Wednesday, December 31, 2014

How the game is played.

It is becoming readily apparent that virtually all the money that changes hands between members of the press/business/government classes are bribes: speeches, book deals, board memberships, think-tank gigs. Our Government and elite classes are every bit as corrupt as that of Pakistan – just in a somewhat different way.[1]
As examples of which, off the top of my head:
  • Michelle Obama's ultra lucrative, half-time hospital job after BHO was elected to the Illinois State Senate. (Heck of a lawyer . . . while she still had her license.)
  • Hillary Clinton's astronomical speaking fees. (Wisdom for the ages.)
  • Former U.S. diplomats with responsibilities relating to Saudi Arabia ending up in lucrative think tanks (funded by S.A.) after retirement. (Vigilance against America's enemies.)

Notes
[1]  Comment by Mr. Anon on "Promoting the Apocalypse. You'll be dead before you know it." By Philip Giraldi, The Unz Review, 12/16/14.

The Cop Conundrum

What with Ferguson, Eric Garner, and the assassinations of Liu and Ramos, we’ve certainly heard enough about the police this year...or have we?

There’s a problem here. We don’t really know, objectively, about the quality of America’s police forces or whether they use their authority generally within the parameters of the law. It’s becoming one of the most discussed subjects in the Commentariat, though the typical opinion-monger seems reluctant to come down firmly on one side or the other. Consider the following statement from our favorite Graybeard:

“On balance, though, I come down with the guys who say that most cops are not bad cops...”

Graybeard may be right, but he may be wrong – and there are institutional barriers that prevent anyone outside them from knowing which position is more accurate.


What is a policeman, in the American context of our time? He’s a municipal or state employee, protected by a powerful union and laws akin to those that protect civilian Civil Service employees, and effectively answerable only to his superiors in the police hierarchy. He’s been granted certain legal privileges – already we’re in murky waters – and a default presumption of justification regarding his uses of coercive force. He may have had some training in police procedure and the restrictions on his activities, though the smaller the district and its police force, the less certain that will be.

What does this policeman do? More to the point:

  • What must he do?
  • What may he do?
  • What must he not do?
...ex officio?

The “must” part has grown very slender. Recent Supreme Court decisions have decreed that, regardless of the prevalent conceptions, the police have no “duty to protect” and no “duty to intervene.” If you deem yourself to be in danger, the problem is yours, even if the police agree with your assessment. You can be in the midst of an actual criminal victimization, yet the police have no duty to intervene to stop it or to protect you, even if they can see it happening before their own eyes.

The “may” part has become very broad. For example, numerous court decisions have ruled that all a policeman needs to detain you is “reasonable suspicion” that you are or have been involved in a crime. What constitutes “reasonable suspicion” has proved remarkably flexible. A cop who wants to search your car can simply say “I smell marijuana,” and suddenly the most invasive imaginable search is “reasonable,” no matter what his original reason was for detaining you. Regardless of any and all circumstances, you are not allowed to refuse his “lawful order” – yet another serious departure from American norms.

The “must not” part has effectively vanished. State and local police forces have become quasi-military bodies. They’ve been equipped with large amounts of military-grade hardware that no private citizen would be permitted to own. They frequently stage violent intrusions and “no-knock” raids on private institutions and private homes. Most of the time, they have court authorizations for those activities...but often on suppositions that later prove to have been wrong, or based on testimony or “evidence” that was convenient but fictitious. Despite all that, courts have ruled that persons subjected to such treatment do not have a right to resist it – that any violence committed in the process of resistance will be held against the citizen, not the police.

To these eyes, it would appear that the incentives pertaining to police and policing have headed in the wrong direction, and are rather far down the road at that.


The incentives of power dictate that over time, power-positions will be filled by an increasing percentage of persons who love power more than all other things. The test of power resides in its use; if you’re not using it, you can’t be certain you possess it. That would suggest that, in the two centuries since the formation of municipal police forces, the percentage of persons in police forces who are there because they love power rather than justice or public service has risen steadily.

Still, even though incentives are important, justice demands that we address the actual behavior of American police. We cannot assume that because the incentives are perverse, therefore the typical cop is merely a thug with a badge. The problem here is that without the cooperation of governmental sources, including police departments, that have a natural interest in keeping us outside their walls, determining the justice and appropriateness of police behavior is next to impossible.

For example, we are told, though not by official sources, that 1089 civilians died at police hands during 2014. Semi-official sources tell us that from 2004 through 2013, an average of 55 policemen were killed each year in the performance of their duties. The ratio might be meaningful, but stripped of context we can’t be sure. Who was doing what to whom (and why) at the time of the death in question? Such details aren’t always available...and when they are, they’re seldom complete or ironclad.

The judicial system is also involved. Consider a “no-knock” raid in which one of the occupants of the house is killed by the police...but it later emerges that the police raided the wrong house. Exactly such things have happened in recent years. Were the intruders not police, that would constitute felony murder by the plain words of the law. However, cops are almost never held to account for such events. Judicial deference to the police is seldom punctured.

All that having been said, there are surely some cops who aren’t merely thugs with badges, just as there are surely some who are that and nothing else. Our problems include both detoxifying the incentives toward thuggish behavior under color of police authority and protecting good cops from being lumped in with their not-good colleagues in blue.


Much police misbehavior stems from bad law: the unConstitutional firearms laws, the anti-drug laws, and the many “laws” that prohibit or restrict various kinds of peaceful commerce. In such cases, it’s easy to dismiss the matter by saying the cops are “only doing their jobs.” In point of fact, police discretion is usually involved to a considerable extent. It’s almost always exercised in a fashion that favors authority...and those persons favored by the police and officialdom.

An example: Where I live, a permit is required to operate a roadside coffee truck. Also, sanitary codes apply to such trucks. Most operators stake out specific spots on particular thoroughfares. Over time, they become known to the police. Relationships develop. Some such operators are conceded something akin to property rights over the spots they habitually occupy. The police then harass others who might stake out positions they deem “too close” to their favored operators, repeatedly (sometimes several times a day) demanding to see permits, conducting “inspections,” and generally making it plainly visible to potential customers that this operator is “on the outs” with the police.

There is nothing even remotely legal about this. Yet it has become commonplace on Long Island. That a number of coffee-truck operators have family ties to the police is surely not a coincidence.

Bad laws create and intensify the incentives to bad behavior. That includes bad police behavior.


The problem is stiff. Americans are generally disposed to believe that much of the above is unavoidable, perhaps even desirable. The rise in allegations of police misbehavior has caused rancor and tumult, but is unlikely to bring about substantial legal, judicial, or procedural changes. No outcome is certain, but the probabilities incline in the direction of an intensification of the “us versus them” attitude about the police that’s become prevalent on both sides of the “blue wall.”

There is no Last Graf. Be watchful, and wary about developments in your locale. Record any suspicious incidents in as much detail as possible. Get to know the cops who regularly appear in your neighborhood personally; personal relationships are one of the few deterrents to abuse available to the private citizen. And stay tuned.

Sen. McTerminator.

LaFaro accused the senator of engaging in the equivalent of “ethnic cleansing.” “For John McCain to have been so vindictive in his actions … It’s just amazing,” he said. “It’s been all-out war.”
More insight into the man also justly described as "Sen. McAmnesty," "Sen. Hands Across the Aisle," or the GOP's answer to Major T. J. "King" Kong.

Not the Colonel's favorite senator, let it be said.

"McCain's big purge." By Alex Isenstadt, Politico, 12/30/14.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Today's morsel of race realism.

The "why" isn't that hard to figure out but the following article is a stark description of what "is" in black America:
"Confessions of a Public Defender." By Michael Smith, American Renaissance, 5/9/14.

H/t: Nicholas Stix.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Civility Watch

Say, remember being harangued about civility? About how important it is to respect the other guy’s point of view and restrict ourselves to courteous methods of disagreement? Most of that came from the Obamunists. It was especially concentrated around the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords by a creep who proved to be a deranged left-wing nut. If memory serves, it was aimed almost exclusively at those of us who dared to criticize the president or his covey of fellators. You know, at us “racists.”

