praised the Top Gun fighter jet pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina today after he vowed to 'take care of it.'
An F-22 Raptor out of Langley Air Force base took the balloon down with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2.38pm, separating its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.
Footage showed the jet screaming towards the spy aircraft before firing the missile as stunned locals watched from the coast.
An operation was underway to recover the wreckage and retrieve any valuable intelligence before it sinks into the ocean.
Houston activists call for arrest of armed
taqueria diner who shot, killed robbery suspect 28 replies
taqueria diner who shot, killed robbery suspect 28 replies
Community activists in Houston are calling for a restaurant patron who shot and killed a robbery suspect during a holdup to be arrested, saying he went beyond self-defense despite many calling him a hero.
Customers were eating inside a local taqueria when 30-year-old Eric Eugene Washington entered and pointed a pistol at them and demanded cash. As he gathered the cash, an armed patron can be seen on surveillance video getting up from the booth he was sitting in and shooting his pistol at Washington multiple times.
"He was within the law when he fired the first initial shots," said activist Quanell X in a
Three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s not uncommon to see people wearing masks in public. I try not to judge people when I see someone wearing a mask; after all, the person may have a legitimate need to wear a mask.
But what I’ve noticed is that there seem to be a lot of healthy younger people — teenagers and people in their early 20s — who wear masks often, and I have a difficult time understanding it.
I’ve had a theory about this phenomenon for some time. I think some people like to keep masking because it makes them feel anonymous. I’m convinced that some people
The U.S. was able to collect valuable information on China’s surveillance capabilities while observing the spy balloon as it traversed the continental U.S. for several days, a senior military official and senior defense official claimed Saturday.
President Joe Biden asked for possible military options for removing the threat of the suspected Chinese spy balloon Tuesday, but the Department of Defense (DOD) opted against doing so Wednesday over concerns falling debris could endanger civilians, officials said at a briefing Saturday. However, they did not clarify whether a military option was considered when the craft transgressed U.S. airspace over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28,
Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene took a below-the-belt shot at one of her congressional colleagues Friday in a spicy Twitter exchange.
The Georgia Republican invoked Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) purported dalliance with suspected Chinese honeytrap Christine Fang, aka Fang Fang, after the California Democrat made a bawdy joke at the expense of Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), who has spent the week passing out AR-15-shaped lapel pins to pro-Second Amendment House members.
White female professor endeavors to help
‘damaging’ white people dismantle
their ‘whiteness 26 replies
‘damaging’ white people dismantle
their ‘whiteness 26 replies
A white, female Willamette University professor is scheduled to host a veritable struggle session this month at a local library “for white people to reflect together on what it means to ‘do our work’ as white people.”
The professor, Emily Drew, predictably “teaches courses about racism, white supremacy, immigration, and social change,” according to a biography.
“Her research agenda revolves around understanding how race and racism get institutionalized, with the goal of helping to illuminate more effective strategies for interrupting systemic inequality,” the biography reads.
She also performs work for Crossroads, an “antiracism” consulting form whose mission centers on “dismantling racism” and “building racial justice in institutions.”
Comments:
Walsh says better than anyone else what's at stake today and what should follow if Democrats do get blown away.