Let’s have a quick survey of civility-relevant incidents of the past few days:

This one actually strikes me as positive:

Overnight, Queens' Park Rangers players observed a moment of silence on the pitch ahead of their English Premier League match against Crystal Palace in London. The team is chaired by AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes.

The folks on that AirAsia flight probably hadn’t done anything to deserve their demises. That a soccer club should take a moment over their deaths is a nice touch, regardless of whether the CEO of AirAsia runs the club.

But that’s only the first of the morning’s entries. This one should disturb anyone familiar with the famous New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square:

On New Year's Eve, as the clock winds down on 2014, the powers that be will hope to be ringing in a new year that carries forward business as usual. That must not be allowed to go down because business as usual in Amerikkka includes wanton police murder of Black people. The refusal of grand juries in Ferguson and Staten Island to indict the cops who murdered Michael Brown and Eric Garner made this clear. So the powerful, beautiful and necessary outpourings that have disrupted this society's normal routine must continue and escalate on New Years Eve and into the New Year.

Kerry Picket at Breitbart adds:

The website urges protesters to bring signs, banners and whistles and links to the cities where New Years Eve celebrations should be crashed. New York, Houston, Los Angeles, New Haven, San Francisco, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Boston will endure a mass influx of anti-cop agitators.

Some protesters are already making threats for New Years Eve, according to The Gateway Pundit. One Twitter user declared: “F*ck 12 and u. PICK A sidE or die with em. #Ferguson #VonderritMyers Shawtown 211MOB New Years Eve Massacre Kill A Pig Night 12/31/2014.″

Just lovely...but perhaps not well thought out. New Yorkers have a very low tolerance for such things. City revelers are likely to greet such...protests in kind, if not worse. We shall see.

Let’s not neglect those lovable guys, the Muslims:

Three Muslim groups joined forces to organize a Saturday protest in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania invoking Koran scripture and the words of Malcolm X in announcing the “Muslims Mobilized Against Police Brutality” protest.

Muslim groups who coalesced to lead the protest charge were Muslim Wellness Foundation, Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, and United Muslim Masjid, a south Philadelphia mosque.

Ferguson National Response Network also promoted the Saturday demonstration. The group has promoted hundreds of protests and has been connected to Ferguson Action which recently held a “Transition and Transform” mass meeting.

Aren’t Muslims just the neatest possible addition to our melting pot? Considering that they don’t melt and never intended to?

Meanwhile, Bill de Blasio, the very first openly socialist mayor of New York City, wants you to know that the problem isn’t his policies or his pronouncements, it’s the media’s cheek in daring to report on them:

“What are you guys gonna do? Are you gonna keep dividing us?” de Blasio demanded of reporters, angry at them for daring to report the ugly behavior of certain demonstrators. You can tell from his body language that de Blasio feels the wall pressing hard against his back. He needed a scapegoat, fast, and chose one of the few institutions less respected than he is at the moment. That might not have been a smart pick, as politicians often learn when picking fights with the folks who buy ink by the barrel and pixels by the gigabyte.

To me, it appears that de Blasio, who’s already lost the support of the police, the firemen, and the municipal-employees unions, has reloaded his revolver and blown off all the toes on his other foot. But what else could we have expected from a left-wing politico who openly tried to ban horse-drawn carriages from the city so one of his cronies could seize the real estate that hosts their stables for redevelopment?

Finally, no round of vituperation would be complete without a roundhouse swipe at law-abiding firearms owners:

What country fetishizes, lionizes, valorizes, idolizes, and sacralizes guns as much as does our United States? OK, possibly Mozambique — the only country with an AK47 on its flag, but really, it's long past time to end this obsessive "My Precious" attachment of Americans to instruments of death.

This morning of Dec. 25, 2014, of the nine top stories from US Reuters, six were about shootings — four new ones and two about the national movement against shootings of citizens by police. This pandemic of sick violence, punctuated by mass killings of children, has gone on far, far too long. It is long past time to repeal the stupid Second Amendment....

Repeal the Stupid Second Amendment. Surround it, grab it, bring it in the back room, pull down the shades, and end it. OK, petition for it, get it on the ballot, and get it done by enough of the US populace, by enough people in enough states, to get it consigned to the dustbin of history.

The author of this remarkably tone-deaf editorial, which implicitly argues for the outlawing of some 80 to 100 million law-abiding Americans, is “PeaceVoice Director and teaches in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University in Oregon.” He clearly has no knowledge of history...or no interest in the inevitable sequel to a mass disarming of a nation’s citizenry. Or perhaps he has plans for the aftermath; most leftists imagine themselves as commissars rather than serfs. Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Well, that’s civility for you. Why be civil toward persons you’re utterly certain are either stupid or evil? Especially as their enthusiasms are the one and only firm control on a government creeping ever nearer to open totalitarianism?

Happy New Year, Gentle Reader. Myself, I’m off to the armory. The voices have told me it’s time to clean and oil all the guns.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Ho hum. Unsustainable debt loads.

The latest missing airliner will consume hours of MSM time in the immediate future. Nothing of the following reality will ever be discussed there or by politicians, and certainly not during an election:
If we look at only the US federal debt, a number that is in the news constantly, we see a chart that shows marked acceleration over the past twelve years.

And if you're thinking that perhaps the US can just continue to borrow from the rest of the world on this trajectory forever, have I got news for you. The rest of the developed economies are just as broke as we are, some even more so.

A 2013 study concluded that the world's developed economies were carrying over 375% of debt as compared to their gross domestic product, or GDP. Why is this important? Because if the total amount of debt is what a nation owes, then its GDP is its income.

In all of history we have exactly zero examples of any nation ever climbing out from under a debt load greater than 260%.

Money creation, fiscal excess, budgets, resource depletion, economic growth, the end of cheap energy, and population growth without limit are difficult matters to understand. Eventually, we'll all have our faces rubbed in them, however much we want to believe that the "war on women" is serious, state-of-the-art political analysis.

As the quote from Mr. Taggart shows, our use of debt cannot continue as before. There is no discussion in our public life of this issue, however, because too many people are invested in what can only be financed with huge annual debt (or crushing taxes).

It's the proverbial elephant in the living room that no one wants to acknowledge . . . but it's there. Importing millions of third-worlders will only add to the welfare burden and create untold headaches caused by lawfare and unassimilable foreigners who despise us. The Treason Class (including the GOP leadership) think that foreigners will clean up our mess for us by working for less and meekly catering to what we want, but this is wishful thinking.

Nothing in that strategy will change the realities of our bizarre inability to get a grip on how we use debt.

"The 'Accelerated' Crash Course." By Adam Taggart, Peak Prosperity, 6/25/14 or before.

H/t: Zero Hedge.

Friday, December 26, 2014

What is America's survival plan?

There is no American survival plan against Islamic subversion and terror. In fact, the entire Western world is in denial about the vile and deadly threat of Islam. Where there isn't active deception. We are in danger of being ruled by our inferiors. Islamic culture is just primitivism masquerading as a civilization.

Everything about it is sick.

Carol Brown lays out the basics of a plan to eradicate the threat here.

We all need to just cut the crap. We have set up a dynamic where if we do nothing the West will be inundated by its enemies. Unpleasant actions are required but inaction means something far more unpleasant for us in our own countries.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

It Probably Didn’t Occur On December 25...

...and it might not have been during the year we would today enumerate as 1 A.D...
...and there are many who say, most scornfully, that we are fools for believing that it happened at all...
...or for believing that there is an all-powerful Supreme Being who takes any slightest interest in Man...
...or that such a Being would permit His only begotten Son to be born as the son of a poor carpenter, and to suffer and die for our sakes...
...but I believe it:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

[The Gospel According To Luke, 2:1-19]

Choose according to the verdict of your hearts.

Very simply, y'all

A very Merry Christmas. Would that we could just celebrate it in the spirit intentioned.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Unspeakable truths.

As is frequently the case, comments on web articles are gold mines of wit and insight. Here are some outstanding comments (on the realities of black-white relations in the U.S.) on this article: "Eliminating Future Fergusons: The Unspeakable Solution." By Robert Weissberg, The Unz Reader, 12/17/14.

Shouting Thomas:

In other words, the entire civil rights movement of the 60s was a mistake and integration was a foolish idea.

I think that is probably true.

Whites (including me) thought that what blacks wanted was the white concept of “equality” and “justice.” That turned out not to be true. Blacks wanted quotas and racial revenge.

Blacks wanted whites to abandon their tribal identification and surrender what they had won, while blacks held on for dear life to their tribal identification and got a big share of what whites had.

rod1963
The problem with our largest cities today is largely due to 50 years of stupid, crooked politicians and businessmen mismanaging social policies for their own ends and inducing what amounts [to] a dysgenics program into the country’s urban centers with disastrous consequences. As a result our largest cities have become ticking time bombs, barely manageable in the best of times thanks to large segments of the population consisting of violent, low IQ wards of the state. Who can and will burn down the urban centers should their bread and circus cease for any reason.
Jimmy:
The approach of the white American southerner to race relations in the early 20th century is (very) slowly revealing some of it’s insight and wisdom when you look at the collapse of black America today. These whites who lived closely with blacks back then knew the nature of black people (in general) far better than their northern counterparts – to them, segregation and extra-legal retribution were just ways that social order could be maintained in black communities. Pretty unimaginative ways, no doubt, but rather effective ways, nevertheless. To say that the Jim Crow system was based entirely in fear and hatred is to say that a drill sergeant’s discipline is based entirely in fear and hatred. Or that a parent’s punishment is based entirely in fear and hatred. The greatest fear, in fact, was in the loss of social order by having two fundamentally different types of people live together without separation.

But what kind of reputation has this insight and wisdom earned the Southerner of 80 years ago nowadays? Something akin to [that of] Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. Lesser third world tyrants and dictators pale in comparison to the evil of the pre-war working class white Southerner, in modern eyes.

Future cops, teachers, welders, mathematicians, programmers, soldiers, accountants, and rocket scientists.
And what has been the modern alternative to the southern black experience of the 1920′s been? Violence unheard of in the Jim Crow South. Social collapse that was unheard of in the Jim Crow South. Out of wedlock births that were unheard of in the Jim Crow South. And a model of externalized blame that was unheard of in the Jim Crow South.
Lest there be any melt down over the mention of "extra-legal retribution" in the above, consider that that is the precisely accurate term to apply to the black and communist riots in Fergudishu and the killing of police by black supremacists.

Mark:

[T]the truth is that non-black communities are not and should not be obligated to accept members of a greater community that is so perpetually troublesome.
Personally, I've seen the Great Society and the civil rights revolution proceed from their inceptions. The latter was an arguably worthwhile experiment, as experiments in abandonment of common sense go, but, the results of both have been a disaster for all concerned with whites pandering to savage, group black behavior and subsidizing underclass parasitism (including white underclass parasitism), bastardy, and the destruction of our cities. All with an icing of virulent black political pathology, lies, and world class bullshit.

Monday, December 22, 2014

Pearls of expression.

Lesson one, do not get into a land war in Asia. Lesson two: don’t try to out-host Martha Stewart.
"The Passive-Aggressive Pie War Between Martha Stewart And Gwyneth Paltrow." By Amy Otto, The Federalist, 12/22/14.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Licking the boots of your enemies.

[S]ociety’s survival overrides individual interest. Obligatory military service restricts those that hate to get up in the morning. However, the need to defend the public justifies it. The prevention of terrorism by returnees demands that residency rights and especially irrevocable acquired citizenship be reconsidered. Furthermore, the concepts of guilt, criminality, and responsibility for membership in criminal organizations, must be re-thought.

Community rights and the government’s duty to protect its people rates higher than shielding hostiles from the inconvenience of jail or deportation.[1]

Of course, this is the opposite of the approach of the Treason Class. Under no circumstances must hostile, parasitic minorities, foreign or otherwise, be inconvenienced in the slightest.

The majority in Western nations, however, are to be hugely inconvenienced. They're to be thrown on the rack of tolerance, psychotic egalitarianism, and multiculturalism. Their values and institutions are to be mocked and their nations transformed into cartoonish, third-world dystopias.

But, by God, no one can say that we don't worship the foreign, the savage, the parasitic, the inhuman, the subversive, or the moronic. You have to give us that.

Notes
[1] "Telling Tales." By George Handlery, The Brussels Journal, 12/21/14.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Unpleasant Necessities Dept.

It saddens me to need to take up cudgels against a stance taken by a dear friend. Yet intellectual honesty and loyalty to my own convictions has made it necessary.

Before going any further, please read this piece at Adrienne’s Corner. Settle yourself and your own opinions about the incident described and the reactions to it you’ve just read.

I hold no brief for Alex Jones – in fact, I’ve never read his site or his writings – so I’m coming at this without any personal allegiances to defend. My quarrel is over:

  1. Local police departments possessing and deploying military-grade hardware that private citizens are forbidden to have;
  2. A law enforcement officer disparaging “well armed” “constitutionalists” to an arbitrary audience;
  3. Treating the rule of law, a critically important and almost wholly misunderstood principle of ethical and constitutional theory, as if it requires each of us to submit to any and every “law” some legislature hurls at us without resistance.

In my opinion, all three of the above matters are despicable. If what I’ve read here has been accurately reported, then this sheriff has displayed an unacceptable degree of contempt for one of the most important developments of our time: the formation of militias of private citizens in the hope of curbing the rampant overreaching and lawlessness that characterizes contemporary American governments.

The MRAP vehicle itself is of little concern, but we may legitimately ask: What other weapons of war, forbidden by “law” to the general public, are in the hands of the Spokane police department? Is it not clear that the whole point of the Second Amendment is to insure that citizens must always be able to arm themselves well enough to resist tyranny – that the people shall always be capable of putting down an abusive government? Yet there are a myriad “laws” that forbid the general public to own the very weapons of war being distributed to local police!

As to this deputy sheriff who refers offhandedly to “well armed” “constitutionalists” as a threat to him and his, that’s what they’re supposed to be: A force that can punish tyranny, that can react to abuses by the organs of the State with sufficient power to redress officially perpetrated injustice! If they were no threat, what other influence would exist to curb the excesses of agents of the State? What point would there be to citizen ownership of weaponry? Deer hunting? Alongside that, a man whose overriding concern is his personal safety does not deserve to wear a badge of office – especially not that of a lawman.

Finally, that paramount, widely misunderstood conception of American governance: the rule of law: That principle does not mean that we must all submit meekly to whatever “laws” are imposed upon us. Consider the Fugitive Slave Act for one example; consider New York’s “SAFE” Act for another. It means that agents of the State are compelled to obey the laws to the same extent as the citizenry – that a “law” that creates a legal distinction between private citizens and government agents is therefore invalid. That’s constitutional theory in a nutshell – the very reason we have a Constitution in the first place!

The critical question is and has always been:

Does an agent of the State have the privilege of breaking one law to enforce another, without penalty?

Because if he does:

  • The slaughter of Randy Weaver’s family was perfectly acceptable;
  • The slaughter of the Branch Davidians in Waco was perfectly acceptable;
  • The murder of John Singer to enforce a law against home schooling was perfectly acceptable;
  • Indeed, any deed by any agent of the State, at any time and place and under the color of any “law” whatsoever, is perfectly acceptable; the agent cannot be penalized for it.

Now, as to some of the other observations made in support of this sheriff and his deputies:

  • Yes, it is unwise to confuse local law enforcement with the federal government: You are in more danger from a government near to you than from one far away.
  • Concerning “psychotic nutjob Alex Jones:” As I said, I hold no brief for the man and have no acquaintance with his writings. But remember always that the strengths and weaknesses of the speaker cannot be transferred uncritically to the subjects and arguments he addresses. (Alternately, “even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”) It is essential to divorce arguments and observations from the personalities of those who make them.
  • Having joined (or not) the military, a police force, or any other agency of the State has no bearing on one’s rights as a citizen, nor on the freedoms to which he is entitled. Inversely: Does honorable military service or voluntarism confer extra rights on an individual? Would you excuse a man of a serious crime, for example armed robbery, on the grounds that he had a sterling record in the military and was a volunteer to the local fire department?
  • The term “right-wing fringe lunatics” is merely a slander of unnamed persons whose stances could well be exactly the one stated here. It is not a refutation of that stance.
  • That other lands suffer even worse governments, and even worse abuses, is irrelevant to abuses of power here in the United States. Foreign tyranny cannot excuse the excesses and lawlessness of our own. If it were so, we would be required to reform the entire world before acting on events in our own domain.

Food for thought.

Friday, December 19, 2014

The Greatest Disinformation Campaign of All Time.

Is the fascination with Nazis in Western culture a product of natural interest, or is it an unspoken pact by novelists and filmmakers to obscure the greater atrocities committed by the Soviets -- most notably under Stalin, who ruled in the same era as Hitler?

A recent documentary on the Turner Classic Movie cable channel illustrated the point. Said the commentators, when all else fails in selecting a villain, make Nazis the sinister evil force and success is assured. Yet the idea to create Soviet villains never appears to occur to novelists and filmmakers, except in spy thrillers where each side is usually defined as morally equivalent.[1]

Mr. Reeves's 2009 article is an excellent elucidation of the bizarre unwillingness of the West to name names and play the raw nerve of communist bestiality like a ukulele. There are 10 tons of Hollywood movies about satanic Nazis, parodies of actual humans, but rare is the movie about the Gulag, the Red Terror, the Cheka, or Chinese, Khmer Rouge, N. Korean, or, inter alia, Cuban horror. As the Nazis are trolls who live under bridges, so communists are saints with commendable goals and occasional errors (regrettable) of implementation. In fact, no enemy a centimeter or more to the right of Van Jones or Bill Ayers is anything less than some leftist caricature of a human – a racist, homophobe, islamophobe, despoiler, denier, misogynist, ape replica. It's the leftist way – straight to the ad hominy.

All in favor of The Narrative – socialism good; white, Western civilization bad.

One illustration of Reeves's point is the movie made of Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears. In the book, the villains with their hands on a nuclear device are Islamic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists aided by a commie East German. In the movie, the guys with their hands on the device are white supremacist, neo-Nazis. In popular entertainment, villains are transformed from Arab terrorists and communists to neo-Nazis. Mission accomplished.

Arab and cold-blooded, radical, leftist terrorists such as the Weather Underground, the Red Brigades, and the Baader-Meinhof gang abounded during the Cold War and all that was left of National Socialism was a smoking hole in the ground but, no, the focus of the filmmakers was on the spawn of the long-vanquished Hitler. To borrow from Chesterton, alive-dead Nazis and the steroid-fueled campaign to deflect attention from the horrendous crimes of the left are as "fresh as the first flowers."

The whole Chesterton's quote is worth reading:

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers.
Thus, one has to admire Mr. Reeves for laying his finger directly on the most vulnerable part of the current ultra-leftist campaign to disassemble the West. There is nothing decent, noble, rational, or true about socialism. It is founded on lies, envy, and theft and appeals to the infantile side of men who desire to be taken care of and to accomplish that by taking from their productive brothers. And it is alive and well today with powerful, well-placed advocates.

Thus, also not to be missed is his revelation that the flagship publication of liberals in America, The New Republic, was published from 1948 to 1956 by a communist agent.

And, of course, Diana West must be cited for her courageous and explosive book, American Betrayal, wherein are discussed the one thing that liberals, socialists, communist, and Muslim subversives positively do not want you ever to hear about, to wit, the infiltration of American society and government by communist agents of influence, the deadly effect they had on American policy and society, and the ominous parallel success at infiltration and influence on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

When John Boehner swoons over bipartisan agreements with the Donks, you can be sure he has none of this in mind. No. No church skunk. No corpse in the pool. Just patriots and constitutionalists as far as the eye can see. His pals.

Nomesane?

Notes
[1] "Nazis And Commies." By Bernie Reeves, American Thinker, 10/11/09.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Some thoughts on Cuba.

I don't know what good will come out of making nice with Cuba. The embargo had a half life of some length and needed to end sometime. A good time would have been after Fidel's death and dragging it out further wouldn't have made any difference in terms of Cuba's access to the rest of the world economy.

No. Cuba's problems were self inflicted and had nothing to do with our embargo. They are the natural and inevitable result of commie stupidity and viciousness. The essential problem with ending the current state of U.S.-Cuba relations is that we won't highlight the commie destruction and privilege of Cuba today and that we won't exact any kind of quid pro quo. The mad socialist, totalitarian experiment off our coast will endure a few more years safe from any kind of a reckoning.

Socialist never pay the bill. The people end up doing that. Always. They are the ones who end up cleaning up the ruins left in the wake of leftist theft and madness.

Anyway, Iraq is precisely the kind of country with which Castro wants you to compare Cuba. It’s the wrong comparison. So are impoverished Third World countries like Guatemala and Haiti [the wrong comparison]. Cuba isn’t a developing country; it’s a once-developed country destroyed by its own government.
"The Last Communist City. A visit to the dystopian Havana that tourists never see." By Michael J. Totten, City Journal, Spring 2014.

The key fact in American political life.

Similarly, the most efficient explanation for the otherwise profoundly anomalous behavior of these GOP Pols: they have acute ADD – Adelson Dollar Disorder. Or, to put it another way, they have been bribed.

* * * *

The key fact in American political life is that a small group of billionaires are spending heavily to wrench the GOP out of the path that the inclinations of its base—formerly also its chief funding source—would normally indicate. The leader of this effort: Gambling Mogul Sheldon Adelson..

"Why Has GOP Leadership Spurned Base, Election And Constitution? Severe ADD (Adelson Dollar Disorder)!" By Patrick Cleburne, Vdare.com, 12/15/14.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Jeb Bush? I Mean, WTF, But...JEB BUSH?!

And he's already out-polling all the other Republicans that have been mentioned as potential presidential candidates!

Can’t we do better than this? Aren’t there enough other generally acceptable candidates that we don’t have to go back to that well?

Or are the differences among them more apparent than real?

He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of Russia and China.

I’m beginning to wonder whether Shea and Wilson might have struck the jugular.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

A Word Of Power

Consider the following snippet from John Conroe’s Forced Ascent:

    With the circle closed, we left the forensics people to collect their data and moved back to the vehicles. A black military-style Humvee had been added to the mix of cop cars, SWAT trucks, and coroner vans. Four men in black suits got out as soon as they saw us, looking every inch like federal intelligence agents.
    “Chris Gordon—Agent Gulden, NSA. Come with us,” the lead agent said. Thirties, completely bald, six-one, one hundred eighty or so, dark eyes, serious demeanor. The other three were younger, two white, one black, all fit and serious.
    “No,” I replied.
    “That wasn’t a request,” Gulden stated, pinning me with his agent-man stare.
    Behind us, I could just about feel the New Jersey troopers absorbing the confrontation.
    “Well, just to be clear, Agent...my no was a general purpose refusal of requests, commands, orders, or directions.”

Does that move you? If so, why? More to the point, do you find it credible? If not, why not?


Who, in these latter days of the Republic That Was, has the courage to say No to an agent of the Omnipotent State? Especially one with weapons and backup?

Chris Gordon was willing to say No in the novel cited above because he’s an enormously powerful supernatural creature as well as a fictional character. In the circumstances he faced, very few of us normal types would have courage enough to do so. Yet the time is coming when Americans will be required to shout No at the myrmidons of the State or suffer to have their firearms confiscated.

Cliven Bundy said No to federal agents. He took a large risk in doing so. Yet he prevailed, because the public proved to be on his side...sufficiently so to defend him with even more force than those agents had marshaled against him.

The Oath Keepers who went to Ferguson, Missouri to protect threatened businesses there brought their arms. They refused the commands of federal agents to stand down and disperse. The feds backed down almost at once.

Various state governments are beginning to chorus No at the increasingly tyrannical and unbounded Environmental Protection Agency. The state governments’ armed force is pitiable in comparison with that of Washington...but their residents are another matter, and majority sentiment in those states is strongly behind them.

There’s a rising in progress.


While your weapons remain in your hands, you have power, a power best expressed by the single word No. But were you to be deprived of them...what then? Would the State recognize any bounds at all? Or would it finally run roughshod over every last right, however poorly protected it may have been, that we’ve been permitted to retain?

Consider Washington State’s I-594.
Consider New York’s Orwellian-named “SAFE Act.”
Consider the recent confirmation of Vivek Murthy as Surgeon-General.
Consider the Obama Administration’s endorsement of the UN’s despicable Small Arms Treaty.
And consider how little the popular trend in opinion on “gun control” means to the political class we endure.

They’re coming, Gentle Reader. Don’t allow them to soft-soap you, flummox you, or change the subject on you. And when you answer the doorbell and find them on your doorstep, you’ll confront a choice you’d rather not have to face: between No and “Of course, Officer; here they are.”

“The right to buy weapons is the right to be free,” wrote A. E. Van Vogt. The inverse is true as well. Add this, from another moderately well-known writer:

“I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.”

As Robert Anton Wilson has told us, “The State is based on threat.” Were we free of fear of the State and the things it purports to “protect” us against, we would never tolerate it. Thus, to say No to the State is to say I do not fear you. It implies that the speaker has power of his own, and that he’s willing to stand on it despite the power the State has arrayed against him.

Nothing instills fear in the masters of the State quite as effectively as No. Yet there are dangers, severe ones. How many of us are willing to accept those dangers will determine whether freedom can be saved from the wolves striving to devour it...whether we might embrace the anarchist alternative after all.

How do we measure up to the standard set by those who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to the quest for freedom?

A time for reflection and examination of conscience is upon us.

UPDATE:The Oath Keepers that went to Ferguson did comply with local police commands to relinquish their posts. I was unaware of this until just now.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Further Thoughts On Torture

As you might have expected, Gentle Reader, the previous essay on this subject elicited a great deal of feedback. Most of that feedback was of the “Are you BLEEP!ing serious?” variety. To those persons, I can only say: Yes, I was and I am. To those who inferred from what I wrote that:

  • Torture is an effective way of extracting vital information from a prisoner;
  • We can reliably trust governments with the privilege of torturing detainees?

...I can only say: Learn to read.

To save you unnecessary wear and tear on your mouse, here’s what I did say:

  • Torture can, in certain circumstances, be morally justified.
  • I -- not you, not your half-brother Herman, and certainly not the State, but Francis W. Porretto himself -- would not hesitate to use torture in those circumstances, if I thought it would save innocent lives.

I put my full name to everything I write for a reason: Unlike the multitudes who pop off callously, slanderously, or without thinking but prefer not to be called to account for it, I intend always to stand behind my words. I stand behind the ones in that previous essay. And as the title of this post implies, I have a few words to add to it.


Whether or not you deem torture to be potentially justifiable, there are significant problems yet to be solved. The most important of those problems is defining torture, such that we need not be guided by anyone’s opinions about it, or about where and when it’s been done.

Clearly, we cannot allow the supposed object of it to define torture, for he would define it as “whatever I would prefer not to experience.” Neither can we accept a subjective definition, based on the reaction to the object’s treatment, for the same reason. We must have a strict, intensive definition of torture, such that any particular practice can be tested against that definition to yield an unambiguous “It is” or “It isn’t” verdict.

An intensive definition requires:

  • A genus, or enveloping category;
  • A differentia, a characteristic that sets the defined things apart from all others in the genus.

The genus is “Treatment of an involuntary detainee.” There are few possibilities for a differentia.

Shall we define torture as “Any treatment of an involuntary detainee that causes him pain” -- ? That’s a subjective criterion, as we have no way to distinguish real from pretended pain.

What about “Any treatment of an involuntary detainee that damages him” -- ? I see problems with this, too, owing to the nebulousness of “damage” and the eternally contentious subject of mental or psychological cruelty.

Let’s pass right over “Any treatment of an involuntary detainee that the inflictor would object to having to endure,” for the same reasons. The Silver Rule is important, doubt it not, but it’s hardly a reliable standard for defining torture in a world that knows both sadists and masochists in significant numbers.

Shall we try “Any treatment of an involuntary detainee that damages him permanently” -- ? But there are so many kinds of damage that seem permanent at the moment they’re suffered, yet are healable by time or by artifice. Also, this plays into the “mental cruelty” conundrum.

Many, many persons have put their efforts to this question without arriving at a sturdy definition of torture, so don’t feel too bad if you can’t succeed where the rest of us have failed.


Complicating all discussions of torture is the rampant politicization of the subject. It’s been pointed out that the “extraordinary rendition” program began under the Clinton Administration, and that the Democrats had no problem with it at the time but are passionately interested in it now that the odium from it can be loaded onto the Bush II Administration. Beyond that, any definition for what constitutes torture will be contested for that reason: the accusers will want more categories of treatment included in it than they would dream of including were they the accused. Political maneuvering is like that.

This is certainly a good reason not to permit “torture” at the hands of the State...if we could agree on what it is. But when organizations such as CAIR can claim that for a Muslim detainee to be served “haram” meals, or to be confined in a cell whose toilet faces Mecca, or to be compelled to sit in the presence of a naked or half-naked woman constitutes “torture” and receive a respectful hearing, we have a problem that no law or regulation, however cleverly worded, can solve.


We should not pass from this topic without considering the effects of torture on the practitioners. It degrades them, and any culture that institutionalizes it, as surely as does slavery. That’s above and apart from the typical popular reaction against it. Such reactions have brought down whole nations whose governments have practiced it. It’s assuredly not something we’d want to make a regular, unquestioned part of wartime operations or penal practice. That makes it all the more important to arrive at a definition for it, albeit no easier to reach one.


Finally, as I mentioned in the earlier essay, the efficacy of torture is questionable. The chance of getting reliable information is better in some situations than others, but it’s never guaranteed. Yet the same could be said of any interrogatory technique.

There are ways to improve the efficacy of an information-seeking process that involves unwilling sources. If you have two or more such persons in your custody, you can use mutual confirmation reinforced with punishment for each deceit discovered. That is: If prisoner Smith says “They went North” while his (separately interrogated) comrade in arms Jones says “They went South,” you punish them until their answers match. That’s not guaranteed to produce the truth either, but it has better prospects.

The reinforced-mutual-confirmation approach can be further refined by including questions whose answers the interrogators already know. If the subjects are unaware of which questions those are, they provide “calibration” for the rest of the process, just as questions about one’s name, address, age, and so forth help to calibrate a polygraph session. Yet there will still remain uncertainties, for it’s possible to pre-arrange coordinated answers, at least for a range of questions, with one’s comrades, and to train away one’s tendencies to produce any of the obvious signs of deceit.

Ultimately, the only way to maximize the effectiveness of an interrogation technique, coercive or otherwise, is to get the subject to want to tell the truth, and to get him to tell it in a convincing manner. That’s a standard that can only be asymptotically approached, no matter what methods are employed.


Torture, like justice, love, and reality, is a subject beyond any mortal’s powers to exhaust. The most definitive statement I can make about it is that it will remain a field for the fiercest of intellectual and political combat long after I’ve departed this vale of tears. No proposed definition will be accepted by everyone. Innumerable participants in the debate will have axes to grind that will move them to obstruct the discussion, usually by accusing the more serious participants of low motives. Shifts in the political wind will add to whatever intensity the controversy would attain on its own.

Which doesn’t mean the discussion should not continue.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

That last one was only slightly in error

And I had been thinking of just linking to the one over at my site rather than crosspost. So, I'll do one of that sort of thing. Here's a little piece, if you like it go read the rest:

As I remember my history from so long ago, and quite probably why I hear so much about the degradation OF the history our children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren are being taught, we tried peaceful protest. Then we got a bit louder. Then the government started violent retribution. THEN we shot them.
Looks like that’s the route it will go again. But that’s also why we wrote the Constitution, so we wouldn’t have to go that way. But, as all supposed free societies in the past have gone, the government slowly but surely eroded the rights of the people. “For the greater good”. Piece at a time, little bit here, little bit there, until one morning we woke to find we were ruled not represented.
Well, it has taken them nearly a century because Americans were used to freedom and watched a bit more closely than today’s society. Piece at a time, little bit here, little bit there, wait a bit, little bit here, little bit there, taxation so far beyond what we rebelled against in the first place, back off some, feed it back in a piece at a time, …
Hopefully that's tasty enough for you to click it. This has gone way past ridiculous in the century it has taken to destroy American freedom, but it follows the time honored method. Death by 1,000 cuts.

Exactly

How much clearer need it be?

Friday, December 12, 2014

Thoughts On Torture

"If hooking up one rag-head terrorist prisoner's testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camel shagger will save just one Canadian life, then I have only three things to say: Red is positive, black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet.” – Don Cherry, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commentator and retired head coach of the Boston Bruins

Given the appearance of the Feinstein-led Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee report just this week, it occurred to me that a few words about torture, in both its historical and contemporary guises, might be appropriate.

The various “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed by the CIA and condemned by the Feinstein report skate an uneven surface, historically. They were certainly meant to cause fear and suffering. They were certainly not meant to permanently injure nor kill the victim. In that regard, they were a far cry from torture as practiced by other cultures and times. But then, our culture is a far cry from those others: it concedes certain matters of principle as being beyond rational dispute.

The point of torture isn’t always interrogation. Sometimes the point is to demonstrate to the honoree’s comrades what could happen to them: i.e., pour encourager les autres. And sometimes – especially in the case of many historical instances of torture – the point is merely to enjoy another person’s suffering and degradation.

The American agents who employed those techniques appear to have been interested solely in information extraction. However, were the techniques deemed licit for continued use, the resulting dynamic would attract genuine sadists to such positions: persons who care only about the pain and terror they can cause. Thus, it was probably for the best that, once the immediate crisis was comfortably behind us, such techniques were ruled to be beyond the pale.

However, the striking contrast between the context of the CIA’s coercive interrogations and the historical use of those (and much worse) techniques should remind us of something:

Quite a lot of persons were eager to do the same and worse to every last American.


“Savages have no rights.” – Ayn Rand

Savages torture. Indeed, they maim, mutilate, and kill without moral scruple. Their ignorance and / or dismissal of individuals’ rights is the defining characteristic that sets them apart from civilized men.

They who have chosen to make war against us – against all of us, not merely our government or our military – are savages by that definition. As they grant us no rights, they cannot claim any rights. That frees me of any conscience qualms about what our forces might find it productive or expedient to do to “Islamic fighters” who’ve strained with all their might and cunning to kill us.

Sometimes it’s a good thing for Americans to be reminded of just how high a civilization we’ve built and inhabit. But such a reminder is nearly always by contrast with another, less advanced culture. In the Islamic movement of today, we confront a culture that’s willfully adopted norms 1400 years behind those of the First World, in obedience to the most vicious totalitarian creed ever circulated among men.

Yes, I meant that last sentence exactly as it sounds. Not even the Nazis or the Communists can equal the barbarism and bloodthirstiness of Islam. Those other totalitarianisms were at least animated by a positive-seeming goal. Islam’s goal is exactly and only the reduction of Mankind to uniform seventh-century squalor in submission to an imaginary god opposed to all freedom and temporal happiness.

Islam meets the definition of savagery in all particulars, without qualification.


It is often the case that a fictional character will say what a real man would never dare to express, no matter how ardently he might believe it:

    Souhi watched, ashen, as the crew was laid out on the deck. Many of them were dead and others were screaming in madness, trussed up with duct tape.
    “So,” the man who appeared to be the leader said, walking over to him, “I have a few questions.”
    “Go fuck a goat,” Souhi said, spitting at him. “What are you going to do? Send me to Guantanamo? I sleep, I eat, I wait for your Amnesty International and ACLU to free me so I can kill you like the goat dick sucker you are.”
    “No, I’m not going to send you to Guantanamo. Those poor boys and girls have enough dickheads to deal with including, yes, the ICRC, AI, and ACLU. Are you the diver or the assistant driver?” he asked, turning to Kahf.
    “You are a man who licks the cocks of camels,” Kahf said.
    “Oh, wrong answer,” the man said, drawing his sidearm and putting a bullet through the diver’s brain. “Oleg, got your first customer.”
    A winch was lowered down and Kahf’s feet secured to the winch. Then the diver was lifted up and lowered over the side.
    As that was happening, the dead crew were being lifted up, their feet secured to ropes, and then dropped over the side to rest in the water. A spotlight was turned on and two large men lifted Souhi up so he was forced to look at the water.
    “The sharks around here are notorious,” the man said, smiling. “Let’s see how long it takes one to turn up.”
    ...
    “Wanna talk?” he asked mildly. “Let me tell you something, you Islamic fuck. A woman I dearly loved was killed by your kind about two months ago. I can’t really be said to be over that. Now, I dearly want to add you to the frenzy, just push you over the fucking side and be done with it. But, as I said, I won’t kill you. If you tell me the coordinates. If you tell me now, you can leave this ship with all your limbs intact. But when I tell them to lift you up, you are going into the water. So you want to tell me? Come on, it’s just a few numbers. I know you know them. You’ve got them memorized. You punch them in and erase the track after you’ve done the pickup.”
    “No,” the driver said, whimpering.
    “God, you people are sooo stupid.” He straightened up and gestured.
    “Please!” the driver said as he was lifted into the air. “You cannot do this to me!”
    “Did I listen to any of the rest of them?” Mike asked as the driver was lowered over the side. “Do you listen to the pleas of your victims? To the men whose throats you cut? To the little girls that get raped for the sins of their brothers? Do you care for those you’re starving to death in the Sudan? Did you listen to the pleas of the pilots you dragged through the streets of Mogadishu? Did you jump for joy when the Towers fell? Did you, YOU CAMEL-SUCKING FUCK?”

That’s as good a statement of the rationale for torturing terrorists as I’ve encountered anywhere.

Note that “Souhi” was beyond any rational dispute a terrorist. He had just been captured while attempting to deliver a weapon of mass destruction – nerve gas – to the U.S. mainland, where it would be used by other Muslim terrorists to perpetrate a mass slaughter. He had no claim to any right a civilized man might invoke, having forfeited all his rights when he elected to participate in such a heinous program.

With the lives of unimaginable numbers of innocents at stake, would you hesitate to torture such a man for the information in his head?


Islam and its adherents aren’t the only such monsters in the world today. There are others, driven by other ideologies, that would deal death to innocent Americans with equal ruthlessness:

    "Your certainty is impressive," Ryan said. "It allows you to justify your faith in mass murder."
"It's not murder," she said, "when the violence is justified by the revolution. The bourgeois regime being attacked is criminal and inhuman and all who are obedient to it are complicit in its interminable violence. In acts of revolutionary violence against the enemy anyone complicit with the enemy who is killed is guilty of the crime of the enemy. It is not murder."
    "So riding a subway train to work," Ryan said, "is a criminal act punishable by death?"
    "When seen in its true historical context, it certainly is," she said confidently.
    "Everyone on the subway is equally guilty," Ryan suggested.
    "No, not if you go person by person, a maid or janitor is not carrying the same level of guilt as a stockbroker or corporate executive, but revolutionary violence sweeps with an inclusive broom. The statement it makes is bold and absolute and is a warning to all...."
    "And what do you believe in, soldier boy? Gawd?"
    "In the individual and his liberty," Ryan said, rising to the bait."
    "Oh dear, an American. You people are so charming, so quaint," she said, "always the perpetual football players running onto the field to the roar of the crowd and the bouncing breasts of the cheerleaders."
    "You're an American, aren't you, Ms. Garvin?" he asked.
    "Ah, no," she said. "I stopped thinking of myself as that, as an American when I was a teenager. That's what we call 'the normal maturation process' these days, soldier boy. Sorry you missed it."
    "So you're not an American," Ryan said. "What are you?"
    "I'm a citizen of the world," she said.
    "That's a big concept," Ryan said.
    "It's basic," she said. "You must have missed it while you were attending your ROTC meetings."
    "I guess I did," Ryan said. "That would explain why I'm still just an American with a silly belief in freedom."
    Garvin laughed.
    "Freedom? You think this America is free? You've got ninety percent of the people glued to their couches gazing like zombies into their televisions and eating non-stop. And then they jump off their couches for five minutes of history when a couple of tall buildings are knocked down in New York. That's the America I see. That's the America the revolution sees. This freedom thing you believe in, soldier boy, is a fairy tale, just like Gawd. History is unfolding right before your eyes and you're running in the opposite direction after the fairies of freedom and the goblins of terrorism. You should run in the direction of revolutionary violence, all of you should, get out in front of it, get off this America thing, because it is dead, a thing of the past. America no longer exists. You just haven't realized it. None of you have....
    "What you people refuse to understand," Garvin said, jumping into the silence that had fallen over the room, "is that this freedom of yours is no more than pitiful self-indulgence at the expense of others. What the revolution does is take the anger and frustration of those who hunger for justice in the world and shape that into purposeful violence. You try to deny that by calling it 'senseless violence' and "mass murder,' but I'm looking at your faces now and I can see those old defenses and the lies that support them draining out of you. You all look like children who have just been told that there is no Santa Claus, and you had really known that all along. You just needed an adult to make it official for you. Well, here I am, kids, giving it to you straight, what you already knew."

[From Martin McPhillips’s extraordinary thriller Corpse In Armor.]

Other ideologies have, of course, demoted persons opposed to it to subhuman, rightless status. In every such case, the inevitable consequence is open, bloody warfare. The rules of war as civilized nations have codified them in the Geneva Conventions are of no interest to such ideologies. In their worldview, much like that of Islam, there are no rights and no noncombatants.

Were you to capture an Allison Garvin, knowing that she was a participant in a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in a major American city, would you hesitate to torture her for whatever strategic or tactical information she might possess?


The efficacy of torture is questionable. There have been documented cases of men confessing to crimes they had never committed simply to get the torture to cease...and torturers aware of that possibility who resolved to continue on to the point of death. But that goes to the utility of torture rather than whether it’s ever morally justified.

When you know...
...that the person you hold is beyond doubt a terrorist...
...that he’s complicit in an ongoing plot to commit mass murder...
...that he would do whatever he pleased to you were your statuses reversed...
...and that he would derive both enjoyment and satisfaction from watching you suffer and plead...

...would you hesitate to torture him for whatever shreds of useful information he might possess?

I wouldn’t.

Think about it.

Welp, We Told Ya.

By: SilverDeth
Date: December 11, 2014


Don't say we didn't warn you.
So now then...

"Conan! What is best in life?"
Well... other than seeing your enemies being driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women?
Oh yeah. Being Dead. Fucking. Right. Again.
We have all night... go on... shamble off for a few moments constant readers... pick out your favored echo-chamber... ruminate away.
No hurry. Take yer time - we'll wait...

__________________________________________

House approves $1.1T bill financing government
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans have muscled a $1.1 trillion bill financing government agencies through the House after President Barack Obama phoned Democratic lawmakers and urged them to back the measure. The House approved the measure late Thursday by 219-206. The compromise bill keeps agencies funded through next September.
__________________________________________

Republican Budget Deal Spits in the Face of Voter Anger
Red State
The House “compromise” budget in which the Republicans give Democrats everything they want in exchange for reforms that favor Wall Street (which is still virtually the least popular institution in America, not to mention the fact that the majority of Wall Street has been bankrolling the Democrats for the last decade) is a deliberate slap in the face of the sentiment that brought them to power. Literally no one who voted for Republicans did so in order for them to vote to fund the government all the way through virtually half of their term in power just so Dodd-Frank could be tweaked, and Obama’s executive amnesty could go forward.
__________________________________________

Representative Jim Moran (D., Va.): GOP Gave Us ‘Virtually Everything’ We Wanted
National Review
“In 20 years of being on the appropriations [committee], I haven’t seen a better compromise in terms of Democratic priorities. Implementing the Affordable Care Act, there’s a lot more money for early childhood development — the only priority that got cut was the EPA but we gave them more money than the administration asked for,” Moran told reporters Thursday evening after exiting a Democratic caucus meeting in which White House chief of staff Denis McDonough tried to convince members to back the bill.
__________________________________________

The Nature of the Scorpion
Daily Pundit
The Republicans lie and back stab their voters when they win – 2000, 2004, 2010, 2014, and they do it when they lose – 2006, 2008, 2012. They just do it. Like the scorpion, it is their nature. How much longer will it take their robotic voting base to figure that out?
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Dems bail out Boehner, help pass cromnibus, 219-206
Hot Air
Update: Obama just sent his chief of staff Denis McDonough to meet with the House Democratic caucus. The White House has gone from reluctant acceptance to cheerleader very, very quickly.
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DC RAMS THROUGH WALL ST. GIVEAWAY
Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- At least Democrats will have eggnog to wash down the poison pills they swallowed on Thursday as the House narrowly passed a government funding bill that will let Congress go home early for Christmas.
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In a surprise, House passes spending bill
The Daily KOS
The bill narrowly passed a procedural vote just after noon Thursday, but after going through debate as if a vote was planned, Speaker John Boehner postponed the vote. As the House recessed to regroup, and for hours after, the bill's fate was very much in doubt, with some reports saying Republicans were 80 votes short of passage, and a whipping war breaking out between progressive Democrats opposed to the bill (as long as it included provisions undermining bank regulations) and those who thought it was the best deal Democrats could get. Ultimately, though, with the president making calls and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer speaking in its favor, enough Democrats were swayed in its favor to counterbalance the extremist Republicans opposing it from the right.
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With Obama's Help, House Passes Boehner's Amnesty-Funding Cromnibus Bill
Brietbart
President Barack Obama bailed out House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday night. After the House embarrassed Boehner by almost killing his 1,774-page $1.1 trillion cromnibus bill on a purely procedural vote earlier in the day, House Democrats pitched in to provide the votes to pass it.
“My job tonight is to say thank you and Merry Christmas,” Boehner said in a rare floor appearance after the measure barely passed the House 219-206 after a day of pure chaos in Congress.
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Told.
You.
FUCKING.
So.


Oh yes constant readers, please DO take a seat. Now comes there part where we stick our schaden-boner in your ear, and fuck some common sense into your skull. So shut up and learn something - pretend for just a few seconds that you are ACTUALLY better than the Goddamned Prog-nazi drones. Roleplay with us for a bit...

We said this would happen before the mid-term election. We mentioned it would happen DURING the mid-term election. We told you it would happen immediately afterwards. We screamed it while all the silly little sheeple were "being pragmatic," "picking the lesser evil," "acting like grown-ups" and dragging the RePubicans, who HATE them, across the finish line - despite their malice and incompetence.

Let's be clear - the Republican party spent all their resources shitting on their voters - not battling their supposed opposition. Each ounce of expended energy during this election was used to hurl every imaginable slur at believers - with a fury reserved ONLY for the people the Neo-Con statists hold in UTTER contempt. No - not the DemonRats fools. Their conservative base. You know... the "Racist-gun-toting-neanderthals" gentry-caste Republicans have to choke back vomit to stand downwind from?

Having witnessed the unbridled train of libel repeatedly during the primary, and bearing witness to direct threats from the likes of "Mitch-the-Axe" - is anyone with a functioning brain-stem ACTUALLY STARTLED by this Shakespearean betrayal? Really? If so, open your damned eyes - which we'll admit, is a hell of a lot easier when one yanks their head free of their rectum.

It's all played out exactly as folks like Bill Quick, Mike Hendrix, Misha, and others, (like US), told you it would. You suicidal, well-intentioned-idiots drug the Republicans into power - and before the traitors can even show up for work, they deliberately make it utterly impossible to do any of the pretty little lies they whispered in your ears. Descriptions less powerful than "treason" and "sabotage" are farcical.

You chumps were used the same way Jugg-Ears played the Prog-tards in 2008 and 2012. You fucked up - you believed a single word a politician told you - or worse, you choked down a shit-sandwhich thinking yourself somehow "rational and mature." No apologies here - we find your outrage and confusion delicious, because you brought it on yourselves.

The entire time you "party-faithful" were slaving away at polling booths, manning phone banks, passing out fliers, (full of deliberate lies), and squandering your hard won cash, these carpetbaggers smiled, rolled their eyes at your naivete, and envisioned the word "RUBE" stenciled on your forehead. Do you know what? They're right.

Betrayal and lies from left to right and top to bottom. But go on.... please tell us again how you're "acting like pragmatic adults." We're listening....

Told_you_so
The punchline? Now that Republicans have allowed the Chamber of Commerce's Wetback Tsunami to flood the FUSA, (and paid the bill for Obamacare yet again!), they are going to spend the next two years campaigning against them! (As highlighted Repeated by Bill Quick and others).

Why would these charlatans engage in such a blatant act of unabashed, sham-tastic hypocrisy?

Because constant readers... they think know you're stupid enough to keep voting for them regardless of how much they ruckus you, piss on your beliefs, steal your liberty and destroy your wealth. Like good little battered housewives, you'll suck down the tears, hold some ice on your black-eye, and rock yourself to sleep at night...

"He really loves me... really... he does... he really loves me..."

Fucking pathetic.

Votes absolutely won't repair this lost nation. Neither would - hypothetically - shooting the nearest Non-Representing Representative in the face... but then again, folks would have to start somewhere...

Thursday, December 11, 2014

More Thoughts On Feminist Lunacy

Yes, there’s a lot of it going around these days. Some of it is merely mildly amusing or mildly unpleasant. Some of it is actively life-threatening, as we can see from the witch-hunts inspired by recent, highly publicized but apparently false allegations of rape.

Milo Yiannopoulos has produced yet another impressive piece, this time about a feminist virago so hysterical, so vicious, and so utterly bereft of good sense that were she not demonstrably flesh, I would have assumed her to be a fictional character. I hadn’t heard about this...person previously – I don’t keep in touch with events in Silicon Valley to the extent I once did – but given recent developments among technologists, both on corporate boards and among low-level employees, her activities there come as no surprise.

By any reasonable person's definition, and even by the standards of Silicon Valley, Kane is an abusive engine of discord, creating precisely the opposite conditions to those needed for happy co-operation between the sexes. So how did she land a feature-length profile in Matter, Silicon Valley's long-read organ of choice—even though her paranoia and control freakery eventually screwed up what would probably have been a fawning profile and left journalists and readers alike aghast at her childishness and self-destructiveness?

(In case you're not familiar with the story, follow those two links, which have to be read to be believed. Evidently Matter started calling around, asking people about Kane's personal and professional life in preparation for their profile of her and her work—doing journalism, in other words—and she threw a hissy fit and started defaming and smearing the journalists in question, who were respectable professionals, beyond reproach in their dealings with her.)

That second paragraph is the key. Such harridans cannot bear scrutiny and will play every card in the deck to deflect or evade it. In this they most closely resemble racialist mouthpieces such as Al Sharpton, who receives unbelievable deference from the media but whose personal conduct has been so vile as to merit absolute condemnation. Yet they continue to get unearned attention and respect, mainly because they belong to “certified victim classes” the media has resolved never, ever to cross.

Unearned respect is almost always abused to the detriment of the genuinely respectable and respect-worthy. Shanley Kane is striving to present us with a demonstration.


A pair of terms with which employment lawyers will already be familiar, assumption of risk and informed consent, are relevant to much of the feminist slander-slinging today.

He who voluntarily and without inducement enters some place or situation is said to have assumed the risks that pertain to that place or situation. For example, a Christian tourist who decides to travel covertly to Mecca, an Arabian city nominally closed to non-Muslims, has assumed the risks associated with discovery. An unarmed man who ventures at night into an area known to be the haunt of muggers and drug dealers has assumed the risks that come with that territory. Assumption of risk lays the burden of coping with the risks, including all the damages that would fall upon him should those risks be realized, upon the principal’s own shoulders.

A woman who voluntarily goes unaccompanied, unarmed, and otherwise unprotected through a district where a significant number of rapes have been reported in the recent past has assumed the risks of that activity. Though the deed is criminal and should be investigated and prosecuted, nevertheless she has no moral claim to having been “failed” by anyone. Neither can she validly protest, when informed of the stupidity of her decision, that to be so informed constitutes “blaming the victim.”

The other term, informed consent, pertains to decisions taken under inducement. An employer induces his employees to enter his place of business by offering a salary and / or other benefits. A shopkeeper induces customers to enter his store by advertising its existence and / or promoting his wares. The inducement constitutes an obligation on the part of the inducer to inform those induced of any non-trivial risks attached to such behavior. If the inducer can validly claim to have done so to the best of his knowledge and ability, he is at least partially indemnified against any damages that may accrue to those induced from the realization of those risks.

An invitation to a “frat party” constitutes an inducement. But what does “informed consent” come to in such a case?

  • Fraternities are populated by young men.
  • They almost always feature alcoholic beverages.
  • Laws against them notwithstanding, they frequently feature various recreational drugs.
  • Young men, with few exceptions, are interested in having sex.
  • Young women, with few exceptions, are the persons with whom young men want to have sex.
  • Though this might come as a shock to the terminally naive, quite a lot of sex occurs at frat parties.

Just how out of touch, friendless, and intellectually deficient must a young woman be not to know all that before she first sets foot on a college campus? Does such a girl belong in college at all?

This common-sense observation won’t halt the cries about “rape culture” and “patriarchal oppression,” of course.


The feminist harridans’ diatribes against men et cetera won’t halt until the media, particularly the Main Stream Media, demand that they hew to the same standards that are expected of men. However, the Main Stream Media long ago abandoned all pretense of “objective journalism.” Like the rest of the Left’s coalition of agents, they’ve signed on to an agenda, in part out of conviction but in at least equal measure because in our time, the preservation of coalitions of allegiant customers is a matter of old-format media survival. Indeed, even some of the “new,” online media have become dependent on such ideological patron groups.

This is a devastating criticism of the journalistic trade. It opens wide the question of whether there’s any “news source” whose reporting can and should be believed by default. When the details of such reports include allegations of rape, molestation, sexual harassment, and the like, careers and lives hang in the balance. A heavy moral onus for destroying innocent lives should rest upon those who promote unfounded accusations.

Women, having allowed feminists to redefine them from the “strong” profile they claimed a few decades ago to the “fragile flower” category they were supposedly striving to escape, will be the ultimate victims. Economic forces are already rearranging matters to separate men and women in business and commerce. The legal hazards of marriage and fatherhood have brought about a huge aversion to those things among young men. Socially, young Americans are partitioning themselves into gender-specific camps to a degree unknown since the Victorian Era. Only terminal blindness to foreseeable consequences can account for it; only the opening of millions of women’s eyes to those consequences can undo it.

“You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.